Comment by snitty | Hacker News Reader

Comment by snitty | Hacker News Reader

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>With the new show being trying to have them unravel someone's trick, with the odds stacked greatly against the magician, it's pretty obvious they've almost "seen it all".

The two main points of the show are to feature and raise the profile of younger magicians, and to get modern video records of their tricks. The "fool us" thing, while genuine is pretty ancillary the point of the show.

>It also gave me a glimpse on how secretive the magician community is. Since people earn a living selling required gimmicks or instructions on how to perform specific tricks, it is completely unacceptable to discuss how things are done. For the really puzzling ones on the show, if you go online to try to find the answers, you'll often find others asking the same thing, and the accompanying wall of silence. Even more so on forums dedicated specifically to magicians. You're likely to find a large discussion, usually with links to the official store for the trick, and zero answers. To do that would be breaking the magician's code, and apparently, you don't break the code.

Very, very, very, few people make a living selling tricks, and most of those are people who design and manufacture large stage illusions for the best magicians. A small handful of performing magicians ALSO sell tricks at retail magic shops. A few more than that write and publish books through magic publishing.

Some folks take the code of silence VERY seriously, but notably Penn and Teller do not. They do a cups and balls with transparent cups. They do Lift Off Of Love, which shows in detail how to do a pretty involved stage illusion. They LOVE telling people how things are done. They share similarity with Houdini in wanting to expose people who pretend that they actually have supernatural powers, and some of their tricks are aimed at showing that it's really just a high skill profession.

> The two main points of the show are to feature and raise the profile of younger magicians, and to get modern video records of their tricks.

Granted, those are two major benefits that occur as a result of the show, I still wouldn't way they are the "point" of it. The intended audience is not "people who want to see an unfamiliar young magician", and a TV network wouldn't air something just to get modern video of acts. Unlike magic, in this case I don't think there is a trick going on ... the point of it is to amaze an audience and the formula is "try to fool us". As a result, you have many unknown magicians who are trying to make a name for themselves, and a modern recording.

It may be the point of the show to Penn and Teller themselves, but not to the audience.

> Very, very, very, few people make a living selling tricks

Making a living ... yes, that would take a lot of $50 props for your unique creation to be sold consistently. The number of people who are magicians is already a relatively small group, and the amount in that group who do it for a living is smaller still.

I agree that being able to Google the methods of someone's unique new trick may not cause them financial ruin. At the same time, it may have some impact. The good news here being there is a good chance that the relatively small number of people who would even bother to try to find that answer are likely just to want to satisfy their curiosity and then move on, making them unlikely to have any impact at all.

In the end, to me, it comes down to those magicians that for their own reasons don't want something they probably worked hard to perfect, that may have not existed before, and dedicated a lot of time practicing, to show up on a website.

To me, it's that group that causes people to not want to post stuff online about a routine. If you are unsure if the magician is ok with that idea, then why bother? Let them post it if they want, or sell a book explaining it.

Penn and Teller do reveals, but they explain in many cases why that particular trick is being revealed, and then often add the additional step of doing it again in a different way. Taking a common trick that has been around forever and making people think about it again. Or, its one of those tricks where the answer is so widespread for so long, that it doesn't really matter. Many may not have seen it, and will find it entertaining, but nobody will be upset if yet another person knows how it's done.

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