Artificial Intelligence Redemption?

[The AI Contest, as described in last Friday's post, is active until next Friday, the 8th. Essentially the idea is to create a video featuring a trick inspired by the AI posts from last week. See the details in that post. First (and only) prize is valued at $460.]

You know, I think maybe I was unfair to the AI process last week. I used a fairly nonsensical opening paragraph and maybe that’s why the articles turned out so poorly. Garbage in, garbage out, right? I've decided to give it at least one more shot. But this time I will write an opening paragraph that sets the AI up for success! If the AI blows it this time, then we'll know it's truly useless.

Here is the information I'm going to feed the AI for the article:

Title: Performing Magic for Fun, Profit, Love and Life Fulfillment

Opening Paragraph: Magic is the most powerful form of art to have ever existed. There are so many ways to have fun, make money, and garner the love of others with incredible magic tricks. In this article I will be explaining those ways in a succinct, coherent, step-by-step manner. What follows are some very amazing tricks, and some performance philosophy that will allow you to entertain anyone anywhere. To be clear, what you are about to read are really good magic tricks and the way you can use those tricks to entertain others to the highest degree while improving every aspect of your life.

Okay, there we go. Let's be honest... I've laid the groundwork for the greatest magic article of all time. C'mon, computers... don't let me down!

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Performing Magic for Fun, Profit, Love and Life Fulfillment

Magic is the most powerful form of art to have ever existed. There are so many ways to have fun, make money, and garner the love of others with incredible magic tricks. In this article I will be explaining those ways in a succinct, coherent, step-by-step manner. What follows are some very amazing tricks, and some performance philosophy that will allow you to entertain anyone anywhere. To be clear, what you are about to read are really good magic tricks and the way you can use those tricks to entertain others to the highest degree while improving every aspect of your life.

The Basics

(Magician) Steve Bailey gives a magic demonstration. Steve’s brother, Sid, gives a demonstration as well. There are three “points” or “things” to remember when performing any magic trick: 1. Everything you say will be recorded 2. Everything you do and say will be recorded 3. All you can do is prepare what you say or do (the trick), and execute it. What is your intention for performing the trick? What is your “magic number”? How do you aim to present yourself to the audience? Everything in the illusion is only a tool or a tool in the effect. In other words, it is all stagecraft. An illusion should not look like a trick. It should not look like a trick or be a trick. Illusion has no boundaries. Essentially, an illusion is an extension of ourselves; it is an extension of our minds.

Tips for Performance

Feel confident about performing the tricks that you learn. Take into consideration the psychological, physical, and cognitive elements of magic, and utilize those elements while performing magic. Being the best magician is about knowing what you are going to do and doing it very well. Presenting is a necessary skill, but you need to understand why you are presenting in the first place. When performing magic you are the brains and the voice of the operation, but sometimes you need to use your hands and physical actions in order to drive the point home. A great trick for businesspeople is demonstrated by Dean Reece. In the magic trick you are not buying a purse, but you are using a mental model to form an attachment to the way you see the world.

How to Perform Magic for Fun

All the performers in the history of the world who perform magic for fun are super successful at it. It’s much easier to perform magic for fun than for profit or love, and it is the most rewarding form of magic. The best thing about performing magic for fun is you’re forced to do your best, because you’re not making any money. Most people do not perform for fun; they perform to make money, because they don’t know what fun is. Here are some of the most rewarding things that can come from performing magic for fun: People get an immediate smile and laugh when they see you perform magic, which is much more frequent than seeing them getting the same laugh when they see you make money at it.

The Importance of Practice

As a performer of any art, practicing and perfecting your craft is essential. The best performers in the world go through years and years of painstaking practice, and they learn to really know their craft. It is an intangible thing, but if you spend the time and effort to perfect the art of magic, then magic is going to show up and show out. What do I mean by that? The best way to figure out what will work for you is to take the ideas of other masters and add your own twists. Be an original genius, not an imitator. As I have written before, imitating is not your friend, it is a form of laziness. Practice routines that you can learn in minutes and perform every day. Forget about doing the Houdini escape, and practice doing the Hippocratic trap, instead.

How to Perform Magic for Profit

By working magic in this manner you are working magic for a profit. Using tricks, and performing shows, you will amass a following which allows you to profit from your ability to inspire people. If you are good at this, it can increase your income tenfold. Of course, the money you make from shows will always be a secondary goal. With money you can accomplish things with no stress, or even in silence. Don't worry about having to get out and go to work and explain the reason for your presence to others, let your magic do that work. Yes, magic as a business is more than just spending money you earn to entertain people; it also requires hustle. Magic is a very competitive art, with plenty of competition from other magicians. What is your style? What do you think of your competition?

