The Tribunal

I’ve never wanted to do “guest posts” on this site. It felt like a bad habit to get into. It starts with me reluctantly agreeing to post someone else’s stuff. Then, before long, I’m begging people to send me something—anything—so I can take the day off. And eventually I’m posting every dumb thing that lands in my inbox just so I don’t have to write and can spend the afternoon on YouTube watching police bodycam footage of drunk Karens getting arrested.

And, of course, I’d have to pretend I was genuinely intrigued by whatever I was posting. “Today I have a fascinating guest post to share with you. Have you ever wondered what thickness of billet paper holds the sharpest crease when folded? I know I sure have. Well, thankfully, magician and amateur paper enthusiast Geoff Crim has written an in-depth examination of this very subject, which I’m thrilled to share with you today.”

And even if I managed to resist that temptation, I’d end up in an almost worse position: having to tell people, “Sorry, this isn’t good enough for the site.” I don’t particularly enjoy shitting on other people’s ideas. So it was always easier to have a blanket policy: “I don’t do guest posts.”

Last month, while writing a mailbag response to someone asking for advice about starting a “similar project” to this one, I started questioning this long-standing policy. And I realized that most of my concerns would disappear if I simply took the decision out of my own hands. If I had a panel of three people who could read or watch submissions and decide whether they were worth posting, then I could leave all those decisions to them.

So I reached out to a few magicians you know and asked if they’d be willing to serve in this capacity. They agreed. And that’s how things will work going forward.

If you have an excerpt from a book, a trick, or a technique you’d like to share, send it to me. I’ll pass it along to the Tribunal and let them decide whether it’s worth posting.

(One note: I’m not looking for theory pieces. This blog is so closely associated with my voice and perspective that I think it would be confusing to have someone else weighing in with their own abstract ideas about magic.)

If the Tribunal unanimously agrees that your submission is great, then I’ll happily post it.

Wait… it has to be great?

Yes.

But you post stupid shit all the time.

Yes. And this is the outlet for my stupid shit. Not yours.

Look, I’ve spent years building an audience willing to put up with my dipshittery. If you want people to put up with yours, you have to build your own audience. If you want to borrow mine, you have to bring something better.

This is likely not going to happen very often, if at all. But if it does, what I’m trying to do is create a win-win-win situation for everyone.

The readers get a great piece of content from someone whose work they might not have encountered otherwise.

The person submitting gets a chance to share their ideas with 1000s of readers and potentially generate interest in whatever else they might be working on.

And I get to spend the afternoon watching a 53-year-old woman in a leopard-print blouse explain to six police officers that they have no jurisdiction over her because she pays their salaries.