Pseudo Chatbot

Taking a break from the influence posts today to mention a new feature in the Jerx App that will be available in an update either as you read this or very soon after.

This is an idea that came in from supporter Dustin W. in an email where he wrote:

ChatGPT and Bard and other AI programs are a great premise for a prediction if you want to dodge the psychic claim.

I think this is a very solid idea.

Imagine it as part of a Shuffle-Bored presentation.

You bring up an AI chat page on your phone. It’s not one of the standard ones. It’s a dark-web-only version or some proprietary site that you have to have an invitation to be able to use.

You enter a prompt that says something like:

I want you to describe the configuration of a deck of cards that has been shuffled and mixed face-up into face-down cards by a 38-year-old woman named Carmen from Tupper Lake, New York.

The AI shoots out a reply like:

🤖The configuration of a deck of cards that has been shuffled and mixed face-up into face-down cards by a 38-year-old woman named Carmen from Tupper Lake, New York is likely to be:

24 face-up cards

Of the face-up cards, eight of them will be black.

All the black face-up cards are clubs.

This is the likely configuration of a deck of cards that has been shuffled and mixed face-up into face-down cards by a 38-year-old woman named Carmen from Tupper Lake, New York. 

My mistake, I just noticed that one of the black face-up cards is actually the two of spades.🤖

You could scroll the page so that the Two of Spades punchline isn’t revealed until you want it to be.

Of course, this could be used as a reframe for any kind of prediction effect that forces the spectator into one outcome.

So I shot that idea over to Marc Kerstein and he has added it to the Jerx App. In the settings for the chat function you just enter whatever you want the AI to spit out and regardless of what you write in the prompt during performance, it will just shoot out whatever canned response you have.

It does it in the “typing” style similar to many AI chatbots.

What happens if your friend wants to ask it another question?

Additional prompts generate this message:

You have no remaining data credits. Credits renew in 30 days.

Aww, too bad. Sorry, friend.

Don’t call it like your “magic chatbot” or something corny like that. This is just some strangely accurate underground chat program that you have a special invite to.

If they come to you 30 days later and ask you to ask another question to the chatbot, just say, “Ah, they made that thing illegal. I wasn’t even really supposed to show it to you.”

Right now it’s very simple to operate. Just enter the wording you would like it to shoot out and it will do so. You could make it as simple as having it say, The 3 of Clubs, and then asking it in performance, '“What card did my friend pick?” Although when it’s that simple I think it will hardly have much of an impact. The idea of adding names and ages and locations into the sample question/answer mentioned above is to suggest that maybe there’s some sort of interesting calculation happening in the background. But you can do it however you like.

If I feel there’s demand for it, I may ask Marc to make it a little more complex, with multiple saved responses and possibly the ability to enter part of the output secretly during the process of entering the URL. That way it wouldn’t just need to be used for forces, but could also be used for free choices. (Similar to what we did with the Wisdom of Crowds word reveal that’s also in the app). But I may just keep things simple with it.

Influence: The Holmesian Reframe

This is a very simple reframe that takes a trick out of the realm of “influence” altogether. It’s certainly similar to ideas explored by others, but I think there is a way to do it that makes it feel more legitimate and less like just hollow taolk.

The premise of the Holmesian Reframe is that they’re not being influenced by these subtle cues that have been placed around them, instead, they are subconsciously taking in and perceiving these cues. Their mind wasn’t swayed by some little thing off in the distance. Instead, their mind keenly picked up on that thing.

We have Spectator as Magician tricks and Spectator as Mind Reader tricks. This reframe is, essentially, Spectator as Sherlock Holmes.

This requires a bit more explanation for the participant because the idea is that they’re absorbing this information and processing it subconsciously. If you don’t make that point to them then they’ll think, “What is he talking about? I just picked this thing at random. I never even noticed that half-finished crossword puzzle on the coffee table.” (Or whatever cues might be lying around.)

To make this premise really effective—as I suggest for other “Spectator as” premises,—there needs to be something that happens that allows for this person to achieve these feats. They need to go through some process or ingest something or listen to something unusual or something like that. Maybe they listen to some audio track that supposedly has a hypnotic suggestion that expands their attention and deductive abilities briefly. Maybe they go through some meditation process that does the same. Or maybe it’s a pill. Or whatever.

There just has to be some sort of reason why they now have this ability when they didn’t have it at any other point in their life.

