Food for thought

[WitchDocIsIn]

So, when I'm bored I sometimes scroll through sites like Not Always Right. Today I stumbled onto this:

(I’m working a late night, bored out of my skull, when a well-dressed young man comes in and grabs a candy bar and a soda, etc. When he comes to check out, I’m just trying to be friendly and hope the night ends quickly.)

Customer: “Hey! How are you doing tonight?”

Me: “Oh, fantastic! Yourself?”

(The young man smiles a wry grin and flips out his wallet. A ball of flame a foot high shoots from it, and I’m scared out of my skin, nearly falling over onto the floor.)

Customer: “Just great! Boring night, eh?”

Me: “I, uh… Yeah. Nice and slow.”

(The man snapped his wallet again, and a slightly weaker puff of fire belched out. I caught a glimpse of some kind of mechanism in his wallet. The sale concluded normally, though I asked for a break from my manager to make sure that it really happened, and that my eyebrows hadn’t been singed off.)

Just thought it interesting to see the experience from the other side of things. Clearly this is a fire wallet. Clearly, this guy thought he was being funny/clever/something. Clearly, the clerk just thought he was a jacka** and feared for her own safety and health.

Is that the impression we want to give to people?

 

[Maaz Hasan]

So, when I'm bored I sometimes scroll through sites like Not Always Right. Today I stumbled onto this:



Just thought it interesting to see the experience from the other side of things. Clearly this is a fire wallet. Clearly, this guy thought he was being funny/clever/something. Clearly, the clerk just thought he was a jacka** and feared for her own safety and health.

Is that the impression we want to give to people?

I don't think he ment to do it. Maybe he was new to performing, or just bought one and doesn't normally perform. Normally Fire Wallets work better in a controlled setting with a bit of an intro patter, right?

Personally, I would never do something like a fire wallet as an immediate trick. People are inherently fearful of fire... especially spontaneous combustion.

Something like a bill change would've been better.

 

[Justinquill]

You can thank Scam School for this, in the video they sell the fire wallet with, they actually promote using it like this young guy used it. For me, that kind of thing is a little obnoxious, if you want to do magic randomly for unsuspecting people, do something much more subtle, something they are not even sure they saw. Now take that with my opinion of just don't. Even when I'm out doing a walk around street performance, when I approach someone or a group of people I always introduce myself and ask if they want to see some magic, or if they want to see something cool or weird. Ambush magic tends to get a big shock but the person you are doing it for is almost always confused and somewhat annoyed afterward.

"Confusion is not magic." Dai Vernon.

 

[WitchDocIsIn]

I seriously doubt Scam School is solely responsible for this kind of behavior.

But really - think about it. How many YouTube videos of "pranks" and "street magic" probably result in this kind of reaction from the "audience"?

Ask yourselves, have you ever performed when the people watching maybe weren't actually interested? Did the people really enjoy it, or were they just politely letting you do your thing because it's the easiest way to deal with someone who insists on intruding sometimes?

Not any "you" in particular, just a general statement.

 

[ChrisJGJ]

But really - think about it. How many YouTube videos of "pranks" and "street magic" probably result in this kind of reaction from the "audience"?

Not sure why you put audience in quotation marks, but I assume it's because you know the REAL target audience for these prank / street magic videos isn't the people in the video, but the people at home. Which means the people in the video don't matter. I'm not saying that is right or wrong, but that is the reality for most online magicians.

Ask yourselves, have you ever performed when the people watching maybe weren't actually interested? Did the people really enjoy it, or were they just politely letting you do your thing because it's the easiest way to deal with someone who insists on intruding sometimes?

Not any "you" in particular, just a general statement.

For "me" in particular, if I'm busking I just assume people want to watch if they're standing there watching lol. For all other scenarios I ask politely if I can perform for them, or I wait to be asked to perform. If they decline, I thank them for their time, wish them a wonderful rest of the day, and carry on. Even if I don't end up performing for someone, I want their impression of a magician to be a positive one.

 

[WitchDocIsIn]

The quotes are because an audience is a group who decide they want to see entertainment. There's a lot of popular videos of people doing stuff like what's described in the quoted story, and the people they are doing it to are not choosing to indulge in a performance. That's not a performance, it's borderline assault.

And again, I'm not directing these comments at any particular person. If the shoe fits, feel free to lace that sucker up and put it on, but I just hope people will think about their performances and how they are perceived - from a third person perspective and not just necessarily from the perspective of the person "performing". That's the first step in creating more meaningful magic.

 

[Josh Burch]

I love real reactions like this. Magicians lie to themselves a lot and need to be a little more critical of what they are doing and why they are doing it. I can see a fire wallet working as an introduction to a piece of magic but it's the kind of thing that I feel like the audience understands at face value. There's a special wallet that belches flames. I think most people get that.

If that is their first thought maybe we need to give them more credit.

 

[Maaz Hasan]

I love real reactions like this. Magicians lie to themselves a lot and need to be a little more critical of what they are doing and why they are doing it. I can see a fire wallet working as an introduction to a piece of magic but it's the kind of thing that I feel like the audience understands at face value. There's a special wallet that belches flames. I think most people get that.

If that is their first thought maybe we need to give them more credit.

One of the first things I figured out while performing is that the audience isn't dumb. When you [as in a general "you", not anyone specifically] first learn magic, it's taught at almost this level, trying to make it seem like you are superior to the laymen. In reality, they are just as smart as you, and you aren't any better than them.

In a super broad sense, the only difference between a spectator who's a magician and one who's a layman is that a layman knows something is fishy, and the magician knows the name of the fishy-ness.

 

[obrienmagic]

I have become more reserved as i have gotten older. Not sure if it is at all related to maturing myself but i just do not randomly start doing magic for people. I usually wait for the fact that i am a magician to be brought up before doing magic. Th only exception of course is if i am in a paid gig, but even then i approach the group and start talking to them first rather than just attacking them with magic lol