An Argument For Removing Secrecy

Jeff McBride recently commented on a post by Oscar Owen. In Owen's post, he teaches a coin vanish (the same one your Grandad taught you).

Owen's video is not exposure unless you view free magic tutorials for open-domain tricks as exposure. He's not just revealing a secret; he teaches the trick at length to aspiring magicians. Oscar promotes himself as a professional magician and magic teacher. He has 19,000 Instagram followers.

The tutorial has been viewed 200,000 times.

Jeff McBride commented, "This is exposure and it kills magic".

Screenshots of the interaction between Owen and McBride went a little mini-viral within magic Facebook groups this week. Facebook magicians had a lot to say. For the sake of today's article, please assume we are only discussing open-domain trick tutorials aimed at people interested in learning magic.

Buckle up because it's going to get a little controversial:

My initial take about all this was, why isn't McBride commenting the same thing on David Copperfield's free tutorial videos on YouTube?! Copperfield's taught some great open-domain tricks with coins and bills. Penn & Teller taught simple magic tricks along with many well-known magicians in their pandemic special, too. I started to wonder if this story was more about the self-fulfilling divide between older and younger magicians.

But then I realised perhaps McBride hasn't seen the videos of Copperfield teaching open-domain tricks on YouTube in recent years. McBride's values have been pretty consistent his entire career, only ever teaching magic to his paid membership and never online for free. So maybe when he comes across the videos of older magicians teaching tricks, he'll comment negatively on them, too.

Eventually, I just decided McBride probably has no idea how algorithms work. He might not realise that every time he comments on a free trick tutorial video, regardless of what he comments, he's actually signalling to the algorithm to show him more free trick tutorial videos. There's something funny about the idea that Jeff McBride is sitting on a couch somewhere, scrolling through social media, and due to his comments, he's only seeing free tutorials that slowly drive him insane.

I've met McBride, and he was wonderful. I'd actually say he might be the best party guest I've ever met, and when I saw him perform from backstage once, he captivated the entire audience.

I took some deep breaths and tried to ignore the whole thing.

And then I saw someone post a list of the ways "genuine" magicians should learn magic tricks; these included library books (dear God) but that mostly recommended learning magic at magic clubs, at lectures and directly from magic mentors.

Magic has a misogyny and diversity problem (if that sentence upsets you, maybe read this), and there was something about the list of ways genuine magicians should learn magic that suddenly made it all so clear to me.

I care way more about encouraging people from a broad range of backgrounds to join magic than I do about guarding the secret of a coin vanish (a coin vanish!).

Maybe I was overreacting. I had just seen a post by another well-respected older magician offering an illusion to rent that he'd named "The Transported Man". I had to really force myself not to comment, "Ummm, can only men perform this?" So I was probably a bit worked up.

I'd also just finished reading Michela Cole's book, which says much about gatekeeping in UK television. She gets it all entirely correct, and it's why I avoid working in the UK TV world, too. But if she thinks TV has a gatekeeping problem which results in a lack of diversity, wait till she hears about magic.

Anyway, libraries aren't a thing any more, and even if they were, the one old magic book in there isn't going to be better than the free video tutorials online.

The internet, by the way, is available to everyone everywhere. You don't need a car, you don't need money, or your parent's permission to leave home for a few hours.

I went into a brilliant public library in Chicago last month – I couldn't find a magic book, but there was a row of internet-connected computers and free WiFi.

Let's please draw a line under the ridiculous idea that magic should only be learned from library books. We get it, lads; you learned magic from a book in a library, and it frustrates you we youngsters don't have to work ever as hard to learn magic. But your frustration should be aimed at society, not us lot.

If you were born in 1995, you'd be learning the cross-cut force from Penn & Teller on YouTube, too – soz.

I realise that there's a bigger discussion to be had about the way content gets delivered nowadays and that you might not want people to get shown trick tutorials on their Discover page without seeking it out. But let me get into that:

• Firstly, you're seeing those videos because you've told Meta you're interested in magic (actively or passively). And you did so by spending 100+ hours on their platforms (far longer than it would take to get to a library, so how's that for proving that you're motivated to become a magician?!).

• Secondly, yes, 200,000 people can share an interest in magic, too. (It might help if you try to imagine how many libraries there are in the world with magic books in them).

Open-domain trick tutorial videos from creators posting magic-themed content are delivered differently from other content like pranks or puzzle videos. It's one of the reasons YouTube magician Chris Ramsay's most popular puzzle video has 20 million views, and his most popular magic tutorial has 3 million views despite getting posted on the same channel. It's also why Tom Holland described Ramsay as a puzzle guy, not a magician. Tom likely only sees Ramsay's puzzle videos on his Discover page, not the magic ones.

While a video of Justin Flom exposing the secret to an illusion base within a larger prank video will get sent out to people without a possible interest in magic – the same is far less likely for a video of Oscar Owen wearing a clip-on microphone patiently teaching the handling for a simple coin vanish.

We don't know the number of people who watched Oscar's video, but given that you have to watch it multiple times to learn the trick, and it's incredibly short, it's possible that only 40,000 watched it an average of five times each.

Oscar only has 20,000 followers, and anyone else who was shown the simple trick tutorial will have likely signalled to the algorithms that they are interested in learning magic tricks.

So, to the magicians upset by free tutorials popping up in their Discover feed, assuming they appear in everyone's – I promise that you see these because you've displayed high intent for learning magic.

It's why you're seeing lots of free magic tutorials and far fewer videos for things you might not be interested in, like, perhaps, make-up contouring tutorials, One Direction fan fiction and nuclear engineering breakdowns.