The process of how they acquire this temporary ability is what will make this a memorable experience. That will be the physical/tactile/firsthand part of the experience for them that they can look back and remember. Since they don’t really have this ability they can’t actually remember the feeling associated with it. But they can remember the taste of some concoction they had to drink, or the sight of some strange imagery they were subjected to, or something like that.

The nice thing about this reframe is that it completely flips the script on an influence effect. It elevates the spectator’s cognitive abilities rather than diminishing them.

Mailbag #83

Years ago Ian Rowland released a humorous “influence” trick that I often perform. I don’t recall the original title, but the effect goes like this.  You show eight cards one by one, which you claim have been painstakingly chosen to influence the spectator’s choice of one of them.  As you show them, you comment on the appeal of each.  “There’s the Ace of Spades, which is the first card many people name when asked to name a card.  Very popular choice.  But also has dark associations, which is why many avoid choosing it.  Or perhaps you’ll choose the Seven of Clubs, which is attractive to those who think it’s a lucky number. Or maybe you were born in July, the 7th month.  The Joker represents the inner trickster, or the wild side of one’s personality and may be especially appealing as it can be a wild card in many games and assume many identities.  Just as you do from time to time.  Then there’s the Queen of Hearts, the feminine principle, the anima, the goddess….”  And so forth.  Each comment suggests why that card may be appealing, but perhaps reverse psychology is at play, and they are being influenced NOT to select that card.

After all the cards have been shown (including the Three of Diamonds which has the words “Don’t Pick Me” written across the face), the participant makes his choice by sliding the chosen card out of a face-up ribbon spread.  You then gather the remaining cards and show the backs.  Each non-chosen card is seen to have a red back with a large X drawn from corner to corner.  Now the selected card is turned over.  It is a blue-backed card with no X.

[Andy’s Note: I believe the effect is called Persuasion and is in the January 2004 issue of Genii. All digital back issues of Genii are available with a $35/year digital subscription.]

As for the reveal,  I ask why they chose that card, and comment on their response.  Then I say something like, “That felt like a free choice, right?  You could have taken the Queen or the Seven.  But you went for the King of Diamonds.  That’s what’s amazing about the influence of these cards.  You may not feel it directly—but it’s there.  Or maybe it’s the influence of what I said.  Or maybe these factors had no influence on you whatsoever. Maybe it’s all BS.  But then, how do you explain this?”  And then the reveal. 

Your thoughts?  Or not. —AK

I like that. It sounds like a fun routine.

This brings up an important distinction I haven’t mentioned in the influence posts this month…

The routine described in the email above is one where “influence” is the stated premise from the outset. It’s the theme of the trick. I think routines such as this come off as relatively benign for the vast majority of spectators. In this situation, the influence is set up almost as a game.

The influence effects that I think sometimes come off poorly is when influence is the surprise (supposed) methodological revelation at the end of the trick. “I didn’t really read your mind. I actually influenced you to think of the 3 of Diamonds!”

Think of how that can come across to some people. We’re enjoying a pleasantly fictional experience of “mind reading” or “coincidence” or whatever the case may be. Then at the end, I say, “Aha! What actually happened was that I manipulated your mind!” I think it’s understandable why many laypeople (not magicians) will hear that and be turned off by it. Whether they think it’s what really happened. Or just that you want them to believe that’s what happened.

It’s different when influence is the stated premise at the beginning of an effect.

Think of it this way. Imagine I had a trick where a ring disappears from a ring box. We put the ring in the ring box and I tell you to go home and put it on your kitchen table. Then I tell you to make sure all your doors and windows are locked and that there’s no way anybody could get in the house because at some point tonight I’m going to find a way to invisibly sneak my way into your house and steal the ring out of the ring box.

You wake up the next morning. All the windows and doors are still locked tightly, but the ring is gone. You probably wouldn’t really think I snuck into your house. And you’d probably be fine with the whole interaction.

But what if I said, “Place this ring box on your kitchen table.” And I never mentioned locking your doors or windows. Then the next morning I said, “I’ve used my magic powers to make your ring disappear.” Then, after you checked that it was gone, I said, “Actually, what I really did was sneak into your house last night and remove the ring while you were sleeping.”

You might feel like that was a violation. You might be unsettled that I would do that, or that I would apparently want you to think I would do that. Either way, it would be odd.

That how’s the “surprise” influence reveal can come across. Except instead of it being their house that you invaded without warning, it’s their brain.

