Daniel Boorstin indicated in 1984 that "'memory training' had become the butt of ridicule and a refuge of charlatans", a concept which had begun by the 1880s with people selling memory tricks and training to the point that the journal Science published an article by George S. Fellows exposing an expensive program by Antoine Loisette, which had been advertised in the New York Times with quotes by Mark Twain. #

The trend probably hit its peak when huckster and convicted fraudster Kevin Trudeau marketed audiocassette tapes of his "Mega Memory" course on late night infomercials until he was shut down by the Federal Trade Commission in the late 1990's.

That history had begun to shift with the rise of memory sports and competitions into the early 2000s and popularized by Tyler Foer's book Moonwalking with Einstein.