Don't Get Scammed by the Outrageous Magic Marketplace

Today, I’m writing about the world of magic product ads and reviews, which has become explosively toxic lately. I’m 62, and I’ve been surrounded by magic ads and reviews for 50 years. Damn, I’m old. But I have lived through the transition from the halcyon days when everything was beautiful to our, let’s say, current situation.

I thought I could help you understand how it happened and, more importantly, what you can do about it.

In the old days, magic ads were beautiful because they were drawn by professional artists. And magic reviews were informative because they were written by professionals.

But there were also complaints of misleading advertising, people saying their product has been ripped off, and reviewers attacked for biases. In other words, exactly the same problems we are suffering through today.

So why was last month the worst month in the history of the magic marketplace?

The answer: the internet.

Or, to put it another way, it’s you.

You’re the problem.

The good news: you’re also the solution.

Part 1. The Media is the Message

I believe the marketplace for magic products has become its own form of social media, with ads, reviews, and comments posted across multiple websites and platforms. Because the world of magic is so small, it functions as a single entity across these domains. Things posted on any of them ripple across them all.

And so, more and more, the magic marketplace follows the rules of social media, of which there are only two.

Rule #1 is that all that matters is activity. It doesn’t matter if it’s pictures of cats or screaming insults; all that matters is activity.

Rule #2 is that outrage generates the most activity.

And so the world of magic ads and reviews is getting more and more outrageous.

Outrage can do a lot of things. It can generate strong emotions. It can make you feel like a warrior for justice. It can make you feel like pounding someone’s head into a wall. It can make you think that the thing you are outraged about is the most important thing in the world and that any people who are not outraged —there must be something wrong with them.

What it can’t do is make you a better magician or a healthier, happier, more interesting person. It can’t even help you choose whether to buy a magic product or not. It is just a waste of time—literally, its goal is to consume your time.

What outrage mostly does is make it easier for other people to control you. And what do they use that control to get? More activity. Their goal is to consume your time.

The first step in escaping this trap is knowing how we got there.

Part 2. A History of Magic Ads & Reviews

Ads in magazines

In the beginning, most magic ads showed a pen-and-ink drawing, usually of a magician holding something to the side. Richard Hatch calls this the Silhouette Principle, which says that the effect of your trick should be clear if all they see is your outline in silhouette.

BTW if you ever perform on stage, this is a useful thing to remember. If you produce a coin, and hold it in front of you, it may not be clearly visible against your shirt. The ads didn’t get that way by accident.

This is the good old days, but this system sucked. When you bought a magic trick you did not know what you were getting. You didn’t even see a photo of it—just a drawing. This is in a business where, traditionally, no product can ever be returned. And one where every ad was written by someone who is a professional deceiver.

Years ago, there was an ad for a trick where you did something impossible with a coin, and then, without any suspicious-looking switches, hand it out for examination. Magicians who bought this received a gimmicked coin and instructions to switch it. The ad didn’t say there was no switch, it just said there were no “suspicious-looking” switches.

But if someone found an ad outrageous in, say, 1970, all they could do is write a letter to the magazine, which might appear in two months’ time. That’s not fast enough to set up a feedback loop.

So magic ads have been problematic since the first magic ad. But no one could profit from making you mad about it.

Reviews in Magazines

As soon as magic products were offered for sale, magazines started publishing reviews.

This is a well-established practice, but it’s still a bad idea. A magazine has a very strong incentive to run positive reviews of products sold by their advertisers, and indeed, in the old days, reviewers were occasionally criticized for overly positive reviews of products created by their friends.

But there’s not really any alternative. The big magic magazines have to accept advertising to make money, and they have to offer product reviews to get readers.

At this point, there was no financial incentive for reviewers to be outrageous.

Ads move online

As the internet evolved to the point where online video was practical, magic ads quickly pivoted. This is a huge boost for magic buyers, who can now see the trick before they have to buy it. As we talk about the downsides, remember: this one benefit probably outweighs all the negatives.

Still, video allows ads to be deceptive in entirely new ways. You don’t have to use edits or camera tricks to produce a fraudulent trailer. A video can just have secret moves occur off-camera. Or you can film the trick from the one narrow angle that makes it look perfect. You can do a multiple outs effect and only show the best cast scenario. You can use stooges to give bigger reactions. All of these were seen in the early days.

Online ads can be much longer or weirder or just more everything—including more outrageous. In a magazine, a full-page ad costs a lot more than a two-inch square. An ad posted to a website or on Youtube can be almost as long as you want, and the publishing costs are the same.

The big difference is that now, people can respond to the ad. This allows for the kind of feedback loop that can manufacture a controversy. But early on, a fair number of ad videos were posted with comments disabled, to prevent people from posting the secret. No comments means less activity.

Still, we are starting to get to the point where there is enough feedback in the system to generate outrage. At one point, a product release was followed by death threats allegedly sent to the creator by people who didn’t like the ad. Not because they had been ripped off—they just didn’t like the tone of the ad.

It says something that it is easy to believe some magician would send such a death threat, and also easy to believe a magic retailer would pretend to receive one. Whether real or fake, this “controversy” generated lots of activity (!), all of which was free advertising for the product.