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Some years back I performed Michael Murray's "Sublime Influence Evolution" for my wife. (You have mentioned and recommended it some time ago, so I assume you know what it's about.) […]

After the ending of the effect, she was impressed and surprised, but she also seemed a bit unhappy. Normally, she is laughing and having a lot of fun with magic tricks, but this time she was just "fooled".

When I asked her about it later, she told me that she is generally concerned about being easy to manipulate. So me manipulating her in such a strong way did not feel good. […]

So since then I have been thinking a lot about whether I was doing something wrong or maybe she a bit sensitive in this area. Or could all those mentalists be wrong? Derren Brown bases his whole professional personality on "I influence you to think about a red bike". People still seem to enjoy it.—SM

Yes, your wife may be a bit sensitive in this area, but that’s not an uncommon thing. I’ve seen many people (usually women, but I tend to perform more for women) who enjoy all types of magic/mentalism, and joyously engage with the tricks and presentations, but who then get withdrawn or guarded when seeing a trick where someone supposedly “influenced” them.

Derren Brown bases his whole professional personality on "I influence you to think about a red bike". People still seem to enjoy it.

For the participant, this goes back to last Tuesday’s post on the Bombardment Principle.

And keep in mind, that unlike you or I, Derren Brown is claiming to influence one person, but millions of people are watching.

It’s definitely interesting to watch other people getting influenced. Whether you think it’s real or think there’s a trick behind it.

But for an amateur, performing socially, your “audience” and the person being “influenced” are often one and the same. So if they do have a weird reaction to claims of influence, then you’re potentially alienating your whole audience for the sake of no one else, because no one else is watching.

Coming up later this week: two reframes that take the word “influence” completely out of these types of tricks.

Dustings #81

To protect my supporters from the shame and stigma that comes with being someone who spends good money on magic, I’m thinking of using these padded mailers when I send out the new book this October.

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A phrase just popped into my head and it made me instantly depressed:

“Zoom magic show”

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I was doing some research on roulette and found this question. Why don’t I have friends this dumb? I feel like they would be a lot easier to fool.

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I was informed by reader Stu Y. that the 52-on-1 card that’s used in the 52 Stunner effect which I covered in this month’s newsletter doesn’t have the 6 of Diamonds or 6 of Spades on it.

My routine (which is different than the one it’s marketed with) involves the spectator naming any card to start.

If they name one of these two cards, here’s what you can do. If they name the 6 of Diamonds, for instance, you could say, “Would you be amazed if the 6 of Diamonds was on the other side of this card?” Then you turn it over to show a full deck on one card (they will assume the 6 of Diamonds is there somewhere, because why wouldn’t it be?). When everyone is done laughing themselves sick at your wonderfully hilarious gimmicked card, then you can say, “Please, please, control yourself. Let’s try something actually magical. I’ll make your card disappear.” Wave your hand over the card. “The 6 of Diamonds has disappeared.”

And I’d just leave it at that. On this pre-printed card, the one card they freely named disappears? That’s strong. Hell, you’ll be hoping they name one of those cards.

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Influence: Two Tools

Here are two tools I find useful when crafting an influence effect.

Pop-Eyed Popper Deck

If you’re going to be using a physical deck of cards in your influence trick (for example, if you have a bunch of cues in your performing area that point to the 3 of Diamonds) I find this to be the best way to actually get the forced card into their hands/head.

First spread the deck towards them so they can see all the faces. There are only 26 faces, with a Pop-Eyed Popper deck, but this is not something that I’ve found any layperson can distinguish. Don’t leave the deck spread face up, because then it may become obvious that not all the cards are there. Just keep the cards moving when you’re showing them to your friend and you’re fairly safe.

Ask them to just “take in” the deck visually. “You don’t need to try and memorize it or remember any particular cards.”

You can’t just force a card on a person without showing them the order of the deck and then say, “I influenced you to pick that card via these cues.” That doesn’t make any logical sense.

So the idea here is that when you’re showing them the faces of the cards they are “absorbing” the order of the deck subconsciously. When you turn the deck face-down and have them choose a card blindly (so as not to be distracted by the values of the other cards), they actually know the value of that card in their subconscious because they saw and retained the order of the deck when you first spread them.

The Pop-Eyed Popper deck works well with this premise because they can really touch any card and they’re actually given the card they touched without ever even taking their finger off it. You can immediately show the cards directly above and below their selection are different. And then show all the other cards in the deck as being different as well.

When they touch a card you give them the option to change their mind. If they do change their mind, you can immediately turn over the card they were touching to show them the card they would have had if they hadn’t changed their mind. And this card will be different than the force card.