You've only got to look at the Discover section of a friend or partner's account to realise how much we exist online inside a magic bubble.

One Ahead runs ads on Facebook and Instagram. We get between 14 and 34 new free subscribers every day from them. We asked Facebook to target male and female English-speaking users of all ages, but over time, their algorithms learned to only show our magic content to the people most interested in magic.

About 98% of the users that Meta shows our magic content to are male.

About 72% of the users that Meta shows our magic content to are over 55.

The gender gap is alarming. The high average age is concerning, too. Remember, this is people interested in magic across Facebook and Instagram. It perhaps signals an ageing magician population, with fewer and fewer people joining it at younger ages. The fact that most people who see One Ahead's content are over 65 is also concerning because, statistically, many readers will hate this article.

But anyway! What's the alternative? All these magicians banging on about how essential secrets are for magic, but none of them actually provide a solution. Why don't some of you get together and build a website that teaches tricks for free to new magicians who share a genuine interest? And no, you're not allowed to build a paywall over it. There are other ways to prove someone is committed to learning magic without taking their money.

It always makes me chuckle when magicians get all high and mighty about the annoying people at their gigs who want to know how their tricks are done. The ones that pester you for the method, who you know, will go home and google it later, and if they don't find out the method for free, they'll buy the trick, too. God, those people are annoying, aren't they?

Well, I've got news for you: those people are future magicians.

Surely, we should all be making a concerted effort as a community to make these open-domain tricks more easily accessible to everyone and encourage more people to learn the wonderful skill of magic. It has so many brilliant benefits. It helps with your social skills and dexterity and can inspire people when they need it most.

NO! NO WAY. They must never accidentally stumble upon a magic tutorial. Absolutely not. A mentor must teach it to them, or they must first see someone who looks like them doing magic and be stubborn enough of a person to go to a library (a library!) and read an old magic book with gendered language.

I'm using exaggerations for my argument, alright.

Personally, I think magic is brilliant, and I believe strongly that everyone can and should learn a handful of easy magic tricks. I think it would be great if they were taught in school alongside topics like science and math.

WOAH! ABSOLUTELY NOT! You cannot spring magic trick tutorials upon students without them seeking them out first. The kids in that kindergarten class might not be genuinely dedicated magicians. No way.

The more I write about this, the more I realise these older magicians talk about unsolicited trick tutorials like unsolicited nudes. You must care about nudes enough to seek them out, and they must be behind a paywall or in an old book.

I know magicians are happy to push magic upon non-consenting individuals simply due to the number of magicians' sons I've met who know mnemonica. You didn't make them hike off to a library, did ya?

Anyway, just for the fun of it. Let's imagine the world these magicians seem to be so afraid of. A world in which every easy magic trick is available to learn for free. No, let's go further. Let's imagine a world in which there are no secrets in magic. A world in which anyone can learn any trick they seek out for free.

What a world that might be.

• The quality of magic might drastically improve. Magicians would no longer be able to rely on easy secrets alone. They'd need to invent or learn more challenging methods or combine easy methods with excellent presentation, stagecraft, storytelling, lighting and choreography. Some of the world's best magicians today use easy methods, but they combine them with other brilliant skills such that if a spectator learned the method, they wouldn't be disappointed. Spectators can feel the difference between a performance by Shin Lim and Matt Franco and be equally amazed by both. Famous magicians already know that magic is more than its method – it's why Blaine is comfortable performing shop-bought tricks instead of inventing the secret to every trick he performs.

• The standard of magicians might drastically improve. Our industry currently views and markets magic as "an easy way to impress people". With secrets more easily found online and magicians forced to put more extra effort into their craft to be viewed as impressive, less annoying and lazy magicians would enter the community. Think about an instrument everyone knows is easy to learn and the kind of people attracted to playing it, then imagine a difficult instrument and the quality of people learning it. Finally, picture that easy instrument and how talented someone would need to be for you to want to pay to see them play it. Even I can't tell if that metaphor made sense.

• Magic might become drastically more diverse. With easy tutorials available to anyone who wants them, a range of people from different social and financial backgrounds could learn them. By no longer gatekeeping access to becoming a magician, a broader range of people might walk through the door. Yes, magic mentors are great, but if most older magicians are from a similar background, and mentors are the primary way we're supposed to learn magic, it's unlikely this statistical point will change with each generation. We underestimate how challenging it can be for someone to enter a community that doesn't look like them (see: Billy Elliot). Imagine if Billy could have learned ballet for free on YouTube before paying to attend that class filled with and taught by people of a different gender. The internet is incredible, goddammit! I've learned so many skills online that I wouldn't have done if I'd had to go to a library or find a mentor.

I'm not necessarily advocating for a world with zero magic secrets. But I think imagining such a world makes you realise how much it shouldn't upset you. There's a balance to be struck, and I guess it's best if only simple trick methods are easy to find by people seeking them out.

But we are moving in that direction.

Magic is beginning to exit its secret economy. Magic stores are having to focus more time on producing props and higher-quality downloads instead of relying on selling secrets (also known as sticky tape).

Magic memberships are seeing a mini-boom, and magicians are spending their money on new formats like One Ahead's content model (thanks).

Magic is about more than methods.

The best method is the one that works.

If you're genuinely worried about your audience being able to Google "how to make a coin vanish", well, you might not really be a genuine magician after all. You might just be someone who learned how to vanish a coin from a library book once.

Buckle up. The era of secrets is coming to a close. Magic is going to become more and more about genuine skill, stagecraft, and storytelling, and it's going to attract a more and more diverse community.

I'm not saying my predictions always come true, but I did write about Murphy's possibly launching a magic shop, and they did just set up a "shop." subdomain.