Derren Discusses The Gameshow

154 Comments

1. Worked with Derren on Miracles for Sale. The man is as amazing as the stunts he pulls off. I promise if you ever meet him you won’t be disappointed. Keep it up Derren we are captivated.
2. What a show. Just shows just how nasty things can get when u are part of a mob. Changed my way of thinking anyway. Keep up the good work Mr Brown.
3. I think this was a disappointing show, from the start where the person “had a choice”, there was no 50/50 choice at all……………………………….

   for example, the third one where the person “chooses” a door to run through, the door he didn’t choose had the following barriers set in his path, the trolley, lines painted across the floor, psychologically the barriers were strong enough to make the choice stacked.

   Derren as he took the audience through the choices used deliberate phraseology again to help determine the selection the audience would make.

   Entertainment yes, but not up to Derren’s usual fantastic high standard.
4. Derren, I watched the show last night and I loved it, The way you showed the audience their unkind actions was a really amazing lesson and insight to the world!
   Love all your stuff!

   pleae follow me on twitter or facebook 🙂

   Flacob Bushell
5. There should have been no information given to the audience about Kris before hand, then they would not have been influenced to choose the bad option each time, the guy admitted to cheating on his girlfriend!
6. Yet again Derren Brown has shown logical in a beautiful way 🙂
   Really enjoyable episode, really showed the truth behind humans and our behaviour.
   I did notice the facial reactions at the end, when Derren revealed the truth and how they felt such guilt and misunderstanding. I think we as humans need to accept more what we our capable of. When I went into my psychology degree I thought it took a specific person to commit the crimes we learn about, but you really learn to understand we are all capable of committing a horrid act, as much as we are capable of committing a good act.
7. Was a great show and from studying psychology was obvious what was going to happen. Whether there was a confederate shouting to smash the tv or not there would have been plenty in the audience thinking it and probably would have said it a few seconds later. The ending was absolute amazing i was expecting it to end up with a possible a blank blood capsule shot at the participant to scare him and for it to be a “real bullet” to shock the audience that they could have the capability of killing someone though their choices. But Derrens ending was definitely more effective despite me knowing that the ending was completely staged instantly it still gives me goosebumps, best of all the camera catching people taking their masks off and instantly being individuals again wondering how he was CLASSIC
8. This interview is very informative and I think it gives an insight into the psychology of what actually occurred during The Gameshow. It’s a pity that the length of the show would not allow this to be included as a part of it, as I think that would have offered people a deeper understanding of what went on.
9. Surely the reason the audience was given the information before hand was so they could justify punishing him. Liked the way that Derren would give %ages when the votes were decisive, but at times seemed to withhold the figures I assume when they were much closer.
10. Brilliant show. Very unsettling to watch fellow human beings acting in that way though. Definitely food for thought and explained a lot about anonymous mob behaviour.
11. Phil, that’s the point. He influences the choices by putting the simple objects in the way. The choice is still there though. He could have easily ran past them.
12. For most of the show, I was quite critical – everyone in that audience knew he wasn’t really going to get a criminal record / made redundant etc.

    More than that, everyone would have assumed that he’d have been compensated for his troubles – prize money for being a good sport, etc. His broken TV would most certainly have been replaced…

    I was getting already to conclude that this didn’t really prove much… until the twist at the end. Once that happened, you realise that even though you thought he would be compensated – you were still being irresponsible and reckless with his life – and a proper grown-up would have known that and recognised the danger.

    Good message at the end Derren.
13. Hi Derren not sure what blogs tweets etc you actually get to read I have likely banged on a tad too much but important 2 the purpose of the show (im not sure everyone got the underlying message tho), I was badly bullied when young so from a victims point of view, I have always wondered at mankinds apparent love of mocking, humiliating, making people cry – what sort of psyche do these people have, WHY & what do they get from it? How can it be pleasurable to inflict unpleasantness on someone else? I de like to hear from some of the audience their “reasons” in carrying on the plot – If this show has made just one person take a look at how they treat other people, then its succeeded. Darkly Worryingly Brilliant. Caroline From Plymouth- (I leapt out on U waving program 4U2 sign at Shaftesbury!)
14. Disappointed in the show. Felt that, even without the masks, of course the audience wanted him to suffer more. For the same reason we laugh when people fall down and we all love watching you’ve been framed. Think you have far more to offer than this Derren. Show us more of your real talents
15. @Becky and Paul Griffiths:

