talkmagic.co.uk

Craig Browning wrote:I know I'm wasting my breath... but it's very simple; MENTALISM IS NOT THE SAME THING AS MAGIC.

Just because we think that posts on different subjects can go alongside one another does not mean we are stupid Craig, in fact if I were to be petty enough I might suggest that, based on the kind of mentalism you wish to discuss in these areas, if people are incapable of spotting these posts from among the others then they are surely not up to the discussion anyway

Craig Browning wrote:....allow visitors to find the areas that interest them with great ease vs. wading through all the "who's the best...what's your favorite...and why I like..." type posts allied with other areas of magic/entertainment. It's just simple organization that makes navigation easier for all and, as has been proven with all those other forums that follow this rule, lends to the board a sense of maturity and general respect to both, the craft and the membership.

Do you really think that all that magicians talk about is who's the best and what's your favourite? Sure, we get plenty of those, usually from new members finding their feet, but if you truly read the forum you would find plenty of mature discussion worthy of a respectable forum.

If you think that the membership here is immature then I would respectfully urge you to bu**er off!

As it happens, we are considering several streamlining and targeting changes to the design of the forum, however, I am worried that certain areas might end up seeming rather elitist, what with the reputation and obvious experience of those likely to post in it. My personal opinion, though I would be happy to be proved wrong, is that this would be very off-putting to those just starting out in that area.

Nickj... I do not think anyone is "stupid" and haven't the slightest idea why you'd think I was intimating this. Too, as to those "who & what" posts I referred to, I know you have threads other than those and I know that much of it deals with card magic, etc. the thing is, for people that want to swing in for a quick glance and see what's up in the areas of their personal interests, they have to wade through all the non-related posts. Too, if a post is not worded (titled) in a way that suggests that it has to do with Mentalism, Kiddie Shows or whathaveyou, how would anyone know to click on it and check it out? That is, unless you think people are going to click and check out each and every post that comes along?

The Elitist issue can go all sorts of directions... I know card workers that are ten times more smug than any mentalist and escape artists that are even worse... so we needn't go there.

Yes, there are misunderstandings and strong misconceptions when it comes to the "grind" between mentalism (pure mentalism) and the stuff so many want to shlock off as being such. There's a big difference between seeing the Center Tear as a Trick and using it as a method, the latter being how the mentalist views it whereas the typical magician honestly sees it as being the cat's meow of mentalism effects.

Please understand, I'm not trying to create an issue at any level. My only agenda is to help out where and as I can.

Craig Browning wrote:I know I'm wasting my breath... but it's very simple; MENTALISM IS NOT THE SAME THING AS MAGIC.

Actually, I am all for a dedicated room for discussions on mentalism, but I have to admit Craig that that particular argument just doesn't wash. In fact it's downright filthy! We do know that mentalism is not the same as magic. We also know that mental magic is not the same as mentalism. That has never been an issue here.

The point as I see it is, that we could also acknowledge 101 other genres of magic, and end up like the magic cafe, where you never quite know where to look for anything or post anything.

At the moment there is a good search facility for specific topics and I have no issue with a single review section for reviewing all products.

Also, by having a dedicated mentalism room, there is nothing to stop the so called "imature" posts from still being made.

The reasons I see that it would be nice to have a mentalism room is, as Craig mentioned, it is one place for posts of this nature to be looked for. I suspect that there are some members who are ONLY interested in mentalism, and so do not want to troll through all the other posts in various areas looking for just the posts that interest them.

nickj wrote:I am worried that certain areas might end up seeming rather elitist

I would hope that this wouldn't be the case. Although to be honest, if I had my way any new room would be in the magicians only areas (so I guess I am not arguing that very well). The reason for that is that by it's nature, any discussion on mentalism, or mentalist related products could to some extent be deemed as exposure. Simply because anyone not involved in magic (oops, I meant mentalism) shouldn't even know these products exist.

But Craig, yes we are thankful to have your knowledge and experience here, but please give us a little credit...

Craig Browning wrote:Nickj... I do not think anyone is "stupid" and haven't the slightest idea why you'd think I was intimating this.

Sorry, I was perhaps a little strong there, it was just that since you thought you would be wasting your breath and capitalised the sentence you did it seemed that you were implying that we were all to dense to see where you are coming from!

Craig Browning wrote:Too, if a post is not worded (titled) in a way that suggests that it has to do with Mentalism, Kiddie Shows or whathaveyou, how would anyone know to click on it and check it out? That is, unless you think people are going to click and check out each and every post that comes along?

