Monday Mailbag #55
/
I feel like one of the longest, weirdest debates in magic is dumb but fair: what's better, invisible deck or brainwave? It's hilariously polarizing.
So I was just thinking, maybe this could be a fun/funny thing to do your laymen research against to definitively know, once and for all, what's stronger. —MJ
I’ve added it to the list. I’ll happily test it out if/when the world ever gets to a point where gathering strangers together for something as inconsequential as testing out magic tricks seems like a good idea.
I miss the testing sessions we used to do. People who have just come to this site in the past couple of years might not know the extent to which we delved into this testing. When I talk about the “focus group testing” we did, they may think I showed a trick to eight friends or something like that. But that’s not how it worked. We were trying stuff out, and getting feedback with anywhere from 40-100 participants (not at one time) per test. In 2019 alone we spent over $14,000 to pay focus group participants. (That doesn’t include any of the other costs associated with the testing.) That might not be much for a big company, but for a small dumb blog it’s a pretty significant investment. And I say “we spent,” because a chunk of the supporter’s payments each year are allocated for testing. So it wouldn’t exist without the supporters, (and that’s why most of the testing results going forward will appear in the book the supporters receive annually as opposed to here on the site).
So sure, I’ll test Brainwave v. Invisible Deck. Once we get back into testing I’ll test all the long-standing magic feuds. Hell, I’ll even test red vs blue-backed deck. This was an argument that used to happen frequently on the Magic Cafe in the early days, and it became sort of the defacto criticism for all the worthless talk that happened there. But what if we test it out and the results are like, “Magic tricks are 12 to 20 times stronger when performed with a blue deck as opposed to a red deck”? Well, then we’re all going to feel pretty fucking stupid, aren’t we. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to figure it out in the near future.
FWIW, one could write entire essays based on some of the prompts that the AI generated [in last Wednesday’s post]. "Forget about doing the Houdini escape, and practice doing the Hippocratic trap, instead" could confound people for months, if attributed to a "thinker" like Larry Hass.
And I gotta say, there's something in this one that explains why there are so many unfunny comedy magicians: "Most people do not perform for fun; they perform to make money, because they don’t know what fun is."
Of course, this last bit is just a paraphrase of Vernon's advice to Ricky Jay: "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." —CK
Oh, absolutely. While the AI produced a bunch of nonsense, the sad truth is that it didn’t provide significantly less food for thought than most magic writing done by sentient beings.
Quick anecdote related to today's post. [Dear Jerxy: More is Less]
About 6 months ago, one of my magician friends visited when my 3-year old niece was around. He literally showed her like two tiny things (a gag with his watch and a quick Flip-stick vanish with a pencil) and she remembered and talked about them clearly for the next 6 months.
Just last week my friend was going to visit again when my niece was around. I got her all pumped up for it and she was so excited for him to do tricks for her. He brought tons of tricks and showed her one after another for more than a half hour. After my friend left, I had this suspicion that in a couple weeks if I asked my niece what tricks he did, she would only remember the two things he showed her 6 months ago, because they were special isolated moments. Sure enough, later THAT SAME DAY, I asked her what her favorite thing was that he did. She could barely even name one thing! I spoke to my friend and told him this and how it's exactly what Andy always writes about.
So,anyway, just a quick anecdote and it's cool that you just referred to this idea once again. I'm not convinced that the psychology of a little kid's experience of magic is precisely in line with everything you say on this subject, but it's definitely in the same circle of theory. —YR
The psychology might be slightly different, but honestly, probably not that much.
The pacing of how frequently you show people tricks is probably one of the least understood factors when it comes to how to enhance—or at least maintain—the impact of your performance. As far as I know, nobody has written too much about this. There is a lot written about the pacing of a show, but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything written about how frequently you should dole out magic to people from an amateur’s perspective. If I’m wrong, please direct me to where I can read more about it because I too am stumbling my way towards the best form of pacing. I certainly don’t claim to have the answer on this.
I said in a recent post that I try to average about a trick a month for a given individual, but even that is the most general sort of recommendation. It really depends on the type of trick. I wouldn’t follow one immersive reality-melting trick with another one any time soon after. But I might show a couple minor effects to someone over the same evening.
I’m still trying to codify my feelings on the pacing issue. What makes it slightly more difficult is that I’m of the belief now (I haven’t been all my life) that you should mix up the types of tricks you show people. Not everything should be a 10/10 mind-blower. There was a time I believed that. I figured, why bother showing someone a trick unless it was a true mind-fuck? But now my belief is that while I want to show people consistently strong tricks, I only want to really ratchet up the intensity, and show them something truly devastating a few times a year. This, I believe, makes the mind-blowers feel even more special.
So, yeah…. pacing. What makes it difficult is the fact that the audience can still be enjoying it, even if you’re not doing it most effectively. What I mean is, the audience might enjoy seeing five card tricks, so that feels good for you and them. But they might have really cherished just seeing one of those tricks and being fully drawn into that one memorable experience rather than a jumbled mass of effects in their head where nothing much sticks out (even if they enjoyed the jumbled mass).
Think of it like a massage. If someone gave you an hour long massage every day, you would probably look forward to that hour of relaxation and enjoy it every time it happened. BUT it would soon turn into a pleasurable non-event. Whereas, if you got that massage just once a month, it would be something that you’d be looking forward to all week and would be a real highlight when it came around. Then, maybe throughout the rest of the month you get a foot rub, a scalp massage, a shoulder rub—these smaller indulgences that don’t quite take away from the significance of that monthly full-body massage.
This is kind of what I’m going for with my pacing. I don’t want to do something incredibly significant too often that it ceases to become an event. So I tone down the frequency of the “big” tricks, and mix in some strong, but not as intense effects to try and keep it lively and fun while keeping the special moments feeling special.
There probably isn’t a formula for all of this, but I’ll let you all know if I stumble into any good heuristics as I experiment with it.