Magic 'Sharing' Sites

[Ender]

Hey, just wondering.... what is everyones' opinion of magic 'sharing' sites where magicians reveal methods to each other for free. I'm not talking about youtube revealers, but real magicians who share methods. i want to get a good debate going here, with pros and cons.

(edit)

my bad. this is supposed to go in the Gnereal Magic forum. if someone with the authority could come over and move it, please.

 

[Magic9002]

here are my thoughts

pros:very cheap way to learn magic

cons:
no respect for the artists
non magicains learning secrets
many times bad teaching

to me I think its better to just buy the magic you want.

 

[lachomagician]

Agreed 100%. There is never a good way to ensure that only magicians will see the content. For example, I never ever mention Theory11 to anyone. Why? Because non magicians may come in here and see some of the videos, buy them to reveal stuff and so forth. I really mean no offense to anyone, but I think it is just flat out stupid to post something on a site like youtube. I know that is not what the poster meant, but seriously, how will you stop non-magicians from seeing free tutorials? You can't, the only thing we can do is keep magic to ourselves. Isn't that part of what makes magic fun anyway?

 

[TTran]

non magicains learning secrets

He's talking about real magicians that do magic regularly not completly new people.

I think that it's a very good way to learn if you already have a good idea of how the trick works and just don't have the money to buy it. Also It allows to not feel ripped off if you do end up buying it afterwards. I for example, usually know how a trick works before buying it, I only buy it to get the professional style of learning, and thats what you lack when you learn from someone else over a forums or such.

So pros. would be that it's Free, and better then a "Product question" forums

Cons. would be not as effective learning, you won't know all the subtleties and such. Also not having the visual of how the trick performs really slows down the learning.

Gatit, you bring up a good point about non magicians being able to enter, but if you look around there are some sites where they do have methods to only allow magicians to enter, for example, asking a series of question about how tricks work, or sleights and also having continuous contributions to see higher level tricks.

 

[Ender]

Wow, good feedback, guys. I think this could become a really good discussion. And Magic9002, you said that 'sharers' have no respect for the artists who invented the tricks. I have some friends who are magicians and we have shared tricks that we've bought, and I have nothing but respect for the geniuses who came up with these effects. Even if I was a serious, full-time sharer like on those sites we're discussing, I'd still respect the people who came up with the tricks.

 

[aznofspades]

It is kind of similar to music.

When me or my friends get a new CD (yeah we're old skool we share it with each other and we all burn it onto our ipods. probably technically illegal, but we're practically family: we share our food we share our houses, why not our music?

Limewire is illegal because although it's still the same concept (sharing is caring) it takes it to an extreme level where you are sharing with complete strangers copyrighted stuff. The only reason you are sharing it is because you want to bypass the law and get it for free.

 

[lachomagician]

TTran I agree. I personally enjoy buying full effects from the source, simply because of seeing the full routine and/or learning other versions of the effects. However I do understand that sometimes there are ways to prevent non magicians from learning effects. I just think that, to me, effects are much more valuable when bought. But I do understand that sometimes money is tight and you want to learn something new relating to our art. I think, magic is worth sharing with someone who is interested in putting in the effort to learn and practice the art, not share it with someone who saw a trick you did and wants to "one up you" or "copy" you. I just think we should be smart with our magic. That is my two cents, but I am glad people are posting very interesting opinions on the site. Keep them coming!

 

[lux-ferre]

If there was a way to make sure that only real magicians were sharing and viewing content, then I don't see much wrong in it. However, like otheres pointed out, the material might reach non-magicians.

 

[drorange]

hey ender drorange form nm do u know when its going to be back up

 

[Ender]

hey ender drorange form nm do u know when its going to be back up

Hey man! I 'll pm you about that.

Anyway, guys, this is a really good discussion. You all have interesting opinions. Let's spice things up a bit: Here's a completely hypothetical scenario -
your magician friend invites you tou a website with thousands of magicians on it. It's a magic sharing site with a member count pushing 10,000. This is different than sharing tricks with your friend. What would you do?

 

[harapanong]

My views:

1. Theory 11 is not ready to become such a site.
2. If we reveal methods, I think non-magicians will get bored reading it. You ever tried letting non-magicians read books like... Royal Road to Card Magic? My friends once secretly took my copy to try read my "secrets", and they gave it back after 2 minutes, apologizing to me and saying the book was "very boring" and they didn't like reading it.

- harapan. magic!

 

[Ender]

1) I wasn't suggesting that theory11 become like that. This was a hypothetical situation to stir up some conversation.

2) In this scenario, the website is a magician's website, so there are no non-magicians.

-Ender-