Help Wanted: What's the Worst Force You Can Think Of?

In this post I wrote about the concept of having a bad marked deck, and why you might want to create one in order to corrupt people’s understanding of what a marked deck is. I enjoy this type of thing—planting seeds for things you won’t harvest until some time has passed. If I ask people if they’ve ever seen a marked deck, most haven’t. And if I introduce the Bad Marked Deck to them, and they believe that to be what marked decks are like, I can then use a good marked deck in the future and—with any luck—they will dismiss the possibility of it being a marked deck because it’s not used in a manner that they would associate with the deck I’ve shown them.

The idea being that people already know about marked decks, so now I want to poison that knowledge in some way. It wouldn’t make sense to introduce a concept to them, and then try and undermine it. But if they already have heard about something, I want to make that thing seem more inadequate than it really is.

You’ll sometimes see this done with the concept of “palming.” Laypeople have already heard of palming so sometimes magicians will mention it in their presentations (such as with the Invisible Palm effect) and demonstrate it in a way that it seems like it wouldn’t fool anyone. That’s the sort of thing I’d like to do with every magical concept laypeople are familiar with.

(By the way, if you’re a supporter of this site, the Jerx Deck you’ll receive next year in your supporter package is going to be a bad marked deck. Not “funny” bad. But just overly-complicated bad.)

So now I’m thinking about ways to do that with card forcing because I’ve recently been doing a number of effects that start with me performing and explaining a shitty version of the trick and then following that up with a similar effect but with a completely different method. This structure seems to generate much stronger responses for me than just doing the better version in isolation. (For more details on this, see this post. Or, if you’re a supporter of the site, see the essay “Garden Pathing” in issue 2 of this year’s newsletter.)

Since I’ve been teaching a lot more crappy tricks, many of which require a force, I need to identify some bad forces that meet these criteria:

They fool people to the extent that it’s not completely obvious how the card was forced.
BUT
The selection process is unnatural/needlessly complicated in a way that makes it obvious this isn’t a truly “free” selection.
AND
Exposing the force wouldn’t reveal any useful deception techniques.

The first thing that came to mind was the 10-20 force, because, as it’s generally described, it’s fucking stupid. “Name a number between 10 and 20,” is no way to start off anything that’s supposed to feel free or random in any manner. At least not when you’re holding something with 52 options in your hand.

And, of course, and process that forces a number could then be used to force a card by counting down to that number in the deck.

But I’m still looking for some more bad forces. So if you know of any (or can create one), send me an email and let me know.

Combining exposure and weak methods is a powerful concept. Teaching them a method, even if it sucks, gives them that little dopamine hit of learning a secret. But it also takes them further away from the sort of methods I’m going to be using. Since they already know of the concept of card forcing, I want them to believe it amounts to literally forcing a card into someone’s hand from a spread (a la the classic force), or that it requires a very convoluted process. That way when they’re just cutting a deck, or touching a card freely, or stopping me while I deal—they’ll be less likely to even conceive those actions could be part of a force.

Monday Mailbag #60

Re: A Jerxian Breakthrough

The breakthrough you’ve discovered is called “honesty and consent.”

All the cool kids are trying it. —MW

Fair enough.

But more than “consent,” I think what I’m searching for in that type of interaction is understanding.

If I say, “Hey, do you want to see a magic trick?” And they say yes. Then I have their consent. But I don’t necessarily have their understanding of what I mean when I ask them if they want to see a magic trick. Because what I want from them is to know that when I show them a trick it might involve a little more involvement and suspension of disbelief than what they may be imagining.

If I ask them if they want to see a trick and they consent and I do a gambling demonstration, I think that works out well.

If I ask them if they want to see a trick and they consent and I do the Ocean’s Eleven version of Spectator Cuts the Aces from this post, then they’re going to be weirded out, because that’s not their understanding of how a magic trick is framed.

The “breakthrough” I had was that by telling them a story about a different performance, or something else I was working on, I could then indirectly familiarize them with the type of of magic I like to perform. And this would allow me to get their “consent” to seeing that type of magic without having to be a real dork about it and be, like, “So, it’s a magic trick. But I often embed it in a kind of fictional interaction. And I don’t want you to be there thinking, ‘That’s not a special kind of gum. That’s just ordinary gum!’ I just want you to try and engage with the story of this special gum. I’m not trying to convince you the gum is actually special. That’s just the story. Got it? Sign here if you consent to seeing such a trick.”

