and it must have because now certain tuxedo clad, card shuffling arctic birds have overtaken the website.
In a recent press release Magic Cafe founder Steve Brooks has announced that the site has partnered with Penguin Magic for the next 12 months in an effort to better help cafe forum members with their outstanding questions in certain product oriented/ driven forums on the website. This change is apparently the first of many new "experiments" to come. Oh goody, I may just die of excitement, oh no wait. I'm sorry Steve, I just clung onto life.
It's not a bad idea to actually have an on board insight technical help chat window in which members could ask questions, or get answers to things that make product buying difficult over the internet, but the problem I have with Mr. Brook's system is it's Penguin. Let's face it, Penguin isn't known for quality, nor high ethics. I remember here recently they tried to rip off Theory11's Wire wholesale! Don't get me started on some of their DVD's either. I've used a few of them as coasters on more than one occasion.
The thing is, is there are plenty of great places on the internet you can go to chat with other magicians and get questions answered without having to rely on a Penguin representative to do the work for you. Frankly, call me crazy, but isn't that kind of what forums like the Cafe (and this one) is for? Second of all, how can I be assured that the advice being dolled out to me is qualified to be speaking to me on things that I am considering for my show? Am I speaking to someone with Max Mavin's depth of knowledge on the craft, or am I speaking to some teenager who needed a part time job so he can afford that latest Xbox game kids have been going nuts over? Or worse, a company man who doesn't care one bit about who I am, or what I do, only in what he sells and how much of it he hawks?
That's the one thing about the Hollywood Magic store in (duh) Hollywood, California that I absolutely hated. The guys behind the counter in there only seemed to care about sales. They very rarely ever listened to my needs as a consumer, and it always seemed to me that their recommendations were what was best for them. If you weren't willing to pay top dollar, they grew tired of you quickly, and would move on to the next wallet with a pulse that walked into the store behind you. I fear that same sales oriented focus will overtake the efforts put out by Mr. Brooks with this year long "experiment" because, lets face it, Penguin has a vested interest in this project, and why wouldn't they hawk their own crap before sending you along the way to something that may actually be of value to you. Something that anyone else who DIDN'T work for the company may have suggested (for free) with a simple inquiry to the forums.
With that in consideration I believe the true motivations behind this "helpful" alliance has been revealed like a horrible double lift. It seems only to obvious to me now that any decision Mr. Brooks makes, with regards to his website, is all about how to maximize his take home profits. Think about it. You can't sign up at the cafe with a free web email service like Yahoo, Gmail, or Hotmail you have to use a paid account. Those are harder to forge, and usually are kept up since it's you know a paid for service. When you sign up on the forums at the Magic Cafe you agree to allow Mr. Brooks to spam blast you anytime he damn well feels like it with useless advertising messages about buy X new product coming out, or sometimes x new update to the website. Here's the fun part, are you ready? You can't opt out, and god help you if you ever call him out on the spam it is! Now, we've got a built in live chat system that only affects forums where new products, selling, trading, or retailing occurs being offered by a company with obvious self motivated aspirations in mind! It's reasons like this why I love Theory11, and Ellusionist more. The support structure there at least helps you grow in the art, and isn't just interested in hitting your wallet for all it's worth.
It's not like the money he makes ever goes back into the website anyways. He's still using the same layout with horrible animated gif's every now and again that most kids learn how to make in an 8th grade computer science class. Sure you're going to pay for server maintenance, but honestly the Cafe can't be THAT poor. Steve Brooks is an active participant in producing magic DVD's and other products, he has donation banners up all over that website, sells add space like mad, pimps others products, to which I'm sure he's getting an advertising cut out of it, and now he's in bed with Penguin. This is more of a rant now, than anything else and for that I'm sorry. It really didn't start out that way, but I can't help but feel like if Mr. Brooks actually cared half a flip about his community the way it's obvious that other sites such as this one does, he'd put a little more effort back into updating, and taking better care of it. Not dressing up obvious marketing ploys in flimsy veiled attempts to make it look like it was something helpful, and not sales driven. When it's all said and done, at the end of the day the only thing Mr. Brooks cares about is money, not helping other magicians, and not the other people in his forum. I knew there was a reason why I didn't support the Cafe much. This would be one of them.
