I mean, is it really so much easier to find a hypnotizable YouTube submitter who happens to fit the wire harness than it is to have a person trained in using the harness pretend to be hypnotized?
Yeah, I’m beginning to wonder if Mr. Clay is yanking our chain.
I’m at work again and so cannot watch the video of the performance, so I am only speaking in generalities, but do we see the person levitate or do we see a draped shape that looks like the person under a sheet levitate? Because if so, she never left the ground and had snuck over to the next place she was to be revealed at.
And to make it even more realistic, they probably had the stooge make a “video” so they could show it as the one that was selected if it were ever questioned.
The Niply Elder was specifically speaking of hypnosis on a magician’s stage. Not the bring 20 volunteers from the audience to hypnotize kind of hypnosis. On a magician’s stage everything is as controlled and choreographed as the magician can manage.
The person that was selected – was her name announced?
Does she have a Facebook page, with years of non-showbiz types entries, and then some comments about making her audition video and hoping she’ll be chosen?
Or did she mysteriously appear out of nowhere, with no social media presence prior to the grand illusion?
I think it’s going to be harder for magicians to convincingly pick “stooges” these days, because it will be easier for curious people to point out that “Anne, from Sydney” didn’t exist until two months ago, but Tineye matches her pics to stage magic enthusiast Emily Sartis who has years of experience in performing.
So, you believe him when he says this? That he’ll just scrap the entire act? (When he could ensure it’ll work every time with a trained assistant)
This is fascinating. Do you teach this, or just use it yourself? Has it worked?
Yes, that’s exactly what it is. The stage hypnotist picks people out of the audience who seem like good candidates. The audience is made up of people who are interested in hypnotism, and plenty of them want to be on stage. So they get picked to go on stage, and the hypnotist tells them what to do, and they do it. If someone told you to get up on stage and cluck like a chicken, and you thought that was fun, you’d do it. If you’re shy but still want to do it, you are now “hypnotized” and have permission to act as if you’re not shy.
Stage hypnosis is just picking likely candidates out of the crowd for some silly improv acting exercises. How the people on stage feel subjectively is irrelevant. Some of them probably feel “hypnotized”, in that they are in a state where they are willing to do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. Others just like acting silly to begin with and don’t feel any different than usual. But nobody is under any compulsion, and when they say things about how they feel, well, they’re at a hypnosis show so they’re going to play along.
People like you would never be picked to go on stage, because you wouldn’t play along. And one of the skills a stage hypnotist has is reading people quickly, seeing if they’re willing to be funny and silly and do foolish things for a laugh. One look at you and they would be able to tell you would never do such things. And this is why stage hypnosis looks so convincing to you, because you think most people are like you and would only act like idiots on stage because they were in an altered mental state. But there are plenty of people who are happy to act like idiots just for fun.
No. This is part of what is going on in a stage hypnosis show, but there is more to it, and more to hypnosis in general, than this. There is a real altered state of consciousness involved. I have been (lightly) hypnotized once in a therapeutic rather than a stage context. I was not far under, and I was not made to do anything silly, or indeed anything much at all. (I talked a bit about my problems, but nothing terribly revealing or embarrassing was said, nothing beyond what I might have said to regular psychotherapist.) However, there was a definite and quite distinctive feel to it. I was peculiarly relaxed and calm both during the session and for a period after.
I have seen stage hypnosis shows too and I see little reason to believe that the people in the shows are not in similar altered states to that which I experienced. Following suggestions to act in some uncharacteristic way, however, is something over and beyond that. I doubt whether I would be a good candidate for stage hypnosis myself. I might get hypnotized (as I was by the therapist), but I doubt whether I would perform, being too much of an introvert. I think the same went for my wife when she volunteered to be one of the subjects at a stage hypnosis show. She seemed to be put “under” ok, and was sitting on a chair on the stage, slumped over and somnolent (along with several other people), but unlike most of the others she did not respond to the suggestions to “perform” and was quietly “woken” and led back into the audience by an assistant, as the hypnotist concentrated on getting the people who would perform to actually do so.
This OP cannot be for real. In response to every explanation he replies, “But the magician SAID such-and-such…”
When you watch magic acts, you need to assume EVERYTHING you hear is irrelevant or an outright lie. If there is a simple way to do the trick, but the only reason it wouldn’t work is “ethics”, then that’s how they did the trick.
No one can be this gullible, can they?
Reminds me of an email conversation I had just this week with an African 419 scammer - it went like this:
You need to read some of the OP’s other threads…
Well. magicians do have their own ethical principles, and one of them is something like “Don’t use a stooge unless it is the only way that you can create a really impressive effect that will still be baffling even to someone who assumes that you may be using stooge.”
I think the effect in question meets that standard, so that all but the most puritanical magicians would accept that the use of a stooge in this case is acceptable. Most magical effects do not meet that standard, however, so although many could in principle be done by using stooges, they very rarely are done that way in practice.
You are quite right, of course, that magical ethics absolutely allow and even encourage both bare-faced lying and deliberately and systematically misleading talk and behavior in pursuit of a more convincing and more baffling effect.
Are those threads evidence that he really is stupendously naïve and gullible, however, or that he, for some twisted reason, enjoys having people think him so?
JohnClay, can I ask you a question? Are you, personally, a strong believer in the power of hypnotism, as commonly presented as entertainment on stage and screen? Would you consider the topic of hypnotism somewhat important to you?
Reading the thread, I think the answer is already given in this thread as a “yes”. Look at the links he provided about hypnotism, and the comments about “speed seduction”.
By means of my amazing mental powers, which You Can Also Learn*, I predict the answer to this question will be:
Bought a book/dvd/course/something on the subject, and it promises much.
Hasn’t worked yet. Must not be doing it quite right.
*My book is only $199, or buy the book and DVD together for only $249!
$199???
Damn, the price was much lower back when we bought it from the back of a comic book.
Yes, but my method is guaranteed to work, if you do it right.
(and you’ll know you’re doing it right - because if it doesn’t work, you’re doing it wrong)
It’ll never work without a hypno-coin.