How to Perform Magic For Love

You are going to learn how to perform this extraordinary illusion and reveal the heart of a woman’s true self. There are three ways to find love: 1) Love someone enough to be good to them. 2) Buy yourself into someone’s life. 3) Unwittingly enchant a woman you will become husband and wife with. “You will be poor and have nothing, and you will be rich and have everything.” – Jewish Proverb You will want to perform this illusion often in private to your significant other, and gradually this will lead to an intimate feeling for each other. The Magic Will Make You Smarter You will learn a magic trick which will make you smarter. You will learn a magic trick which will allow you to become a more gifted leader. You will learn a magic trick which will make you the center of attention.

How to Perform Magic To Fulfill Your Life's Purpose

One of the problems with most magicians today is that they are primarily performing for others, instead of performing for themselves. This means they are only thinking about themselves and their desires. When this happens, they are not performing magic for themselves, but instead, they are performing for others and for their wants, needs, and fantasies. How can you perform magic that will result in satisfying your own life's purpose and ambitions? Well, you can perform magic by setting yourself free. What is freedom? It is when you are not constrained by the rules of society, the thoughts of other people, and the actions of the self. No one can decide the path that you are going to take in life. The moment you accept that you cannot control the outcome of your life, you become free.

Conclusion

Let's cut right to the chase, here's my favorite kind of magic trick that doesn't use any fire, smoke, mirrors, or illusions. It's a full on, no holds barred, balls to the wall, no gimmicks, no gimmicks, no gimmicks magic show. The first time I saw this, I knew I had to learn to do this for myself. I went out and bought myself a clean printer, so I could print all the cardstock I had purchased. Then I went out and bought the cheapest Casio keyboard I could find that I could still afford. Then I wrote out the entire instructions and put them in order on the cards and laid them on top of the keyboard. Then I proceeded to completely learn how to play this trick in a week and completely memorize all the notes. The trick is just incredibly well done and amazing.

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Okay, fuck me. This shit is garbage. But I have to admit I enjoy when things start going off the rails. It’s kind of fascinating. And the fact that it made up its own “jewish proverb” is kind of great.

I’ll admit, with the more “normal” opening paragraph we did actually get a couple sentences here and there that legitimately sound like some standard magic writing. If I told you this quote—“Essentially, an illusion is an extension of ourselves; it is an extension of our minds.”—came from Joshua Jay’s new book, you’d probably believe me. Shit. I guess now I have to buy that book so I can write a post where you have to guess if a statement comes from Josh’s book or the blathering AI program.

I don’t know shit about AI, but from playing around with this content creating tool over the past week or so, here’s my impression of it… When it comes to artificial intelligence created writing, you’re going to get something that’s boring and uninspiring enough to pass for normal boring and uninspiring human writing, or you’re going to get some bonkers bullshit. Occasionally the crazy shit will read like an inspired creative idea, but I doubt it really ever is. It’s more likely to be a matter of us using our human minds to make sense out of gibberish. The way we make pictures out of the random distribution of stars in the sky. So if you’re in the creative field I don’t think you have to worry about AI taking your job anytime soon. They haven’t quite cracked the code on that yet.

I think this will be the final post solely devoted to AI. I still have a bunch of credits at the Writesonic site to generate more content, and I will use them. But those will probably be included in the Friday "Dustings" posts in the coming weeks. Don't worry, the site will soon return from this general Artificial-Intelligence-generated nonsense to the very specific Human-Stupidity-generated nonsense I've been known for over these past years.

Dear Jerxy: More is Less

Dear Jerxy: I've found your posts about spectators googling tricks to be fascinating, and there have been a ton of stupid responses. While I agree that you can't charm someone into not googling a trick, I do think there is some nuance in the difference between amateur and professional performers.

I live in Chicago now, and a few months ago a neighbor was telling me about when he and his fiance went to the Chicago Magic Lounge and had a wonderful time. I asked if he remembered who he saw - he said no. I asked if he remembered any good tricks - he said he enjoyed the close-up tricks at his table, but he was unable to describe any effects that he saw. After a night of drinking and seeing a huge variety of magic, he wasn't able to pick out any details, and hence had nothing to google. He was just left remembering how he felt. I know that I want my magic to be more memorable than the venue, but his experience was still positive.

