The Anonymizer - Exposure and Online Magic
/Are you an employee at Ellusionist who has something to say about their culture of work-place sexual misconduct, and a permanent red palm-print on your buttocks from Brad Christian spanking your bottom every time he walks by? Were you a Grammar Host at the Magic Cafe who can give us a behind the scenes perspective on the great “Oxford Comma Debacle” of 2004? Are you a former assistant to David Copperfield whose job it was to capture a child and sacrifice it to Moloch every evening so David could maintain the powers he needed to fly around the theater and bang supermodels?
If you have a story you want to divulge, or a perspective to share, or some dirt to dish—without attaching your name to it—you have an open invitation to send it to me and I’ll be happy to post it, keeping you anonymous. And you can do so with complete assurance that I will never tell a soul who you are. Your secret is 100% safe with me. Blabbing about shit that someone has asked me to keep private is against my brand.
Today I’m going to share with you an email I received from a well known “social media magician” regarding his thoughts on exposure and why he is not against it. I think it’s an interesting perspective. Not one that I completely agree with (I’ll share my thoughts afterwards) but I don’t perform magic on the internet, so it’s not really something I’ve given much thought to. (But that won’t prevent me from having a lot of rambling thoughts to say afterwards.)
In the next section you will read his thoughts…
The Anonymizer: The Social Media Magician
One way of removing ego from a trick is to expose the secret. When a viewer doesn’t know the method, they are kinda forced to give the credit to a smug magician. “Well, I guess he did something to make that happen.” Even when they are acutely aware that the magician is playing pretend. So when talking exposure, we have to remove Jerx-style magic from consideration. This is about the traditional ego-driven performance of magic tricks. Magicians are selfish narcissists who have fooled themselves into thinking their tricks instill wonder but they’ve kept the coolest parts of the art a secret.
Reasons not to expose:
-Ruins the audience’s wonder
-The secret was invented by and belongs to someone else
-It prevents other magicians from using that secret to fool future audiences
-Exposure disrespects the “art”
I’m certainly open to the possibility that magic exposure is immoral and bad for the art. However, the arguments above start with some major presumptions about wonder and how the audience experiences magic.
To start, we cannot assume all magic gives wonder. Sometimes magic is a visual gag or fun piece of eye candy and that’s okay. The audience probably knows that the bird came from somewhere inside the magician’s coat but it was a visually satisfying performance even though the viewer arrives at 90% of the method. And I do believe the audience often has (what they believe to be) 90% of the method. And that’s enough to steal their own wonder.
But maybe the secrets belong to the inventor. That would make for a fragile career because just one guy could take you down by exposing the secrets. I don’t think that’s how it works. Also should be noted that I’ve never bought a magic prop with an agreement to keep the secret; the one exception being Michael Weber who has LOTS of fine print with his tricks. I’m not even sure one is allowed to perform tricks bought from Weber.
I guess it’s an unspoken agreement but it’s rarely taken seriously as magicians constantly reveal “acceptable” tricks. Is there some rule book I missed with the exceptions to the rules? I’m asking because it seems okay for Penn and Teller, Mac King, Amazing Jonathan, Justin Willman, Criss Angel, and even Blackstone Jr. to expose some methods used by other magicians.
Another question is, “Does one guy exposing a secret prevent the rest of the community from ever using that secret again?” That’s silly. Of course not. Masked Magician is still being watched and getting decent numbers online yet no one in the magic community is complaining. Why? Because time has shown that nobody sees or remembers anything. Same goes for classic methods exposed in Now You See Me movies or TV Shows like The Mentalist or Arrested Development. Methods like mirrors, trap doors, pulls, and flash paper have been seen by millions yet we can still safely entertain with them. This seems to be the most difficult mental hurdle for magicians to get over.
Lastly, does exposure disrespect the “art”? No. I think knowledge only increases respect. If I wanted to disrespect the art I could point to an LA Times article to show how racist, sexist and abusive the magic community is. It would also be bad for the public to learn that mentalists sincerely want the public to believe they have special body-language reading abilities. As you’ve written many times, if you want the audience to think you can really read minds you’re mentally-ill and sad.
My dream is that the general public have as much magic knowledge as an average-60-something-magic-convention-attendee. What I mean is I want the public to know about mirror tables and deceptive bases (because it makes illusion shows more fun to watch), but David Williamson will still fuck ’em up. Who loves magic more than magicians? No one. Magicians fly to Vegas and watch every magic show. We might consider giving the public a taste of why we love magic so much. Think of a dealer room where dopamine is released in one's brain every few minutes! See something impossible, then immediately learn its clever method. It's a constant reveal of a “mystery box” every few minutes to steal a JJ Abrams analogy.
Guys like Greg Rostami have a great 10 minute act based around exposure. Of course he sticks to the dealer’s room but Greg shows you a cool trick with your phone in which he reads your mind and knows what celebrity you’re thinking of. Neat-o. Then he reveals the secret for sale and shows you you how he hacked your phone! Naturally magicians say “take my money that’s the coolest thing ever!”. I believe the public would enjoy Greg’s presentation with the secret revealed at the end MORE than they would enjoy Oz Pearlman pretending like he’s a wizard who influenced your thoughts.
I’m having a blast and am excited to take magic tricks to weird new places with this freedom. With only one major requirement: audience first. Not all magic secrets should be revealed. If a secret is revealed, it’s because my data shows that the audience wanted to know the secret and wouldn’t care to watch the trick otherwise. The material must be in service to the audience.
I don't really have a strong opinion on any of this, but I will play devil's advocate here, just for the sake of providing a counterpoint to this email.