It’s arguably the cleanest way to force a card with a gimmicked deck, and I feel it definitely works the best with the influence premise.

(The Mastermind deck is another good option. With that deck, they do get to see all 52 cards, but they don’t get to see the full face of any. You can decide which trade-off you’d rather live with. For me, the Pop-Eyed Popper deck slightly edges it out.)

Pop-Eyed Popper decks are cheap, but if you want to get one to force a specific card (rather than just whatever one you happen to get when you order) you’ll have to either make one yourself (time-consuming), have one made for you (more expensive), or blow someone in Penguin’s warehouse (soul-destroying).

Infamous

Infamous was a set of Stroop Test cards that looked like this.

It’s sold out in most places but can still be purchased here.

The cards are used to (supposedly) implant and then reveal the thing you forced on someone.

So, let’s say I start the presentation by running you through some quick psychological tests. One of those is the Stroop test (look it up if you don’t know what it is). Then I say that I think I have a good understanding of how your brain works. I have you choose a card (say, the 10 of Hearts) and then I “read your mind.”

I then come clean and say, “I didn’t actually read your mind. You went for the 10 of Hearts because you were compelled to do so. I’ve been implanting that card in your subconscious all night.”

And I would have a bunch different reveals of the 10 of Hearts around my place.

I’d point to the back of the card case on the table and show the 10 of Hearts is printed there.

Maybe there’s some left over valentine’s day candy in a dish on the end table— ten candy hearts.

Maybe at one point in the night I told you about my friend’s dog, Dano, and his intestinal problems and how he stunk up the entire apartment the other night. I go back and play a portion of that anecdote that I secretly recorded on my phone when I was telling it. I highlight every time I talk about when Dano farts. “And when Dano farts…” Dano farts, Dano farts, ten of hearts, ten of hearts.

Then I point out the cards we used for the psychological test that are still spread on the coffee table…

What’s nice about this is that conducting a psychological test does fit in with the general idea of anything “mind” related. So it can be seen as part of laying the groundwork for “learning how they think.”

And, of course, you don’t need to use this with playing cards. Any word/thought/image that you can force can seemingly be “implanted” by these cards.

I mentioned these are hard to find now. They’re sold out in most places. If you can’t track them down, you can always make your own. Get a bunch of colored markers and some blank cards. “Homemade” Stroop test cards are no more or less suspicious than professionally printed ones.

Influence: The Fleeting Reframe

The first reframe I want to talk about for effects with an influence reveal is the Fleeting Reframe.

To understand this, let’s consider another effect that could theoretically make a spectator feel “less than” for a moment: the No-Tear paper trick.

Imagine this series of events. I hand you a piece of paper and say, “You’re too weak to rip paper.” You try to rip it but can’t. So you think, Oh, I guess this is some special kind of paper that’s hard to rip or something.

That’s the only thing anyone would think (unless they got a wayward javelin through their skull as a child and it pierced the part of their brain responsible for logical thought).

But if you use the no-tear paper in a routine where they are temporarily zapped of their strength, then it becomes a more conceptually interesting moment for them. They may come to the same conclusion (special paper). But the more layers you add to the effect, the less certain they’ll be that’s what’s going on.

We can do the same thing with influence effects. We can couch those effects in a presentation where we do something to temporarily make someone susceptible to influence.

Here’s an example of how that might look… Perhaps you get some of this popcorn-scented spray. Dump it into a small glass bottle so it doesn’t look like something you picked up off Amazon. Have someone smell it. Not just once, but like 10 deep inhales (assuming that wouldn’t kill them—I don’t know what’s in this spray).

Now go through your effect and before the influence reveal you say, “You’re probably wondering what the deal was with the popcorn scent. It’s interesting… that artificial popcorn smell was created in the 1950s. Actually, the popcorn smell might be older than that, but it was added to another compound in the 1950s to mask the smell of that chemical. And the reason they did this is because they were pumping this into the air vents in movie theaters back then. Why put artificial popcorn scent in a movie theater that already smelled like popcorn? Well, because the original chemical compound—the one the popcorn smell was masking—had been determined to affect the brain in such a way that subliminal advertising was 700% more effective. It made subtle brief cues stick in the mind at a much greater rate. So before they made subliminal messaging in films illegal, this was part of that whole scheme to implant certain ideas into people’s heads. It’s not dangerous. The effects are only temporary, but it does seem to work fairly well. For example, you thought of Tom Hanks pretty freely, yes?”