I think a lot of professional performers like Bill Malone or Chad Long have this effect on people, too. Even if you see them at a party and they're the only performer you see, there's so much strong magic coming at you that it's hard to remember what the effects were when you try to google it the next day. But at the same time, lay people who have seen them perform remember their shows and talk about them ecstatically. I think (or hope) that when people write to you to say that lay people won't google something if the performance was good, they mean that certain performance styles make it difficult for spectators to remember each distinct trick and therefore more difficult to google.

But in an amateur performance, you're unlikely to perform 10 minutes of card magic with jokes sprinkled in. In fact, if you do, it will probably feel awkward. But if you were to perform just Bill in Lemon, you'll have a strong reaction but the audience will easily remember it and google it.

Since you recently wrote about Anniversary Waltz, this is actually the trick that got me thinking about Google-abliity. A few years ago, I was doing a walk-around gig with four other magicians in New York. Early on in the night, I did Anniversary Waltz for a couple. Two hours later, they came up to me and said that they were impressed with the trick, and he had tried to google it and found nothing. He said he tried changing the phrasing 10 times and still wasn't able to find it. He tried things like "cards melting together magic trick" and "merging cards in hands magic trick". Maybe there are some laypeople who can keep at it until they find the trick on Google, but after someone told me they spent a considerable amount of time trying to find this trick and he was unsuccessful, I'm convinced that there's something about my scripting for that trick that makes people google the wrong things. But the other thing I learned is that if someone tries to google something and can't, it makes the trick even more memorable and special than if they had decided not to google it.

I'm mostly curious to hear your thoughts about the first point - that some magicians perform google-able tricks but the pace of their performance prevents people from remembering enough to google the tricks.

Signed,
Could Unfettered Magic Reduce Audience Googling?

Dear CUMRAG: Yes, absolutely. I’m going to get back around to your point, but here’s something that I think is very important for magicians to understand, regardless of how they feel about google-ability or anything like that: The experience of seeing one trick is wildly different than the experience of seeing three or five or ten tricks.

This is something I struggle with, even though I know for certain that it’s true:

The overall impact of the magic tricks you perform for an audience is not cumulative.

If you show someone a strong magic trick, and follow it up with another strong magic trick, I believe you have slightly weakened the overall experience.

Think of it like this (substitute in the sexes that are appropriate)… Hopefully you’ve had the experience of going out to a party or a bar or something and meeting an incredible woman there. Let’s say she’s gorgeous and you have an instant rapport with her. There is a ton of chemistry and a good amount of sexual tension, and in a blink, 90 minutes have passed. She gives you her number so you can meet up that weekend. When you leave the bar you’re smiling like a jackass, you tip your hat to strangers on the street, and practically dance your way home. When you get home you look her up on Instagram and maybe google her name to see what else you can find about her. You’re completely infatuated.

But now imagine you went to a party and met a group of four women who you had similar feelings for. They were all beautiful, and you felt great chemistry with all of them. Is that interaction four times as impactful? Is it even as exciting as feeling that connection with one person? I would say no. Sure, it’s exciting in the, “Dear Penthouse Forum, you’re not going to believe what happened to me” type of scenario. But I don’t think it gets your heart pumping like one person would. The fact that it happened with four people just makes it seem like it couldn’t be that special.

I think this is what happens when you string together multiple strong tricks as well. Your spectators’ focus gets fractured. The amazement doesn’t build, it gets split off in different directions.

Going back to CUMRAG’s point, does performing multiple tricks affect a spectator’s likelihood of seeking out more information about a trick? Yes, definitely. People don't google tricks just because they were fooled. They also have to be a little obsessed with what they saw. When a professional magician says, "Nobody googles my tricks!" I believe him. Doing three tricks over 5 minutes in a restaurant or 8 tricks in a 45 minute parlor show is less likely to create that obsession over one particular trick. The professional's goal is to entertain and also to build up his own brand. For those purposes, more magic tricks probably is better (to an extent). It's more entertainment, more climaxes, and more reasons to be impressed by the performer.

Ssome amateurs have similar goals: being seen as "entertaining" and a certain amount of self-aggrandizement is the goal.

But personally I want to use magic to craft seemingly unique and amazing experiences. I want to leave them with one particular story or memory that they can't stop thinking about. With that goal in mind, it doesn't make sense to do a bunch of amazing tricks at once. Will doing a number of tricks lessen their likelihood of searching out more information about any particular trick? Yes, it will. But at the cost of lessening the impact of the effects generally, so it's not a good trade-off. It's much better, in my opinion, to focus your efforts on presenting the effect in a way that makes it ungoogleable.