Actually, that's exactly what I do! I know that as a mod I have a responsibility to do this, and I still occasionally miss things but I can usually manage to take it all in and skim through the ones that are not of any interest.

Craig Browning wrote:Yes, there are misunderstandings and strong misconceptions when it comes to the "grind" between mentalism (pure mentalism) and the stuff so many want to shlock off as being such. There's a big difference between seeing the Center Tear as a Trick and using it as a method, the latter being how the mentalist views it whereas the typical magician honestly sees it as being the cat's meow of mentalism effects.

I disagree that the "typical magician" sees it in this way. A very poor and atypical magician, or one who has steamed in up to his neck before really learning anything may, but surely this is the same with mentalism? I get the recurrent feeling from your posts that you assume magicians will act this way, which must be from your experiences with them, but I assure you that in my experience on this board the reverse is quite the case when you exclude the "steamers".

Also, I totally agree with Bananafish's first paragraph.

Craig Browning wrote:I know I'm wasting my breath... but it's very simple; MENTALISM IS NOT THE SAME THING AS MAGIC.

If Mentalism is not the same thing as magic then does it belong on TalkMAGIC at all?

Craig Browning wrote:Yes, you will end up with a longer list of "categories" if you give a special area to Mentalism and one to Children's Magic, one for the Bizarre side, etc.

But if you apply this logic to mentalism then you should, by rights, do the exact same thing for other areas of magic - then you end up with the Magic Cafe which is so fragmented.

The other difference is somewhere like the Magic Cafe has a massive volume of messages, over 1 million messages last time I looked - we don't get that here. There are probably hundreds of people interested in Mentalism over there - from what I'm seeing here about 3-4 people have felt strongly enough to post asking for a new forum. Compared to childrens magic which seems to have a much greater interest level here.

The bottom line is there doesn't seem to be the level of interest to warrant a new forum compared to other areas - plus as NickJ said, it's not like you can't discuss it here anyway. It seems to me if you're really into Mentalism - there are better places to discuss it than a forum that doesn't have seperate area for it - it's not like our browsers can only hold one link!

Craig,

There are lots of dedicated and well populated mentalism forums on the internet, and I know you're a prominent member of many of them (including members-only ones) and are well known in the mentalism community at large. So with all due respect, I don't understand why you are you pushing quite so hard to have TalkMagic set up a new one I mean to say, the focus here is fairly tightly on cards. The name even implies that it's about talking magic rather than other forms like mentalism, and you yourself are veherement that they're different. It feels like you're trying to put a square peg in a round hole, and I'm not sure why you're making that effort

tomo wrote:There are lots of dedicated and well populated mentalism forums on the internet, and I know you're a prominent member of many of them (including members-only ones) and are well known in the mentalism community at large. So with all due respect, I don't understand why you are you pushing quite so hard to have TalkMagic set up a new one

I suspect, because he thinks it will be good for TalkMagic. For the record, I also think it would be good.

themightynubbin wrote:If Mentalism is not the same thing as magic then does it belong on TalkMAGIC at all?

Oh please. Let's try and leave the hair splitting arguments at the door. I think we all can say that mentalism is a genre of magic and talking about it here is not the issue. It's where we should talk about it here.

Here are some of the main pro's and cons...

Cons.
An extra room just adds clutter to the forum and makes it too fragmented

We don't get enough mentalism related threads to warrant a new room

Pros.
Some people are here JUST for the mentalism, and don't want to troll through the non related posts.

Having a designated room, makes it easier to search for specific posts relating to that topic

My only interests in this are very simple;

a.) Most folks don't want to go from thread to thread reviewing what's what, just to find a subject of interest. It's just not practical when it comes to time constraints as well as being appealing to the greater whole of those that hold an interest in this/these fields.

b.) By simplifying one's ability to browse through your forum (i.e. by having select categories such as the majority of successful forums do) the site has a neatness factor and becomes appealing to a broader group of people who can more readily find the subjects or areas of study that interest them. As much as I detest the Cafe (due to some of it's management's practices) they do have a formula that has worked... granted, the copied 95% of what they do and have done, but what they copied came from other forums that set the example, which really is a big side of "the point" as it were.

c.) Since coming here I have had several PMs, emails and requests to get onto my messenger by board members that want to discuss Mentalism, Cold Reading, etc. but have either few or no one to deal with that's actually a "Mentalist" vs. a magician that's read a few books in the past year or two.

Every reason I've listed relates directly to actions that will improve your board, your service to members, and an increase in membership. This is not a self-serving thing or I'd be screaming for a Bizarre and Illusion section as well; after all, those are also areas of this craft that I'm established in.

