Social Magic Basics Pt. 3

The presumption when talking about Social Magic is that magicians tend to fall into one of two categories:

1. They want to perform magic to strangers for money.

2. They want to perform magic to people they know for fun.

(This implies two other categories as well, but I think we can take the category of "wanting to perform magic to people you know for money" off the table. That seems like a long-shot. 

So that leaves the category of "wanting to perform magic to strangers for fun." I don't think this category really exists. There was a time in the early 2000s where—inspired by David Blaine—a lot of people talked about performing "Street Magic" where you would walk up to strangers on the street or in a mall and perform magic for them. This idea appealed to younger magicians, primarily teenagers, because teenagers are stupid, and performing for strangers for fun is sort of a stupid idea. They didn't ask to see magic, they don't know you as a person, and you don't have a camera crew to put your performance into context. It's just kind of a weird deal all around.

That's not to say that everyone I perform for is a close friend or family member. I often show a trick to someone I just recently met that night, but usually it's someone I hope to interact with after the effect. I don't perform and then run off. So the magic might be part of building some rapport. Or I may perform for my seat-mate on a train or plane. But I see that as a little mini-relationship, and I would still only show them something if it flowed with our interaction.)

The idea of Social Magic is to develop a manner of performing for the people in your life so that it remains fun for everyone involved for the long-term.

Here are some styles of performing that I've found don't work in the long-term:

1. Pretending you have actual powers that are either supernatural or just highly unusual. In the long-term this will be obviously incongruous with the real "you."
2. Performing tricks that are highly scripted, in a theatrical style. In the long-term this can come off as annoying or alienating, and it can be a barrier to your interaction with people because it feels like you step into a character when you perform.
3. Performing tricks very casually with no other framing device other than, "Here's a trick." This is probably where most of us are or were with our performances for friends and family. While the casual aspect is good, in the long-term, the magic itself quickly loses its novelty. And if there's nothing for them to latch onto other than the trick itself, then your tricks will sort of blend together and won't garner the reactions they did when you first started showing them magic. 

As it turns out, the tactic that I think does hold up in the long-term, is presenting yourself as someone with an interest in magic and then giving people a semi-fictionalized glimpse into what the world of magic entails. You're not pretending to be a magician, or mindreader. You're not putting on a show. And you're not giving them random tricks devoid of context. 

Instead you're giving them a true "behind the scenes" look at how magic is learned, practiced, and passed along, mixed with a more fantastical take on that subject as well.

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Social Magic and Performance Styles

The performance styles I've described in the past fit in well with this concept of Social Magic. They are all "meta" presentations, for the most part. They are presentations that are about being someone who has an interest in magic. (If you're newer here, the Performance Styles are briefly described and linked to their original posts in the Glossary.)

The Peek Backstage is a style that is about the study and practice of magic and letting them assist you in those things.

The Distracted Artist is a style that is borne out of the idea that someone who studied and worked on magic tricks would interact with their environment in a different way than someone who hadn't. Just as anyone who studies a particular art or craft might.

The Engagement Ceremony is a style that is about the unusual rituals and procedures you might come across as someone with an interest in magic. You don't need to present these as actual supernatural rituals. My attitude is that I'm just always on the lookout for potentially interesting concepts and techniques and here's this thing I read about (a Navajo synchronicity ceremony, for example) and, of course, it must be nonsense but there does seem to be something weird that happens sometimes when you follow it. And then people are free to play along and buy into this as much as they like.

The Wonder Room is a style that is about the strange objects you might accumulate as someone with an interest in magic.

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You might not immediately grasp how a "meta" performance style can disarm people and open them up to experiencing the magic more profoundly. Here's an analogy I've used before that may register more with you now after having read these Social Magic posts...

If you meet me at a party and I'm all dressed in black and goth-y and I'm like, "I'm a real life vampire... a creature of the night. No, I don't turn into a bat. But yes, I drink blood and exude raw sexual energy." Your first image of me would be some jocks dunking my head in the toilet in high school because you're a rational adult and you know vampires don't exist so me pretending to be one on any level comes across as somewhat pathetic.

But if you meet me at a party and I tell you how I have an interest in vampires and the subculture and I've been doing a lot of research on the subject. And then I say, "Obviously anyone claiming to be a modern-day vampire is just play-acting. I mean... I think that's true...but I have to say, I went to this one village in Serbia while I was doing research and some pretty crazy things happened when the sun went down...." Then I could undoubtedly tell you a story that would chill you and enthrall you on some level. And in a much greater way than I could if I was trying to pass myself off as a vampire.

