May 2009 :: YouTube : Angel or Demon

[JoshuaGillespie]

Whilst I'm now against magic exposure, I learnt almost everything I know from YouTube. When I first saw someone do a card trick I googled "how to do card tricks" and started from there. It led me to YouTube straight away. It has had two positive impacts -

1 - Seeing as any tutorials/reveals on there are piles of salmon, I have had to learn the basic method and work out any subtelties / misdirection myself. This means that I'm very good at improving magic that is given to me, whether they're my own effects or someone elses. ("elses" currently doesn't look like a word to me. Either I'm missing an apostrophe or I'm just really tired. Sorry either way...)

2 - This is the most important thing I've gained from YouTube. Seeing as I never had access to tutorials on ALL of the tricks I wanted I had to become very good at figuring out tricks. Whilst there is obvious benefit there in the fact that I rarely need to buy tricks, it also means that when I think "Oh man, x would be an AMAZING trick" I can come up with a method rather more effectively than a lot of magicians.

A negative I can think of is that YouTube magicians rarely come out of the rabbit hole. They tend to stay in their room all day and never perform to real people and basically become move monkeys and trick junkies, I'm one of the few lucky enough to emerge unscathed.

In short I think that whilst YouTube has it's negatives my magic has grown up on it and made me a better magician in the long run, which is why I'd vote on it being an "Angel".

 

[Parker Nolan]

Now, I think Youtube is great because you can find the moves behind the major tricks (double lifts, passes, etc) but it sucks because so many people can post tutorials on effects they have purchased from sites like theory eleven or ellusionist.

 

[Temitopesmith]

Youtube is absolutely a brilliant source of knowledge..in fact it is the ultimate one..magic just magically appears at youtube.

 

[Boomer Scripps]

I feel that it depends on the trick, if it's just something as simple as a fairly old/widely know trick, I don't mind, but if it's something that should be bought from a website or a magic store, then it gets annoying.

 

[Austin24]

The sad part about it is anyone that can halfway shuffle a deck posts "tutorials" teaching sloppy magic to people who then go out and perform sloppy magic. Making it harder for real hard working magicians to get taken seriously.

 

[RedbeardThePink]

Brian Brushwood posted a youtube video a while back that talked about the ethical teaching of magic on Youtube. He talked about how Youtube is like a library and people have to go looking for what they want to see. As such, teaching magic on youtube, he claims, is kind of like a library offering a book on magic. When he picks magic to teach on youtube, he uses the following criteria:

1. The effect has to be simple enough that the person watching can actually learn it from the video. If at the end of the video the watcher can actually pull off the trick and start practicing it to clean it up, then you've taught them something. If not, the argument could be made that you've simply exposed the effect.

2. The effect must be something that can be done without walking into a magic shop. Magic shops are wonderful, but teaching someone a trick they'd have to buy something for before they've bought what they need is exposure (i.e. putting a video about how to use the Raven in the hands of someone who doesn't own a Raven gimmick).

3. If there is a living magician who is credited with/owns the effect, that magician's permission MUST be given, and often times he gets them on the show to teach the effect themselves.

Personally, I think that's a pretty good benchmark, and I try to keep that in mind when I'm scouring Youtube for new magic (which is a thing I do occasionally). If there's a commercial effect in my routine I like to make sure I paid for it, but a lot of good magic is out there in the public domain, and a lot of that magic is on Youtube.

 

[krab]

Brian Brushwood posted a youtube video a while back that talked about the ethical teaching of magic on Youtube. He talked about how Youtube is like a library and people have to go looking for what they want to see. As such, teaching magic on youtube, he claims, is kind of like a library offering a book on magic. When he picks magic to teach on youtube, he uses the following criteria:

1. The effect has to be simple enough that the person watching can actually learn it from the video. If at the end of the video the watcher can actually pull off the trick and start practicing it to clean it up, then you've taught them something. If not, the argument could be made that you've simply exposed the effect.

2. The effect must be something that can be done without walking into a magic shop. Magic shops are wonderful, but teaching someone a trick they'd have to buy something for before they've bought what they need is exposure (i.e. putting a video about how to use the Raven in the hands of someone who doesn't own a Raven gimmick).

3. If there is a living magician who is credited with/owns the effect, that magician's permission MUST be given, and often times he gets them on the show to teach the effect themselves.

Personally, I think that's a pretty good benchmark, and I try to keep that in mind when I'm scouring Youtube for new magic (which is a thing I do occasionally). If there's a commercial effect in my routine I like to make sure I paid for it, but a lot of good magic is out there in the public domain, and a lot of that magic is on Youtube.

Here is the reply I have given to Brian one different forums and blogs about why calling youtube a library is wrong...

Why youtube isn't a library or what ever is better than a library is the fact i have never gone to a library only to find some books about the Cincinnati Reds blank because some arbitrary bot came in claiming copyright on everything with the words Reds and Cincinnati. even if the book had the rights to write about the team. The library does not have blank books on birds because a record company claimed that the bird singing in the background was copyrighted music. Also when you go to the library you do not have trolls grabbing a book yelling first or trying to tell me how fat my mother is or how I like to have relations with people of the same sex.

So no youtube is not a library or better than a library and it is certanly not the greatest. Any twelve year old with a webcam can make a video and post it. There is no filter for good or bad. It is everyone who wants to can. So you are shotgunning crap at a wall and well there is a ton of crap stuck to the youtube wall. You want to learn a really good magic trick, why go to youtube? Know what you find on youtube? Fourteen year olds who just got the latest thing off the wire trying to teach it begging for likes and subs. The only reason they are showing how it's done is to get subs and likes. They can't talk to real people. That is why when they get something that cost more than $10 they won't expose they use the title of something killer with the words exposed only to say they aren't going to show it, they just want you to like and sub.

Brian also said...

"Both the IBM and SAM have addressed the distinction between "teaching" and "exposure," and their conclusion was that the difference was a deliberate, intentional act on the part of the prospect that indicates their desire to become a student of the art.

Notice they didn't say "you have to join a club to be a magician." They didn't say "you need to pay me 20 bucks to be a magician." They essentially said "You need to take a conscious and deliberate action to show that you are willing to give up tasting sugar, so that you can be sugar." And I think that's a pretty great way to handle it.?

You know there are people who do not care about giving up the wonder, they just can't stand not knowing how it's done. They are the people who can't stand that others are in the spotlight for two minutes and they want to blurt out how it is done. They are the buzz kills at parties like this kerl...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1ExAg8XHCY

Youtube is part of the problem. They see you doing it and think "Well this is how I can get likes and subs." They want fame, even if it is on the internet and they see your show as a way for them to get there. So they pull out the card get their junk in frame and make an exposure video.

You say if a living person hold the rights, do the people who own the publishing rights not count? You say they shouldn't by a DVD from T11 and then make their own video on how it is done, but you are doing the same thing by teaching things from books that some company still owns the publishing rights to. There is a large chunk of people under thirty who thinks everything should be free and on the internet. No living person hold the rights to the book test. How would you feel if they started making videos called Book Test exposed as seen om Scam School?

What it comes down to somewhere along the way magic stopped being about performing for people and became all about selling magic to other magicians or being internet famous. There is a large section of new magicians under 30 who need to stop and look around to understand what magic is really all about.