Chris Ramsay's Impact On Magic

I found myself on the train some weeks ago with cards in hand. Yep, I'm one of those magicians. Guilty as charged. 

The boy sitting opposite me, perhaps 17 or 18 years old, pulled his headphones out and sheepishly asked if I could do the Tenkai control.

I gave him the cards, and he showed me a steal from a fan. We ended up talking about various sleights and deck designs that he liked. 

Like the old guy at the back of the magic shop, I found myself asking him the ancient question – how he got into magic. His answer, not too surprisingly, was through the Chris Ramsay YouTube channel. 

He is not the first young magician I know to say this. Alfie, a great magician from Sheffield, was the same, as was Ella, a young performer from Ireland. I asked her about YouTube, and indeed, the bright thumbnails of Alex Pandrea and Eric Leclerc, as well as the videos of our main man, Chris Ramsay, were a big reason she got started in magic. 

While it's easy to see how titles that scream "LEARN AMAZING COLOR CHANGE" can appeal to a younger generation, what Chris is doing now is far beyond that. Although his channel has changed tact over the years, becoming more puzzle-focused, his videos on magic continue to draw in thousands of views—and for good reason. 

A few years ago, the consensus (especially among the older generation) seemed to be that YouTube was a bad thing for magic. "Exposure channels" were popular, and many proclaimed that it was the beginning of the end for magic. While a myriad of these channels still exist, Ramsay's videos show how the internet can progress magic, not hinder it. 

Many of his latest videos adopt a documentary-style approach, in particular, his travels to Mario Lopez's Troba'm festival in Spain. Scenic vistas are interspersed with insightful interviews from some of today's top performers, all stylishly edited together and contained within a cohesive narrative.

Magic has never looked so DAMN good. 

But these videos act as something else, too – a showcase for some of the best performers today. 

The average hobbyist first becomes aware of a new trick when confronted with a heavily fudged, ad-copy-riddled trailer advertising its imminent release. 

But Ramsay is creating a platform to show magic as it should be seen – stripped of the hype-train filter that has descended on our industry like a fine mold.

Take, for example, Tobias Dostal's Liquify. I remember seeing this trick for the first time on Ramsay's channel 2 to 3 years ago, way before it became commercially available a few months ago. I can remember the feverish messages sent between me and my friend Jack Paton when we saw it: 

"U see that bit with the ring?" 

'Yeah, it was mad. And the liquid on the table, too??" 

"Insane." 

While live performance will always be the best way to experience magic, his video really made me feel like I was there in Spain, sharing ideas with other magicians. I'd experienced this feeling many times in person but never over the internet. 

Ramsay's approach is reminiscent of that taken in cardistry, the artistic sibling of magic. Their community relies heavily on videos, collections of moves, and ideas released at watch parties.

While there is a small market for cardistry tutorials and custom decks, the focus is on appreciating and building on innovative and creative new approaches. Cardistry is an art form that thrives on shared participation. 

But the very fact magic has "secrets" means this approach is rare in our industry. Videos like those by Ramsay are seldom seen because of a fear that demonstrating new material will lead to knowledgeable performers "backtracking" tricks, which in turn could lead to work being plagiarised. As we are all painfully aware, trailers are purposefully obfuscated for this exact reason. Why buy it when you can work it out? 

Cardistry doesn't have that second layer. What you see is what you get; there is no underlying "secret" that can be exploited and profited from. A move's end product and its mechanics are the same. Cardistry is appreciated without expectation, which helps to keep ego down—it's not a competition to see whose secrets are best-sellers or tick the most boxes (NO gimmicks, switches, innovation, etc.). 

But if magic is returned to its essentials—an appreciation and showcase of the impossible—then the importance of method fades away. 

Chris's videos give us access to performers who created their tricks without a commercial end goal in mind—the effects are designed to be magical, interesting, strange, and boundary-pushing. They also unveil the magic communities around the world and how sharing and building on the ideas of the past and contemporaries is the bedrock of the art form. It isn't a competition anymore. 

In an industry that can sometimes seem overcrowded with ego and clickbait advertisements, it feels like we're finding our way out of the dark. 

Of course, Ramsay isn't the only one. If you haven't come across the good YouTube channels that enhance the art of magic, then you're missing out. Paco Rodas, the Common Magician, and Arthurits are just a few I could name. They aren't trying to sell you anything – their core focus is on pushing the craft forward through intelligent discourse and performance. 

The big difference with Ramsay's channel is the scale he has to play with. He has the connections and resources to travel to the most intimate get-togethers, where the forward thinkers perform. And now, in turn, so do we. 

To me, a lot of this shows that we are entering a new age for magic on the internet, one where artistic integrity is front and center. In a dream scenario, this becomes the foundation of magic on the internet. It adopts the ideals of art over commercialism and allows us to share ideas in a thriving community that builds on what we have to show, just like cardistry. 

For the performers Chris records, these values are already present, but for the audience, it would mean being able to watch magic without wondering how much it's going to cost or whether it's 1000% angle-proof. 

Maybe I am too idyllic – this approach might make it harder to make money from magic. But I don't see magic companies going away any time soon. The two approaches can run in tandem with each other. A lot of what Chris is making shows that this is possible. His approach is engaging, fooling, respecting the art, and elevating the performance craft. And it also makes magic cool. 

Many of us are in it for the long haul, and we've accepted that we have chosen to spend hours of our lives slaving over something that doesn't have much commercial appeal. 

But for many bright but listless 17-year-olds who don't know where to channel their creative energy, a cool, welcoming community is a stronger pull than we might think. From what I can see, it clearly has an effect.