How to Respond When Your Sock-Puppet Account is Revealed On the Magic Cafe.

When I wrote the Magic Circle Jerk blog back 20 years ago, I had a mole inside the Magic Cafe who would send me their backroom discussions where they were panicking about me and scheming ways to get the site taken down.

One day, about a year after my site started, he sent me an email with a list of 40 or so known magicians and their sock-puppet accounts on the Magic Cafe, thinking I might want to publish it. All your favorite magicians were on there.

I don’t quite remember my thought process at the time and why I chose not to. I may just not have been able to come up with a good angle for how to write about it. Or I might just not have thought it was necessary to bust people on secret identities. It would maybe be seen as hypocritical of me, given that I was writing that blog (and now this one) anonymously and no one knew that I was really Tony Hassini.

I’ve had people ask me if I have an account—sock-puppet or otherwise—on the Magic Cafe at the moment. Believe it or not, once I got booted from the Cafe I never created an account again. I didn’t have to, because I had a few friends who gave me their passwords if there was something I wanted to post or a restricted area of the Cafe I wanted to look at. I’ve posted on the Cafe using those accounts throughout the years, but I’ve never made a single post about this site or any of my other work on there (or anywhere else). So I wouldn’t say I have any “sock puppet” accounts. Just accounts my friends let me use when I need to post in the “Clowning Around” section to ask what face-paint people are using these days.

Sock-Puppet accounts are on people’s minds recently because Michael Weber got busted for his on the Cafe. His alter-ego “newguy” has been around for 20 years now.

Now, I don’t begrudge any known magician who wants to post in a public forum under a different name. But here’s the problem…You may start off with the best intentions. Maybe you just want to take part in the discussions while still maintaining some privacy. I get that. But the temptation to add some information about yourself and your products where it’s applicable will be too strong. And that will transition into complimenting yourself and your work. And that will soon transition into this:

And when you get to that point your actions are shady at best and unethical at worst. So Weber deserves the hits he’s taking on this.

As “newguy,” Michael cleverly hid his identity and created a rich alternative life where he could get lost in the character of… someone who was a Michael Weber fan and happened to know every detail of his business dealings. Look, I don’t want to take away anything from the people who exposed Weber here… it was a good catch. But he didn’t do the world’s greatest job of disguising his identity. If you read three newguy posts you will come to the conclusion: Either this is Michael Weber or he has an enthusiastic, gay stalker who intends to “Talented-Mr-Ripley” his ass and take over his life. The detective work needed to unmask Weber could have been done by this guy.

So what should you do if your sock-puppet account is revealed on the Magic Cafe? You can’t really run from it or deny it. It’s usually just too obvious. I think you have to embrace it.

Using Weber as an example, the best way to handle it would be to go comically sock-puppet. Start posting in threads for tricks that have nothing to do with you: “I wonder if Michael Weber has a version of this? I bet that would be killer. He’s a genius!” Or go into the section for kid’s magic and say something like, “Did you read that article about the kid’s show Michael Weber performed in 1992? They followed those kids’ lives for the next 30 years and now they’re all CEOs. How does Weber do it?”

When someone calls out your true identity, you violently deny it while still praising yourself.

“I’m Michael Weber?!?!?!?! Uhm… yeah… sure. I wish! First off, I’m a lady. But thanks for assuming my gender and my identity. But it’s actually very complimentary that you think I’m him. I wish I had even half his brains. Not to mention his charisma! What aspect of being Weber would I not want? His history of putting out amazing effects? His successful career in and outside of magic? The way animals and children adore him? His kindness towards the elderly? And, as a woman—which I most definitely am—what I wouldn’t give to get my hands on that famously girthy cock! 💦”

Then change your profile picture to this: