Overall, I cannot say I'm too happy with some of the people in this community. (NOTE: I said some. How much is "some" will be left for you to guess. This is not directed toward the ENTIRE community, but a pretty big chunk of it. So when I say "this community", please don't think I'm talking about EVERY PERSON. You know who you are.)
I feel this community needs a change. A big one. I think people are enthusiastic about advancing their magic and being productive, but many people don't have the DRIVE to do it. I also think that the forums are many times counter-productive with bad advice given from people that are not knowledgeable enough to give it.
Let's rewind the clocks a few days. David Blaine's iPhone app was full of awesome. Even so, my friend Shane Black and I disliked it for the same reasons. We felt it would be cool to laymen, but to have this app as a magician would only show that we have no skill and we are just gimmicky. So Shane developed a new way to use the application. He posted it in the David Blaine thread and not a single person responded to his post. I didn't see it and when Shane told me this on the phone I just said "Well it's possible that people skipped over it because it was a long post in a thread about the app and people just decided to skip over it."
So I asked Shane for his T11 password. I went on and copied and pasted his entire post in its own thread which can be viewed here. To my surprise, the thread barely got ANY responses. Shane predicted it.
So... My question is this. How does a thread like Shane's get almost NO replies after being up for quite a while and a thread like this get 7 pages of replies after being up for only a few minutes? I really wish to know that. Someone spent a few hours coming up with a way to enhance an effect and he gets nothing, but some troll like this somehow manages to get PAGES of replies in minutes? Now does this sound productive to you?
I can get very sick sometimes of what I read on here. It seems people care less about the REAL magic and only care about the newest and greatest thing to come out on T11. Someone actually posted a great idea and wanted some feedback. He got none. That makes me depressed. Now this brings me to my next point.
We just finished the chat with Daniel Garcia. Overall, the video portion was good, but the chatting area of the chat was, in my opinion, a complete disgrace. First off, it was one heck of a spamapalooza. People were spamming their questions CONSTANTLY. The chat was unreadable at some points. Also, TONS of the questions being asked were pathetic. I was seeing things like "What's your favorite deck of cards", "What's the price point for Symphony?", "Any new decks coming out soon?", "When are the DG projects coming out?", and other ridiculous questions. Seriously? I mean SERIOUSLY? You're in a chat with a creative god that works for David Blaine and has tons of working experience, and you ask him what his favorite deck of cards is or what the price point of his new DVD is? I won't elaborate further because that just speaks for itself.
I think we all need to step back for a moment and look at ourselves and where we are with our magic. Are you where you want to be? Look how many books you have on your shelf compared to how many DVD's. Think about the questions you were asking in the DG chat. Also think about how you post on T11. Are your posts primarily in the fiery hell of spam/troll threads or are you posting in a productive thread? I think we all need to step back and look in the mirror for a few long moments.
-Doug
I feel this community needs a change. A big one. I think people are enthusiastic about advancing their magic and being productive, but many people don't have the DRIVE to do it. I also think that the forums are many times counter-productive with bad advice given from people that are not knowledgeable enough to give it.
Let's rewind the clocks a few days. David Blaine's iPhone app was full of awesome. Even so, my friend Shane Black and I disliked it for the same reasons. We felt it would be cool to laymen, but to have this app as a magician would only show that we have no skill and we are just gimmicky. So Shane developed a new way to use the application. He posted it in the David Blaine thread and not a single person responded to his post. I didn't see it and when Shane told me this on the phone I just said "Well it's possible that people skipped over it because it was a long post in a thread about the app and people just decided to skip over it."
So I asked Shane for his T11 password. I went on and copied and pasted his entire post in its own thread which can be viewed here. To my surprise, the thread barely got ANY responses. Shane predicted it.
So... My question is this. How does a thread like Shane's get almost NO replies after being up for quite a while and a thread like this get 7 pages of replies after being up for only a few minutes? I really wish to know that. Someone spent a few hours coming up with a way to enhance an effect and he gets nothing, but some troll like this somehow manages to get PAGES of replies in minutes? Now does this sound productive to you?
I can get very sick sometimes of what I read on here. It seems people care less about the REAL magic and only care about the newest and greatest thing to come out on T11. Someone actually posted a great idea and wanted some feedback. He got none. That makes me depressed. Now this brings me to my next point.
We just finished the chat with Daniel Garcia. Overall, the video portion was good, but the chatting area of the chat was, in my opinion, a complete disgrace. First off, it was one heck of a spamapalooza. People were spamming their questions CONSTANTLY. The chat was unreadable at some points. Also, TONS of the questions being asked were pathetic. I was seeing things like "What's your favorite deck of cards", "What's the price point for Symphony?", "Any new decks coming out soon?", "When are the DG projects coming out?", and other ridiculous questions. Seriously? I mean SERIOUSLY? You're in a chat with a creative god that works for David Blaine and has tons of working experience, and you ask him what his favorite deck of cards is or what the price point of his new DVD is? I won't elaborate further because that just speaks for itself.
I think we all need to step back for a moment and look at ourselves and where we are with our magic. Are you where you want to be? Look how many books you have on your shelf compared to how many DVD's. Think about the questions you were asking in the DG chat. Also think about how you post on T11. Are your posts primarily in the fiery hell of spam/troll threads or are you posting in a productive thread? I think we all need to step back and look in the mirror for a few long moments.
-Doug