Help on Selecting a Product Please

Nov 20, 2007
4,410
6
Sydney, Australia
Hi guys.

So I was just wondering, like, I'm totally lost. See there's this superawesomebrandspankingnew DVD that's out, Product X, and apparently like 95% of young magicians have it. It full looks mad modern and stuff and it's popular and new so it must be good right? Everyone must love it. It's like impromptu too, which is awesome cause I've always been caught when I use a palm I never practiced to add a gaff to the deck. Oh and is it hard-hitting? I want to be able to watch the DVD, copy exactly what the guy does, and be able to fry people in the next 3 minutes. And if I can't learn it in 3 minutes I'll just post another thread and ask for the real secret that'll let me do the sleight in 3 minutes. I'm an original person by the way guys, just in case you were wondering. I actually personalise tricks. Instead of the Ego Change, I use the Clipshift. Yeah, take that, generic tricks.

The problem is, for the next month, my parents are only letting me buy one thing using their credit card. I know, right? God, other people are so spoiled. So like I wanna know if I should get that awesome new thing (btw I heard that apparently there are like some books or something, something about a bible but I'm not religious so yeah - and there's nothing in old stuff anyway, I want modern!), or whether I should get Product Y - you know, that really superawesomebrandspankingnew DVD that's not out yet - that thing I saw this awesome trailer for. I don't know what the actual, like, trick is but the editing sure was mad.

So like, I know it's like a not-yet-released thing yet but I wanted to know, what did you guys think? Even though you don't actually have the DVD, probably don't know what's on it either, and couldn't possibly give me a decent judgment on it, what do you think? I figure since like you know nothing about it, that's like totally obvious to ask, right?

And just to make it easier on you guys I'm gonna tell you nothing about myself. But my style is like, I like to freak people out and make them scream. You know the reaction like you get when you punch their mother? Yeah, only with like, magic. Cause that's awesome.

Btw my skill level is like intermediate (but don't bag me out if I don't know some things... Wtf is an Erdnase...)

Ellusionist sucks! Ellusionist is full of n00bs!

...Now post the same answer for me for 2 or 3 pages. Ok... Go!

kthxbye
 
May 3, 2008
1,146
4
Hong Kong
wtf was the point of that?
we all know about the spoilt 10 year olds but still what was the point of that?
i only found one thing here worth reading "the reaction like you get when you punch their mother?" made me laugh.
 
Woah.. that is... so... true.....

I actually realised how bad these type of questions were a few months back, and now I'm forcing myself to not buy any new material, except for books which are worth studying
 
May 3, 2008
864
3
33
Singapore
www.youtube.com
It's hard hitting. Get it 5/5 totally recommended.



good point, however, I dont think that you shouldve posted this. It's not going to change anything. It'll only have a bunch of people saying "yea. true."
 
Sep 20, 2007
153
1
I wish my parents let me use their credit card... but no "you need to get a job ben" and then bang bang shoot shoot I killed those losers
 
Sep 1, 2007
1,572
2
34
Leicester, UK
www.youtube.com
*breathes a breath of relief*

For a moment, I thought I was gonna have to slap you. :p

It's a shame that what Prae has posted could encapsulate nearly 70-80% of the new comers to magic. Though I partly blame that on the culture they see when they try to get into it... Unless you have a good start with good people with you, it's really tough to get on the right kind of track.

I'm not so good with words, but hopefully I've got across some sort of idea that I was trying to...

- Sean
 
Sep 2, 2007
1,186
16
42
London
I think that the people who ask these questions and the people who answer them share equal blame for their futility.

There's nothing wrong with asking for advice before making a purchase, however, it's important to be clear about what you want this product to do for you, and why. For example, if you're asking about Surfaced, why do you want it? To learn to do the shakey-hand colour change in ten minutes? In that case, people could advise you against Surfaced and point you in the direction of a one-hand top palm. Do you want to use it to make you a better card magician? Well, then, informed advisors could direct you to Erdnase, Royal Road and Expert Card Technique before you even think about the clip shift. If, however, you just want the latest product and be able to keep up with the newest stuff that everyone else is doing on their videos, of course you need Surfaced, but you knew that anyway, so you didn't really need to ask.

One of the problem comes with the adjectives people use to describe their "style". Everyone wants "visual", "hard-hitting", "impromptu" effects. However, these people haven't really worked out what these terms mean. All magic is "visual", unless you're doing mentalism over the phone or on the radio, "hard-hitting" is achieved by the performance rather than the product, and as for "impromptu"...why is that so important? To make things easier to perform? Probably not, since normally these kind of posters aren't interested in easy. To give an instant reset? Again, probably not, because a lot of these people aren't table-hopping and having to perform the same routine over and over again. So borrowed items can be used? Again, probably not, because a lot of these posters are using custom decks which would be rendered redundant if they were borrowing cards.

