I think some people are seeing this in the wrong direction. Why would these charlatans need to submit to Randi’s challenge? The more notable ones can make plenty of money on their own; they don’t need the million dollars to catapult themselves into fame.
In the same token, I don’t think them failing Randi’s challenge would sway any True Believers anyway. Manipulating people through their grief is not hard. Many people, after going though a bad break up, the loss of a loved one, etc are not in a fully rational state of mind. They often lack some kind of closure- maybe they wished the relationship they had went differently, maybe there was something they always wanted to say to the person but they can’t because they’re dead. It seems like to be a ‘successful’ medium like the Long Island medium you only need the following things:
1.) Communities where families are generally close-knit. People in big, close, generally loving families often have the hardest time dealing with the loss of a loved one. These communities and/or cultures will have a ‘mark’ that probably spent a significant portion of their life in close contact with their relative before they died. Other communities/cultures may be less tight knit, people moving away from their families or simply not placing as much value as having a big close knit family. A rube from a big, traditional, close knit family is going to be much less used to being ‘away’ from a loved family member, and desperate to ‘hear’ that they are okay/any lasting advice.
2.) Communities and cultures that are more supersticious are (obviously) more susceptible to fortune telling. Maybe they believe a ton of other woo, maybe they are just really into things that are ‘good’ luck and ‘bad’ luck. They’re often, but not always, recent immigrants from a poorer and more agrarian country than say the US.
3.) Very mild ‘skeptics’ you can convince. Long Island Medium pulls this- one of her “clients” will have a “skeptical friend” who the medium will conveniently blow away. The person isn’t skeptical at all; maybe they’re unsure or not confident enough to take a stance either way. When the medium does her schtick, the person then feels pressured to go along with it. Look at people who are convinced they are abducted by aliens- maybe someone had a memory lapse and is trying to understand what happened. They are in a room full of people who are convinced they were abducted by aliens, and it was so horrible, etc. That unsure person will probably go along with that collective belief, perhaps out of pressure and self-doubt. People are afraid of getting ostracized, even if they end up being the only ‘correct’ person in the room. Sometimes its easier for them to just play along.
My wife’s culture is a little of 1 and 2. Funerals are huge drawn out affairs for them, people mourn for a long time, and there are many supersticions about death/afterlife. It comes as no surprise that fortune-telling and mediums are popular in immigrant communities. These were communities of people who very rarely had an opportunty to go to college (my wife was the first to go, and to graduate, and she is in a BIG family) mostly farmed, and had a lot of struggles and misfortunes that were not easily explained. "Beto and Ernesto both got that strange fever at the same age, but Beto got better and Ernesto died 3 days later. Why? Wait, wasn’t there a white owl perched on the fence outside when Ernesto got sick? Hmmm :dubious: "