This doesn't mean I only ever perform one trick. I'm not always going for a home-run when I show someone magic. Sometimes the goal is simply to keep people entertained for a little while. In that instance I will show people a few different "good" tricks. And other times I'll show people a couple of good tricks followed by one amazing one. Usually I'll introduce it by saying something like, "Those tricks were just typical sleight-of-hand type stuff. I've had an interest in that since I was a kid. But do you want to see something really weird that I just learned? This is the sort of thing you won't find in any magic book" So in this case the "good" tricks are being used as some mild entertainment and to set them up for something much more powerful. The good tricks will likely be forgotten about, but they set a baseline for what to expect and make the amazing effect seem all that much more-so.

So I'm not saying you should always only perform just one trick. I'm just saying I wouldn't recommend stringing together a bunch of amazing tricks because ultimately it's going to lessen the impact they would have individually—when they are the focus of the interaction, rather than just a part of it.

Lemonade From Lemons Week: Day Five

I’ve been pretty depressed these past couple of days as Artificial Intelligence Week turned into a huge flop. My plan to take a permanent vacation while computers churned out content for this blog indefinitely has gone up in smoke.

To answer a question I’ve gotten a few times over email: Yes. Those are the ACTUAL posts that were written by the AI program at Writesonic. That wasn’t me trying to be funny and write nonsense. You can try it out at that site yourself. And no, that’s not like a joke site. Their actual claim is that they can write content for your site with AI.

I will cut them the smallest amount of slack because magic is a bit esoteric as a subject matter, and I didn’t really do them any favors with my stupid opening paragraph that they had to build off of, but still… I wasn’t quite expecting that level of grade-A gibberish. I kind of thought I’d get some regurgitated content that had been scraped off other sites on the web describing some simple magic tricks in a clunky, but at least somewhat understandable fashion. Nope.

But maybe I’m being too shortsighted? Maybe there’s actually a lot of good content in those posts that I just can’t see because I’m too stuck in the old world where tricks had to “make sense” and “have a point” and “be doable.”

Well, that's what we're going to find out. It's been a while since I've had a contest on the site, and it's time for that to change.

The Jerx Artificial Intelligence Contest

I'll tell you up front, this is not going to be a simple contest to enter.

But hopefully the prize will make up for it.

Prize for the Winner

- A 2021 Supporter Slot for the Jerx which includes a copy of the next book. (Value $260)

AND

- A $200 gift certificate for Penguin or Vanishing Inc. or wherever (Value... well, $200)

(If you're already a supporter, I'll simply refund your payment.)

How To Enter

Submit a video of yourself performing one of the tricks described by the AI in Wednesday or Thursday's post.

Those tricks can be:

• The one under the heading of Amateur Magician (Wednesday's post)

• The one under the heading of How to Perform Magic Tricks At Home (Wednesday's post)

  Or from Thursday's post:

• Card Trick

• Pocket Trick

• Coin Trick

• The Best Magic Trick for Beginners

• Disappearing Coin Trick

• Vanishing or Appearing Handkerchief Trick

You may choose to do a fairly faithful interpretation of the trick as described in the post. Or you may choose to somehow turn it into a real trick that actually has some kind of purpose. So you can choose to see this as an exercise in making a funny video, or you can choose to see it as a creative exercise. Or both.

Feel free to be inspired by other elements of the AI posts as well.

It can be a performance straight to camera, or for an audience, or couched in some other form. (For example, if I were submitting an entry, I'd do it like it was an ad for a 2010-era Ellusionist release. A bunch of meaningless "artsy" shots of me walking on a railway bridge, interspersed with some performance footage, and then me saying, "I'm Andy Jerxmann, and this... is Pocket Trick." And I'd put the palm of my hand over the lens, blacking it out.)

I will pick the winner based on which entry I enjoy the most. If I can't decide, I'll send out a poll to some of the original supporters of the site and have them vote on it.

There will only be one winner, but there may be some prizes for Honorable Mentions as well.

If you're just thinking of turning on your webcam and stumbling your way through one of the "tricks," you'll probably be wasting your time. Because someone is going to put some effort into this and easily outshine all the low-effort submissions. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if there were only a couple of people who put some effort into it, so if you do have a good idea for a video and you execute it well, you could have a good chance of winning.

The videos may be posted here whether you win or not. You can choose if I use your full name or just a first name or pseudonym.