Reviews move online

The big change here is that instead of a few reviewers at a couple of “establishment” magic magazines, now anybody can start a magic review channel on Youtube and have at it. Will magic reviews be better if they are all replaced by amateurs? To paraphrase Stephen Colbert, it sure worked with porn.

One good thing: Independent youtube reviewers have no incentive to give positive reviews for advertisers. If they get successful enough to monetize their reviews, the ads on their channel will not be for magic products anyway.

And what kind of success do they need to have, to monetize their reviews? Say it with me: activity.

Youtube reviews can be pretty much as long as they want. They can go into much more detail on the strengths and weaknesses of a trick. They can show those strengths and weaknesses much more clearly. That’s good.

They can also post all sorts of things that would have been unheard of in the old days, like personal attacks and accusations of impropriety shouted loudly before they have been investigated and confirmed. Or clickbait headlines that include trigger words like WARNING in all capital letters.

Mostly, though, there is now a strong financial incentive for reviewers to make more and more outrageous claims, in more and more exaggerated language, as part of their reviews. The best thing that can happen to a magic review site is to start a controversy.

This is much easier to do with lies than with the truth. Something to remember.

The magic marketplace as social media

Here we are. Magic ads and reviews are posted online, to youtube, on instagram, and on TikTok, and other places I am too old to know, where someone can make money from them. And so, many magic advertisers and reviewers do things that make them more money. The video that slagged Noel Qualter and The Fall got basically ten times more views than other videos on that channel.

Outrage-based marketing works. It will never vanish from the earth.

Part 3. How to avoid getting outraged by the marketplace

This is easy: don’t go there.

But that is going to be hard for you. I know because it was hard for me. If you are like most magicians, you have strongly ingrained habits that lead you to spend more and more time on magic media. Breaking a habit is very hard.

The best way to break a habit is to build a new habit that blocks the first one. Here’s an example. A couple had a dog that kept barking at visitors. Anti-bark training did nothing (it almost never does; barking is hard-wired at a very low level in the dog’s brain). So they taught the dog a new habit: bring a toy to each visitor. With a toy in its mouth, the dog doesn’t bark.

That’s what I want you to do. Train yourself like a dog. Also, bring a toy to your next visitor. See what happens.

Stop watching magic ads and reviews.

Does this seem impossible? Well, you’re a magician, that’s your job. Just give this three week program a try.

The first week, every day, chart how many total minutes you spend on magic ads and reviews. Don’t change anything; do the same as last week. Just count the minutes. Easy!

The second week, every day, don’t spend any time on magic ads or reviews; instead, spend that same number of minutes practicing.

Make it easy for yourself. If you watch magic ads/reviews on your computer, put a deck of cards next to your computer. If you use your phone, change your lock screen to show a stack of coins, or whatever you might want to practice with.

The third week, every day, spend those same minutes working on what to say when you do the tricks you are practicing. Again, spend no time on magic ads or reviews. Whatever you come up with, write it down! Or, use your phone to record everything you say. That will also help keep you from using your phone to download some more outrage.

I can’t imagine a better tradeoff than to spend less time learning about magic products and more time learning about magic.

How are you going to learn about the latest and greatest new magic? Read on.

Reset your time frame

Don’t look for the best trick to come out today, or this week or month. Look for the best trick from five years ago—the one that’s still being done five years later.

Let somebody else figure out if a new trick is better than the ones you already have. That takes time—and the answer is almost always no. How can any reviewer figure out if a trick is consistently effective and reliable? That takes time.

A better idea is to watch the “Best Tricks of the year” video from five years ago, and see which of those tricks are still around.

Immediately turn off anything that makes you angry

This is a fantastically useful reflex to have with any social media. Imagine that everything you see online that makes you angry was posted by a hacker trying to steal all your money. If you engage, you lose everything.

Again, put a deck of cards or something near your computer or phone. Anything that tries to make you angry, close that window and practice for 60 seconds, or 30 repetitions, or whatever.

No Ads; Performance Videos Only

I pay a monthly fee for a DVR whose primary value is that it lets me eliminate all ads from everything I watch. I also pay for streaming services, mostly so that I can watch shows without ads. I hate ads.

So why do we go out of our way to find and watch magic ads, anyway? If you want to learn about a trick, a live performance video will tell you what you need to know. Best of all, they are almost never designed to make you mad.

Watch with the sound off

The first time I see any magic product demo video, I watch it with the sound off. I find it’s much easier to see strengths and weaknesses—in the effect and especially the handling—when you’re not distracted by what’s being said.

Remember— You’re not buying the ad or review

In the final analysis, the bad decision the magic marketplace wants you to make is to think that any of it is important. The ad is not important. The review is not important. Inaccuracies in the ad or review are not important. I don’t even think the magic product itself is that important, but I am biased in favor of presentations.

What is important is what you get out of the time you spend on magic. And I don’t see too many magicians who got anything out of the hours they spent on the last month’s controversies, other than the ones who got more activity on their social media.

I hope this combination of analysis with a few practical suggestions helps you step away from the magic marketplace that represents, for me, the worse side of magic. I think that if you replace the time you spend in the magic marketplace with time spent practising, creating, and rehearsing, you’ll be a much better magician in a pretty short order.