Why do people hate Jay Sankey?

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Jan 26, 2017
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Just found entire communities geared towards hating Jay. Can someone explain why? I love him (like... as a magician/teacher/person... not in the way you may have thought ... you know what I mean.... I love his work, that's what I'm trying to say.)!
 
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WitchDocIsIn

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Well, he occasionally has this weird thing where he just forgets how to do customer service - like, people receiving broken gimmicks being ignored or dismissed, responding with a fake name (I think Scott?), etc. Not as bad as Outlaw Effects but enough to earn a reputation. Also he tends to re-release the same thing over and over, or put out things that aren't really worked out for real world practicality.

Personally I have next to no opinion of him, other than he seems to have a very high opinion of himself. It seems pretty extreme to have a community geared towards hating him, to me. That's a lot of negativity for next to no reason.
 
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Jan 26, 2017
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Well, he occasionally has this weird thing where he just forgets how to do customer service - like, people receiving broken gimmicks being ignored or dismissed, responding with a fake name (I think Scott?), etc. Not as bad as Outlaw Effects but enough to earn a reputation. Also he tends to re-release the same thing over and over, or put out things that aren't really worked out for real world practicality.

Personally I have next to no opinion of him, other than he seems to have a very high opinion of himself. It seems pretty extreme to have a community geared towards hating him, to me. That's a lot of negativity for next to no reason.
Lol the customer service thing just sounds messed up on Jay's part.

And yeah, I was actually kinda freaked out by these hate communities. There's even one (person or community I'm not sure) on Reddit called "I HATE JAY SANKEY"
 

WitchDocIsIn

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Well, there is a lot of entitlement in the magic world (And performance world in general in my experience).

Nobody's perfect, but some people just take it on as their mission to spread the gospel of whatever hurt they endured (real or imagined).
 
Jan 26, 2017
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Not to mention the fact that some people just love to hate, and hate just for the sake of hating. Especially on the Internet.
 
Jul 26, 2016
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There always have been, and always will be, haters, in the world. These are people who are insecure and have an inferiority complex, and so they try to bring themselves up by putting others down.
 
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There always have been, and always will be, haters, in the world. These are people who are insecure and have an inferiority complex, and so they try to bring themselves up by putting others down.
Ha, that is a great way to put it xD

But why Jay Specifically? I mean, he's had these hate things going for him for a long long time.
 
Jun 20, 2017
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Hmm Jay Sankey was one of the magicians that really inspired me when I first got started in magic, so I will always respect him as a really creative and brilliant magician. With that said I lost a lot of respect for him when I saw his performance in Penn and Teller. That was simply bad - like really really bad. And for me it got even worse when he half a year later tried to convince people (and it looks like he succeeded in that), that he actually did fool Penn and Teller, but for some crazy reason just did not want to tell them.

Here's his performance on Penn and Teller
 

CWhite

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Jul 22, 2016
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He appears to be a genuinely decent guy. His rant video after his Penn and Teller performance was very odd to say the least.
Penn gave a retort of sorts on his Sunday School podcast. It was actually very funny.
He is a very talented magician and has worked with everyone from Copperfield to Criss Angel.. (according to his site)
But to have groups that hate on him is a bit much ... just saying..
 
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Jan 26, 2017
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I can't play it for some reason, but meh. Anyways, it's natural for people to grow a hate community as they get more famous. There will always be people who don't agree with you, and it applies for everything.
Hate is different from disagreements.
 
Sep 13, 2014
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The Fool Us fiasco for starters. Also, his magic video that was political on YouTube.

I don't hate the guy but he comes across as someone I'd rather not meet or support.
 
Jun 17, 2017
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I watch guys like Chris Ramsay, Daniel Madison and Xavior Spade...who present themselves in such a cool, down to Earth, laid back manner. Then I watch Sankey...and he seems like the guy at the bar who would come up and interrupt your group conversation obnoxiously and you want to punch him in the face within two minutes.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy some of his tutorials, but he does come off as a bit of a "trying too hard to be cool to the point he's insufferable" kind of guy.
 
