talkmagic.co.uk

dat8962 wrote:I suspect that they think that they are getting their purchase price back and covering their costs

Perhaps there should be an age limit for buying some tricks

I'm really getting fed up with the assumption that all kids just expose magic, or learn from exposure. It's like the square rectangle thing (which I'm sure I've mentioned on here before.)

All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.
Mostly only kids reveal tricks, but not ALL kids do.
Does that make sense?

Lets blow 'em sky high with highly explosive stuff! thats the only way to stop the exposer.

HenryHoudini wrote:

dat8962 wrote:I suspect that they think that they are getting their purchase price back and covering their costs

Perhaps there should be an age limit for buying some tricks

I'm really getting fed up with the assumption that all kids just expose magic, or learn from exposure. It's like the square rectangle thing (which I'm sure I've mentioned on here before.)

All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.
Mostly only kids reveal tricks, but not ALL kids do.
Does that make sense?

I have to agree with you there. I think the only reason why it seems as if people under 20 are exposing tricks on youtube etc because they are part of that myspace generation, where everyone communicates over the internet etc. And surely having age limits on tricks, or magicians assuming that younger people will expose tricks would only discourage young people from learning in the first place. I know some people will not agree with me here but I think some magic on utube is okay, obviously not copyrighted exposed tricks being exposed but I know about 3 people now who have started learning magic over youtube and then gone on to really care for the art and when poked in the right way (i.e to royal road etc) they can become very good magicians. Magic is a hobby that can be quite hard to get in to, and if people are using youtube to get into magic, then yes I think it can be good.

However what drives me crazy more than anything is people who purchase a trick I have bought and then perform it so poorly on youtube. Torn is shown so poorly it starts to get embarasing!

dat8962 wrote:
I suspect that they think that they are getting their purchase price back and covering their costs

Perhaps there should be an age limit for buying some tricks


I'm really getting fed up with the assumption that all kids just expose magic, or learn from exposure. It's like the square rectangle thing (which I'm sure I've mentioned on here before.)

All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.
Mostly only kids reveal tricks, but not ALL kids do.
Does that make sense?

And I agree!

To put into context, my comment was refering to those people who do expose secrets, whether they are kids or not as well as why they might do so. I fully appreciate, as I'm sure many others do that not all kids expose secrets. In fact, I suspect that more adults expose secrets and breach copyright etc. than kids do.

I think that the one point that we all agree on is that it's wrong.

NB - I'm not getting all defencive

Now for the part you are probably not going to like. The fact that your friend went there and stated 'hahahaha' means he went on line to find effects that you do so you will not be able to 'put one over on him' this is indicitive of your performance. Judging from your post you are challenging your friends rather then entertaining them. I haven't seen your performance so I could be wrong. I'm just pointing out a possibility so don't go getting all defensive, or get defensive, no skin off my nose. Just something to think about. Other thing you can do is stop performing for your friend, eventually they will forget about it. The other obvious thing is stop pointing the site out to others...

I'm taking this as constructive critisism, the way I perform effects to my friends (or this certain friend) may indeed come across as 'I can do this and you can't' however, I would say that its him being one of those people who cant take not knowing how a trick is done, rather than the way I do the tricks.
For example, if I show him a trick, he HAS to know the name, (I dont tell him, as I am 100% certain that he will search for it on youtube, then claim that he can do the trick too...) - this drives him mad, but he always seemed like a good sport with the whole magic thing, and often gives me friendly advice on how to beter the trick and the performance, but now he just says things like 'I know how you did it' or 'mr_expose_magic, on youtube does it better than you'.

I know there isnt much that can be done about these sites, and I agree with other users comments - there are other sites, people can rent books from a library, buy from magic shops etc, however, the 'under 20 youtube generation' seem to be spoiling things for me (as a magician showing my friends a few new tricks) as they can simply search youtube and bam, trick exposed and potentially ruined.

Final thing (honest ), didnt even occur to me that posting the link to the site would be essentially advertising it :S - the ultimate hypocracy :-O

Dan

Of all the youtube exposure videos, I have yet to see one that is not presented by a spoilt child. I'm not saying that all kids are going to do this, but many, due to their being spoiled by their parents and immaturity, have no respect for the art.
How do they afford all this stuff? When I was a kid I wouldn't have been able to buy expensive things all the time? They see, to get whatever they ask for and therefore it loses it's value to them as they don't care if the world knows the secret, they're getting some new stuff next week.

I think it's the "Internet popularity" syndrome. When these kids expose a trick and then check to see how many views they got they feel like they suddenly became more popular and show their friends how many subscriptions they have, etc.
I have also sent a letter to YouTube expressing my "concern" or more specifically my anger at the exposure and as I probably guess, they already have a "magician spam" folder where they put all messages like mine.