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Hey Andy,

How about doing the Invisible Deck as a trick that a mysterious stranger apparently does for you via post?

That way you can secretly control the outcome for the spectator - whilst giving the credit to the mysterious magician friend.—JM

It’s a good idea, but as someone who has done a lot of faux “third party” magic tricks (where someone else outside of myself and the participant is apparently controlling the magic), I know that they have to end examinable. In these types of presentations its incumbent on you to act like a real spectator. Otherwise it just comes off as a fake-y presentation.

So at the end of the Invisible Deck you’d want to be able to look over the deck just to search for some clue in regards to how it was done. Obviously if you’re using the standard Invisible Deck, that wouldn’t be possible.

But one of the benefits of using a “third-party” presentation is that it can be easier to switch things and end clean. There are a couple reasons why it’s easier:

1. Because you’re not playing the part of the magician, there’s going to be a little less heat on you.

2. You can add in instructions from “the magician” that give you the time and opportunity to do switches, and you don’t have to justify your actions because you’re just following instructions.

Here’s what I mean. If you sent yourself an Invisible Deck in the mail and wrote instructions from “the magician” who sent it to you and the instructions said. “One of you should name any card in the deck. The other person should spread through the deck and remove the one card I reversed in this deck before I sent it to you. Don’t look at it just yet. Have whichever of you named the card hold onto it.” If, at this point in the instructions, it said to walk over to a mirror or close your eyes and repeat some phrase or to switch seats or whatever, that’s all the time you would need to do a deck switch for a normal deck.

I would recommend a deck switch for a deck whose back doesn’t match the back of the invisible deck for a few reasons. First, because it adds a Brainwave type of effect to the interaction. Second, it prevents the notion that maybe you were in on it and you just flipped over the card they named and they weren’t paying close enough attention to notice. And third it leaves you completely clean at the end.

If you don’t use a different color deck, then you end up with a duplicate of whatever card they named. Maybe it’s unlikely to get noticed, but it’s still there. If you do use a different colored deck, then even though there is another one of the named card in the deck, that can make sense if the trick is that the magician took a card from a blue deck and reversed it and stuck it into a red deck before mailing it off. There would be no discrepancy if that was the premise.

But yeah, using an ID in this way is definitely do-able because you can be so clean with it. And that’s what third-party magic requires.

For Christmas you could wrap up the ID and put a bow on it and send it to your house. Apparently from your “magician friend.” And this trick is his “gift” to you (or you and your family).

Dustings #58

I once had an idea for a dating site where you would upload the least flattering pictures of yourself. Maybe there would be some sort of vetting by people who worked on the site to make sure these are truly bad pictures of you. Otherwise the site would operate like a normal dating site. Except when you get to the point where you finally meet your match in person and you think, “Oh, wow! What a pleasant surprise!”

I’ve always done my best to set low expectations with people. If you tell people you’re a great worker, or a great cook, or a great lover, or whatever—that might get your foot in the door (or penis in the vagina)—but then you have to put your actual abilities up against the power of their imagination. And that’s a battle you can almost never win.

This phenomenon plays out in magic ads as well.

Take this trick, SOLID. I watched the video and at first I thought, “A borrowed, signed key penetrates into a can or bottle? That sounds amazing.” Immediately my mind was churning over the possibilities.

Then I watched a little more and did a little reading and realized the key isn’t borrowed. It’s your own key. And it’s a key that easily fits into the can. And you start the effect by just openly putting the key in the can and then “removing” it. Does this make it a bad trick? Not necessarily. But it just makes it not the trick I originally was hoping for.

Now, had the ad copy started, “You pull out your keyring and remove a small key,” they probably would have sold a copy to me. No, I wouldn’t have been initially as interested as I was when I thought it was a regular-sized borrowed key, but at least my interest wouldn’t have waned the more I learned about the trick. I would have been focused on the positives of the trick rather than where it didn’t live up to my expectations.

Is this good marketing advice? No, probably not. But I’m mentioning it now because if and when I start releasing products in the future, I’m going to use this approach. I’m going to establish the limitations and the weak spots first and then express what makes the trick worth it despite those factors.

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Love to see such a genuine excited reaction to a magic performance…

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This trick teaches the very important lesson that bullying isn’t all that bad because the effects of bullying can be undone with the snap of your fingers. Wait… that can’t possibly be the message, can it?