    That was sort of the point though. They set Kris up to look like he needed a bit of a fall by showing that he was a little bit cocky and airing the part where he admitted cheating on his girlfriend, started it off with the girl getting her bum pinched which wasn’t so bad and was a bit of a laugh but then showed how gradual escalation and phrasology/charisma can convince an audience of anonymous people to do awful things.
    Derren Brown played a dictator and the audience were his army.

    And Paul, with the third choice having the obstacles there, surely you’d agree that Derren put them in place purely to unconciously influence the mans third choice?

    Great show though.
16. This episode, more than almost any other I can remember from Derren, really disturbed me. The opening exchange with ‘the boyfriend’ as he got right in the face of ‘the target’ was certainly not light-hearted, or amusing, but quite frightening in the manner of the delivery and the offer to step outside. Even ‘the girlfriend’s’ reaction prior was pretty full-on. Yet the audience laughed and cheered along, selecting ever more upsetting outcomes.

    I could not relate to their joy in the demise of the person. I think that was the point.

    I certainly have laughed and pointed at my T.V. many times. Reality T.V. is just an excuse to play armchair God for the night and to feel better about ourselves as we ridicule the fall of others.
17. A bit dissapointed by ‘the game show’, all seemed a bit pedestrian by Derrens standards, still better than everything else on at that time!
18. was a execellent experiment, suggestion and crowd immunity was explored in a interesting ways. superb ending very fitting. keep up the amazing work derren
19. I loved the show.. i was so on the edge of my seat at the end.. Derren you are amazing, never fail to surprise me.. fair play was a great piece of work.. You are like my hero 😀
20. I thought it was great when you reviled what was going on at the end and they were all stunned beyond belief, I thought this was a great idea and I loved every second of it.
21. sorry, I thought that show was poor. Seemed obvious from here on the couch(not the car, although I’d just finished saying I hope Derren makes the audience feel ashamed of themselves in some way)I’d have been disappointed if I’d been in the audience and had to endure the majority decision. I wonder how that experiment would work in a different country? I love Derren Brown show’s but sorry can’t say that was one of his best.
22. wow, that dood in the middle of the picture has an amazingly lifelike derren mask! 😀

    hey, guess what? when people are allowed to act anonymously, they become nastier & nastier even when they’re NOT in a crowd. not everybody does, of course…but it happens a lot. so the crowd may not be much of a factor,
23. I think it was interesting to show the ‘Youve been framed’ generation in all our gory glory. It was obvious from the start that it would go that way. We are all, after all, bitter animals who point outward in an attempt to draw attention to the outsider, that isn’t them. Too many continuity errors for me to have taken the perils of the ‘victim’ seriously though. The police would not allow him to take his bag into the van, he wouldn’t be able to take a call and he didn’t have the bag when he was ‘dropped off’. These were detractors that blew the end illusion for me but the point was made. I did enjoy your use of language and direction therein as well. I look forward to next week.
24. I enjoyed the show although I know if I was in the crowd I would have gone for all the negative stuff without any coercion. Of course there would be a natural cut off point when real potential for harm would have me moving to the positive outcome. The fact that it was televised made the negative choice seem ‘safe’.

    As a kid I remember running with gangs although I didn’t necessarily have any intentions of harming anyone. When there was a confrontation between us and other groups the change in some of my friends was completely out of character. One guy who I’d never seen aggressive in anyway before picked up a lump of wood and charged with the crowd. I never got involved with the violence as my pacifist nature made me wonder why people will harm others based on an the flimsiest of differen
25. I have loved Derren since Mind Control in 2000 and in my opinion, since Andrew O’Connor has left Objective Productions, the shows have declined and changed. I loved Derren’s mischief with us and I really hate saying this.
    I am a lover of the misdirection and psychology Derren used to do, but the latest “The Gameshow” was an hour of disappointment. Looking at psychology and the empircal research that has already been discussed about crowd control and human behavour, you can read this and of course watch this in the media, and the Gameshow was nothing new. Bring back The Heist, Zombie and his best work.

    ps but wil never stop watching!
26. I didn’t enjoy the Game Show. I found it cringeworthy and embarrassing. It didn’t sit easy with me. Had it been any other tv show I would have switched of in the first 15 mins. But I stuck to the end. My opinion didn’t change.