Jan 26, 2017
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I watch guys like Chris Ramsay, Daniel Madison and Xavior Spade...who present themselves in such a cool, down to Earth, laid back manner. Then I watch Sankey...and he seems like the guy at the bar who would come up and interrupt your group conversation obnoxiously and you want to punch him in the face within two minutes.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy some of his tutorials, but he does come off as a bit of a "trying too hard to be cool to the point he's insufferable" kind of guy.
Sorry for the late reply, but for whatever reason, I didn't get an alert on this.

The first thing I would like to say is that Ramsay and Madison don't exactly come off as down to Earth (granted, DM has made arrogance his marketing persona - in his actual DVDs and long videos, he actually is pretty humble). I was also referring to Jay outside of his YouTube channel - as with his DVDs and books. To be fair, he kinda comes off as annoying on Camera because he's a comedian (by initial profession), and Comedians can be pretty annoying when there isn't a conversation others can partake in.


Back to the full discusion,

I would like to say that while I really like Sankey, I first found out that some of his stuff isn't the best and he definitely releases some effects which aren't really doable. Next, his P & T thing kinda pissed me off when I first saw it. He also see,s a bit self-centered, but then again, a lot of people are. But what really interested me is this - Sankey seems to take shots at people without any real reason.

Yesterday, I googled some of DM's work to find some effects I heard people talking about, and I ended up finding this:
https://www.theory11.com/forums/threads/daniel-madison-is-a-thief.5246/
Now before you click on it note that it is a very old post, and filled with pretentious comments and utter disregard for morals. It eventualy just became people taking shots at others - became almost like some posts in the Cafe (so glad the Forums here have developed into a much more mature and welcoming community).

What you should focus on is the OP that has Jay's newsletter on it.

The thing that first pissed me off is that Jay flat out calls Madison a thief and tries to be cool about it.

He then gives 3 examples of Madison "stealing" from him. On further research, I found that the effects Jay listed as Madison's "thievery" are different enough from Jay's that they are indeed original. The Madison Effects listed even got a lot more praise than the Sankey ones, and overall looked better.

What really pissed me off though was the last line about Madison not being part of the industry, or being considered a magician. I feel like Sankey blatantly just lied here. Madison became a magician somewhere in the the late 90s. He was a founding member of TXI, Why the hell would he not consider himself a Magician, or part of the industry? I'm like 98% convinced that that quote is made up - the other 2% being the possibility that Sankey was Drunk and imagined it (or called the wrong person), and partial benefit of the doubt.

And Even if Madison did "Steal" them, there was no need to publicize the entire exchange. Magicians think of similar ideas all the time. He should've hit up Madison (for real), and if he said no - which I doubt he'd do - tell Theory 11! Madison was a part of TXI at the time.

What's worse is that I think I've read stuff where he has called out other magicians for no real reason - but I'm not 100% sure if that was a made up thing in my head, or if it was even Sankey (I think I'm actually confusing Criss Angel with him in this specific memory).

Another thing that pisses me off about Sankey is that he puts "INSANE MAGIC TRICK... REVEALED" in a ton of his videos to attract laymen, which isn't necessarily a bad thing since most of the stuff he teaches involves something about performance etiquette (I'm not going into detail about this here, please don't start a discussion about exposure on this post), but it definitely brings more exposure to the laymen community who don't really care about magic, but just want to ruin performances.

And Sankey Hate has obviously existed for a while! Just take a look at that post and read the pretentious replies. They are saying even if Madison stole the tricks, it was ok.

Overall: So While I respect Sankey, I think the dude needs to take a couple chill pills and stop looking at the magic world like he owns it. I think he tries to hard to prove he is "the best" - something that never has, and never will exist in magic.

Edit: Sorry for the rant :D
 
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