Dustings #150
/I’ve never read a page of Vanish Magazine, and this—quite possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen in magic—won’t be what changes that.
He had AI create a podcast "discussing" his magazine. And he's trying to pass it off like these are real people. They're not. They're fake hosts, fake enthusiasm, fake opinions—and he's promoting it as "NON-MAGICIANS talking about the latest issue of Vanish."
They're not non-magicians. They're non-humans.
That tells me two things.
One: he thinks so little of the material he's publishing that an AI-generated summary of it counts as worthwhile content to him.
Two: he thinks so little of his audience that he expects them to mistake two digital sock puppets for actual people having an actual conversation.
The kicker is—"non-magicians talk about a magic magazine" would already be the dumbest fucking thing you've ever heard if it were real. The fact that he looked at that premise and thought this needs to be faked takes a special kind of imbecile.
Of course, now I’m left wondering how much of the magazine itself is written by AI.
Here is the same magician selling his snowstorm effect. And what could be more aligned with the delicate beauty of producing a magical blizzard of snow than wincing and grimacing like you just took a sledgehammer to your scrotum before you activate the gimmick? He does this every time he activates it in the demo.
If only Houdini had braced himself this thoroughly before taking that punch to the abdomen. He’d still be dead, of course, but maybe he would have stuck around long enough to give us a sequel to The Grim Game.
I like to have fun, but on a day like today, I’m grateful to the Magic Café for setting frivolity aside and reminding us of the solemn importance of the occasion with its annual, breathtakingly beautiful tribute to those we lost.
