March 15th, 2009
Brian Brushwood: Scams, social engineering and straightjackets
Brian Brushwood attempting to escape from a straightjacket
At the live taping of Revision3’s Diggnation, Brian Brushwood (Twitter) opened the show with his legendary magic show. Brushwood is on another Rev3 show called Scam School, where he shows you how to outsmart someone either on the streets or at the bar.
He gave a talk on Friday where he performed various stunts including the swinging pendulum, an ESP experiment, and hammering nails into his nose.
Sometimes it’s hard to watch, but it’s still awesome.
He explains that social engineering is using cheap, dirty psychological tricks to get people to do what you want. Brushwood’s demonstrations use psychological manipulation, verbal duplicity, and outright deception to manufactire a specific outcome.
When people offer up a reason for something, most likely, they will get something in return. The magic word is “because”. It’s very hard to say no to someone we like a lot.
How to get out of a speeding ticket:
- Relax, it’s just a ticket.
- No crying!
- You have three minutes to make them laugh
It’s difficult to say no to someone who gives you something for free. And finally, magicians shall never reveal their secret, but Brushwood usually does. Once is a trick, twice is a lesson.
He actually taught me a trick a few months back on how to successfully control playing cards.
Check out Scam School for some really cool gags »
Andrew Mager is a web developer at Ning, Inc. in Palo Alto. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
For daily updates on Andrew's activities, follow him on Twitter.
Subscribe to The Web Life via Email alerts or RSS.
