Justin Miller (enduremiller) Exposed!

[CrazyInMagic]

Sometimes you’ll find people who act like authorities but instead are terrible examples, some that have been exposed on here. I won’t say anything about their qualities as magicians, but in terms of behaviour I think Mr. Justin Miller tops all, acting like he cares about the art and literally claiming that whatever he says is all about reality and the truth. He drags a bunch of diehard supporters along who agree with whatever he says so when Mr. Miller talks bad about anyone or anything, those supporters will hate and talk bad about it too, even if they don’t know a single thing about the situation. This all adds up to why behind his back he is being called the Contradictator.


Falsely caring about the art

F*** the industry. The industry has produced and birthed these thieves. The industry has produced and birthed exposure videos. The industry has to be stopped for the art of magic to survive.
-Justin Miller

Mr. Miller actually used to play a big part in the industry working with industry giant Ellusionist and others, but he claims not to be an industry artist anymore.

Of course something could have made him realise that the industry is bad for the art, but guess what? Only a month after he made those statements he went back to Ellusionist and has now released six more effects with them with quite a few more planned to come out later.

Also, Mr. Miller clearly is very much against thievery and piracy if you see and hear him talk about it, but after a 50-minute rant about it (see here) he actually says this:

See, I’ve torrented stuff before, but guess what? I’ve actually paid for it afterwards. See, that’s a difference. I definitely have torrented stuff, without question. But I’ve paid for it afterwards, for whatever reason I couldn’t pay for it at the time. Maybe they didn’t take the credit card, maybe they didn’t take PayPal, whatever. So I torrented it, watched it [..] and then I bought the DVD. I paid for it. I did the right thing.
-Justin Miller

So he is against it but has made use of it and even thinks that making use of it regardless was the right thing to do? Even if he indeed paid for whatever he torrented, for whatever reason he couldn’t pay for these things at the time (isn’t that the excuse all these downloaders have?), by making use of it he has supported piracy.

Good job Mr. Miller, for continuing the birthing of thieves and exposure videos. How exactly do we stop you? I really, really want the art of magic to survive just like you said.


Desperate for money
This is at least what it seems like to me. This started in the end of February with Mr. Miller setting up a crowd-funding project on Indiegogo, asking people to give him thousands of dollars in total so that he could set up his own professional magic production company with a professional film studio and heavy duty office. Really now? A crowd-funding project for starting up a company? That is definitely a first, instead of offering a product or service which leads to or comes from a company. I think most people thought the same because this ended in a failure. Two weeks later, before the deadline was reached and only a few hundred dollars were donated, Mr. Miller decided to hide the project from the public. The trailer for it is still up and running, but I think this could also be used as an artist promo for that in the video he doesn’t talk about the project at all.

People make mistakes, although Mr. Miller has yet to admit to it and clear up the entire mistake, but the very next thing he decided to do right after hiding the Indiegogo campaign was to release something he called "The changing of the guard". He decided to lower all prices of all previously released products available on his website to "only $2.. for life". He said to do this to save the art and its value. Within two months after this started, all prices were raised to $5 so that definitely didn’t work out as planned either.

And if two money mistakes aren’t enough, when these prices were raised Mr. Miller decided to release a lot of things through Ellusionist again as said earlier. Why would he? What other reason could it be then for.. you know..


Fictional facts
For someone who says he is all about the truth and facts, Mr. Miller has made quite some incorrect claims. Hereby a couple of them which he has repeated in several occasions:

It had been downloaded 2000 times in 3 days. F****** ridiculous. Now, it was a $35 DVD and that was just one DVD, in 3 days. That’s $70,000 in 3 days from 1 dvd, that was taken out of mine and kozmo magic pockets.
-Justin Miller

The one big problem with this and the reason why in a court of law he would not actually get $70,000 when suing the responsible pirate, is that there is absolutely no evidence that those 2000 downloads would have been 2000 sales otherwise (as a matter of fact, they wouldn’t). Add that to the fact that the same person could have downloaded it multiple times and that Mr. Miller himself has downloaded torrents in a way he thinks is okay and no one would ever be the only one in such situations, there would be substantially less downloads and money left. Of course I can see what he is coming from but that doesn’t mean it’s correct.

I care about the magicians. I care about the the true students of magic who are getting ripped off. Because when you buy a bootleg, not only are you paying a higher price, but you’re also getting cheated out of the actual stuff that is supposed to be in the package.
-Justin Miller

I’m not and will not be talking good about bootlegs and thievery, but the purpose of bootlegs is to offer products at lower prices than the originals, how else would people ever be able to sell those products, if the items are available cheaper elsewhere? Mr. Miller even gives an example here showing a person selling a bootleg for 40/45rb which equals $6.50/7.34 instead of the $29.95 the actual product cost. That on its own says enough about bootlegs.

Also, people who are buying bootlegs usually are very well aware that they are buying a bootleg and not an original copy. Truth is that magicians from all around the world are buying items from Asia that would otherwise cost much more than they could afford, gimmicks and bigger illusions in particular.

I have over 3000 people on my mailing list. I have over 5000 people on my Facebook. You know, that’s 8000 people.. over 8000 people that are my customers.
-Justin Miller

Not taking into consideration any overlap between the people on the mailing list and the people on Facebook?

If you don’t have the material, you can’t steal it.
-Justin Miller

Mr. Miller seems to think magic thieves are only located in Asia, which caused him to limit access to his products for whoever lives in that continent. If he would actually think a bit more about this single quote though, he should see the incorrectness of it.

If those people don’t and can’t have the material, they steal it. That is what stealing is: taking what is not rightfully yours. Magic pirates in fact live all over the world. When checking the IP addresses from people who upload and seed magic torrents, also without proxy addresses, Asia does not even provide half of the original uploaders. The other half mainly are people from all over America and Europe.

It is true that the bootlegs are mainly produced in Asia (and Russia) but if those people cannot buy the products any longer, they will get them another way nonetheless, provided by those from the other continents.

Not saying I like any of this, not at all, but that is the reality.


Filthy-mouthed
Having seen some of Mr. Miller’s releases with Ellusionist, I can tell he knows how to behave properly. But then I heard that in his own, mainly uncut tutorials he often uses a huge amount of foul language. This might not be an issue on its own, but without any mention of this to any of the products, I see it as quite a big issue.

Imagine you have something against foul language because you dislike usage of it or because you happen to be a parent buying magic for your kid or anything. From Ellusionist or any of the other producers Mr. Miller has put out stuff with, it is a very short way to his own website and independent products. There is absolutely no reason to suspect any foul language in any of his products and nowhere does it warn you for this.


Diehard supporters
Lastly I would like to spend a moment on the supporters mentioned in the beginning of this post because I find it very frightening to see people that just can’t think for themselves. It has even come to a point where these supporters have been hating on Ellusionist and the industry because Mr. Miller told them to, even after he again joined the industry and put out stuff with Ellusionist.

Another example from Facebook from weeks ago:

[...] wait until you see this one. Kranzo, penguin, dunn, mandy.
My Penguin Lecture was cancelled. Not by me.
Details
Emails
all coming soon.
JM
-Justin Miller

Never has he cleared up anything. The only two posts he added to this status update were:

it all has to do with kranzo...dont worry illl post everything soon.
-Justin Miller

Just got a call from penguin. Ill let you all know something on Friday
-Justin Miller

He has not posted a thing about the situation since, I guess because it has been solved, but his supporters are still hating on Penguin Magic and Nate Kranzo.