talkmagic.co.uk

I wasn't sure where to post this, or if anyone else here thinks its as big of a problem as I do....but I found a massive archive of magic secrets being revealed to all.

Im sure you have all seen Wikipedia.com - it's an online encyclopedia where you can find out pretty much the answer to anything, all on one site.

I realise the influence of the internet and its various search engines have made it increasingly difficult for keeping the secrets to the art of deception. However, this site is a user edited site. Anyone can go on there and add or delete things accordingly.....and someone is posting the secrets to many stage and close-up effects.

I have tried deleting all references to any methods or handling in the various sections about magic, but I hardly even got a fraction of the way through - and some moderator of the site blocked me from deleting the exposure sections on the grounds of.....

"You are not authorised to represent the magician community as a whole. You cannot delete these encyclopedia entries based on your personal preference. Many magicians may want this information to be made public for ease of reference with thier own research"

Im sorry, but im pretty sure there isn't going to be many of us who would ever think it's a good thing, to have secrets posted for any nosey young scrote to find! I wrote back to ensure the moderators of Wikipedia.com that NO magician in their right mind would ever need to use a site like this for their own 'research' - but my plea's have fallen on deaf ears.

It would be intresting to hear some of your opinions about this. Even though it looks as though it out of our hands to stop them. Here are some links with a few examples of the exposure.

(Note from Mods: On the grounds of not giving further opportunities for casual browsers to find those links, they've been removed)

.....there's loads more on that site, so I can't be bothered to list them all, but you get the idea. Im a bit gutted to be honest. What do you guys and gals think?

Although a pain in the rear end, my opinion is there doesnt seem ot be much there that cant be obtained from good old ebay. Royal road, corinda etc are all freely available on there whic seem to cover most of what was on the wiki site.
I guess as far as close up, cards, mentlaism go is deisgusing what your doing anyways. With billets etc. The person may know about them, bt if your method is indectectable they wont put two and two togther.
Thats my hope anyways. Of course it would be better if they didnt have them on there, for all to see at a click of a button, but there are worse offenders than wiki.
Unfortunantly the www is so vast it is difficult to regulate its entire content and the amount of copyrighted material available freely is scary.

Just an opinion

F x

You couldnt actually perform any of this stuff from these descriptions alone.


99% of it is historical info anyway.

and if you did this like this....


you deserve to get caught out.

Why is there a kinky women in a leather jacket with her legs tied in the straitjacket section!

Tyler,

Is it really necessary to post direct links in the open forum to this stuff? I think we all know it's out there, but isn't this is just giving Mr Smartypants-Knowitall descriptions of techniques to map onto your performance? He doesn't need to be able to perform, just recognise what you're doing so he can more confidently shout out and spoil things for everyone.

(Note from Mods: Links now removed - peace restored.....)

The situation with Wikki has been mentioned before, they've been asked to remove some information but they responded with the predictable, 'knowledge should be freely available' line. It's noted that they don't show detailed data which criminals and terrorists could use but having made that point to them, apparently they just ignored it.

As has been mentioned, the explanations aren't all that accurate or workable and there was once the idea of a deliberate process of editing those entries with mis-information to confuse the unwary, but it's unlikely that any serious changes will be made to their database. It's a bit like the old Masked Magician shows, they caused a bit of a stir at the time but actually didn't make a great deal of difference in terms of spoiling magic for the audiences.

I've never really known what all the fuss over this sort of exposure is all about. To start with, people are going to need to know what to look for in order to find it and most people aren't going to have a clue where to start with any of those. And even if they do know, 99% of people really aren't going to be that bothered to go to the trouble of looking it up.

So what if they do happen to know the secret, with a good performance they should never link what you're doing with what they know. I've had magicians managed to get a cross cut force past me with out me realising it until I thought back on it later on.

I guess my point is that this sort of thing might be out there but most people really aren't interested enough to want to look it up.

Far worse is posting those links on a site that might be visited by secret hunters looking for exactly that kind on info.

These have been around for ages, in this very section you'll find a huge thread stickied to the top that has a petition to ban this "horrible, horrible exposure".

However, finding this information isn't all that easy (except when you post nicely organized links as you have - take Tomo's advice and if you're really against wiki putting them up, don't advertise it).

Take the example of the sub trunk. Who aside a magician would know it was called a sub trunk or metamorphosis? If the stage magician has done his job correctly the trunk seems incidental - he needed something to lock the lady into so it was hard for her to escape, then they changed places! A trunk just happens to be there. How, exactly, would a spectator go about finding that particular illusion? The words "Trunk" and "Magic" only bearly get metamorphosis in the top 10 results.

The same can be said for any close up routine, unless you're dense enough to tell them "I'm about to perform an amazing routine using billits and a stebbins stack", or worse, the name of a commercial effect...