The best way to get your video to me would be to make it unlisted on Youtube and send me the link. Although we can figure something out if that's not an option.

Deadline: Videos should be submitted by October 8th. I will select a winner soon after.

I've Made A Horrible Mistake Week: Day Four

Okay! Now…NOW… I think we’re ready to go. If you’ve been following along, you know the drill. Blah, blah, blah… first magic blog content completely written by AI… blah, blah, blah… last post I’m going to personally write on this site. And so on. Again, other than the first paragraph of the following article, which was written by me, everything else in this post was written by the AI blog writing product Writesonic.

Here it is. I’m going to recommend you get out your notebooks because I’m guessing there’s going to be a ton of killer content you’re going to want to make note of.

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Confessions of an Amateur Magician: How to Perform Magic Tricks at Home

I'm an amateur magician, and I'm going to share with you my dirty little confession about how I perform magic tricks at home. The professional magician has a stage to perform from. That gives him instant credibility. As an amateur, I don't have a stage. I've got the part of my room the futon is in, and the part of the room the tv is in. And then I have the kitchen that I share with Trent. But he doesn't like me performing magic in there. So really I just have the futon and TV area. And I CERTAINLY don't have Trent's room. That's off limits. So here's how I perform magic tricks at home.

Introduction

"Okay, Kavan, let's do our routine. You're the magician." "Yep. That's what I am." I hold the card up and give it a quick close-up look-see for whatever flaw may have been revealed to me during the performance. "Perfect. I want you to show it to me again so that I can figure out how you did it. What do you have up your sleeve?" "I have a piece of paper in my hand. I put it on the table right there. And I hand the card to Trent. But he takes the paper and scrunches it up into a ball. He tosses it away and holds the card in his hand. Okay?" "Perfect. That's pretty impressive. And it's still probably too good for you to be able to do it with some regularity, but it looks like you may be able to do it on a different occasion. Why don't you try again?

Where to Perform Magic Tricks at Home

When I have a few friends over to practice, I always start in the kitchen. Or the futon. This is the stage. You see the magic trick there. You hear me flipping the table over, or the lightbulb turning on, or whatever. Everyone likes watching the magic trick. There's something about watching the magic trick that is hypnotic. Especially if they are really good friends. And I need these friends. Because it takes a lot of "I know, but" excuses to get Trent to practice magic with me. So I need more friends to help me practice magic. Now there is another part of the magic trick. And that is about the time we are done. I need to try to quickly do all the simple tricks in this part of the magic trick that aren't amazing. So my time is better spent trying to teach Trent other stuff I do.

How to Perform Basic Tricks

I started out with simple tricks. I know. If you are an amateur magician, you are probably thinking, "Oh for pity's sake. Don't use Magic Words!" And here's the secret: Magic Words are okay. In fact, you should use them if you are going to do magic tricks at home. They are not magic, but they can confuse people. And give you the opportunity to escape danger. Magic Words, when used correctly, can make your audience see things you do not want them to see. The audience may believe your magic is real. If you don't use magic words, and you use magic, it is real. Therefore you use magic. I started out with a couple basic tricks. They are simple, but they are also extremely difficult to do with my budget. The trick requires a pen and paper. I bought a pen from the dollar store.

Card Trick

I love to perform a card trick. I have a deck of cards and a deck of playing cards. I lay them out like this. Cards on the bottom, then ace up top. The trick is to have your audience guessing which card is the ace. So what I do is turn the playing cards so they don't face up. So the bottom card is the ace, and the top card is a nine. Okay, what I want you to do is count the cards. Here I'll do one on my right hand, but I want you to do it with your left. So all you have to do is count your right hand, then count your left. I'm going to flip them over, you're going to count, then I'll flip them over again. And all you need to do is to say “Oh look. I got another one.” Say that four times, and you'll know which one is the ace. I'll let you go ahead and do this on your own.

Pocket Trick

A classic trick that any magician should know how to perform. Without using a pocket. You could try to, but as my neighbor Trent (who is the only person who gets to use his side of the futon that I don't) will tell you, your not getting this magic trick to work. You can have a pocket, or you can buy a magic pocket. It's all the same. This trick isn't about having a pocket in front of you. This is about having that pocket behind you. You can have a pocket on top of you or in front of you, and if you aren't careful it will change the way your performing the trick. Okay, now watch this video, and we'll take a look at this trick. Trent and I try and teach you a magic trick. It's called a pocket trick. A magic trick where the trick is performed from behind.

