Marketed tricks, Reviews, and Genii
I was interested in your observations about magic marketing, and the differences between how magic is often sold now and how we used to evaluate tricks before we bought them. Looking at my own purchases, I can see that there are two distinct groups: 1) Magic purchased online; and 2) Magic purchased in-person from a magic shop. My best guess is that I perform less than 10% of the magic that I purchased online, and 30- 40% of the magic purchased in-person. I bet I’m not alone in those statistics. I make much better, more thoughtful and critical purchasing decisions when I can watch a demo live and discuss the various positives and negatives with the demonstrator. Online purchases are made based on edited ads and other people’s endorsements.
—Dr. Sheldon Jafine
Jim Steinmeyer responds: Thanks, Sheldon. We still get comments about how apparently insubstantial our trick reviews can be. A surprising comment has been that the reviews “look short,” which presumably means that they were too short to actually consider reading and evaluating. We haven’t heard what essential information we’ve been leaving out. Magicians have been convinced that long essays about marketed tricks are giving you amazing insight into the products that you’re buying. Some of our most respected reviewers, who had been encouraged to write those long Genii reviews, told us that they disagreed.
It’s the paradox of modern trick marketing. Dealers now sell their own tricks, with their own endorsements, their own videos, their own performances (in dark bars, for screaming 30-year-olds). They really don’t need Genii to say anything about their products. They are capable of selling them without us.
So, this magazine attempted to become relevant by writing more and more about the trick: the history, the predecessors, the inside touches, the cautions, and a few inspirations for when you walk it into that dark bar and try to elicit screams. That was the one thing that a magazine could do that the dealers’ websites couldn’t do: surround it with prose.
None of that prose mattered, of course. As soon as you could look at a video of the trick (for a majority of these tricks), you’ve seen almost everything you need to know. As Dr. Jafine noted, the videos encourage you to buy it and often they do the job very efficiently.
What should we be writing about these tricks? Most don’t need any comments at all, and most reviews end up being ridiculous exercises in journalism. The dealers realize that they don’t need Genii’s comments. When was the last time you saw an ad that reproduced a Genii endorsement (or a Linking Ring or MUM endorsement) within their online content? They’ve already engineered their own endorsements, no outside opinions necessary.
As a fellow who’s survived a good part of the 20th century, I’d like to suggest that this can be a common problem with lots of reviews that elevate common things to uncommon status. Readers love when we enshrine pop culture, but it’s contrary to the nature of pop culture. Some of those tricks are understood, by the dealers themselves, as junky products designed to fill out an order or satisfy an itch with the customers. The dealers have told us that themselves. They know that not all their products are great.
Sifting through those six-second social media marvels, looking for new, creative adjectives to describe them, is pointless. We’ve indulged in that process. It’s demeaning to magic, overall, and it’s disrespectful to our reviewers. Go online. Watch the video. Find the reviewer that makes you happy. Most gush, unreservedly. That’s how they got there. Some sniff at an occasional trick, so you can take them seriously.
We understand that part of the magic experience is those weekly, monthly, or bimonthly orders of tricks, and the box of marvels that can often be opened and sorted on the kitchen table before they make it to the magic drawer: perhaps 10 % of it is performed. We are not part of that system. We are not part of the firehose of gratuitous products, nor do we feel that magic is made more important by treating that torrent of common water like a collection of fine, vintage wines.
We will write about tricks when we feel they deserve the prose. In this way, we’ve been inspired by our other reviewers like our $100 Challenge participants, David Regal (Not Forgotten) and Jeff Prace (Best in Show), and Staff Picks, which tells the point of view of a magic shop. These actually impart information and share important elements about the marketplace that are worth telling. But, as an editor, I have to tell you that writing about something doesn’t make it important. These stories should be carefully chosen. Rather than asking our writers to focus on the junky aspects of magic, we’d like to focus on the things that make it grand. Dare we say… we’d like to discuss the things that make it an art.
As always, we’re interested in your points of view and suggestions.
It’s the paradox of modern trick marketing. Dealers now sell their own tricks, with their own endorsements, their own videos, their own performances (in dark bars, for screaming 30-year-olds). They really don’t need Genii to say anything about their products. They are capable of selling them without us.
So, this magazine attempted to become relevant by writing more and more about the trick: the history, the predecessors, the inside touches, the cautions, and a few inspirations for when you walk it into that dark bar and try to elicit screams. That was the one thing that a magazine could do that the dealers’ websites couldn’t do: surround it with prose.
None of that prose mattered, of course. As soon as you could look at a video of the trick (for a majority of these tricks), you’ve seen almost everything you need to know. As Dr. Jafine noted, the videos encourage you to buy it and often they do the job very efficiently.
What should we be writing about these tricks? Most don’t need any comments at all, and most reviews end up being ridiculous exercises in journalism. The dealers realize that they don’t need Genii’s comments. When was the last time you saw an ad that reproduced a Genii endorsement (or a Linking Ring or MUM endorsement) within their online content? They’ve already engineered their own endorsements, no outside opinions necessary.
As a fellow who’s survived a good part of the 20th century, I’d like to suggest that this can be a common problem with lots of reviews that elevate common things to uncommon status. Readers love when we enshrine pop culture, but it’s contrary to the nature of pop culture. Some of those tricks are understood, by the dealers themselves, as junky products designed to fill out an order or satisfy an itch with the customers. The dealers have told us that themselves. They know that not all their products are great.
Sifting through those six-second social media marvels, looking for new, creative adjectives to describe them, is pointless. We’ve indulged in that process. It’s demeaning to magic, overall, and it’s disrespectful to our reviewers. Go online. Watch the video. Find the reviewer that makes you happy. Most gush, unreservedly. That’s how they got there. Some sniff at an occasional trick, so you can take them seriously.
We understand that part of the magic experience is those weekly, monthly, or bimonthly orders of tricks, and the box of marvels that can often be opened and sorted on the kitchen table before they make it to the magic drawer: perhaps 10 % of it is performed. We are not part of that system. We are not part of the firehose of gratuitous products, nor do we feel that magic is made more important by treating that torrent of common water like a collection of fine, vintage wines.
We will write about tricks when we feel they deserve the prose. In this way, we’ve been inspired by our other reviewers like our $100 Challenge participants, David Regal (Not Forgotten) and Jeff Prace (Best in Show), and Staff Picks, which tells the point of view of a magic shop. These actually impart information and share important elements about the marketplace that are worth telling. But, as an editor, I have to tell you that writing about something doesn’t make it important. These stories should be carefully chosen. Rather than asking our writers to focus on the junky aspects of magic, we’d like to focus on the things that make it grand. Dare we say… we’d like to discuss the things that make it an art.
As always, we’re interested in your points of view and suggestions.
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