Derren Brown: Pushed to the Edge

[robvalue]

That's a good summary.

You can tell he doesn't know shit about it when it came to a coin flipping game and a trick strategy, and he said it works because of "a kind of deep maths". It wasn't deep at all, but the fact he thinks it is reveals a lot.

He is generally awesome, which is why this failure stands out so badly.

But seriously, when he manipulates people to extreme degrees, what would be the consequences if they took him to court rather than laughing and signing release forms? He's done some heavy shit, unless it's just a fix which he swears it isn't.

[Napoléon]

You can tell he doesn't know shit about it when it came to a coin flipping game and a trick strategy, and he said it works because of "a kind of deep maths". It wasn't deep at all, but the fact he thinks it is reveals a lot.

He obviously didn't think it was, it was all bollocks to drag out a program for the sake of some shitty computer edited reveal.

He knew exactly what he was doing and that's why it sucked. It lacked any real intelligence.

Same as when he made that other one where he reckoned he'd have us all unable to get out of our chairs. That was literally the biggest wind up going.


I love Derren Brown but sometimes it's like he's laughing at the fact he can make such obvious bullshit programs and people lap it up like he's an actual magician. Yeah, he's the first to say he's not, but in some of his stuff it's not even clever. It's just a time waste.

[robvalue]

That was kind of my cousin's take. He kind of "admires" him for being able to get away with absolute shit at times, talk to people like fuckbaskets and have them praise him for it.

[downbeatplumb]

I used to be a fan but have found some of the people who are supposed to be unaware of his stunts as obvious stooges, the illusion would have been easier to maintain if he hadn't employed some piss poor actors who reacted like the actors in Blackadder 3.

[Napoléon]

I used to be a fan but have found some of the people who are supposed to be unaware of his stunts as obvious stooges, the illusion would have been easier to maintain if he hadn't employed some piss poor actors who reacted like the actors in Blackadder 3.

Another thing that a lot of people in my experience don't realise. Pretty much everyone he 'hypnotises' is an actor. 

What's ironic is my favourite program with him in it is where he went after Psychic Sally and called her a fraud.

[robvalue]

Is that for realsies? Is it known for sure he uses stooges?

I did wonder about a lot of the stuff he did, not just about it being possible but about how ludicrous it would be to do it to a stranger.

[Tiberius]

You can tell he doesn't know shit about it when it came to a coin flipping game and a trick strategy, and he said it works because of "a kind of deep maths". It wasn't deep at all, but the fact he thinks it is reveals a lot.

Are you talking about the bit where he flipped a coin and it came up heads 10 times? If so, then he doesn't believe that it's a "kind of deep maths", because literally at the end of the episode he revealed that to get the 10 heads in a row, he recorded himself coin flipping for 10 hours until it came up.

I don't believe he's an idiot, I think he knows when he's spouting bullshit, and he does it to try and distract people from the real trick. If he revealed how he does all his tricks it just wouldn't be entertaining anymore.

Also, I don't believe for one second that all the people he hypnotizes are actors. He's done too many stunts and shows for that to be true without at least one of them selling their story to a national newspaper. Plus, I went to a live show of his once and one of my mom's friends went up on stage and got hypnotized, so I know there are legitimate non-actors used in at least some of his stunts.

[robvalue]

No, the coin bit was where one team had to pick three outcomes of three coin flips, like HHH and then he allocated the other team another list, THH. He then made people cheer on the second team, to make it seem like that helps them win. But it's actually just very simple probability. (What he forgot to mention at the start is that you reset after each "match".)

He wrote in his book that he has a way to beat roulette and he will validate it "when he finds a mathematician". This is real ignorance of how numbers and probability work. Unless he actually wanted to present himself that way.

[downbeatplumb]

You can tell he doesn't know shit about it when it came to a coin flipping game and a trick strategy, and he said it works because of "a kind of deep maths". It wasn't deep at all, but the fact he thinks it is reveals a lot.

Are you talking about the bit where he flipped a coin and it came up heads 10 times? If so, then he doesn't believe that it's a "kind of deep maths", because literally at the end of the episode he revealed that to get the 10 heads in a row, he recorded himself coin flipping for 10 hours until it came up.

I don't believe he's an idiot, I think he knows when he's spouting bullshit, and he does it to try and distract people from the real trick. If he revealed how he does all his tricks it just wouldn't be entertaining anymore.

Also, I don't believe for one second that all the people he hypnotizes are actors. He's done too many stunts and shows for that to be true without at least one of them selling their story to a national newspaper. Plus, I went to a live show of his once and one of my mom's friends went up on stage and got hypnotized, so I know there are legitimate non-actors used in at least some of his stunts.

Personally I wasn't talking about the people he hypnotises but some other bit players who were "supposed" to not be in on it.

[Tiberius]

No, the coin bit was where one team had to pick three outcomes of three coin flips, like HHH and then he allocated the other team another list, THH. He then made people cheer on the second team, to make it seem like that helps them win. But it's actually just very simple probability. (What he forgot to mention at the start is that you reset after each "match".)

He wrote in his book that he has a way to beat roulette and he will validate it "when he finds a mathematician". This is real ignorance of how numbers and probability work. Unless he actually wanted to present himself that way.

Like I said before, I highly doubt he's an idiot when it comes to these things. It's more likely that he's actively trying to trick people (because, y'know, he's a magician) and most people would fall for such explanations.

The same thing applies with his "wisdom of crowds" explanation. He doesn't believe that's how he did it, because doing it that way obviously wouldn't work, and the actual trick was the special effects. However that explanation might convince a load of people, or he may have hoped it would. To his credit, at the end of the show he did put out another explanation, which was that he rigged the lottery machine. Neither of course were true, but then he's not supposed to reveal his tricks anyway, he's a magician.

I think the same thing applies to his roulette comment. It's tongue in cheek, it's supposed to be funny. Incidentally, he did "almost" beat a roulette machine by predicting which number the ball would land on, but ultimately lost when it landed on the number next to it.

If you think he's an idiot, he's probably got you fooled, because that's exactly what he wants you to think at times. If he revealed how he actually did his tricks, he wouldn't be special anymore.