i think i have always failed to mention the most relevant bit... the driving philosophy behind all of this...
i feel the way about the browser group and people wanting to know the secrets because i am very used to having secrets people want...
because i am a magician...
and i have noticed a certain way that people are about secrets...
ok, do yourself a favor and learn a magic trick... one trick, that is all you will need... and make it a good one... one that impressed you when you saw it...
now, spend the rest of your life doing it for people...
that is all... this simple act will show you a side of humanity you probably have not known before...
i always say that magic is one of the most valuable things for learning about how people work...
magic taught me to hide things in my hand and lie to people's face... very valuable... and you learn alot about how the mind works along the way that makes it all possible...
PEOPLE ARE EASY TO FOOL!!
note that i did NOT say anyone but me!! EVERYONE is easy to fool... and it would take me hours, maybe months and probably more like YEARS to fully get across what i mean by that.. (hell, i still learn new details myself) the mind is easily deceived...
magic is about learning and exploring/exploiting the weaknesses of human perception and cognition...
follow me on this...
i am about to try to make a VERY important point...
say "toast" out loud...
seriously, do it... you will see in a sec...
if you do not say it out loud, it will not work, and, this is something you may remember the rest of your life if you do it right... so, don't blow it... just say "toast" out loud...
ok, now, spell "toast"...
not in your head, out loud, it is important...
say "toaster" out loud...
spell "toaster" out loud...
now, say "toast" again...
now, spell "toaster"...
now, answer this...
what do you put in a toaster?
did you say toast?
if not, it is because this does not work in print... of course, the answer is "bread", you get toast out of a toaster...
try it on everyone you know today (again, face to face, on the phone, etc.... i doubt it works too well in print... (they have time to think about
it...)... you will see what i mean... it is one of
the first things most people learn in magic because it is an EXTREMELY important lesson and demonstration abut the human mind...
and even if they say "yeah, i know a couple of those tricks and throw some other dumb little thing at you, hold on to the toast/toaster thing... i use it all the time on people who consider themselves to have rock-solid minds to show them that fooling someone is not a hard thing... i can do it in 5 seconds with things like the above...
this is NOT some dumb trick to make somone look bad... this is actually a psychological principle...
"misdirection"
if i ask you what goes in a toaster, you say bread... BUT, i can TRICK you into totally throwing out rational, logical answers by doing a couple of things first... i lead you away from the right
answer...
i mis-direct you...
do you see the POWER that lies in that???
read it again... I CAN TRICK YOU INTO TOTALLY THROWING OUT RATIONAL LOGICAL ANSWERS!!
i can disable your ability to reason properly...
that is downright dangerous...
if you do not know, magicians are the good guys... but, there are people who use the EXACT same principles to truly deceive...
con artists... cultists... people like that... even just dishonest salesmen... they can do it, too...
these are all just psychological principle's, usable by anyone who knows how...
and, even though it sounds very cliche, the only person who is any worse off than the rest is the person who says it can't happen to them!! like it is a matter of intelligence or experience or something... IT IS NOT... it is just the way our minds work... when i see a magician, i can tell you AFTER how he may or may not have done it... but, while watching it, i am tricked pretty much the same as anyone else...
i could convince you i could read your mind...
i mean, i could REALLY have you wondering if it
was not a trick...
and don't kid yourself, i am a trained professional... if you don't think i could make you believe i am psychic, even a little bit, you are MORE suseptible to it than anyone else...
it is very simple to REALLY spook someone... and i especially love doing it to people who flatly deny mind-reading (by which they mean psychic powers and such) is possible... and then, when i really have them doubting much of what they believe, i assure them it is just a trick... nothing supernatural about what i am doing...
as the line goes... "anyone could do what i do.. even your average five-year-old could do it, if he had ten years of practice..."
i just demonstrated that i can ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS keep the logical, rational answer OUT of your head... anyone's head...
man, seriously, use that toast/toaster thing on everyone you know, for the rest of your fucking life... it will prove what i am saying now...
(just make sure you do it the way i did it...)
you will be amazed year after year, especially when people that "cannot be fooled" fall for it...
now, if i had weeks to work on someone, i could make them believe anything i wanted...
do you think the people in jim jones's people's temple in guyana were all just gullible?
or all 39 heaven's gate members just watched too much star trek?
or the people in the experiment i posted about in your forum were just all bad people to begin with?
or that EVERY officer in the SS and gestapo were just evil to begin with???
you think those people are just dumber than you???
they are just as intelligent or unintelligent as the rest of us...
the fact is, people are weak... ALL of us... weak-minded, weak-willed... it is very sad and scary, but, the BEST defense is to know how bad the problem is and realize that we need to try to keep the balance, ever-watching for those who would try to push us the wrong way...
and, no, you don't have to be a paranoid conspiracy theorist... but, fully acknowledging the human condition is the ultimate survival skill...
and that is how magic works... it is all about mind control... and people are rarely on the look out for mind control... even the mind control we encounter everyday like advertising...
