Out of Humanity

In Joshua Quinn’s new book, he has an entire chapter on tricks with Cards Against Humanity cards.

That reminded me of a post I had planned that had slipped my mind. It’s an Out of This World effect with CAH cards. Joshua has a similar idea in the book where the spectator is able to separate the awful cards from the wholesome ones.

That’s good but I think I like the twist in this version better. It comes from everyone’s favorite darling of the magic community, Rick Lax.

Here’s his email to me from a few years ago…

Out Of This World using Cards Against Humanity cards, and we're asking the spectator to 'sense' the cards and, without looking, determine if a card is "Something you feel bad about" or "Something you feel good about." Then you first read the cards that the person felt bad about, and they're all commonly bad things like, "Racism" or "Crony Capitalism." And then you read the cards with "Things you feel good about" and they're just the most vile cards in the game.

In the 1.0 version, all the 'good feeling' cards were related to men's genitals, but the writing on some of these cards is just so good--maybe better than the trick--that really it's just an excuse to read the funniest cards against humanity cards.

Specifically, I came up with OOTW for CAH cards. Justin came up with the groups "Something you feel bad about" and "Something you feel bad about." Or maybe it was "Things that give you a bad feeling/Things that give you a good feeling" Either way, his wording was what made it good, and allows for the 'control' part where you show the 'bad' things and it looks like things are 'on track.'

I like it. Methodologically, I would use something like Bannon’s Power of Poker or the 242 Poker Deal as a way to have them separated. They’d only be separating 10 cards that way, but I think that’s enough for the bit to land.

I like this approach because of the misdirect involved. You start by introducing them to CAH cards (if they’re not familiar) and then you lay out the premise as you want them to understand it.

“Most of the cards have something weird, unpleasant, or disgusting on them. But every now and then you’ll get a kind of sweet card. Like this one for Puppies! or Breaking out into song and dance. [You pull out some cards from the box to show these things, but theyr’e not the cards you’re using for trick.] I’ve got a mix of cards here and I want to see if you can pick up on the energy of cards that give you a bad feeling and cards that give you a good feeling.”

So, they assume the idea is they’re going to separate good from bad.

But I think a lot of people will get ahead of you and guess that they’re going to end up with the bad cards.

Then at the end, when you turn over the cards they didn’t choose to keep and they are in fact “bad” things, that will cause them to shift their mindset back. Oh, I DID separate out the bad ones.

But as per Rick’s idea, these cards should all be abstract, institutional, or vaguely political "bad" things that sound serious but aren't shocking or vile:

Voter Fraud
Corporate America
Toxic Masculinity

etc.

And maybe one or two trivial ones like, “A disappointing salad.”

You congratulate them for separating out all these bad things.

“And the ones you had a good feeling about are…?”

You have them turn over their cards and it’s very cock-centric or memorable gross or vile.

Carrying my poop around in a ziplock bag.
Using a Smucker’s Uncrustable™ as a maxi pad.
Holding down a child and farting all over him.
Twisting my cock and balls into a balloon poodle.

And then you’re like, “WTF? You preferred these to a bad salad? Weird.”