1. While I agree with his thoughts as they apply to performing on tik tok, facebook, etc. I'm not sure they hold true for in-person performing.
2. It’s probably true to say that most laymen want to know the secret, but I don't know that necessarily means they receive any joy from knowing it. I think it’s more a matter of them just being uncomfortable not knowing how something is done. The people who get true joy from learning secrets are the people who pursue learning magic. Greg Rostami is performing for that self-selected group of people. But there's nothing to necessarily suggest people generally get the same thrill from learning the secret. If they got the same thrill we got, then they would probably already be in the magic community. Do lay people want to know secrets. On some level, yes. But I also think it’s not completely clear-cut. Would Copperfield or Derek Delgaudio or anyone have sold-out shows if they were revealing the tricks at the end? I don't think so, but I don't really know. You could easily argue that a random tik tok magician is more "popular" than Copperfield or Delgaudio. And that's true in a lot of ways. But I do wonder if a live show could exist that exposed the tricks. You could say P&T did this, but their artistry was the exposure. They didn't put their art into the effect and then explain the effect at the end too.
3. I bet there are some who would say that exposing the methods is just as much an ego driven pursuit as not doing so. In the old days you could build your ego by creating a sense of mystery and power about yourself with magic. That's not an option anymore. Not online at least. There will always be someone in the comments describing how you did it (or giving a description that satisfies enough people). So now, maybe, the way to use magic to boost your ego is to be the first one to expose a method online—or the first one to do it in a way that gains traction. That way you get to glom onto the cleverness of the method and get your ego boost there. (I have no idea, because I watch almost zero magic online so I don't know what anybody is doing anywhere.)
Again, I’m not disagreeing with our guest here in general. I’m just making the case that exposure might be as ego-motivated as anything else in magic, and not wholly an altruistic gesture.
Now, let’s jump in the way-back machine and look at something I wrote a few years ago…
If things just progress as they're going, I think in a matter of years, the "mystery" element (the "magical" element) of magic will be almost gone. This isn't a bold prediction, this is just the way magic has evolved over the past couple hundred years. In 10 years, when finding out anything will be almost instantaneous, I can see the mystery being entirely eliminated. Or at the very most it will be this very brief moment that happens before the secret is immediately revealed. Magic tricks will be almost like the set-ups to jokes. And learning the secret will be the punchline. That will be the nature of performing tricks. I don't think this is a pessimistic point of view. I think it's not only realistic, but pretty much obvious. People will still like magic, but if will be a different sort of experience.
My only mistake here was thinking that it would take 10 years. This is, essentially, where online magic is now. Here’s a video of Eric Leclerc where he shows his Fool Us performance and then explains it. This would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Thankfully, the trick he’s exposing is hot dogshit, so it doesn’t really matter either way. And, in fact, the exposure here is definitely more interesting than the trick is otherwise. So it’s hard to take issue with it.
Getting worked up about the exposure of magic online is kind of a lost cause. Exposure is baked into online magic performances. There’s really no way around it. Either the performer has to address it in some way, or the people in the comments will.
Thus, the performance of “magic” online becomes a separate thing from the performance of “magic” in-person.
Online Magic - Uses the elements of deception to entertain.
In-Person Magic (at the highest levels) - Uses the elements of deception to create mystery, awe, and wonder.
So you’re saying magic when performed on facebook or tik tok can’t create “mystery, awe, and wonder”?
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. This should be obvious. Consider watching someone vanish an apple on Instagram. It might seem very cool and visually amazing. Now imagine sitting across from someone in real life as they make an apple in the middle of the table slowly fade away to nothing. That could be a life-altering moment. It’s just not possible to elevate the experience of a trick online to that of one that happens in person. The medium is limited that way.
Imagine the internet didn’t exist. I come up to you one day and say, “Hey, I have this new way for you to beam your magic into people’s homes.”
Sounds great!
“It’s somewhat impersonal, however, because you’re doing it for an audience of, potentially, millions of people.”
Oh, that’s alright. I don’t change my delivery and patter regardless of who I’m performing for.
“Also, they can watch the trick over and over.”
Oh, that’s not good. Doesn’t that go against a fundamental rule of magic?
“They can even pause it, rewind, and play it in slow-motion.”
Uh-oh.
“And there’s a place they can go to discuss how the trick is done with every other person in the world.”
Are you kidding me? Where is this place they can go? I pray that it requires at least some effort on their part to get to it.
“Oh, no, no. It’s about an inch away from where they’re watching you perform.”
What!? That sounds like a terrible medium for performing magic!
EXACTLY.
The traditional style of performance and presentation doesn’t work on the internet. And the people who have big followings performing magic online understand this. That’s why they’re not presenting magic in the contexts we normally would and with the same reverence for secrets that was ingrained in most of us who perform in the real world.
Don’t get me wrong, I would love it if there was no exposure of magic online. I wish secrets couldn’t be found with a simple google search. I wish the experience of seeing a magic trick was something that was rare and not something that everyone could call up at any time they want with a device that’s in their pocket. But that’s not how it is. And the secret to happiness in life is to focus your efforts on how to best navigate the terrain in front of you, not spending your time wishing the terrain was different.
That’s why my magic has followed the trajectory it has these past years. As I’ve written about on this site and even more-so in the books. Slowing tricks down, burying effects in layers of presentation, putting some burden on the spectator, creating something more immersive and personal makes the tricks unlike anything the person can see online. Most of the techniques I use wouldn’t even work online. That’s part of the reason why I use them. I want people to have a different experience than they would sitting at their computer. And the beauty of social magic is that you can slowly cultivate an audience who wants that too—an audience who is interested in more than secrets.