    Derren as much as I would have loved to be a part of your shows. I’m so glad I wasn’t a part of that one.
    Was the buttons even workin?. Did the audience even have the choice?
    Looking forward to the next show hoping that Derren returns as the master of misdirection.
27. I thought it was interesting to see how quickly some people took their masks off and clearly felt concerned for Kris…also noticed some kept their masks on to the very end – were they ashamed to show their faces on tv or did they not feel the need to re-individualise themselves like most of the crowd?
    I agree with the above comment about the parallel with bullying – whether the audience were led or not, the fact that some of them were happy for a stranger to be kidnapped by a gang of thugs (even knowing it was a prank – it’s still a horrible thing to happen) was pretty extreme. I wonder how many voted against it though?
    I half expected it to turn out Kris’s interview had been edited and really he was totally undeserving of the punishments – the faked accident had a better impact though.
28. I couldn’t help but wonder if the same result would’ve been achieved if the subject was a pregnant woman; would all of the choices have been positive or would it not have affected the outcome at all?

    I think the audience were biased from the start when he openly admitted to being a generally bloke. When he admitted to cheating on his other half, the majority of the audience were automatically against him albeit for different reasons.

    I think this is an interesting area the may require further exploration even if it couldn’t be done by Derren.
29. We need to remember the audience were influenced by Darren Brown himself, agree with Paul Griffiths comments (29/10/2011, 603pm). If the audience were not given any information about Kris, I am sure the voting would have been different. Also evidence has shown that people tend to go for the second option (B) more than the first option (A), which obviously Derren and the producers are aware of. However, the topic of the show is worth further discussion. No debriefing took place for the audience last night, which is a great shame. My guess is many audience memebers will still be unnerved and unsettled about the “show” and have many unaswered questions. What would have been valuable would be 4 Darren to go through how many reality shows manipulate viewpoint, embedded commands etc.
30. Is it just me who’s noticed or will the next subject also be called Chris? Or any other spelling of the name…
31. I don’t think there was anything really cruel in the show. The real test would have been if the audience had been presented with an option that they belive could possibly go badly wrong, then I think we’d see what levels of cruelty they could go to. Everything on the show was just a prank and I think there was nothing there that they couldn’t have seen on Candid Camera or Game For A Laugh (showing my age).
32. Very Clever.
33. The awkward moment when Derren Brown doesn’t have a television even though he is the greatest entertainer ever shown on television…
34. I wrote the video well not wrote spoke the video above for you to listen to I hope that you are able to. Here it is again. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ayw2kDT4G0o
35. very tame and very obvious human nature !
36. I was uncomfortable from about the 2nd choice when the “boyfriend” got nasty with the victim. I know 100% that I would have chosen positives from then on, hidden in the crowd or not I do not like this kind bullying. Good show and I hope people were affected by it in a way that changes their attitudes to their fellow man. Like the people who stood up and spoke against the recent rioters at the time
37. Shocking! I actually found it little uncomfortable to watch for some reason, but loved the ending. Derren, you played the part of irritatingly enthusiastic cliché gameshow host very well;) Look forward to the next episode.
38. I’ve read a lot of comments saying oh well it wasn’t that bad, there was no real peril, I could spot continuity errors! For heavens sake. This chap was put through increasingly horrible situations, and of course there was some direction at the beginning when we were told he’d cheated on his girlfriend, that was the little push to start it all off. And to all the people who say of course I’d have chosen differently, the whole point is of course you say that, but in that crowd we would all become different to what we hope we are in reality. That’s kind of the point.
39. Good show, Derren. Very insightful – updating Stanford Prison and Milgram.

    A question. How did the stuntman at the end manage to get a shirt exactly like Chris’s?

    It started with Chris having a drink in a bar. How did you get a perfect match for his shirt if the car crash sequence was filmed earlier in the afternoon?