when i do a trick and i don't want you to see a little thing i do because it would give the trick away, i can MAKE you not see it... i can do it right in front of your eyes and you will not see it because i MAKE you not see it...
at first blush, this is all a little weird, i guess... but, it is just how magic works... as well as any form of deception...
david blaine and i do many of the same tricks, but, he tries to convince people that he uses supernatural powers to do it...
i am honest and say i use deception to do it... and i USE the magic to try to warn people that these same principals will be used by others who do not just wish to merely entertain them...
to me, being a magician is a philosophical war i wage against mental and epistemological laziness/ignorance... reminding people how easy we all are to fool...
but, anyway, that is not the point today... today i am relating magic to running a browser group, so, i will now move on back to the subject...
ok, so, you learn the trick and you do it the rest of your life i said...
(you ever meet me in person, i wil teach you my
best trick... my very best trick... i have been doing it for years... and you will astound many people for years and years to come...)
you will be asked many, many times "how do you do that?"
well, i am not one of those magicians that says we need to keep it a secret... i think the old saying "competition breeds excellence" is the overriding principle here... even if there is no war to be waged, it is just dumb... i guess i am an "open source magician"... people are still being fooled with 2,000-year-old tricks... magic could use some new material and keeping tricks that are so old and can be found so easily is just dumb...
plus, the more they know about how it all works, the more they know all that i explained above... those 2,000-year-old principals are also being used by people to lead other people to mass suicides or giving their money for a "healing"... if someone would just rip them off with a magic trick and they go find out how it is done, they would recognize it when someone tries to fool them in a larger issue...
so, when they ask how it is done...
you make sure you know a link or a title of a book or have a business card for your local magic shop or something like that...
and you tell them, 'go here and you can learn how to do it'...
i guarantee you, 99 times out of 100, they will not even put forth that minimal effort...
i have been doing this a long time, and i know for a certainty that this will happen...
ok, so, that is fairly easy to swallow...
now, think of someone that WOULD definitely go
and do whatever it took to know the secret...
do the trick for them...
wait for them to ask the question...
tell them where to find how to do it...
then get back to me and tell me i was right, even they did not go put forth the minimal effort...
it is nothing i can nail down and say 'this is why they do it', but, that is the way it is...
i have no title for it... it is just another odd phenomena within the human condition...
99 out of 100 people, no matter how badly they want to know how the trick is done, will not go find out..
ok, so, you will have this trick to experiment the rest of your life, so, try it a few different ways...
someone asks how it is done, go ahead and show them... right then, right there...
be prepared... the FIRST thing you will experience is disappointment...
"THAT'S ALL??? you just had a thread attached to it and the other end was tied to your finger??? well, i could have done that, i thought it was something cool!!"
magic is not mysterious... magic is sneakiness and thread and tape and spit and "gee, i hope it
holds long enough for me to get away with this" and "if i move my hand just right, maybe the coin will fall in my pocket and they won't see it" and you sometimes end up as shocked and mystified as them when it works and they saw nothing...
but, what comes after this is sometimes they lose interest... if that is all there is to it, they don't even care to know anymore...
if you make them feel they are about to call on
beelzebub, prince of darkness, to levitate this playing card or something, they feel more comfortable... it is more what they expected...
man, i have tried some crazy stuff on people to see if they liked it more... secrets are boring... it is like they know it is a trick, but, are still
disappointed when the trick does not involve chanting magic words under your breath...
and then comes the other part... ok, so, they accept that it is only a trick, nothing mysterious... but, when you tell them how a trick is done, the reality REALLY sinks in... and they realize there is no mystery at all...
people have asked how i do a great trick... and it was one of the days i felt like testing my fellow man, so, i told them... usually, they say they can't believe what a lame trick it is now that they know how it is done, they don't know how they ever fell for it, and when they see you perform it again, will probably try to convince everyone in the room it is not actually that great of a trick even though they all seem to love it... "if you knew how he did it, you would not be so impressed!" eventualy he will go around trying to tell everyone how it is done...
do you see any of the connections to the browser group yet?
this is just an analogy, i won't sit here and define every analogue within it... if i could download all of what i have seen with how people respond to secrets in magic, it would be so much easier to see why i react to people the way i do in the group that are looking for secrets...
they want a quick answer... they do not want to read anything...
they WANT us to say "ok, ok, we have been holding out, here is the real secret... just hit ctrl+m and it will unlock the pw mpeg player... then
open your menu and you will find a hidden link there... push it and it will show you a thousand mpegs you can view"...
they heard there was some gratification to be had here... well, they did not stop to ask themselves if it is instant gratification or not...
i have people ask me if they can get a passport at the group... i tell them maybe... so, they go to the group and post about wanting a passport...
then they do not understand...
"you said people at the group gave you yours for free!!"
"they did..."