I think it works that way with magic too. If I say, "I'm a magician," people's first thought will be "Oh, so he does little tricks and stuff, like I did when I was a kid." And if I say, "But I don't do cheap tricks. Im actually a real magician," then people will just think I'm straight up delusional. Neither of those thoughts are great for engendering a feeling of magic.

But, if it comes out that I have an interest in magic and I say something like, "I don't really perform all that much. I used to when I was a kid. But now it's just one of my hobbies to track down some more esoteric concepts. I mean... you can learn how to do basic tricks from youtube or a book, but there's a whole other level to this sort of thing that almost nobody knows about that I've been trying to learn through some back channels," then I will have people begging me to show them something. And by not trying to come off as "the magician" or some psychological genius, but instead just a person who has an interest in this sort of thing, I am much more relatable. So they can sort of join me on this journey. And then when I say something like, "Say... do you want to see something I learned recently that really freaked me out? Don't ask me how it's done, because I don't know. I just know how to set it up and it sort of works itself. The guy who showed it to me won't teach me the full secret until someone else who knows the secret dies. He only ever wants six people in the world who actually know the secret," I can sort of sneak enchantment in through the backdoor in a way I never could with a more direct presentation where I need to take credit for my "miracles."

By using these meta-styles I'm giving people areas of entry to talk about magic with me beyond just saying "show me a trick." This allows the subject of magic to flow more freely in and around my conversations which, in turn, leads to more opportunities for weaving magic into my natural interaction, which is the goal of Social Magic. 

[The one performance style I haven't mentioned here is the Romantic Adventure. That's a weird one because it's sort of a meta-meta-performance style. I'll have some new thoughts on this style soon.]

Gardyloo #47

From reader, Devon L.

"I'm new to your site and I'm slowly working my way through your back catalog of posts so I don't have much experience performing tricks in the way you suggest. But I wanted to drop you a line to let you know I tried the Google Home trick you posted today for my wife and it got the biggest reaction of anything I've performed for her since we first met 12 years ago. Despite knowing it was a trick she was riveted to every step of the presentation in a way she isn't with most tricks and she yelped when the Google Home said her word. I don't know why it went so well, but I wanted to thank you and I just signed up for the year 3 bonuses. Thanks."

I have a theory, Devon. Because I've had similar experiences with that effect. I thought it would just be something of a goof, but it has turned out to be a fairly strong trick for me. And I think the reason why it's a strong trick is because the narrative is unimpeachable. The "story" of the trick is ridiculous, but the structure of the story makes perfect sense.

The story: The man thought his Google Home was not only listening to everything he said, but also picking up on thoughts too. So he asked it what the woman was thinking, but the thoughts weren't coming through clearly. So he had her concentrate on a specific random word, but still the thoughts weren't clear enough. So he blocked his thoughts with tin foil and then the Google assistant was able to read the woman's mind. 

Yes, it reads like a summary of the world's worst Black Mirror episode, but there's no flaw in the narrative itself. And while I don't think every trick you do needs to have a logical narrative that accompanies it, I do think having one makes it easier for an audience to connect to the trick, and gives them something beyond just "being fooled" to hang onto long past the conclusion of the effect.

Compare the previous story to this one: The man borrowed a dollar bill. And then it disappeared. And it showed up in a lemon!

That's just retarded nonsense. And that's true of most magic presentations. "Behold the classic story of a man who put a ball under a cup and then it went under a different cup." 

You're giving people something impossible, but not much else. Many magicians would argue that that's enough. They'd say, "Magic is about doing something impossible, not creating interesting narratives." That's a fair point of view. But I think there might be some correlation between that stance and some other things magicians say like, "Why do people just see my tricks as a puzzle to be solved?" and "Why do people think magic is just for kids?" and "Hey, let's go beg congress to pass a resolution recognizing magic as an art."

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Regarding Stray the Daisy, Pete McCabe wrote in to suggest that if you add an extra card to the top of the deck at the start, then you can know how many cards the spectator dealt off just by reading the number on the back of the top card, rather than reading the number and subtracting by one. 

This is true. And it is a smarter set-up.

