Dear Jerxy: Talking Shit

Back in the [Magic Circle Jerk] days, you used to bash tricks a lot, which you rarely do anymore. Did you change or has the magic being released gotten better? And what do you make of all the talk going back and forth regarding Noel Qualter’s effect Fall?—BT

2023 marks the 20th anniversary of when I started my old blog. When I was writing that blog it was 95% me commenting on other tricks, magicians, websites, and the Magic Cafe. Then there was 5% me talking about my own ideas. At that time I wasn’t performing enough to come up with my own ideas regularly.

But there was another thing about that era that made it the perfect time to be commenting on other people’s shitty tricks, shitty websites, and shitty personalities. And that’s the fact that there wasn’t a ton of magic related content online. So I could oversee everything going on in magic and comment on the 20% of it that was genuinely bad.

For the sake of discussion, let’s say 20% of things in magic are unredeemable garbage, 77% is somewhere from “okay” to “great,” and 3% is undeniably excellent.

Back in 2003, I could “see” the 20% which was garbage very easily. The magic world (online) was so much smaller. You could survey everything that was happening, good and bad, just by visiting the Magic Cafe a few times per week. We were a bit starved for content.

For example, back in the early 2000s, someone could go on the Cafe and start a thread about a new self-levitation they had created. It wasn’t for sale. They had no video of it. And yet the thread would go on for a year and many dozens of pages while people talked about this product that likely didn’t even exist.

These days, if someone didn’t post a video of the effect within 12 hours, nobody would pay any attention to the thread. There is so much publicly available magic content now that it’s tough for the genuine garbage to get any traction.

If I wanted to talk shit about stuff as actively as I did back then, I’d have to really dig to find shit to talk about. And I really don’t have the time or inclination to do that, because I don’t care. I didn’t care back then either, but the shitty stuff was so much more prominent that it was hard to ignore.

Regarding your other question…

Noel Qualter recently released a trick called Fall where a selected card is pushed through a clear plastic bag (or other thin plastic sheet).

For some reason this trick has generated a weird amount of backlash.

You can follow the drama on this thread at the Magic Cafe.

There are video reviews about the trick, and responses to those reviews, and responses to the responses of those reviews, and responses to the responses of the responses to those reviews. You could easily waste 5 hours of your life watching the videos going back and forth about this trick (although it looks like some of them have been taken down at this point).

I have no clue why this has generated so much discussion. While I don’t think this is an all-time classic type of trick, it’s not in the bottom 20% either. It’s well within that 77% range of OK to Great. Your life is too precious to be watching hours of debate regarding a trick that is, at worst, perfectly fine.

Some of the criticism leveled against it is that it’s not a “Card thru Window” as advertised. I guess there’s some validity to that. I thought this was a Card thru Window at first. But after 5 seconds looking at the ad, I realized they were mentioning that as an analogous type of effect—not a card going through an actual window. I guess if you saw the phrase, “Card thru Window,” stopped reading, entered your credit card number, ran away from your computer, then waited for the package to show up, you’d be understandably disappointed. But if you read thru the ad or watched the video, it’s hard to think you were being intentionally misled. (Perhaps misled enough to pay attention to the ad, but not misled enough to buy the trick.)

Another criticism is that it can’t really be performed strolling with people seated at a table. It should not come as a surprise to know the trick isn’t designed to be performed for people seated (unless you’re seated with them). Look at the demo and use your head. Obviously this is a trick that is best performed looking down on it. Like Card Thru Window, this looks best for people who are facing the plane through which the card is being penetrated. Certainly you wouldn’t buy this imagining you would perform it for someone sitting some distance away and looking at the edge of the plastic bag (or below it). You don’t need to know the method to know that much.

And there’s the criticism that you can’t do this trick if you have small hands (because you’re stealing away something). Look, I’m very much a believer that there are certain things that absolutely should be disclosed in magic advertising. But if you have little rinky-dink hands that can’t hide a playing card that’s something that’s up to you to account for in your magic purchases. When you watch the demo, does it look like maybe something is stolen away? Now look down at those stubby little nubs on the end of your palm. Can you do the math at that point and figure out if this is right for you? I think you can. You’re a big boy—except your hands—you can figure this out. It has been demonstrated throughout the history of card magic that even people with below average hand size can palm a card deceptively. But if you know that’s not you, then it’s up to you to be extra vigilant with the effects you do and don’t buy. The magic company doesn’t have to go out of their way to explain this to you.

Here’s the thing, if you watched this demo and didn’t have a good idea of what was going on here (like if you were surprised they couldn’t look underneath or that there was some amount of set-up before the card penetrated the plastic), then you might not be the best person to be reviewing magic tricks. I’m not trying to gate-keep anything here. But it does take some understanding of things to be qualified to give a useful review.

That being said, there is—no doubt—a lot of mutual dick-rubbing going on in the magic “review” community as well, and it’s good to see that challenged from time to time. But in this case, going in hard against this particular trick seems a little thirsty.

This sort of goes back to what I was talking about at the beginning of this post. People enjoy when you go off on things. That was the main draw of my site 20 years. But back when I was turning shit-talking into art, there was a lot of prominent dumb shit to talk about. These days, the really dumb stuff rarely makes any noise, so you end up having to go off on something that’s fine—but maybe just not right for you. And it seems weird to get too passionate about a trick that is unquestionably at least “okay.”

This is why my review newsletter only has reviews of stuff that I’m really into. When I like a trick, I end up performing it at least a few times and have some thoughts on how it can be presented in a way that gets the best reaction. That gives me something interesting to write about. Writing about the tricks I’m not into becomes dull, because I just don’t get worked up about tricks that aren’t for me. And usually I’m smart enough not to buy the tricks that truly suck in the first place.