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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To think Darren Brown "the push" is horiffic

113 replies

MrsA2015 · 12/01/2016 22:33

Just sat and howled through it. Can't believe what I've just watched really. Brilliant but horrible to watch

OP posts:
00100001 · 14/01/2016 12:09

They must have screened them for things like being veggie etc

Jw35 · 14/01/2016 12:12

I was just shocked that 3/4 were willing to push!! I hope I wouldn't! Chris was amazing!

Toria2014 · 14/01/2016 12:15

It was a load of old tosh IMO!

If I had just pushed someone off a building, I would definitely take a look over the edge to make sure they were dead! Wink

JessieMcJessie · 14/01/2016 12:18

I'm a lawyer. I'd have told the Schmoosy Scot that it was entirely his call as to whether he presented meat canapés as vegetarian, but advised him that the risk of a vegetarian potential supporter realising immediately was very high and the potential fallout from that was much worse than having no veggie food available. Similarly I would have told him that the consequences of not calling police and ambulance immediately far outweighed the consequences of cancelling the event. I would have clocked early on that "Tom" was a nutcase and gone off to call the ambulance myself/ find a third party to help me deal with Tom.

Chris was a total wet blanket.

TheOptimisticPessimist · 14/01/2016 13:04

People keep saying they would expect a much bigger push and a more dramatic reaction from the pushers - I think the fact there wasn't a big dramatic scream or similar made it more realistic.

If you were apprehensive about shoving someone off a building I'm pretty sure you wouldn't take a running start. There's a huge difference between looking back at a tiny push and a running start shove and surely on a subconscious level you'd be trying to protect yourself mentally. A light push could allow you to convince yourself on some level that he was unstable already, he might have fallen off anyway, he might not fall as hard, you didn't really do much - anything to make it easier to reconcile the act in your head later on. A little push isn't as violent or aggressive as doing it with clear intent and force. It would take some serious dedication to wind yourself up and shove the guy off. It's a very deliberate, aggressive action and if you do that there's no way you can justify isn't to yourself later on. These are just normal people, not aggressive thugs (or at least we hope not!) that believe someone deserves to die. Confused, scared, filled with adrenaline and being bombarded with pressure from all angles. I doubt you'd be thinking 'right I need to put my whole body weight behind this to make sure he goes over, but make sure I don't over balance and go over the edge too so...' Surely you'd be trying to minimise it instead?

I agree that the pushers looked a lot more fake than Chris but I think that's partially down to the fact that we'd watched him all the way through. We'd seen the way he reacts to different situations and been through the story with him. As viewers we were removed from the last three. We didn't have any affinity with them and hadn't grown accustomed to their body language or reactions in the way we had with Chris. On a deeper level, it's a lot easier to think they're fake than to be confronted with the terrifying reality that some people had actually just been coerced into pushing someone to their deaths.

In addition, the only time we've seen this sort of thing happen is on TV. In films the actors all start sobbing after doing something horrific because it's more dramatic visually and frankly that's the reaction you'd hope someone would have. But how many of us have killed someone in real life and therefore actually know how we'd react? I think it would be a lot more likely you'd be in shock after doing it and not thinking or feeling straight. The sobbing would come later when it finally hit you, which is probably why Derren steps in straight away, to stop that from happening or at least to reduce the impact.

Or of course they were all actors and the show was a farce...who knows!

TheOptimisticPessimist · 14/01/2016 13:04

Apologies for the essay! Watched it last night and have been thinking about it this morning Blush

APlaceOnTheCouch · 14/01/2016 13:14

TheOptimistic I agree with you about the dynamic of the push. You would have to have a lot of animosity against someone to give an aggressive push. The point was that the 'participants' not sure what to call them didn't have a big emotional connection to the person they were pushing off the edge. Their motivation wasn't anger against that person, it was about complying, and 'saving' themselves and the rest of the group from prison? possibly I'm not entirely sure what their thought processes would have been. Their 'emotional' connection was with the peer group pressuring them to act not with the potential victim.

001 yy I think you're right about the susceptible or the cynics applying and from them they narrowed it down to the ones they thought would comply. But there are vast swathes of the population who probably sit between being susceptible and cynical so although from a statistical analysis pov you could say it was a small number who pushed, actually since it's a self-selecting group, I'm not sure you can extrapolate from that how many would push in the general population. But, previous experiments seem to imply it would be more common than we'd like to think.

00100001 · 14/01/2016 13:47

It's an interesting play on statistics and his own point of what we believe/are led to believe.

On the surface (from this show) we are led to believe that 75% of people would push in this situation. Shocking 3 in 4 people would push!! Shock

But actually - it's 75% of a certain population. It's hard to say what portion the four represent - but even if they represent 50% of the population (And I'm being generous here.), that means 37.5% would push.

Just over 1/3... not quite as dramatic as 3/4 Grin

DisappointedOne · 14/01/2016 14:42

And Milgram concluded that 66% of people would administer an electric shock strong enough to kill if told to by a person in authority (those people weren't pre-screened in the way DB's were). 75% is not so far from the scientific conclusion.

00100001 · 14/01/2016 14:49

but the Milgrim experiment was with a victim that they had only met briefly and couldn't see.

Derren's experiment was different:

  1. The pusher and victim had met and interacted and built a rapport with them (of sorts) there is a relationship. The man was not a 'stranger'.
  2. The victim was right there, not in a different room.
  3. The people urging the pusher to kill weren't in "authority" just more confident and trying to convince the group this was the right thing.

It was more about group conformity than an individual being told by a authority figure. As such, It is perhaps not comparable to Milgrim?

venusinscorpio · 14/01/2016 15:23

Plus why wouldn't you question why you personally had to be the one to do it when it wasn't your idea? And realise there was a high chance you wouldn't get away with it and as a PP pointed out, that up until you committed murder nothing you had done would be a legal offence anyway - so all those things considered, it's hard to see why you would make that decision?

JessieMcJessie · 14/01/2016 15:43

It was like the kind of nonsense logic that always gets Mark and Jeremy into trouble on Peep Show!

venusinscorpio · 14/01/2016 15:47

Yes, like the sectioning, or eating the dog.

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