Post #2: Darren Brown

    I didn’t know who Darren Brown was before listening to his TED talk and watching his older series about debunking other psychics, but I am so glad I know of him now. He truly is a great mentalist and has an amazing showmanship factor. The key thing for psychics really is the idea of being vague and generalizing things for their audience. Brown shows that he can match the “famous” psychics by being so vague and really “faking ‘til he makes it.” In my personal experience, I used to love getting my tarot cards read and looking up my astrology for compatibility or if I would want to know what would be my ideal career. Now I know that something like the “stars” and “signs” cannot define who I am as a person but it can generalize a majority of people who share the same birth month as me. As for the tarot reader, looking back now this old italian woman that I had met in Venice  Beach, CA was able to sell me more of an “experience” rather than answers to my future and reading of my past. I found the Ted talk enlightening because as someone who used to rely so heavily on these psychics can now see that it is a trick of just reading a person's mannerisms and more relating to humans and their habits.