The only people that are going to find such articles are:
1/ magicians doing historical research (though, I would argue Wiki is not the best place for this)
2/ someone with an honest interest in magic that is just starting out (don't worry, if really interested, they'll stumble their way to a book or forum soon enough where we can set them right)
or
3/ a jerk that looks up "Magic" because he can't stand being fooled.

1 and 2 are surely acceptable. #3 is always going to be a problem - and most won't have the patience to do the research, or the brains to relate the abstract methods to what they saw Copperfield et al. do.

It is a shame that it is all published on such a common database as wikipedia. Of course there are worse sites considering exposure and it is the purpose of an encyclopedia to have the answer to everything. However as it is necesseary for scientific research to share information and discoveries, it is counterproductive for magic which lives off the fact that people don't know the secret.
But well, it seems that the battle whether wikipedia should contain every information there is or just "good, approved" ones has been lost long ago. It has extensive articles about such things as the history of youporn.com and other stuff that shouldn't be published in a "serious" encyclopedia.
That they now reveal magic is no reason to celebrate but I don't think we can do anything against wikipedia either.

to quote a song by Taste - "It's happened before, it'll happen again.."

You know what worries me? Do you even care what worries me? no matter I will tell you anyway. I was looking at stunts like the bullet catch and the explanation.

Here in Central Pennsylvania, or as I like to call it, (redneck) ville, they teach the children to hunt at a very young age, and they have access to firearms. Granted they are usually taught the proper methods of using a gun but kids eventually turn into teenagers and do stupid things, all you teens don't take offence, I've done more stupid in my day then many. That aside if you follow the directions on Wikki for the bullet catch chances are you are not going to survive. To be honest I don't know how the bullet catch works, so I don't know if that method is accurate, I'm sure others will know, I don't seek out to find information on magic effects that I would never have an interest in performing as I really do want to enjoy the show. That aside, if you do build create the bullet as described if the consistancy is not right it can still do an extreme amount of damage. I know somebody who put a certain kind of pellet in a BB gun thinking the bullet would be harmless, good thing he had bad aim, his brother still has the scar where the 'harmless bullet' went through his hand.

It is not the exposure that bothers me so much it is the lack of nuances. What I hated about the magic exposed show was 2 fold. The first was how condescending it sounded. When they got to the explanations they would say something to the effect of, 'and really thats all there is too it, not so amazing anymore is it?" They never ever mentioned the real work that goes into an illusion, they didn't mention the countless hours and bruises that goes into perfecting an illusion, they never mentioned the extreme strain a box jumper puts on her body to contort or balance. That is what bugged me.

The 2nd reason, (assuming that you are still reading my rant) is the announcer of the show was an actor from the X-files and it was his condescending voice and attitude that irked me. But this was the same two faced idiot who then went public at how upset he we was that somebody stole the final episode of the X-files and released it on the internet. hE made statements about others people integrity about stealing secrets of the industry and how this thief was just going to ruin the show for others...yet he was doing the same bloody thing!

I had someone tell me that he was going to Google a trick I did for him. It was actually Coinvexed but he didn't know where to start, the best he got was a coin switch but I couldn't have done that as he signed the coins.

If you're good enough then things like that should never enter their head, they should be relaxed in the entertainment. He was a friend though & not a customer.

Russ
www.smartmagic.co.uk

I had the same actually - but with cards.

Using a sven - my cousin went googled and came up with a magnetic deck. Was funny when he tried to catch me out by throwing it at the radiator and they all fell down. Only strengthened what i did.

F x

also, from what I can see, there's patents available for several large illusions (DC's Flying if I'm not mistaken) available from the US Patents Office online, but unless you know exactly what to look for, chances are you'll never find it.

Saying that about Wiki isn't strictly correct however, the site is laid out quite easily, so it's easy to jump from a link about a specific magician, to a whole list of magic tricks, and stumble upon a secret like the Chinese Linking Rings for example.

I think that YouTube, both from it's bad iMagicians angle, and also its exposure angle does much more harm. There's a lot of dealer items on there that are just laid bare for all to see, but again, you have to know what you are looking for.

Thing is of course, as others have said, a trick performed perfectly looks like real magic anyway. There's no end of people on here saying 'I've seen such and such perform a trick, I know how he does it, but it's still magical'. I know how the Linking Rings work (I do them [badly] myself), yet every time I see Jeff McBride or that bloke with the Ninja Rings, it's just like the rings are melting together, and it's still magic.

FairieSnuff wrote:
Using a sven - my cousin went googled and came up with a magnetic deck. Was funny when he tried to catch me out by throwing it at the radiator and they all fell down. Only strengthened what i did.

F x

hehe , my wife's like that. She knows more than the average joe public about magic, but it's brilliant when she's sure she knows how something is done, and her theory is wrong. Like you say, it only strengthens the effect.