talkmagic.co.uk

Recently I performed cap in bottle for a co-worker who then said they were going to google it. Imagine my surprise when they came back the next day complaining that they couldn't find the method anywhere on the net. They could only find it for sale.

I went to google and typed it in all sorts of ways. Each time the search engine took me too a method. Conclusion? I work with stupid people or people say they are going to look it up, but in the end they don't because it really is not all that important. or a little of each.

One of the greatest skills a magician can learn is how to facilitate misrecollection. This stops all googling cold. A spec may be able to find out how I read the words on a piece of paper I tore up, but they won't be able to find out how I answered a question they wrote on a piece of paper and then burnt while I was out the room.

I couldn't find the thread, but awhile ago a member here was asking about literature on colour psychology. Because he remembered when he was young a magician asked him to pick three colours and from that deduced the time and place of his birth. No one here could help him and it was generally agreed that what he remembered was not in fact what happened.

As for his attitude being annoying just wait till you've been payed, establish an alibi, follow him home and stab him in the face.

I've never mentioned the name of the trick but i produced the four aces so all he's gonna do is type ''four ace trick''.It never had to be named.

In retrospect i did finish each table with the ID performance with everyone at the table shuffling the deck so that could easily be googled.I can't really think of any other more fun way of involving everyone in the audience with the ID other than doing the 'ID' patter.Having said that I think i will change my performance on it to prevent that beauty from being disclosed!

Damn this magic business.Should have learned the piano or something.

Flood wrote:all he's gonna do is type ''four ace trick''.

That should keep him busy There are quite a few of those around...

Flood wrote:I've never mentioned the name of the trick but i produced the four aces so all he's gonna do is type ''four ace trick''.It never had to be named.

In retrospect i did finish each table with the ID performance with everyone at the table shuffling the deck so that could easily be googled.I can't really think of any other more fun way of involving everyone in the audience with the ID other than doing the 'ID' patter.Having said that I think i will change my performance on it to prevent that beauty from being disclosed!

Damn this magic business.Should have learned the piano or something.

It just goes to show, like I've always said, you have to strip everything down and rebuild it in your own image. There's no googling that!

The problem is, everyone thinks they're too sophisticated to be baffled at the moment. Just wait for the credit crunch to sink in...

depends on the situation...

sometimes a short sharp shock works - "i think i missed the meeting where the world decided you were in charge...none of your business how i did it to be honest with you...I'm here to entertain people..."

and very occassionally - "well, i tell you what, i'll show you for £50, once how i did it...pay me for my hard work..."

otherwise its a small smile and a "on yer way now..."

but then again, you could make up a name for it - show a fake method, tell them their mum smells of fish fingers, all kinds of things...but i suppose the bottom line is, whether you do it politely or tersely, they have to know that you are in charge - and if they don't like that, then they can go get the bus...

Craig Browning wrote:The irony to all of this is that Magic is supposed to be a craft based on secrets... the situation being akin to the current wikileaks B.S. that is now holding the U.S. "hostage" (though I'm in hope that the old Cold War tactics are afoot and that little problem will "vanish" soon). The wikileaks scenario being very much akin to magic because magic itself is being "terrorized" and "held hostage" by these jerks who haven't the integrity to actually sit down and LEARN not just the essence of a trick, but how to actually PERFORM the effect so as to affect others in the same way they were "enchanted" and intrigued when seeing something for the first time.

Watch it.

Would you have been offended if this happened 15 years ago and he said, "I'll just go to the library and look it up."?

Would you be doubling offended if you told you that he was going to the library to use the computer so he could Google the trick?

Where a little more diplomacy is necessery, I favour teaching a simple (but relativley unknown to non-magicians) trick to pacify them and give them something to show thier friends, distract them from the other thing they are asking me about and perhaps, if they enjoy performing, find their own way to magic. It's all misdirection of course and the kindness in 'revealing' a small trick on your part really puts you in a position to decline any other requests for reveals should the misdirection have failed.

With mentalism though it is less taboo to ask how it was done. So usually I explain some basic muscle reading (ie, 'think either left or right') which they can then go off and irritate their friends and family with.

To my knowledge though, I have never been inspirational enough to acquire any strict diciples although I have had a handful of people who flirted with the idea of magic for a few weeks because of me, which was very flattering. (I did reccomend rrtcm, shocking, I know)

And talking of the wikileaks thing... without getting too political, I quite enjoy watching states get owned by some liberal computer geeks. I don't quite see the analogy though tbh.

But anyhow, I'm sure we were all in that curious position of a layman wanting to find out how magic was done at one point... and I'd bet that for most that was the starting point of magic as a hobby. Everyone must start somewhere.

PS Perhaps this is a further argument why magicians should create their own effects.
Plus, another possibly useful dodge might be to close the act with something which will provoke more thought than any other more 'googlable' effects earlier on in the routine. A Bit like 'sightless vision' in Corinda where the guy reccomends that you don't close with the effect unless the audience makes their own blindfold as you did and finds out how you did it... if that makes any sense to anyone I should consider myself lucky...

It reminds me a little bit of that Simpsons episode where Chief Wiggum says to his son "Ralph, what is this obsession you have with my forbidden closet of mystery?"

I see why its frustrating but if you show people something seemingly inexplicable, its reasonable to expect a certain number of them to need to know how it's done. I would vehemently disagree with exposure but it's human nature to be curious. Surely coming up with new ways to stay ahead of the audience is what drives magic to advance as an artform?

Tomo wrote:I'm with the others on this.

Don't tell him the name of the trick, just the name of a really expensive magic book. Let him google that. When he discovers the price of discovering the secret, he'll lose interest.

So what you are saying is I've to churn out a magic book, get it published on that Lulu publisher thingamy and price it at over £100, then anyone who asks me how I did the trick I say its a published effect in Vic Day's "Advanced Magical Techniques Volume 6"?
That's a great idea, thanks for the great tip Tomo xxxxx

V

Darth Carter wrote:Surely coming up with new ways to stay ahead of the audience is what drives magic to advance as an artform?

Not necessarily. In terms of methods, there's a lot of very old stuff that still works perfectly well. It's about engaging and entertaining people. That's where things can become dated. It doesn't address the issue, though, that some people like to be astonished while others can't bear not to understand a puzzle.

V.E. Day wrote:

Tomo wrote:I'm with the others on this.

Don't tell him the name of the trick, just the name of a really expensive magic book. Let him google that. When he discovers the price of discovering the secret, he'll lose interest.

So what you are saying is I've to churn out a magic book, get it published on that Lulu publisher thingamy and price it at over £100, then anyone who asks me how I did the trick I say its a published effect in Vic Day's "Advanced Magical Techniques Volume 6"?
That's a great idea, thanks for the great tip Tomo xxxxx

V

I didn't actually mean that, but...

Tomo wrote:I'm with the others on this.

Don't tell him the name of the trick, just the name of a really expensive magic book. Let him google that. When he discovers the price of discovering the secret, he'll lose interest.

Tell him he can find it in Tarbell. (That's probably true anyway.)

I've been putting a series of very short magic videos on YouTube (if you're interested, they're at http://www.youtube.com/user/mindmagic42 ) and I've been very careful not to give the effects their proper names. The only one I'm worried about is the rope trick; unfortunately it's very easy to find a couple of ****s who've exposed it.

Barry