Hmm…

Well, I can’t find any other lesson to be learned here.

The sad thing is, even if you can solve your bullying problems with magic, you still have parents that sent you to school with a lunch consisting of a juice box, a mandarin orange, and cookies. Jesus, mom, get the kid some goddamn protein. No wonder he’s getting bullied. He can’t build any muscle mass!

A Jerxian Breakthrough

There’s a certain style of magic I write about frequently here that I describe as “immersive fiction” or the “Romantic Adventure” performance style. That’s where the goal is for the trick to feel less like a demonstration and more like an (obviously) fictional story that they are taking a part in. In a previous post I described this as a direction that magic might evolve towards in the future (for certain types of performers).

I wrote:

I suspect magic will be seen as a form of experiential storytelling. Instead of being a one person exhibition (like being a juggler or ventriloquist) it will be more aligned with things like escape rooms, haunted houses, or parlour games. I think magic won't be seen as something you do, but an experience you create. The best magicians will be those who craft the best immersive stories for people.

The issue with this is that it’s kind of an unusual way to present magic. And while I find it to be wildly more enjoyable for people to experience than a traditional “demonstration of my magic skills,” it’s also something they’re not used to. There’s a learning curve involved when it comes to enjoying this sort of performance because it doesn’t really work well if the spectator has the typical mindset people often approach magic with: “You’re going to try and fool me, and my goal is to try and figure it out.” Having their guard up means they’re not appreciating the story because they’re questioning it. That’s not an attitude that helps them get immersed in what you’re showing them. “Wait… your aunt wasn’t a gypsy. I’ve met your aunts.” That’s not the vibe you want them to have.

The ideal mindset I want my spectators to have is, “This story is meant to be fictional, so I can just let myself get lost in it without questioning things. And I’m not going to figure out the magic no matter how hard I try, so I might as well sit back and enjoy it.”

That’s the “ideal,” mind you. I’m not saying everyone I perform for has this mindset.

The hard part of this style of magic is really getting people somewhere near that point. Magic—especially amateur magic—is almost defined by the “challenge” of it. So coming at it from a different perspective can be difficult for people.

For a long time, the only method I had in my arsenal to get people prepared for this type of performance was to slowly introduce it to them over the course of many performances. The post I’ve linked to the most on this site is this Bedrock post where I talk, step by step, about how I go about doing that. It’s a long process, but it’s an enjoyable one for me.

But now I’ve found a shortcut to get people up to speed on what I’m going for much faster.

This was really a breakthrough for me, and it’s so obvious and stupid that it shouldn’t have been, but it is.

Here’s my big breakthrough. Here’s how I get people to expect a different type of magic experience…

I tell them.

I just tell them that I make up stories to go along with the tricks, or to give the tricks the feeling of a weird experience or something like that.

This doesn’t get them prepared to sit through a 90 minute immersive trick. But it does get them to used to the idea that we both know this is meant to be a fictional little bit of entertainment, and not to get too worked up about trying to “catch me” when the story is unfolding.

I stumbled over this when I pulled out the trick Kids Kards for the first time in a while. Someone I didn’t know too well was at my place and I told her something truthful. I said, “Oh, this is a trick I used to do a lot but I stopped doing it. I would tell people this story about me dating this elementary school teacher and how I would visit the classroom and do a trick every now and again. And at the end of the year the kids made me this deck of cards. And blah, blah, blah. But the problem was, people were really believing the story. And they were getting emotionally invested in these kids and this relationship. And I didn’t want that. I was just trying to show them something fun. Here, I’ll show you.”

Then I went into the trick with my old presentation. And she was immediately onboard. Because she knew it was a made-up story, she could just let herself go along with it. She didn’t have to question whether I believed it or whether I wanted her to believe it. She could just enjoy it. And then, later in the evening when I went into another trick, she again instantly realized what the situation was. I didn’t have to explain to her again what the deal was, because I had already established the type of thing to expect.

And I’ve had similar success with other people. I just have to say something, anything really, that lets them understand that I like to use magic to create the feeling of going through some weird experience. That these stories are intended to be fictional and just for their enjoyment.

I would say that I still prefer taking the long way to get to this point and slowly getting them accustomed to this style of performance. But if I want to move that process along, or if I’m not going to have that much time with the person, this technique allows me to get into some more interesting performances, without freaking them out, and without the intermediary steps along the way