Comments on: Going, Going...

Going, Going...

Dr. Fetish — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 16:11:42 -0800

Auctioneers as hypnotists? (Hurry up, you could lose the bid...)

By: benito.strauss

benito.strauss — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 16:35:11 -0800

If you like listening to auctioneers, check out the chants of (recently deceased) Elizabeth Clare Prophet — they might remind you of Balinese Monkey Chants. WFMU has a page with a few. For a quick taste, try this one (mp3) .

By: Moistener

Moistener — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 17:01:26 -0800

The Livestock Marketing Association has an auctioneer championship every year. This page has mp3s of the winners from the past 40 years. For your own good, please listen to some.

By: jamjam

jamjam — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 17:06:48 -0800

Auctioneers remind me of the way herders always seem to talk to their herds more than anything else-- so yes, hypnotic. Elizabeth Clare Prophet was incredible; I wanted to listen to more of her stuff after I first heard her ~15 years ago, but I was afraid to.

By: benito.strauss

benito.strauss — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 17:12:17 -0800

Thanks for posting the champions' page, moistener, they're amazing. There's a lot of them, so if people just want to check one out, I'll recommend the one from year 2004. /I've got all those mp3s from when I downloaded them years ago, but I couldn't find that page.

By: Horace Rumpole

Horace Rumpole — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 17:25:36 -0800

They talk like that to hypnotize the bidders. Call me a pedant but other than that flat assertion there is absolutely zero evidence or citations in that article.

By: leotrotsky

leotrotsky — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 17:28:36 -0800

those livestock guys, are they just trilling between the numbers, or are those supposed to be words?

By: Songdog

Songdog — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 18:33:42 -0800

They're words. As I understand it livestock auctioneers each develop a personal vocabulary of phrases to stitch the bids into a chant, but the chant does make sense.

By: clarknova

clarknova — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 18:35:02 -0800

You are now aware that most formulaic, repetitive speech patterns are designed to produce some level of trance mentality.

By: leotrotsky

leotrotsky — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 19:06:27 -0800

clarknova. Amen.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 23:08:13 -0800

Moistener and benito.strauss, you have just made my mp3 playlist so weird. Shuffle will never be the same.