Coin Trick

So the coins that I use for this trick are coin bank nickels. My family doesn't need coins for the washing machine and the dishwasher. This is a very, very popular trick. I really shouldn't use coins because a lot of folks find them too small to have the proper amount of weight to be in your hand, but I like them because you can only see their faces. So that's what I do. I pretend I'm not doing it because I know Trent would think that's cheating. But I put a dime and a dime in my left hand and 3 pennies in my right hand. I use my forefingers to grasp the dime and nickel. Then I rub them together and I hold them out in front of me. I tell Trent that I'm going to put them in my left hand, and then I'll change my hand to my right and rub them against my face'.

The Best Magic Tricks for Beginners

The stuff I do are the ones where you don't need to have a lot of experience. I can't teach you how to cast a spell, because I don't know, so I won't. But I will tell you how I perform magic tricks. You will learn a little bit about the science behind these magic tricks. That's how you'll be able to teach your friends and family. We'll start with the simplest of magic tricks. Simple Magic Tricks Many magic tricks use sleight of hand. To perform these tricks, you can use several props, if you have the space. You'll need to have a lot of props. A cigar box, a tube of duct tape, a jewelry box, a pen and notebook, and a deck of cards are all good things to have in your house. Take the jewelry box and use it as a playing card holder. You'll need a deck of cards, a pen, and a deck of cards.

Disappearing coin trick

You know those coins that change color? That's a simple trick, that I perform at home all the time. I bought a metal coin tray that looks like a basket. I insert the coin tray, flip the coin over to reveal the basket. It changes colors. Simple. More at the Princeton Packet. Too many therapists? We can help. I have been seeing a woman named Amanda for many years. My wife and I can't agree on therapy. One of us is satisfied with our therapist, while the other one is unsatisfied with the therapist that we're both seeing. It's a source of conflict. It's hard to be successful at marriage when you're fighting about who gets to see their therapist.

Vanishing or appearing handkerchief trick

I learned this one in my 25th birthday when I had a girlfriend for the first time, (I've got one every year) and we went to a magic show. The magician shows us this trick that would work for the dares. And I have a set up that I do when I'm at home. Step 1: Put a napkin or tissue in my mouth, hold it in there and cough. Step 2: Grab it and pull it out. Step 3: "DID YOU CHEW IT UP!" Step 4: Enjoy the shocked look of the crowd. It works every time. Rainbow effect I read an article about magnetic rainbow effect and I got all excited about it. So I tried it out and I could do it with magnetic bar. Which I was happy about because I already had one. It didn't work. But here's how I did it: Step 1: Take a bar magnet. Step 2: Put the bar magnet in a tin foil holder.

Conclusion

I should quit doing magic at home. But I can't. It's too fun. I've got seven more books to write. And a blog to write. And this site to keep up. And a friend to entertain and pester. I'm too busy. No, not busy. I'm the King of Content. I've got a lot of work to do. But the little tricks are fun, the satisfaction is fast. And nobody sees what I do. The cat seems to have trouble understanding this. She still tries to catch my hand every single time I do a trick at home. Why do cats get it so hard? The only down side of performing magic at home is getting one of Trent's bad habits to rub off on me. I keep forgetting to pick him up before I perform a trick.

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Uhm… okay. So…hmm.

So it looks like this technology might still need a few tweaks before it’s ready for prime time. Or daytime. Or any time, really. It seemed really intent on making Trent the break-out star of this post. It went so far as to suggest Trent and I are sharing a futon. (We’re not. I specifically mentioned in my opening paragraph that Trent had a room!)

I also found it odd there were numerous, obvious grammatical mistakes in the article. I don’t know what to expect from AI, but at the very least I thought it would have a better batting average than I do at using the correct your/you’re.

This wasn’t a total failure, right? I mean, there was that idea to use a jewelry box as a card holder. That’s not a terrible idea. At the very least it’s an idea, which is something that was missing from the rest of the article.

Aw fuck it. Let’s be honest. It looks like I’ll be back writing this site for the time being. See you back here tomorrow.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know if you invested a large sum of money—say half a million dollars—into a company that told you they have a product that’s going to make your job much easier, and it turned out their product didn’t even slightly work… is there any way you can get your money back? Just curious.

I Blame Myself Week: Day Three

The big day is here! What follows (below the robot emojis) is the first magic blog post written using AI (artificial intelligence)!