But beyond that, I just like the idea that in some part of Pete's mind he read something that required you to subtract by one and he thought, "There's gotta be a better way!"

As for me, I'll continue to do it the old way and subtract by one because I'm a really smart guy with a savvy mathematical mind. (And I keep my phone in my lap open to the calculator during that trick to double check my work.)

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Dear friend, and illustrator of The Jerx, Volume One; The Jerx deck; this site's banner image; and the GLOMM logo—Stasia Burrington—recently had the first children's book she illustrated released by HarperCollins. It's called Mae Among the Stars and it's about Mae Jemison, the first African American woman to travel in space.

If there's a young person in your life who might appreciate the book, don't hesitate to pick it up.

There may not be a big overlap in the audience for her book and my work (despite the fact that I too am a huge inspiration for young women of color), but I wanted to mention it because I'm very proud of her and happy for her success.

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Just working on the cover art for a 14 DVD box set of my work with Josh Jay doing the performances and explanations. Once I get the cover finished and take in the money for pre-orders, I'm going to ask Josh if he wants to do it. (If not your money will be donated to the Jerx Home for Destitute and Feeble-Minded Magic Bloggers.)

Another GH Idea

Another effect it's worth adding to your Google Home (or possibly similar products) is the Trick that Fooled Einstein.

I have a little stack of change on my end table, behind a lamp. If someone mentions the Google Home and asks what it does or whatever, I can be like, "Yeah, it's capable of some crazy stuff. Do you have any change?" I grab my stack of change, then we both shake our coins in our hands while I ask Google, "How much change do we have?"

The GH gives its response and the semi-odd phrasing is passed off as being due to the "weird algorithm" Google uses to figure out how much money you each have. 

With a second, slightly different, key phrase you can repeat the trick after each of you have added or discarded some coins to show it's "not a fluke."

I've only done this once so far but it got a good response. And when the person I performed it for mentioned it later to a third friend he said, "We shook our change in our hand and it could tell us exactly how much money we had." Completely forgetting that it didn't quite do exactly that.

The Google Home Word Reveal

Google Home is the little speaker/virtual assistant thing put out last year by Google. It's a similar idea to Amazon's Echo and Apple's new HomePod. You can use it to play music, make phone calls, answer questions, and control different things in your house (lighting, thermostat, tv) so long as those things are "smart" (so it won't work on your wife, right guys? hahahahahaha, that dumb old bitch!).

I have to be honest, when reader L.B. wrote in to suggest maybe utilizing the Google Home as part of a trick, I thought it might be mildly amusing but not really all that great. I thought that both about the concept of using it in a magic trick, and about the Google Home unit itself. But, after having a unit for a few days and playing around with it, I'm actually surprisingly happy both with the unit itself and the responses I've received when using it for a magic trick.

When it comes to technology and the Product Adoption Curve, I'd put myself as a "late early adopter." So somewhere near the right side of that green area. I'm not a super tech-savvy guy, but I usually have a pretty good eye for what technology is going to stick around and what's not. (I remember when my friend was buying his movies on LaserDisc in the late 90s and I was like, "You really think this is a technology with a shelf-life greater than 6 months? You don't see a slight issue with this as a storage medium?")

Google Home (as well as the other similar products on the market) didn't seem like something I needed to have, but at the same time I knew it was probably just a matter of time before I got one and I'd end up finding a number of uses for it. 

So, when L.B. suggested the idea I went and bought one. The Google Home Minis are $50. So it's not a super-big investment.

Let's start with the basic, somewhat obvious, idea of how to use this as part of a magic. 

You can configure the Google Home to respond in a certain way to whatever you say. So if you say, "Hey Google, what card did she pick." You can have it respond to that with, "She picked the three of spades," or whatever. So then you would force the three of spades, ask google what she picked, and that would be the trick.

That's fine, and I'm sure it would go over as well as any standard card revelation. But I wanted to build on the idea a little and add a few more elements to embellish the presentation and also hide the idea that there is something pre-set.

Here's how it looks. 

My friend Sara comes over, notices the Google Home and asks me if I like it and what I'm using it for.

"I didn't think I was going to be such a big fan of it, but I'm actually really glad I bought it. I might get another one for my bedroom." Then I demonstrate some of its features, like how it can control my lights and music.