    Rats smell.

    SteviePUA
40. Put us out of our misery: was kris, his friends or his colleague actors. If so, the concept is undermined as the picture portrayed to the audience was pantomime to the extreme. I find it hard to believe not, who would confess to infidelity in front of a camera in that way?

    I am afraid I thought it was a very poor show. It was as if Derren wanted to duplicate the cruelty displayed in Zimbardos prison experiment, but Channel 4 beat him to it.

    I really hope this series improves.
41. At the end, someone got on their moral high horse and shouted out “Why are you still filming”. I’d be interested to know how they voted throughout the evening……

    I found I disagreed with some of what Derren said about the anonymity. I believe that in a lot of situations (not all the time!!) that if you can remain anonymous you will stick to what you want to do, but if people can see your face then you are more likely to do what you think the group is expecting of you, even if it does go against your morals, for fear of being singled out and spoiling everyone elses fun.
42. I do not understand how this can be classed an ‘experiment’ when it completely lacked validity. Derren wasn’t testing how ‘people in groups can become de-individualised and make ‘evil’ decisions’… He was testing what people find entertaining to watch. As far as the participants (the audience) were concerned, none of their ‘decisions’ impacted upon his real life as they would in say a riot, for example. I am thoroughly disappointed by this programme as usually I love his stuff. I hate to say such a thing about him but personally, I thought it was pathetic.
43. You have to think carefully about this show. Yes, on the one hand you can say, “Oh, but the audience weren’t voting for him to REALLY lose his job or REALLY get arrested, they were just doing it for fun,” but the kidnapping scenario and the smashing of the TV really showed something. 1. They were perfectly happy for a totally unsuspecting guy to be terrified out of his mind by being snatched off the street (after all, HE didn’t know that he wasn’t in any real danger,) and 2. They wanted his TV to genuinely get smashed. That part wasn’t fake or ‘just a joke.’ And the guy apparently getting run over at the end suddenly rammed it home to the audience that what they had been doing wasn’t funny….It was just mean and reckless. Who hasn’t felt like this at some point when a joke has gone sour?
44. he said on the show that his girlfriend made him wear that shirt, so they knew ahead of time

    pay attention
45. *In reply to SteviePUA* Derren and his team got Chris’s girlfriend to get Chris to wear a checkered shirt, (Derren knew what shirt the stuntman was wearing as they were all working together) (this was said during the show) 😀

    Loved the show-AGAIN! You never fail to please 🙂
46. StevePUA: Derren clearly explained the shirt thing during the explanation of the whole stunt .. They’d given the shirt to Chris’ GF and she’d asked him to wear it
47. I didn’t like it. It made uncomfortable watching and I thought the whole thing fell flat at the end. I was hoping for some sort of discussion with the auduence after to get their take on things and how they felt. I have really enjoyed other stuff you have done and appreciate this was from a different angle but I didn’t like it. Sorry
48. It’s quite astonishing that we all watched the same show but our perceptions of what we actually witnessed are so varied. Derren has a knack of producing thought provoking programmes…that is his strength.
    All the questions people are asking i.e. The voting could have been fixed, Chris was in on it, Derren and the producers were ‘leading’ the audience to choose only negative options etc are clearly not stopping people phoning up and voting in all these reality TV shows. Maybe after watching The Gameshow some people will have second thoughts and not be drawn into the very ‘lucrative con’ that is reality TV. On the other hand….’carry on up the Jungle’ is due to start any day now and the whole media frenzy of “lets bully and humiliate another human being for our own enjoyment” will start all over again.
49. SteviePUA – the shirt was explained in the show – they had two shirts, one for the stunt man and one given to the girlfriend which (I think) she was to pretend she’d bought. She was to insist that Kris wear it that evening.
50. Derren has taken the obvious and used it for entertainment, his experiment failed. By supplying information to subjects, instead of the subjects finding the information themselves, the information is open to suggestabilty. Like chinese whispers. Just because you can create less resistance to make a negative choice why would you?. If theres one thing Derren has shown, it is that our destructive nature as a species is something we must outgrow. These shows don’t help. Why not create less resistance to make a positive choice?.