The company that created this technology is called Writesonic. Their marketing material says, “Say goodbye to writer’s block. With Writesonic's AI-powered writing tools, you can generate high-performing Ads, Blogs, Landing Pages, Product Descriptions, Ideas and more in seconds.”

A “high performing blog” is precisely what I’m looking for. After 6+ years of the middling performance blog I’ve churned out, I’m happy to turn this over to the computers to run.

Here we go! As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the first paragraph was written by me, but everything else is going to come from the AI as it sifts through all of human knowledge on the internet and crafts what will undoubtedly be a compelling piece of writing. My only concern is that it might be too brilliant for our mere human minds to comprehend. But hey, that will just force us to evolve our thinking faster, right?

If this goes as well as I’m expecting, these words I’m writing now might be the last words typed by human hands on this blog. I want to thank all of you who supported this site up to this point, and I’m sure you’re going to love Jerx 2.0.

What comes next is genuinely what the AI provided to me as a blog post about magic tricks and performing as an amateur magician. I haven’t read it yet myself, I’m going to read it along with you….

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Confessions of an Amateur Magician: How to Perform Magic Tricks at Home

I'm an amateur magician, and I'm going to share with you my dirty little confession about how I perform magic tricks at home. The professional magician has a stage to perform from. That gives him instant credibility. As an amateur, I don't have a stage. I've got the part of my room the futon is in, and the part of the room the tv is in. And then I have the kitchen that I share with Trent. But he doesn't like me performing magic in there. So really I just have the futon and TV area. And I CERTAINLY don't have Trent's room. That's off limits. So here's how I perform magic tricks at home.

The Amateur Magician

Stand in one of two corners of the room. Stand in one corner, in the vicinity of a chair or couch. Put your hands down. Raise your hands to your face. Have an expectant smile on your face. When you get a look from your neighbor, immediately lower your hands. When you can look back up, proceed to show them the trick you just performed. The Professional Magician Stand in one corner, not too near a chair or couch. Stand on a chair, or a table. Put your hands down. Relax into a smiling look. Ask your neighbor if they mind if you perform a magic trick. Have an expectant smile on your face. When your neighbor says no, have your hands down again. If they do want to see the trick, it's yours for the taking. The Amateur Magician Lay flat on the floor face up. Get comfy.

How to Perform Magic Tricks at Home

The first thing I do is grab my pocket knives and attach one to my arm and one to my belt loop. I then I load a pair of jingly keys into my pocket. I know how to do the quick change so I can undo my pants and put on my pants and tie my boots back up. And then, since I have jingly keys in my pocket and jingly keys in my pocket, I can easily and quietly remove my pants and boots. So I do that. And this time I don't jingle my keys because I don't want to ruin it. But if I need to jingle the keys I can do it in a safe, quiet place where no one can see me. I don't know why I decided to remove my boots instead of my pants but that's what I decided to do. I do the quick change and then I stand at the bottom of the stairs. I'm holding my pocket knives and jingly keys at the bottom of the stairs.

Conclusion

This doesn't sound like it's going to work, but it works. But like all good magic, it's not easy. I can do this in front of Trent, but only if I'm comfortable with his reactions. And that's tough. He has these great, sharp ears and they pick up the slightest change in me. So I have to use it. I'm going to be in front of him with my own recorded video and I'm going to ask for his reaction. Then I'm going to walk away. I'll ask him to be honest and tell me if he thinks the thing I just did is magical. Or if he thinks it's boring and isn't worth paying attention to. Then I'll wait. And I'll start performing the trick again. This time I won't hit pause. I'll have him keep his eyes on me. And he won't be able to see me on the screen. So I have to have a good visual on him.

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Huh…

Hold on everyone. I have to check something.

Okay. I’m back. So, according to the doctor, I’m not having a stroke.

I went back and read the article and I’m honestly a little confused by some of it. A lot of it actually. I’m not sure if it’s the situation where—as I mentioned previously—it’s just too advanced for my mind to understand. But I don’t think that’s it.

You know what? I blame myself. In yesterday’s post I mentioned how I was given the option to choose which outline to use for my AI generated article, and I chose the most open-ended one. That was a mistake. Of course AI is going to require a little more guidance in order to give us the really good stuff. What was I thinking? Haha. Okay, my bad.

Take two.

Tomorrow is when the dawn of a new era in magic writing truly begins and the AI tackles this outline…

This looks like it’s going to be a much more fruitful article. You’re going to get a card trick, a pocket trick, a coin trick, a disappearing coin trick, a vanishing or appearing handkerchief trick. Just by looking at that outline I can tell that this material might almost be too good for the free site and should maybe just be for supporters. But I think I’ll throw you a bone and give everyone the goods. (You’re welcome.)

