I have to admit I could only stomach the first few pages of this thread. After which, I found myself extremely frustrated with what I was reading. Imitation is the best form of flattery? Imitation is a part of the learning process?
In my opinion, these are nothing more than cheap excuses to not putting in the effort to being original. Come on.
This is exactly what I was talking about in another thread of this forum. I apologize for the broad generalization, but I do feel the internet has spawned more cop-out hacks than it has legitimate practicioners of magic. It seems like everyone is just settling with what they see. I guess that comes with the territory of a visual medium like videos and the internet. When people see something flashy, their attention is drawn to it. It's easy to cop out and assume the way Daniel Madison vanishes a deck is as good as it's is going to get. There's no need to change it, because if it's not broken-- why fix it, right? This is a genuine problem, because copycats are only mere shadows who do subpar renditions of what they see. The more copycats there are, the more bad magic there'll be. It matters, because it's ridiculing and belittling the craft that some take more seriously to try to preserve. That's the truth.
I agree that it's easy to be impressionable when learning a new effect. But to steal someone's entire presentation and not do anything to make the technique and method your own means you have nothing to add to it. How can that possibly be? I find it very, very hard to believe that as young individuals with 13+ years of experience just living, that some of you cannot make a presentation fit who you are. Not to sound self-glorifying, but I find it hard to believe, because I was doing it at ten. Actually, I know other kids younger than that who can make magic more applicable to their own lives. Granted, it's rudimentary and laughable material, but you'd be surprised to see how much more developed an 8-year-old is with a simple Svengali Coloring Book than some 20-year-olds are with the most advanced card magic in the world!
Originality is a fundamental. It's not a mature lesson that you have to grow up to understand. I find it taught in some of the most elementary of books with lots of pictures for everyone to comprehend. Tips on presentation are usually scattered throughout write-ups in elementary books like the Tarbell Course, Mark Wilson's book, the Bill Severn volumes. I'll admit it may be a difficult lesson to learn off a page, but it's better than being brainwashed into copying whatever you see on a screen.
I will always be an advocate of learning magic the old-fashioned way. I was extremely fortunate to have done so. Read books. Meet people. Only use visual aids like DVDs as supplementary sources. We've become so dependent on the internet and the videos we see that the blind are leading the blind now. I have to agree with Draven above-- this issue really does separate the legitimate performers from the annoying Uncle Bobs.
...I just couldn't believe what I was reading. I'm sorry. Copying one's work just isn't good in my book.
RS.