A brand new illusion that will trick your friends into believing in MIND CONTROL.
Hey Gang,
Brian Brushwood here, and for the last 3 months, I've been working on something big: a brand new illusion that will trick your friends into believing in MIND CONTROL. Simply by reciting some lines of poetry, you'll cause a playing card to come into their mind...and then you'll point them to a YouTube clip that proves that their selection was predetermined.
This scam is unbelievably versatile: you can perform it in person, over the phone, and it's the ONLY trick I know of that can be performed over instant messenger. You can even do it with a borrowed iPhone: as long as your mark can get to YouTube, you can do this trick.
We've been secretly testing this effect for 3 months, and the responses have been unbelievable. Check out the effect in this week's episode of "Scam School", then check out the method explanation and cheat sheets we've posted at mindcontrolscam.com.
...and start scamming your friends. If you hit a home run, I want you to post a transcript of your IM chat session at the Scam School boards. We're also discussing our different tricks and techniques when performing this scam, and would love to hear what works best for you.
Special thanks to Stephanie Mack, Ryan Daume, and Glenn McElhose for being the guinea pigs in this episode!
--Brian
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Posted by Murphy1d on 12/16/2008 at 10:26:05 am in Scam School
OK, here you go. For those who haven't seen it yet.
*link*
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Posted by Murphy1d on 12/16/2008 at 10:23:50 am in Scam School
And yeah, Its Death Proof, but I can't edit my previous post now.
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Posted by Murphy1d on 12/15/2008 at 05:16:04 pm in Scam School
Hahahaha..just watched Bullet Proof (Grindhouse) for the first time!
Butterfly, am I supposed to give you a lap dance now? (just watch the movie peeps).
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Posted by coldv on 11/11/2008 at 10:03:57 pm in Scam School
"this video fucked with my head a little, because, like the first girl, I chose the queen of hearts.
: ("
Queen of hears and Ace of spades are the two most common cards to be picked. Hippie Glenn seems to be the creative one out of the bunch.
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Posted by R3P1N5 on 11/10/2008 at 10:16:51 pm in Scam School
It's been a few weeks since i last did this, so i gave it a shot over IM. worked a treat.
Me - hey, i just found an interesting trick... wanna give it a shot?
Him - righto
Me - its apparently a form of mind control, but i dont really believe it... a guy on youtube said it works 100% of the time though
Him - wow thats a good percentage
Me - think of a card, any card at all (with the exception of the joker i think) as you read this poem by Robert Frost; "The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But i have promises to keep, And miles to go before i sleep."
Him - righto, done and done
Me - what was the card you thought of. i bet it didnt work
Him - ace o' clubs
Me -holy wow, no way. *link*
Him - haha no freaking way', that's amazing
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Posted by gabe_utsecks on 10/17/2008 at 02:54:10 am in Scam School
this video fucked with my head a little, because, like the first girl, I chose the queen of hearts.
: (
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Posted by speed on 10/05/2008 at 10:22:17 pm in Scam School
I don't know how to account for clubs, but I think ace is just one of the first cards people think of.
This information is kind of cool, and I'm sure that together, we can come up with some kind of use.
On a side note, I managed to creep out one of my friends despite the fact that I prefaced it as a scam. I just love this trick.
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Posted by TooLittleTime on 10/05/2008 at 08:39:56 pm in Scam School
Brian wrote:
"
Hmmmm.... Should I feel as though I've been conned into doing the work for you? :)
I wish I could come out to see the shows, but I live on the wrong coast. I'm sure they're great!
"Great job on the datamining. I like that you noticed which cards are the LEAST popular... I'm certain there's something we can come up with to take advantage of that.
I've set up a tubemogul account to track all 52 users and their TOTAL views (regular and extended versions of clips). I think it's important to go with these numbers, since some of the searches bring up the "regular" interview, while others bring up the "extended versions"."
Using the better numbers does change the statistics a bit. Although the popularities of different cards is re-ordered a little, the biggest change is that the differences between cards are now less dramatic. Case in point: Ace of Spades is still #1, but it is observed 8% of the time (4 times the expected 1.9%) rather than the 12% of the time (6 times expected) that we saw in the smaller dataset.
That said, here are the new top 10...
8.43% 1s
6.80% 1h
5.51% 1d
4.73% Qh
3.22% Kh
3.03% Js
2.28% 3d
2.21% 3h
2.13% 2h
2.12% 7s
It looks like the Aces rule-- except for 1c (which is ranked 21st!...strange...). These 10 cards account for 40% of all selections.
The bottom 10 look like this:
1.02% 10s
1.00% 10h
0.97% 8d
0.96% 9s
0.96% 4c
0.90% 5s
0.82% 9c
0.78% 9h
0.75% 9d
0.66% 10c
In order to try to keep this long post from becoming even longer, I put all the other stats into the attachment (below)
Anyhow, maybe there is some potential for a "mentalist" kind of crowd effect? Something like: "There are a little over 500 (or whatever) people here, so only about 10 (or whatever) of you should be thinking of my card....but I'm going to your minds, and force as many of you as possible to think of my card."