"well, i keep asking and no one is giving me one!!"
well, that is bad enough...
but, i usually try to explain that the group is not a place to get browsers... when people see you using what you have, learning more, then eventually hitting the ceiling of what you can do, they will want to help you out to do more...
but then i usually get something like "so, what do i post to get them to send me a browser???!!!"
oh boy...
do you see it?
"come on teach me how you do that trick!!"
"here is where you can find out"
"why can't you just tell me???!!!"
ok, so, i left out above part of what they do when you teach them a trick... i said you will have the trick to learn from for years, so, try something different once in a while...
one suggestion is go ahead and show them...
now watch them...
they will spend 2 minutes or 5 or whatever to do it half-assed once... and then they will practically sprint to go show it to someone...
then, guess what happens...
the person they show it to says "you had a thread tied to the end of your finger and that held it up..."
then, guess what happens...
they come back to you saying that you must have taught it wrong because when they did it, the person saw how it was done... they are often mad at you...
again, this makes me think of SOOOO many posts from the group...
like the other day someone posts "where can i get a dp?"
a couple days later "ok, your site said crazy taxi 2 had dp3.16, so, here i am and spent $40 at toys r us and there is only something called "dreamkey" on here... you guys want to explain this to me???!!!"
i expect a post soon saying he got a dp and will say "um, guys, this one is all in japanese!!! i can't read japanese!!! why did i spend even more money on this??? where can i get an english one???!!! and how much will IT cost me next??!!!"
and he would not be the first... i have seen these sorts of posts from the very beginning back in MAY...
these are people who saw or heard about a very good magic trick... and they want to know how to do this trick... but, all they want is the one trick...
they do not want to know how to get the most from their planetweb... or even dreamkey... they say dreamkey sucks because it can't irc... they want irc, "dp does irc right?" they don't ask what the irc client is like... they don't want a full list of advantages and disadvantages of each browser... "dp can play mpegs right?" all the while collecting links for where to find porn movies... then they will go try to play a 50 meg avi fle and demand to know why it did not work "you guys TOLD me that if i bought this japanese game, this browser could play mpegs!!!"... no one told them to pay for an import game to get a browser, they did not know the difference between avi and mpeg, they never stopped to think about file size...
madness, madness, madness...
so, when someone comes to the group with a simple question, i do not see it as someone in need of help... hundreds of people have gone through since this all started... MOST of them fit the descriptions and complaints above...
in fact, when someone STARTS with questions, that is almost always a bad sign... (hopefully i demonstrated a little of that above) the people who stick around, the people who help, the people who actually use the help we give, they usually just start reading and learning... some do not even join until much later...
so, do i have a point?
not really, i'm afraid...
this is mostly an attempt to communicate a huge concept... almost a defense... people see me in fairly unattractive light when it comes to helping people...
but, they don't know anything about secrets and those who want them...
those who do not like the way i do things obviously know nothing about psychology...
but, i know about people wanting secrets... the people who will get the most help from us are not after secrets... i mean, they are, but, for totally different reasons... and you can usually tell by the way they ask...
i said somewhere way up there (in all seriousness, this may be the longest email i have ever written... but, again, it may be my favorite subject... the human mind...) that you will do that a trick for people that you KNOW, absolutely KNOW they will do whatever it takes to learn the trick... and those people will not do it... and it will shock you... hell, you will be shocked when they fall for the toast/toaster thing...
because you know nothing about all this until you start experimenting...
those who have questions and seem like they REALLY want to know are the ones that will most likely not bother to find out, odd as it may sound...
because all they want is the trick... when there is so much more behind it...
someone REALLY wants chab when they hear about it... and when they realize it takes some stuff to make it happen, they usually don't want it... and decide it was not worth having... (like the example above... they learn how the trick is done and try to convince everyone it is really not that great of a trick... THEIR EXPECTATIONS ARE SO HIGH (or they just did not think through how great the trick is or isn't), THE REAL ANSWER IS DISAPPOINTING!)
the people i WANT to help are the ones that want the full experience... there is more to using the web than just adding an im service or viewing mpegs... there is more to magic than doing a magic trick...
and the people who only want a trick will be the people i described in many ways above...
and they will give up fairly soon...
because one or two tricks by themselves are not very valuable... how many mpegs actually work? how many people are actually on chab? how long do you have to practice a trick to be able to perform it well?
they think learning one trick will enable them to mystify people... or that having chab will mean
hours of chatting and meeting new people in a totally new way... or that being able to play mpegs will mean viewing a "movie file" without thinking about the fact that there are many formats and many sizes...
someone once asked me to make a bookmarklet to enable us to view flash 5...
that is total ignorance...
this is not someone who does any reading to know how things work... they just want something they do not have that they THINK will make it all so mch better...
the people who ask for those things never stick with it...
and they almost always end up disappointed with what they have gotten...
because they only wanted a trick...
do you see it?
do you see the connection?
it is exactly the same thing...
and when you deal with people who want your secrets as often as i do, for as long as i have, it all makes perfect sense and totally changes what you are and are not willing to do...