"It's a little weird though to think that's it's always listening. And they say it's not constantly recording, but who the fuck really knows. And it just does some... strange things sometimes. Like it will play a song I had stuck in my head when I ask it to play music, even though I don't specifically name that song out loud. And sometimes it starts answering questions before I've completely verbalized them, like it knows what I'm about to say." 

"I know it sounds like horseshit, but I'm not kidding. It kind of makes sense. It picks up audio waves, so why not brain waves? That seems like it could be possible, at least in some rudimentary form. I'll show you. Think of something."

Sara settles on something in her mind.

"Hey Google, what is she thinking of?" I ask.

I can't tell. There are too many thoughts coming in at once.

"Okay. Yeah, it helps to have one particular idea that exists outside your mind to concentrate on. So... uhm... grab a couple books from the bookshelf. Two that have a similar number of pages." 

I now run through the process of the Hoy Book Test to have her settle on a word to think of. You could also do some kind of peek of a word they wrote down. Or, less ideally, have them freely choose a card and figure out what it is in some manner. My preferred usage is with the Hoy Book Test. Nothing is written down, it's not playing cards, it feels very random because any two books could have been chosen. 

So my friend is now thinking of a word. I ask again, "Hey Google, what is she thinking of?"

And again the reply comes: I can't tell. There are too many thoughts coming in at once.

"Dammit. I swear this works. I'm not crazy," I say. "Wait, I know."

I go to my kitchen and come back a few seconds later with a large square of tin foil and start shaping it around my head. "This will help block out my thoughts so she can home in on yours."

[There is very little in my magic performances that is "scripted" in the traditional sense. But saying "I'm not crazy," right before going and putting on a tinfoil hat is one of those beats I always intend to hit.]

Once I have my tinfoil hat on and I'm looking like a complete dork I say a final time, "Hey Google, what is she thinking of?"

This time Google replies, "Okay. It's coming through clearer now. I think there is an S sound in there somewhere. No. Wait. I know what it is. She's thinking of the word: history."

She is and she freaks out. 

"It knows everything!" I say. "Pick something up off the table." She picks up a remote control.

"Hey Google, what is she holding?" I ask.

"She's holding a remote control," Google Home says.

Sara tosses the remote aside like it's a cursed object.

"This thing is too scary," I say, and I chuck it out the window.

[No, I haven't thrown it out the window. But for $50, it might be worth it. What I really do is I unplug it like I'm a little freaked, and thus putting an end to asking the thing more questions.]

Method

I'm not going to dwell too much on the technical details other than to say it's very easy to set this up.

So, we want to Google Home to reply a particular way when we say something. And then we want to be able to change that reply to something else in just a few seconds. This is how we're going to add a little shade to the method. Instead of just being a card force and a little robot that always replies the same way to a certain question. We're going to have it respond different ways to the same question.

Getting Google Home to Respond What You Want It To

Method 1 (Don't Use) - In the Google Home app there's something called "shortcuts" where you supposedly can get your GH to reply whatever you want to a particular input. I tried it and it didn't work. So I don't recommend it.

Method 2 IFTTT - IFTTT stands for If This Then That and it's just an app that connects two apps/programs/smart objects in your house so that when one thing happens it triggers something else. I'm not even going to get in the potential uses for this, but I have a feeling there are all sorts of magic related ones that you could find.

So you get the IFTTT app, which is free, and it connects to your google home. And you create an "applet" which is just a simple conditional statement. "If X happens, then make Y happen." Again, if it sounds complicated or techy in any way, it's not. The image to the left shows you the extent of the "programming" required. And this video walks you through the whole process.

So that "applet" gets saved and now whenever you say "What is she thinking?" you will get the "I can't tell..." response.

Now what you do is go in and edit that applet so it has the following line in the What do you want the Assistant to say in response? field

Okay. It's coming through clearer now. I think there is an S sound in there somewhere. No. Wait. I know what it is. She's thinking of the word

So this is everything but the actual word itself. Don't worry about the potential non-hit in the middle.  If there is an S sound in the word, it's a minor hit before the actual reveal. And the "No. Wait," suggests "No, I'm not just getting a letter, I'm getting the full word." And if there's not an S sound then the "No. Wait," makes it seem like it's correcting itself. Either way the statement will make sense. And it makes the revelation bigger so that it's not just the word itself.

Keep in mind: you don't save this new message yet. You just turn off your phone at this point and set it somewhere in your kitchen near the tin foil.

