Unusual Solutions to Magic's Biggest Problems

Last year, I attended Cardistry Con in London, and I watched a talk given by Biz. I love Biz, and he's written an excellent article for One Ahead in the past about why some sleights get forgotten. But, it was clear when I looked around the room that Biz was preaching much bigger ideas than the attendees might have anticipated.

He was zoomed out much more than anyone else there and cared much more about cardistry as a whole, where it stood in the world and the future that was coming for it, than what the next cool cardistry move might be. He spoke of ways to gamify cardistry in order to get more people learning and creating new moves. He imagined a bright future and put the work in to establish ways to encourage more people to pick up a deck of cards and learn it, too.

I enjoy talks like these, and they leave a lasting impression on me. The last good example of this was a lecture I saw by Ondrej Psenicka (someone we should really ask to write a guest article for One Ahead). His talk on crediting and researching the history of moves, tricks, and methods was the first time I started to wrap my head around why so many magicians care so much about doing so.

I'm about to publish my definitive book on magic, which has inspired me to zoom out and look at the bigger picture, too. Magic has its issues, and I wondered if there could be some unusual solutions for them we have not yet put into play.

Public Ledgers

I've written before about the piracy issue that plagues magic. It's a serious issue which has led to a considerable decline in the number of magic creators and publishers. Overall, the quality of work has diminished, and many have left the industry.

I do not think the long-term solution is to go after the pirates. People will always pirate things, and they will definitely pirate magic – remember, for many magicians, the way to become a magician is by not giving up until you find a method for a trick you see. It makes sense why someone who has taken this path might end up obsessed with hoarding secrets and happily file sharing and downloading pirate copies in order to collect more.

An owner of a magic publisher once posted online a photo of them watching a magic lecture on their laptop. Pinned along the top of their web browser was a popular pirate movie site. Nothing illustrated more so than this that going after magic pirates is a fool's task.

I think the more unusual solution is to ignore the pirates and focus on rewarding the magicians who buy magic tricks. You might think I mean to give them really great products and instructional videos, but those will only end up getting ripped off and copied, too. No, I'm thinking about rewarding them with something that can only come directly from the producer – it won't solve piracy, but I think it'll make a small but significant dent in the issue.

Why don't publishers put out public ledgers? Anyone who buys a trick gets to have their name added to the ledger. Of course, this would work best for smaller publishers selling directly to consumers.

In theory, having your name added to the public ledger will encourage you to buy the trick directly. You certainly would feel negative about performing a trick downloaded illegally if your name is not on that list. Suddenly, there's the opportunity for the community to help in the endeavour, making note of when magicians perform tricks for which they do not feature on its ledger.

Of course, most people who pirate magic tricks have no intention of performing them. But I think the incentive of getting your name on that ledger and the worry about not having your name on there and illegally downloading the item might make more of an impact than you'd initially expect.

Crowdsource Crediting

Crediting in magic is a nightmare. Over the years, I have witnessed a pattern of certain magicians getting very frustrated at others for releasing magic when they claim to be the first ever to do it. These frustrated magicians often end up needing to swallow their pride when it turns out that someone did it before them, too.

In the past, when I've seen magicians get attacked and get into dramatic disagreements involving legal and bullying threats, I've often wondered how easily this could all be avoided if there were such a thing as crowdsource crediting.

Platforms like Ask Alexander and Conjuring Archive have been brilliant for magic and helpful for magicians looking to source the history of their magic tricks. The issue is that it is still close to impossible to credit everyone correctly, and this can lead to a ton of upset. I wonder if the magicians who throw their weight online about this or post intense comments online would still do so if they could easily add the credit themselves with the click of a button.

I think something is interesting, and actually quite compelling, about using hosted websites for the credits of every magic trick publisher's release. If anyone feels that a credit is missing, they submit it to the list. The credit will appear along with the name of the magician who submitted it and any references, and other magicians get to upvote it based on how relevant they think it is.

People will still abuse the system and gang up on creators they dislike, but I think there might be something quite wise about giving them a healthier outlet and simple solution for any time they believe credit is missing.