And that’s how such an Imp could be used with Show Reel. (Although it doesn’t have to be used with a movie-based effect. It just works particularly well with that one.)

The believability of the story doesn’t really matter. (Personally, I don’t want someone to actually believe these things.) The goal is just to create an experience for the spectator beyond the ones I identified in the original post this month:

1. You’re easy to influence

   OR

2. People are easy to influence.

This story—that there is some sort of way to affect people’s minds in such a manner that they briefly become susceptible to influence—is much more compelling. And all you need is to come up with some Imp that supposedly puts them in this fleeting state.

Influence: The Bombardment Principle

Influence took off as a presentational premise over 20 years ago when David Copperfield influenced that Tornado of Fire not to burn him.

Okay, that’s probably not completely accurate. It’s more likely that the influence premise really took hold with Derren Brown, perhaps most notably in these two performances…

The fun thing about both of those performances is that there is, of course, no actual influence being used here. I crossed out “of course” because, despite the fact that these tricks are 100% reliable and work in a purely mechanical fashion, there were plenty of magicians, maybe a majority, that thought these were genuine demonstrations of influence/mind control. That was always crazy to me. You study magic. You should know better. You think you can make someone think they wanted a BMX bike by putting some bicycle imagery in the room and using some sound-alike words? That’s how you think the human mind works? Do you go to the dentist and subconsciously absorb all the dental imagery on the walls and think, “You know what I want for Christmas? A molar!”

While these performances aren’t good examples of actual influence, they are good examples of how to present an influence-based effect.

If you’re going to go with a premise that is strictly “You were influenced to do X,” then the influence needs to appear substantial. It should come off as if you were bombarding them with influence from every direction.

The reveal of how they were influenced is where the enjoyment of this type of effect lies.

Imagine a mystery novel where the detective said at the end, “And I know the killer was the butler because… we found his fingerprints on the knife.”

That wouldn’t be a good story because, with a mystery, you want to see a bunch of pieces come together. You don’t just want one thing to explain the whole story.

Think of influence reveals like that. They should have multiple parts that come together. Not just one “thing” that supposedly influenced the person.

You can see this in action on a smaller scale in the trick I wrote up in this post way back in 2015.

I had Sebastian Calbry’s effect Offset (which looks to be unavailable now), which allows you to make ink appear on a card box. Done openly (which is not how you do it), it looks like this…

My idea was to use a type of dual reality on one person by filming the trick with a cell phone. You can read all the details in that post. Essentially the trick is that my friend “sees” a word that was never actually written down (according to the video record of the effect). And then I reveal that she was “influenced” to see that word by about 8 different types of cues from our interactions going back a week that were designed to embed that word in her head.

Last Wednesday, I said that standard “influence” effect leads to one of two conclusions for the spectator:

1. What I just experienced happened because I am particularly easy to influence.

   OR

2. What I just experienced happened because humans are easy to influence. This works on everyone.

By bombarding them with influence cues, you create a new interpretation for them:

“If someone goes to a lot of trouble they can invisibly implant a thought or action in my mind.”

That’s a much more enjoyable story than one where they were influenced by some simple cue that they saw or heard briefly.

It’s more enjoyable because the subtext of that story from the spectator’s perspective is: I’m someone who’s worth going to a lot of trouble for in order to create a unique experience.

This is a way to make someone feel good with an influence effect. Rather than just making them feel like they’re completely impressionable and lack control over their thoughts and actions.

In fact, when I do an effect with an influence reveal, I make a point to tell them that I had to go to all these lengths to make this work. I’ll say something like, “I tried something similar with you about 6 months ago but I couldn’t get it to work at all. You’re so strong-willed I knew if I was going to try it again I had to really overwhelm you with subtle cues if I was going to be able to affect your thoughts in some way.”

Are all my friends really strong-willed? Not necessarily. But people like to feel they are, so why not reinforce that?

The Bombardment Principle with influence effects is simply that there is a direct relationship between the number of hidden cues you can reveal (within reason) and a spectator’s enjoyment and willingness to embrace being “influenced.”

I like to have at least half a dozen things I can point to as being part of the process. That way the reveal has a real feeling of one thing after another—it’s like a barrage of punches to the gut.

I would say you want your reveals to build in “obviousness.” There is a temptation to reveal them in order of how clever they are. But I’ve had better luck with revealing the subtle cues first and building to the most obvious ones.

If I can’t bombard them with cues for an influence-based effect, then I will reframe that premise. I’ll discuss three of those reframes in future posts over the next couple of weeks.