This is all pretty straightforward from here. 

You try to have it read her mind in a general sense, and you get the "I can't tell" response.

You say, "Ah, we need you focusing on a single thought." Then you go through whatever process (Hoy book test, peek, card selection) to get them to narrow it down to a single thought. You ask Google Home again what your friend is thinking but you still get the "can't tell" message.

You realize you need to block your own thoughts. Go to the kitchen, turn on your phone and type in the one word at the end of the phrase you already entered then hit save. Put the phone back and grab a piece of tin-foil you've already removed from the roll. This shouldn't take long. Maybe 10 seconds, 15 at most, to type one word. That doesn't seem like an unusually long period of time to get some foil.

Return. Make yourself a hat. Ask again what she's thinking. React. But remember, you're not supposed to know the word so get her to verify it first.

But what about that bit at the end where I tell her to pick up something off the table and the GH tells her what it is? This is simply a matter of only have a few items on the table and then having a key phrase for each one. "What did she pick up?" "What is she holding?" "What's in her hand?" Etc.

You might wonder why that bit is even there. In a theatrical magic presentation you would never follow up the revelation of seemingly any word in the English language with a 1 in 5 revelation. Certainly not within the same broad "effect." You might feel like the correct structure would be, "Let's see if Google Home can guess which object you picked up." And then follow that up with, "Okay, let's up the ante and have you think of any word in the English language." But the reason I prefer to do it in the opposite order is because it feels less like I'm showing concern for dramatic structure. I don't want it to feel like a two phase "routine." I want the "what item is she holding" bit to come off kind of as a throwaway afterthought. I get into it before the reaction from the first effect has died down. What I really want to do is confuse the issue. Since there is a bit of a build-up before the first reveal, they might start formulating some hypotheses about what happened and when it happened. By slapping on another similar effect—but with a different method—at the end, I think that helps obscure the method used in the main part of the trick.

Other Ideas

1. I don't know if there's a limit to how many IFTTT statements you can create, but assuming there's not, you could theoretically create an "if this" statement for every card in the deck. Then you could have a card freely chosen (say from a stacked and/or marked deck), cue it to Google Home in your question and have it name the correct card in a very fair way. You could use a crib. Or you could do one of those things where the first word of the sentence cues the value and the last word cues the suit. Then you only have to remember 17 things (suits and values) rather than 52 different phrases for each card.

2. Most laypeople don't realize how few items there are that people draw when asked to draw something. You could have cues for the top 25 most drawn items. Then you could peek a drawing, or openly just watch the person draw whatever they want and then cue the correct drawing with your question. "Hey Google. What did he just draw?" He drew a car. "Isn't that crazy?" you say. "I found out how it works. It actually listens to the marker strokes while you make the drawing. That's how crazy sensitive this thing is. What will they think of next"

3. You can, of course, just use these same tools to do dumb stuff like this.

Coming in MFYL: The Damsel Technique

From the post, The Force Unleashed

The Damsel Technique: I'll probably write this up at some point next year. It's a tiny idea but one that can have a big impact. This was the technique I originally wanted to test when I went off to NYC. It can be used with almost any force (it works amazingly well with the cross cut force). In our testing we used it with the dribble force. We performed a standard dribble force for 11 people and their "fairness" rating was 54. We performed the same force with the Damsel technique for another 11 people and its fairness rating was 86. And it has applications beyond card forcing. You won't get all the details any time soon, but I mention it now just to whet your appetite. Y'all whet?

The update here is that I will not be posting this on the site. Why? Because I like it too much and I've found it to be super valuable. Not just for stronger card forces, but for all sorts of tricks where your spectator is forced to a particular outcome. I've used it with the Hoy book test and other mentalism effects. In fact, the technique originated in a Rubik's cube trick I was working on. So it has all sorts of applications. 

The reason I'm not putting it on here is because it's something I want to save for paid supporters of the site, so it will be appearing in the 2018 supporters bonus book, Magic For Young Lovers. 

If you're like, "What the hell... you said you were going to post that here and now you're not?" My response to you is: get fucked.

Here's the thing, the absolute most valuable stuff I've ever written about magic is available for free on this site. And that's the stuff about presentation style and amateur/social magic. I wish I had those insights at a much earlier age because they have completely transformed my performances and increased the spectator reactions and enjoyment by an order of magnitude. I would have paid a lot of money if someone had pushed me in that direction long ago. And all that's here free. So you can't say I'm holding out on you.