It's worth noting that crediting is very different from ripping someone off. As someone who is hired to be creative, I believe that the simple fact that one person has an idea proves that anyone else could. It's why I struggle with the term "credit" over something like "acknowledgement."

I have heard of magicians who are afraid to give credit for fear that people will assume this means they knew about the other version before they came up with theirs.

Free Resources

If you look at the free Google Trends service, you'll see searches for magic terms have declined considerably over the past twenty years.

Searches for "Learn Magic" have steadily dropped 83% since they peeked in 2007. The more generic term, "Magic Tricks", has fallen 95% since it peaked in 2004. The numbers are staggering, and it's hard not to wonder about the future of magic.

I'd like to imagine there are just as many magicians today as there were in the past, but that magic has become far less concentrated. If you asked someone on the street to learn a magic trick, they would likely go to YouTube or TikTok first rather than searching for an online magic shop.

I believe most people who are getting into magic do not even know that magic shops exist – they think the way to learn about it is on YouTube.

It appears searches for most hobbies (juggling, etc.) have generally lowered since 2004. However, not all hobbies and art forms have dropped in such a significant way as magic. Rock climbing has only dropped about 50%, and mind reading has fallen by 60%. Cardistry, which began in 2010, found a gentle peek in 2017 (around the early days of Fontaine).

We do not know why 95% fewer people are searching for magic tricks on Google. They might be looking elsewhere, or there might simply be fewer people interested in magic tricks.

My prediction is that the magic brand that will win long-term is going to be the one that starts releasing high-quality free resources.

The funnel for learning magic is broken. I get that the magic community has this big rule of never revealing secrets (unless it's 50 years old or you're paying for it), but the problem is that all the people who are revealing the secrets are the figures the magic community dislikes the most – and they're doing it terribly.

Whether we like it or not, the future of magic is currently being defined by the people the community pushed out for revealing secrets. Magic producers need to start meeting new magicians where they are at – TikTok, baby. I know the next big magic company will be a YouTube channel that teaches simple open-domain magic tricks with a note at the end of each video pushing their magic kits.

Ekaterina has amassed 2,000,000 Instagram followers, sharing short tutorials for tricks she often does not have permission to teach. Why she doesn't just open up an old magic book and teach public domain tricks is beyond me. Imagine how different magic would be if the person who amassed 2,000,000 followers teaching magic cared more about magic itself. It is possible to build huge followings while still caring about magic – I think. Those 2,000 o00 people are interested in learning magic tricks and could go on to buy physical magic tricks and courses.

The future of magic is slipping away from us.

The magic community is so busy bickering about its many internal rules that it's not even in the public conversation.

Outreach Programmes

I think about how bad the onboarding flow is for magic and how it ends up creating a complicated community. Most magicians get into magic because someone who looks like them taught them a trick or because they were stubborn enough to seek out the method for a trick that once fooled them.

This goes some way to explain the lack of diversity in magic and the fact that by all accounts, magicians are the worst customers in the world – they steal, cheat, complain, and bargain left, right and centre. The stories I have heard from some of the magic companies about their customers are honestly insane, and I know many magicians who have left the magic community to run similar businesses for happy customers in other industries.

There are lots of lovely, talented humans who would be great magicians, but they didn't have someone who looked like them teach them a trick, or they didn't have the drive needed to seek out methods to tricks. I don't think an unhealthy need to know the methods of magic tricks should be one of the requirements for becoming a magician. Many of the magicians who are most popular with the public do not care about methods, and I often wonder how correlated this might be.

I think it is worth it for magicians and magic brands to put more time and effort into outreach programmes. Corporate magicians might offer corporate training and team-building sessions. Local magicians might set up magic classes as well as their usual residencies. Magic brands might work with schools and companies to offer magic kits and resources for teachers and teams. Magic conventions might give ten tickets to a well-aligned convention in a chance for ten tickets to theirs.

If I compare magic to every other hobby I've had, all of them had outreach programmes built into them – magic, in its insular, secret-hoarding way, has very few. The young magician's clubs at the Magic Circle and The Magic Castle come to mind, and indeed, the Magic Circle's YMC seems to be getting run brilliantly. So many people would make great magicians. They just don't know it, and they might not have ever seen someone like them perform magic or realise it's something one can even learn.