Month: November 2023

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I, Sickle
or Nobody puts baby in the corner

SIn my previous post I talked about The Magic Circle’s rules regarding exposure and teaching magic on public platforms, and I did it on the basis of controlling access to information to only people directly seeking it. And I ended with “Maybe you could even start a Discord”.

Today I want to drill down into that a little more, in terms of one of the things I think is lacking when you teach magic on a public stage like a youtube channel or even a website:

Community

Now you can get your hammer and sickle out.

Continue reading “I, Sickle
or Nobody puts baby in the corner”

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Ban Hammer
or Throwing the baby out with the bath water

I was planning for my next big post to be a video of my latest routine with a further video explaining its origins, similar to the post I made for the tooth fairy act but watching back the performance, I just wasn’t happy with it yet.

Needs longer to cook.

However it got me thinking about video content and specifically about magic youtubers and such, which all led to with this video my friend and long time reader sent me.

Continue reading “Ban Hammer
or Throwing the baby out with the bath water”

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You’ve Done Enough
or stop trying to make cubes happen

For the longest time, the Rubik’s Cube did not exist. Literally the entire history of the universe until 1974. Then for a considerably shorter period of time, there were no Rubik’s cube magic tricks.
Finally in 2008 Fooler Doolers released the Enchanted Cube, and shortly after in 2013 Takamiz Usui released The Cube, and between them created the entire genre now called Rubik’s cube magic.

This was the beginning of the end.

Continue reading “You’ve Done Enough
or stop trying to make cubes happen”

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Trickbait
or Sell the Sizzle not the Sausage

YouTube thumbnails are slowly coalescing to a singular form.

I remember when the thumbnail of a YouTube video was automatically generated from the middle frame of the video itself, which led to a few years where the YouTube videos with the highest production values had a flash frame in the middle of the video of a nicely designed thumbnail image with enticing text and cover art. Now YouTube lets you choose frame from your video or even upload a separate image, which many people do, leading to the rise of misleading thumbnails. These often feature provocative statements, pictures of celebrities, titillating imagery and red circles to highlight nothing in particular.

It has long been known that the eye of a particular demographic drawn to pictures of the unclad female form, and “sex sells” has long been the motto in the marketing department of masculine products.

But magic products… You want to instinctively draw the eye of a magician you need lemons.

Continue reading “Trickbait
or Sell the Sizzle not the Sausage”