Basically, if you're asking advice on a product, you need to be clear about what you intend to achieve by it's purchase. Otherwise any response to your query will be pointless.
 
Jul 16, 2008
52
0
austin, tx
You know... Most of the "extra-smart" people criticizing here share the blame.

There are two converging factors here that make this phenomenon easy to wrap one's head around:

1. A majority of the time, these are young kids bombarded by the newest, coolest thing. There are obviously varying levels of maturity, but if you don't have a good group of magician friends or a mentor, and you get your supplies/ideas online, of course younger people are going to gravitate to the coolest produced thing. Maybe it's extra-annoying to some when they post uninformative questions about which products to buy (or have their parents buy), but can you really, honestly not see why this is happening?

2. I rarely see people posting in these type of threads a recommendation of where to buy a book with some of the source material for the move in it. Perhaps, instead of a sarcastic thread that some of the targets won't comprehend anyway, one could post a suggestion for a better book that contains some of the moves in the area the person was talking about. Or perhaps one could ignore it completely. The condescending, "better than thou" attitude is, quite frankly, just as frustrating.
 
Sep 2, 2007
1,186
16
42
London
You know... Most of the "extra-smart" people criticizing here share the blame.

There are two converging factors here that make this phenomenon easy to wrap one's head around:

1. A majority of the time, these are young kids bombarded by the newest, coolest thing. There are obviously varying levels of maturity, but if you don't have a good group of magician friends or a mentor, and you get your supplies/ideas online, of course younger people are going to gravitate to the coolest produced thing. Maybe it's extra-annoying to some when they post uninformative questions about which products to buy (or have their parents buy), but can you really, honestly not see why this is happening?

2. I rarely see people posting in these type of threads a recommendation of where to buy a book with some of the source material for the move in it. Perhaps, instead of a sarcastic thread that some of the targets won't comprehend anyway, one could post a suggestion for a better book that contains some of the moves in the area the person was talking about. Or perhaps one could ignore it completely. The condescending, "better than thou" attitude is, quite frankly, just as frustrating.

I hope I wasn't being included in that "better than thou" group. I'll accept "extra-smart" if you're throwing that one in my direction, even with the quotation marks, but I consistently post recommendations in threads where people have phrased their questions in a manner that allows me to understand what they're looking for. And I used a specific example of a way in which I answer such queries in my earlier post. The point you're missing is that the person asking the question needs to have thought about exactly what they're asking otherwise they are never going to get a sensible response, e.g.:

QUESTION: Is Surfaced good?
ANSWER 1: Yes, it's super-visual.
ANSWER 2: Yes, I think it's really hard-hitting.
ANSWER 3: No, I don't think the Clip Shift is worth the effort.

Does the questioner really get any useful information from that?

I think this thread is quite helpful, as I'm sure a lot of people have made purchases they later regret, and this may contribute towards them phrasing their questions in a way that elicits more useful answers.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Sep 17, 2008
195
1
Maryland
When I first read this, I thought....I am not even going to read anymore. So I stopped reading at the first parent line about the credit card.

It just goes to show you that if you write an appropriate post, you may get a better response, or even have someone read the entire post.
 
Sep 2, 2007
1,186
16
42
London
When I first read this, I thought....I am not even going to read anymore. So I stopped reading at the first parent line about the credit card.

It just goes to show you that if you write an appropriate post, you may get a better response, or even have someone read the entire post.

I may have misunderstood, but I took that to mean you didn't bother to read the entire post.

If that's correct, then the only message that can be drawn from that is that you were more willing to spend thirty seconds writing a knee-jerk response to a post you didn't consider "appropriate" than to reading the whole thing. That would have given you a chance to digest the meaning of the whole thing and to formulate a considered response.

Why did you stop reading?

(I seem to be getting quite confrontational in my old age...what's the deal with that?)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Jul 16, 2008
52
0
austin, tx
I hope I wasn't being included in that "better than thou" group. I'll accept "extra-smart" if you're throwing that one in my direction, even with the quotation marks, but I consistently post recommendations in threads where people have phrased their questions in a manner that allows me to understand what they're looking for. And I used a specific example of a way in which I answer such queries in my earlier post. The point you're missing is that the person asking the question needs to have thought about exactly what they're asking otherwise they are never going to get a sensible response, e.g.:

QUESTION: Is Surfaced good?
ANSWER 1: Yes, it's super-visual.
ANSWER 2: Yes, I think it's really hard-hitting.
ANSWER 3: No, I don't think the Clip Shift is worth the effort.

Does the questioner really get any useful information from that?

I think this thread is quite helpful, as I'm sure a lot of people have made purchases they later regret, and this may contribute towards them phrasing their questions in a way that elicits more useful answers.


I wasn't targeting you. It's certainly reasonable to request that people be more informative about what they are looking for;)
 
Searching...
{[{ searchResultsCount }]} Results