Several years ago I came across a forum that was "reluctant" to address things in a certain manner when it came to bizarre & psychic styled magic. I discovered within a short period of time that it was part of some Fundamentalist Christian cult here in the U.S. and part of their agenda was to discourage young magic enthusiast from learning how to present "darker" modes of magic in the proven "darker" way. In fact, there is a big trend amongst magicians to encourage this kind of agenda i.e.; lessen the psychological advantages exploited by the Mentalist by promoting through our performances that it's all tricks and nothing exists along those lines, etc. It's a rather cruel as well as selfish action, but it is afoot and it is hurting the industry at many, many levels.

I bring this up only to reveal what many young people are up agaist and the need for a solid, safe resource where they can discuss the rudiments of this side of the craft, getting started, etc.

One other note... (personal)... I know this seems like an "ego" thing and there are those involved with a certain rabbit hutch that would lead you to believe that this is all that compells me. Truth of the matter is, I have a fair amount of free time on my hands due to personal health challenges and being stuck at home a great deal of the time. Rather than stew, I like being able to help out. It keeps my mind working and it helps others discover resources, perspectives, etc. that they would otherwise hold little to no access/knowledge of. Last I checked, that's what we old farts are good for, so I hope you'll take that into consideration as well.

bananafish wrote:

themightynubbin wrote:If Mentalism is not the same thing as magic then does it belong on TalkMAGIC at all?

Oh please. Let's try and leave the hair splitting arguments at the door.

It was actually meant as a semi-jokey comment, hence the

bananafish wrote:I think we all can say that mentalism is a genre of magic and talking about it here is not the issue.

I agree with you, from what Craig has said I'm not sure he does agree that Mentalism is a genre of magic, maybe he can clarify.

As I've said before and as Tomo said, it just doesn't strike me as very logical why you'd want to start something brand new here when other places serve mentalist's needs much better.

It's like starting up you're own Supermarket from scratch and taking on Tesco! You've never going to be able to match that offering!

I agree with you, from what Craig has said I'm not sure he does agree that Mentalism is a genre of magic, maybe he can clarify.

I've written a bit more extensively about this elsewhere but here's the short version...

MENTALISM is a kindred artform that's related to magic just as Ventriloquism and even Shadow Puppetry are; "related" does not equate to being "the same thing" however. The psychological paradigm as to how these two art forms are presented and "sold" to the audience is in direct opposition to one another... that is, when you understand that this opposition is what makes mentalism, mentalism rather than just another type of magical presentation. As Lee Earle and others have regurgitated time and time again Magic requires the supsension of belief and an agreement between performer and audience that essentially states that 'I', as a performer, and going to fool 'you' the audience. This is fully understood and expected. MENTALISM on the other hand requires an investment of belief and the self, even if it's only temprorary and of a theatrical nature (as in, what happens when we get sucked into a movie plot or good book). There is a direct committment by the audience when they participate in a Psychic styled program. The performer exploiting and applying psychological tactics in a manner that "works against us" in order to deliver his/her effects. Too, unlike the magician, what the mentalist presents is a demonstration of the supposedly (rumored to be and often believed to be) real.

As I've said before and as Tomo said, it just doesn't strike me as very logical why you'd want to start something brand new here when other places serve mentalist's needs much better.

That's exactly right... they serve the "needs of mentalists" NOT those new to mentalism.

There was recently a thread started about a new book release from Kenton Knepper that I quickly jumped on, warning folks that this is advanced material and may prove frustrating and highly impractical to those who are short on experience and hands on understanding of how to present effective mentalism. Given the expressed short coming of existing members here to respond intelligently and with genuine "authority" on such an issue, chances are strong that a bunch of people would jump on the bandwagon and grab an "expensive" item that really wont serve them well at this point in the game. For the average 16, 17 or evern 25 year old enthusiast that's only been tinkering with mentalism for less than two years... magic, for less than five, chances are very strong the $45.00 price could be applied elsewhere in order to gain a more practical, viable sense of gain -- advantage!

One last thing... most of those forums you mention (other than that puke green swill pool) that have a seperate Mentalism and Bizarre magick area that I'm involved in, really don't do the newbie too well. Even the Bunny Hutch tends to have too much "wrong" information going out via individuals that have played around with mentalism for the past couple of years but whose opinions are based on what's of current vogue and not personal experience and honest know how. They mean well and unlike many forums Magic Bunny does have a fair number of actual performers and learned students on board, but you just can't beat actual experience coupled with real world insights from actual working pros on this or that topic.