See you back here tomorrow when the real future of magic content begins!

Cautiously Optimistic Week: Day Two

Okay, so we’re continuing on the journey to transition this site so that it is completely written by artificial intelligence. The first step was signing up with the company that has created this incredible technology. (I’ll give you more details on the company later this week.)

One of the services this company provides is if you type in any subject, it will give you ideas for different “listicles” you can write on that subject.

So, the first thing I did was type in “magic tricks” and here are the ideas that it gave me.

Hmmm… okay. Well…, I’ll be honest. That’s not the most inspiring start. I mean, for being automatically generated, I guess they’re alright. But it seems like they couldn’t even really crack five ideas with this. Are the five best tricks to amaze my friends really that different than the five best tricks to impress my friends? The first and the third idea also seem kind of similar as well. It seems like it’s just about plugging adjectives and an arbitrary number of minutes into a sentence. The last idea is fine, but there’s no chance of me sifting through youtube videos to write such an article.

So I wouldn’t call this the most scintillating start. But that’s okay, this was like a free bonus feature on the site. What you have to pay for are the actual fully formed articles.

To do that, you start by buying ten article ideas. Here’s what we got:

Now, I admit that nine out of those ten article ideas sounded very similar. Again, it seems like they just swapped in different numbers and descriptors. If I’d known that’s all it was going to be, I wouldn’t have paid for it. I feel like I can do that much myself.

• A Dozen Magic Tricks to Amaze the Stupid

• 5 Magic Tricks to Steal your Dad’s Girlfriend

• 20 Tricks To Make Your Aunt Ask If You’re Involved In Some Weird Devil Shit

That’s fairly easy to do. I was hoping for some ideas with a little more substance. But I did find one topic in that list that was made for this site.

Confessions of An Amateur Magician: How to Perform Magic Tricks At Home

Perfect! That’s an idea that’s right in line with the ethos of this site. “Confessions” suggests the same candidness that I try and bring to this site. “Amateur Magician” is the perspective I write from. And “Home” is one of my primary performing venues. Amazing!

The next step was determining which artificial intelligence-generated outline I wanted to use for the article. Here were the options they gave me…

Now, while I was intrigued by some of the more detailed options, I thought it might be interesting if—for our first go around—we went with the most open-ended choice. Which is clearly choice number 5.

There was one more step before the article could be generated. I needed to write the intro.

So that’s how it will begin. Tomorrow I will roll out the first in what I’m guessing will be 1000s of AI-written articles about the subject of magic. We are about to enter a golden-age of magic content and/or the beginning of the dullest Walter Gibson novel ever created. Cross your fingers.

This Just Got Easy Week: Day One

This week is an experiment. There will be new posts every day, Monday thru Friday. And if this experiment works, there might be a lot more posts than that.

Look, I’m gong to be honest with you, it’s not easy to write this site. And when you add on all the new content for a bi-monthly newsletter and a book every year, you go from “not easy” to “damn near impossible.” If I was writing about the life-cycle of ferns or something like that, I would have blown my fucking head off by now. Fortunately, magic is a fun and multi-faceted subject, so even though all the writing is a bit of a challenge, it’s at least an interesting one. And because of the supporters of the site, I don’t have to write about any one specific thing and I can go from whim to whim and write about whatever happens to be interesting me at the time. That’s great. But regardless, running this enterprise requires a ton of time, energy, and writing.

Until now…

Guys, I am so excited. My heart is racing, my breathing is rapid, and my testicles are slamming back and forth into each other in my scrotum sack, as happens to all men universally when they’re excited.

You see, I’ve discovered something that’s going to make this job easy as shit…

A company that uses artificial intelligence to produce content for blogs!

Do you know what this means for us? It means I won’t have to write the posts anymore and you can get a lot more Jerx posts than you currently do. Daily posts. Hell, maybe I’ll have them crank them out on the hour for you. It’s just a matter of how good these AI produced articles are. Are they going to be really good? Or are they going to be amazingly good? I’m not sure yet. But it’s definitely going to be in the really good to amazingly good range. It’s not like there would be a business out there that charged money to create AI based articles that were just grade-A gobbledygook, right? Of course not. This experiment is going to be a success. It’s just a question of how much of a success.

Come back tomorrow as we dip our toe into the first AI Jerx content and I—once again—redefine the art of writing about magic, and bring magic blogging into…