But at the same time, I need to reward the people who keep this site going. That's who I write it for. So the best tricks and some of the better techniques are going to be saved for them. That's just how it is. 

I'm grateful for everyone who supports the site. And I have no issue with those who are indifferent to it or dislike it. But, "I don't think it's worth $20 a month to support the site and I demand you make every single thing you write available to me beyond the 150 essays and effects you make available for free every year" is not a position I find tenable. 

I try to make sure everything is available at a reasonable price because I know I've been in situations when I was younger where money was tight. So even if you went for the highest level of support, that comes to $5 a week. And even when I was struggling I still had $5 per week that I could waste on something. So it feels fair to me.

Look, I could have followed this lady's approach and had a $10,000 per month reward level. At that reward level you can get yourself a non-nude video of her. $10,000 per month and you won't even get a single goddamned nipple, son.

For those of you who support me at the $20/month level you'll be getting full-frontal and my a-hole spread wide. Metaphorically, I mean. (Although for $10,000/month you can have it literally).

Social Magic Basics Pt. 2

How to Know if Social Magic is the Style For You

Which of these interactions would you prefer? Which would you feel more comfortable presenting and which would the people in your life be more interested in witnessing?

Interaction #1 - You're out getting some drinks with friends. You pull out three half dollars and pass them around to be looked at. "You know," you say, "the eagles on the back all look identical, but they're actually all different and they each have their own unique personalities. You see, the first eagle is Bob, and he's a bit of an adventurer. So even though the coins are all in my closed left fist, Bob just needs to make a break for it and now he's over here in my right hand. That leaves two in my left and Bob in my right."

"Sonia is the next coin in my left hand. She loves Bob, so she'll follow him wherever he goes. That's why there are now two coins in my right hand."

"That just leaves Petey in my left hand. Petey is scared of being alone, which is why...," you slowly open your left hand and the coin that was there is gone. You open your right hand and now there are three coins there. 

You place the coins back in your left hand. "Of course, you can't keep Bob in any one place for long. So there he goes. Sophia follows. And Petey tags along behind." You look off into the distance and brush your hands together and the coins are all gone. 

Interaction #2 - You're out getting some drinks with friends. One of them asks you if there's anything you're working on. 

"Eh, kind of, but I'm not having much luck with it. There was this... I think he was Russian... or maybe Eastern European physicist in the 1960s who was also a magician and he came up with a way to make a small object go from one hand to the other. And I've been working on it for a couple weeks but it's really hard because his magic style was very physics-based and I just grew up learning more traditional sleight-of-hand type stuff. I'll try it for you."

You pat your pockets. "Do you have a coin?" One of your friends gives you a quarter. You pick it up and hold it tightly in your right hand. 30 seconds pass. "Oh, it's going," you say. Another 10 seconds pass. You drop the coin on the table. "Nope, not going to happen." You shake out your hand, then press it flat on the table and lean into it like it's been painfully contorted and you need to stretch it out. "Ah... holy hell that hurts."

You pick up the coin again and hold it in your hand, "I've seen people who are really good at it who can make it go in just a couple of seconds. But as I said, it's not really the style I was brought up—wait, wait, wait...." Your eyes go wide and you stare straight ahead. You slowly look to your right hand, and open it finger by finger. Then very slowly you turn your head 120 degrees to the left. So slowly, as if there is something precariously balanced in some alternate dimension, and if you move too quick it's going to topple over.

Eventually you're looking at your left hand which is holding a glass of cider. A silent moment passes. Then the coin falls from your palm, ting'ing against the glass, and wobbles to a rest on the table.

"Well I'll be damned," you say quietly.

✿ ✿ ✿ 

The first is an example of a theatrical style of performance. "Watch while I present to you this performance piece I've put together." You might say I'm trying to deter you from this style by giving you a shitty example with the bird flying patter. I'm not. That patter is just a variation on some Tommy Wonder coins across patter. For our purposes you can imagine the most well scripted patter for a multiphase coins across ever created. Or you can imagine performing it in silence.

I'm not trying to convince you a social style is better. I'm just trying to elucidate the differences between the two styles, so you can identify which you're more comfortable performing.

With theatrical/presentational magic there is a more overt beginning and end to the trick. With social magic the trick is, ideally, more enmeshed with the natural interaction.