In a recent press release Magic Cafe founder Steve Brooks has announced that the site has partnered with Penguin Magic for the next 12 months in an effort to better help cafe forum members with their outstanding questions in certain product oriented/ driven forums on the website. This change is apparently the first of many new "experiments" to come. Oh goody, I may just die of excitement, oh no wait. I'm sorry Steve, I just clung onto life.
It's not a bad idea to actually have an on board insight technical help chat window in which members could ask questions, or get answers to things that make product buying difficult over the internet, but the problem I have with Mr. Brook's system is it's Penguin. Let's face it, Penguin isn't known for quality, nor high ethics. I remember here recently they tried to rip off Theory11's Wire wholesale! Don't get me started on some of their DVD's either. I've used a few of them as coasters on more than one occasion.
The thing is, is there are plenty of great places on the internet you can go to chat with other magicians and get questions answered without having to rely on a Penguin representative to do the work for you. Frankly, call me crazy, but isn't that kind of what forums like the Cafe (and this one) is for? Second of all, how can I be assured that the advice being dolled out to me is qualified to be speaking to me on things that I am considering for my show? Am I speaking to someone with Max Mavin's depth of knowledge on the craft, or am I speaking to some teenager who needed a part time job so he can afford that latest Xbox game kids have been going nuts over? Or worse, a company man who doesn't care one bit about who I am, or what I do, only in what he sells and how much of it he hawks?
That's the one thing about the Hollywood Magic store in (duh) Hollywood, California that I absolutely hated. The guys behind the counter in there only seemed to care about sales. They very rarely ever listened to my needs as a consumer, and it always seemed to me that their recommendations were what was best for them. If you weren't willing to pay top dollar, they grew tired of you quickly, and would move on to the next wallet with a pulse that walked into the store behind you. I fear that same sales oriented focus will overtake the efforts put out by Mr. Brooks with this year long "experiment" because, lets face it, Penguin has a vested interest in this project, and why wouldn't they hawk their own crap before sending you along the way to something that may actually be of value to you. Something that anyone else who DIDN'T work for the company may have suggested (for free) with a simple inquiry to the forums.
With that in consideration I believe the true motivations behind this "helpful" alliance has been revealed like a horrible double lift. It seems only to obvious to me now that any decision Mr. Brooks makes, with regards to his website, is all about how to maximize his take home profits. Think about it. You can't sign up at the cafe with a free web email service like Yahoo, Gmail, or Hotmail you have to use a paid account. Those are harder to forge, and usually are kept up since it's you know a paid for service. When you sign up on the forums at the Magic Cafe you agree to allow Mr. Brooks to spam blast you anytime he damn well feels like it with useless advertising messages about buy X new product coming out, or sometimes x new update to the website. Here's the fun part, are you ready? You can't opt out, and god help you if you ever call him out on the spam it is! Now, we've got a built in live chat system that only affects forums where new products, selling, trading, or retailing occurs being offered by a company with obvious self motivated aspirations in mind! It's reasons like this why I love Theory11, and Ellusionist more. The support structure there at least helps you grow in the art, and isn't just interested in hitting your wallet for all it's worth.
It's not like the money he makes ever goes back into the website anyways. He's still using the same layout with horrible animated gif's every now and again that most kids learn how to make in an 8th grade computer science class. Sure you're going to pay for server maintenance, but honestly the Cafe can't be THAT poor. Steve Brooks is an active participant in producing magic DVD's and other products, he has donation banners up all over that website, sells add space like mad, pimps others products, to which I'm sure he's getting an advertising cut out of it, and now he's in bed with Penguin. This is more of a rant now, than anything else and for that I'm sorry. It really didn't start out that way, but I can't help but feel like if Mr. Brooks actually cared half a flip about his community the way it's obvious that other sites such as this one does, he'd put a little more effort back into updating, and taking better care of it. Not dressing up obvious marketing ploys in flimsy veiled attempts to make it look like it was something helpful, and not sales driven. When it's all said and done, at the end of the day the only thing Mr. Brooks cares about is money, not helping other magicians, and not the other people in his forum. I knew there was a reason why I didn't support the Cafe much. This would be one of them.