Mail: Googleability

The randomizer took me to "Is He Still Talking About Google-ability? He Is.” and I realized something.

A while ago I was at the movies with two quarters I was going to use on a candy machine when one of the quarters vanished. A magic trick in real life. And what I noticed is that it took a while before I was sure it was gone. I had to search everywhere it could be.

I think this is part of any vanish effect—you have to give the audience time to look (mentally, maybe) everywhere before they’re convinced it’s gone.

But today I realized that this can also apply to people googling tricks. If you do a trick that fools me, I’m not going to be completely fooled until I have looked everywhere for the secret. Googling is just that same impulse. Maybe.—PM

I still get people who will debate this with me. That is, the idea that sometimes a spectator who is fooled will Google the specifics of a trick to try and figure it out. And by “sometimes,” I mean, “more often than not, if they really have no clue.”

When people deny this happens (or deny it happens to them), I usually ask them to consider this thought experiment. Imagine we’re not talking about google and the internet. Imagine we’re talking about a book. Your spectator has a book in their pocket that they’re pretty sure might have the secret to the trick with which you just badly fooled them. You think they’re not going to crack that fucking book open after you leave?

And yes, there are things you can do to hopefully dissuade them from doing so (as written about in the post above and others). But the best course of action is to take steps to make your magic ungoogleable in the first place.