Theatrical magic is usually more about the effect, whereas social magic is usually more about the context of the effect. (This is due to the fact that theatrical magic's context is well established. It's a "show.")

With theatrical magic you are presenting yourself as a magician (not necessarily a "real" magician, but you're taking on that role during the course of the effect). With social magic you are presenting yourself as someone with an interest in magic. 

That may seem like a minor difference but I think it's actually very important. 

I, Magic Enthusiast

I'm hoping this post, and the example of a Social Magic presentation above, will clarify something that I haven't stated clearly enough in the past. Something I think both fans and detractors of the style of magic I've endorsed on this site may have misunderstood. 

I've often said that social (née amateur) magic should be presented without the trappings of a "show" and that you should take the focus off of yourself as "the magician." 

I think some people reasonably interpreted that to mean that I was suggesting you do magic secretly. Like you should do effects and act like you have nothing to do with what's happening. While that can be an interesting dynamic, and I will occasionally do something in that manner, it's just not something that is workable for the long term with friends and family. "Wow, Andy's fortune cookie had a description of what he was wearing in it." "Wow, Andy got a $20 bill in his package of M&Ms." "Wow, Andy found an envelope in his mailbox that said not to open until after the Superbowl and when we did there was a written prediction of the winner and the score." 

Eventually, unless your friends are morons, they'll catch on that you're orchestrating these things. (Now, I suppose it's possible you could say, "I was struck by lightening as a kid, and ever since then, strange coincidences and weird events have been happening all around me." But to really sell that you would have to hide any interest in magic that you have from everyone else in your life. Which is not something I'm willing to do.)

I don't think you should try and hide your interest in magic, or suggest that you're not responsible in some way for the things that are occurring. On the other hand, I don't think it's great to call yourself a Magician if you want to perform Social Magic. Taking on the persona of a magician outside the context of a "performance" is off-putting to people.

Instead I think it's best to just establish yourself as someone with an interest in magic. That's how I handle things. And occasionally that interest manifests itself in the form of me presenting a trick to them, like it's a show. But those are rare occasions. 

More often, tricks are introduced in a sort of back-door way, e.g., I'm talking about some new technique I'm working on, or a new concept I read about, or an effect I need their help with, or a convention I'm going to, or some interesting person I met, or a strange object I was given. Some of these entryways into performing are legit, and some are as fake as anything you'd see in "theatrical" magic. No one cares too much either way. Because of the fact you're not presenting these things in a magician-centric way—intended to glorify yourself—people quickly become comfortable with the idea that there's a mixture of fantasy and reality here.

You see, Social Magic isn't about just getting lucky and hoping the conversation will turn to a subject for which you have an effect prepared. It's not even about willfully orchestrating those moments (necessarily). It's about expanding people's perception of you to include your interest in magic. Then it becomes something they bring up because it's natural to do so.

At least that's what I experienced with my evolution as a performer. I used to just be like, "Hey, check this out," and I'd show them a coins across or something. People liked it to a certain extent, but it felt a little a little show-off-ish at best and needy at worst. So then I went the route of crafting better presentations. No longer was I just like, "Hey, I can do something amazing." Instead they would witness a little "show" from the me. But that felt awkward and out of place and still put the focus too much on me. 

That's when I kind of stumbled into a way to build a foundation for Social Magic, which is the last thing I want to mention today.

What I did was, for a month or so, I stopped performing. And instead of performing I was world-building. I was creating a world that was half truth and half bullshit about how magic was learned and secrets were kept and passed around. And I would mention some book I was reading, or a convention I was going to go to, or this old man I was hoping to visit who taught this one effect to someone only once a year. And it was all magic related stuff, but I wasn't actually performing for them. Instead I was just talking about magic with enthusiasm the way my friends talk about their hobbies. Prior to that, the only time I ever brought up magic was when I was doing it. But here I started just mentioning some interesting or intriguing ideas in passing which made magic a normal subject for us to talk about. After a couple of weeks of setting the table like this, people quickly picked up on it and they were asking me if I'd learned that technique or met that person. When they lead you into the trick like that it eliminates the boundary between effect and interaction. This helps create something that feels like real human interplay and not a performance. And that's the fundamental idea behind Social Magic.