I suppose you could also try the reverse and claim to "erase" the minds of anyone thinking of 10c or 9d.
But as I re-read them, both ideas sounds pretty weak. Maybe they'll at least help seed ideas for better uses...
-Ben (a.k.a. TLT)
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Posted by shwooddotcom on 10/05/2008 at 11:13:39 am in Scam School
"This is an awesome, awesome hack! I'm so glad you went through the effort to do something this cool!
The ironic thing is that you inadvertently generated some REAL data to refute Dr./Prof./Rev./Coach SingDoubTrip's theory:
By counting the ~10,000 page views you have generated (so far) on YouTube for all of the videos (not including the "extended versions'), we can actually see what cards people tend to pick after hearing Robert Frost. (Well, not really... I don't really believe these statistics would be any different had you recited Dr. Dre.) "
you beat me to the punch! I've been busy with the Halloween Horror Night shows at Universal, but figuring out which cards are the most popular was one of my secret hidden agendas...
Great job on the datamining. I like that you noticed which cards are the LEAST popular... I'm certain there's something we can come up with to take advantage of that.
I've set up a tubemogul account to track all 52 users and their TOTAL views (regular and extended versions of clips). I think it's important to go with these numbers, since some of the searches bring up the "regular" interview, while others bring up the "extended versions".
Here are the TOTALS for each expert, as of 10/5/08:
professoralfredsin = 1,473
professorbyronsin = 265
professorcharlessin = 304
professordavidsin = 183
professoredgarsin = 158
professoralfreddou = 336
professorbyrondou = 370
professorcharlesdou = 359
professordaviddou = 168
professoredgardou = 179
professoralfredtri = 529
professorbyrontri = 331
professorcharlestri = 331
reverendalfredsin = 1,188
reverendbyronsin = 372
reverendcharlessin = 386
reverenddavidsin = 306
reverendedgarsin = 356
reverendalfreddou = 192
reverendbyrondou = 346
reverendcharlesdou = 253
reverenddaviddou = 137
reverendedgardou = 175
reverendalfredtri = 300
reverendalfredtri = 300
reverendbyrontri = 827
reverendcharlestri = 563
coachalfredsin = 307
coachbyronsin = 286
coachcharlessin = 308
coachdavidsin = 167
coachedgarsin = 227
coachalfreddou = 194
coachbyrondou = 343
coachcharlesdou = 232
coachdaviddou = 143
coachedgardou = 115
coachalfredtri = 255
coachbyrontri = 187
coachcharlestri = 305
doctoralfredsin = 962
doctorbyronsin = 329
doctorcharlessin = 399
doctordavidsin = 222
doctoredgarsin = 350
doctoralfreddou = 299
doctorbyrondou = 201
doctorcharlesdou = 170
doctordaviddou = 131
doctoredgardou = 198
doctoralfredtri = 226
doctorbyrontri = 241
doctorcharlestri = 288
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Posted by TooLittleTime on 10/04/2008 at 10:25:29 pm in Scam School
This is an awesome, awesome hack! I'm so glad you went through the effort to do something this cool!
The ironic thing is that you inadvertently generated some REAL data to refute Dr./Prof./Rev./Coach SingDoubTrip's theory:
By counting the ~10,000 page views you have generated (so far) on YouTube for all of the videos (not including the "extended versions'), we can actually see what cards people tend to pick after hearing Robert Frost. (Well, not really... I don't really believe these statistics would be any different had you recited Dr. Dre.) The top picks are:
12.07% 1s
7.05% Qh
6.64% 1h
6.63% 1d
4.28% Kh
4.22% Js
3.21% 7h
2.79% 5d
2.72% Ks
2.39% Qs
2.38% 2c
The expected percentage would be 1/52, or 1.9%, so a 12% for 1s means the Ace of Spades is selected six times as much as expected by random chance. There are probably some artifacts here from your testing. Anyhow, almost as interesting are the least-picked cards:
0.70% 8h
0.64% 6h
0.57% 10d
0.51% 8d
0.49% 8c
0.46% 9c
0.46% Qc
0.42% 7d
0.40% 10c
0.32% 9h
I wonder, why does everyone hate the 9 of hearts? Anyhow, there is strong bias against clubs in the suits...
32.7% S
31.9% H
21.4% D
14.0% C
And also against "middle cards" in the ranks (sorted by rank, rather than percentage, btw)...
26.6% A
7.6% 2
4.5% 3
6.4% 4
8.2% 5
3.8% 6
5.7% 7
2.8% 8
3.0% 9
3.3% 10
6.9% J
10.9% Q
10.2% K
Folks pick an ace more than a quarter of the time!
Not sure how this info could be useful, but I thought it was fun to peek into it. Like I said above, I think that if these stats mean anything, it's only that people have certain inherent biases towards certain cards (irrespective of hearing classic poetry.)
Keep it up. Love the show!!!
-TLT
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