Jonathan Kamm (kammagic) Exposed

[Richard]

For the past month, our inboxes and messengers have been seriously flooding over on this subject. A lot of you apparently wondered about our opinions on Jonathan Kamm and so we started doing research on this magician. To complete this, Jonathan himself sent us a PM about a week ago out of the blue. What a coincidence! Mark passed this message on to me because apparently he had been having some issues with him in the past and so I was able to make up my mind about Jonathan Kamm, his magic and his personality. I think I succeeded in the fairest way possible. To keep it clean, this article will only go over the facts as for all negativity.


MAGIC
Let's start off with his magic. He is a great magician and especially a brilliant performer. He has a great audience control and presentation which must have to do with the fact that he has been performing the art for over twenty years.

On the sidenote, his video comments would make you believe that he truly is one of the very best sleight of hand artists in the world and that he has mastered every single sleight he does. True, he is good and certainly handles cards well enough to fool laymen, but when comparing his sleight of hand to people who truly mastered the sleights he uses, there still is a big gap. Usually we would not make a deal out of that because he sure is talented and it all works fine in real life, but this seems to be an important thing regarding the subject.


ATTITUDE
Now this is where all trouble starts. Those who love Jonathan, love him for his magic. Those who hate Jonathan, hate him for his attitude.

Discussions and false assumptions
Jonathan always wants to have the final words in a discussion. This makes it impossible to discuss anything with him because he thinks he stands correct on everything he says including false assumptions he tends to make. This is something I noticed in the messages he and I sent back and forth because every reply I needed to correct him one way or the other. As soon as I corrected him, he would choose something different to discuss and to make false assumptions on.

An example:

I: "..In your reply, you confused me by saying that our 'Your Turn & Force Impossible' and 'Signed Force Impossible' videos were not performed live. The fact that these spectators are no real strangers does not make their reactions less honest. A good example would be the videos by Magic Geek. You can clearly see whether their spectators react in an honest or staged way, or whether they are not impressed at all or know how the trick works. This also counts for every other live performance out there. You can tell both the reactions you and Mark got were honest.."

Criticism
Jonathan does not seem to take criticism very well. This is what I have heard from at least five of you and it also explains why his video comments usually are very positive. Apparently when he does not like a comment, any comment including criticism for that matter, he will ignore and remove it. We do that with comments that include magic exposure but that is morally wrong. Criticism is not quite like that because it allows you to improve and become better at what you do. There is always room for improvement, so by ignoring and removing those comments you block yourself from any improvements.

This does not just count for his magic, but also for his videos. For instance, he recently switched to a 20-second introduction and whoever would tell him that twenty seconds is too long for a two minute video would get a reply along the lines of "I doubt you don't have enough time" or even a full explanation on how professional his introduction is.

Feedback from magicians & quoting statistics
Someone else showed me a conversation in which the following sentences said by Jonathan grabbed my attention:

Jonathan:
"I NEVER care what magicians think about my magic. Their view is tainted by their knowledge of magic. I only listen to my lay audiences. That is one of the secrets to being a great magician"

I can see what he is coming from by saying lay audiences should be the ones to listen to because I personally agree on that, but to ignore things other magicians say does not seem to be the correct thing to do at all. Magicians know how it works so they can also say what exactly is wrong with it, if there indeed is something wrong. Laymen would or should never be able to tell that.

Then again, does he really never care about what magicians think about his magic? Testimonials beg to differ. Also, on his poster he quoted "Most Viewed", "Highest Rated" and "5 stars". Those are statistic-related things which should rely on facts rather than on quotes, and he obviously is not quoting anyone. It are lies instead.

Marketing
In the end, it is all marketing. Unlike DarkSleightZ, Jonathan obviously took the commercial highway. He mentions the tutorials he is selling in every video he makes and he puts it in annotations whenever he does the sleights he teaches in those tutorials as well. I would consider this to be ruining the magic or even being actual exposure, but he probably realizes that most people watching his tutorials are magicians who know these basics already anyways.


CONCLUSION
So to answer the question "What do you think of Jonathan Kamm?" I will have to go with the facts: Jonathan Kamm is a very talented magic performer who makes himself look better than he actually is by removing all criticism and bad comments.


This article is in no way meant to hate on Jonathan Kamm. It is just to expose the truth and should function as a good lesson for every single one of us because there are a lot of people like this. But the most respected ones are those who allow both positive and negative feedback, and who are completely honest to themselves and to the rest of the world.

A special thanks goes out to everyone contacting us about Jonathan, and especially the people who helped making this article possible.