Gardyloo #46

Going forward I will try and put more thought into trick titles. In The JAMM #12 there is a trick called The Immortal which was my variation on a trick by Christian Knudsen called Angel. But, as it turns out, Knudsen's trick was a variation of a Christian Chelman and Gaetan Bloom trick called... The Immortal. 

Methodologically they're not the same. Knudsen's version uses a gimmicked deck. The Chelman/Bloom version uses two gimmicked decks. My version uses a normal deck. 

Thematically they're all similar as mine was based on Knudsen's, but I was like, "Let's dump this goofy angel theme and just go with the subject of immortality." Not realizing he had thought, in regards to Chelman's trick, "Let's dump this immortality theme and go with the subject of angels."

So, I'd like to one-up everybody and take every possible iteration of the immortality naming concept and re-name that trick, Immortal Vampire Angel of Dorian Grey Who Is Also A Robot.

If you have that issue, please make this simple fix. 

• Buy an HP Laserjet Enterprise 700 Color Printer
• Print out that issue on high quality magazine paper.
• Hire a graphic designer to redesign every reference to the trick The Immortal so it now says: Immortal Vampire Angel of Dorian Grey Who is Also A Robot
• Buy a high quality scanner (if you don't spend at least $2000 you might as well make a copy with silly putt)
• Scan the hard copies back into your computer
• Insert the scanned pages back into the original PDF document.

Simple.

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Here's a good magic trick of which I was on the receiving end. Well, maybe not a "magic trick" maybe it's just a "trick," but it felt supernatural when it was happening.

I had a friend visiting me recently. He has always struggled with his weight. And so, to be a bit of a dick, I was bragging about how I had recently gone down another belt size. Because that's the type of supportive friend I am. 

The next day we were walking around the mall together and he said THINNER like the gypsy guy in that Stephen King story turned shitty movie.

I didn't really understand what he meant at first. If he had rubbed the back of his hand against my cheek I would have caught on sooner, but I just thought he was commenting on something he saw or saying something under his breath that wasn't really meant for me.

But then, a minute or so later, I felt the need to tighten my belt. And then, a minute after that, I had to tighten it another notch And then again not long after that. What the hell was going on? Had I really lost three inches off my waist in a matter of minutes? Had he put a gypsy curse on me that would cause me to whither away to nothing?

No. No he hadn't.

What he had done was cut a slit in my belt with a razor blade from the hole I was currently using to the hole I had been using. See the red line in the pic below (I would have taken a picture of the actual belt, but I tossed it before I thought to write this up.)

He didn't remove any of the leather of the belt, he just cut a slit. So what happened was I would tighten the belt like normal and as long as I wasn't moving around too much it would stay in place. But when I was walking, like we were in the mall, the "stick" part of the buckle would slowly travel back from the hole where my pants felt comfortable to the older (looser) hole. So I wasn't tightening my belt inch by inch, I was just moving back an forth between the two holes. I'd tighten my belt, it would eventually shift back, and then I'd tighten it again.

The first time I tightened my belt I did it pretty absentmindedly without any thought (as you might if you've been between belt holes for a while). When he noticed me do that, that's when he said "Thinner" to me. 

I asked him where he got this idea and he said it was just something he thought of that night. He had no clue if it would work, but it actually worked really well. For a couple minutes I had no idea what was going on.

You might think, "Andy, what kind of sociopath friends do you have that would just take a razor blade to your belt. Are you friends that indifferent about damaging your property?" No. That's not the case. It's more an issue that he knows me well enough to know I wouldn't get hung up on him ruining a $10 belt. Certainly not when it led to a good story. 

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This is from an old post...

I used to do a trick where I wore a blue t-shirt and across the front it said, "This Shirt is Red." When someone would say, "No it's not." I'd turn my back to them and say, "Not even on the back?" They'd say no, and when I turned back around my shirt would be red and it would say, "Yes It Is" across the front.

This was how I would do Dresscode by Calen Morelli.

Reader, R.E.D wrote in to show me his version of the shirts he made for this trick. Nice.

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Reader, Sean Maciel wrote in to say this about The Red Pinetree Gift Lottery from The JAMM #11. 

"Like everyone else, I performed the red pinetree gift lottery to what might be the best possible reaction I've ever received on either a christmas gift or a magic trick - people still talking about it weeks later, even though it's just a bit of quick and dirty papercraft."

Below is his climax for the trick/game/experience. I love seeing these...