But hey, Bicycle sales are going up, right?

This really infuriates me. I've spent a lot of time and money on my magic, and for it to be exposed on youtube by some little twerp with an absolutely rubbish performance is pretty bad. In saying that, I think I've managed to find the site that you're talking about (link was removed before I got to this thread), if I'm right, the guy that runs it is quite a dorky geeky looking chap, with curly hair and glasses, who dresses with his collar buttoned, but no tie (what?).

Looking on the brightside, of the few videos I could stomach watching, not only is the presentation of the trick generally rubbish and illegible, but the instruction seems to be as well. It's clear that these kids are simply trying to immitate the people who produce clips at Penguin and Ellusionist, and of course to make themselves look smarter than everyone else. Why they can't do this by just perfecting their magic and performing it I just don't understand.

Having never bought anything from Ellusionist or Penguin, and having only seen a few glimpses of clips at my friend's house, I'm not sure about this, but on the couple of short clips I've seen, not once do they ever emphasise practise or to keep the secret secret. Perhaps if they put out a 'rules of magic' download for free or something, that some of kids doing these videos would stop them.

Any critisim I give is meant to be constructive. So I am glad that you took it that way. And yes there are people in this world like that. And yes libraries have books available on magic. I know a magician who goes to the local library and moves the magic books to different sections throughout the library.

My view on the library deal is a little different and I admit my way of looking at it may be off but in today's world I think that someone who is willing to go the extra mile and actually go to the library to research magic is somebody who is actually interested in magic and should probably be encouraged. I will go out on a limb and say that the folks exposing 'on purpose' over the internet, regardless of specific website have never been to a library.

Very good point bmat.....and the library is not breaking any rules as far as sharing information goes. They are very assertive in repects to plagerism, photocopying, publishing rights, etc....so they do it by the book...honest no pun intended.

The internet is the "modern-new-age-library" for many.....you are right, very few have been to the library. Going to the library, looking it up, hoping it is in, and sticking around to read or sign it out takes a comittment of forms.....typing into google search half-naked and eating a bowl of cereal doesn't comitt you to anything.

if I'm right, the guy that runs it is quite a dorky geeky looking chap, with curly hair and glasses, who dresses with his collar buttoned, but no tie (what?)

Yep, thats the dude, lol, described perfectly by the way

I dont see how you could simply become a magician without ever going to a library...its mind boggling to be honest, I used to rent books from my library all the time when I was younger, and in my oppinion, RRTCM (even without the DVD's to accompany it) is WAY better than ANY instructional DVD or cheap youtube video, solely because you have to read, re-read, practice, re-read and make the trick totally your own in the process. watching a trcik video means you end up copying the trick, and (from my personal experience) end up feeling scraed to even try alternate patter, in case it doesnt look as good as the way that 'mr_expose_magic' on youtube does it

So, this seems to have really sparked up a heated debate...but, back to the original post...what can actually be done about it? there is nout illegal with it (as far as I can tell anyways...if the person posting the video hjas the original trick...then they can expose all they want?). It seems its the same as when the Sun exposed the ending of 1 of the Harry Potter books...it just annoyes a massive amount of people...

Dan

In the early days of the WWW, before broadband, I ran a website called The Magician's Corner. We had a discussion forum called The Great Debate (one of the first of its kind, while usenet was still popular), and one of the debates I held was on exposure of magic, specifically The Masked Magician. We had comments from every corner of the planet, from magicians going daft because of his exposures. Can't remember who it was, either Jeff McBride or Jonathan Pendragon that tipped me off the real name of the masked magician, anyway, I exposed him, and ended up with all sorts of threats coming through my mailbox from his lawyers. I fought my corner, and they eventually backed down, I'm sure the original masked magician apologised at one point too.

Thing is, we know who these guys are, and half of them are minors, so there's very little we can do to be honest, unless someone knows how to do a denial or service attack on their website or something?

Just to put this into perspective - has anybody who works with the general public (ie performing magic for them whether in a pro or amateur basis) ever had anyone say to you "I know how that's done - I saw it on YouTube?" Because I certainly never have and I'm out working 4 nights a week.

magikmax wrote:Can't remember who it was, either Jeff McBride or Jonathan Pendragon that tipped me off the real name of the masked magician.

Oohhhh. I thought this was like a huge mystery and no one knew who he was. Not that a name can tell you much anyway.

Nah, it wasn't a huge mystery, his name was known to a few of the magicians in Las Vegas at the time. Sorry, don't mean to name drop either, I don't know either of them, but did receive some nice praise from them after they visited the site.