09-25-2011, 09:18 PM | #21 |
DarkSleightZ Artist
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That makes sense.
Uhhhhhhhhhhh.... my brain is broken right now >.< I don't have any witty things to say...
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09-25-2011, 10:31 PM | #23 | |||
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Yeah! This has turned into quite a heated argument! I like that!
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To me it seems like we magician gets so used to lying that we tend to not see it as a lies anymore. (lie = tell an untrue statement. Doesn't necessarily bear any negative connotations to me) However, from the spectators view I think no-one would think there is any difference between "Your card is not on top" and "The deck may be shuffled by a spectator". If you are caught lying in either case, you are busted! But that doesn't mean they don't expect that you are lying! And every now and then we are turned into laymen again when we can't figure out a trick. We are amazed and we love the trick! And the method is propably a new one that we didn't think of, for example: lying when we expected him to be telling the truth! So, why would that method be "unethical" when we would lovingly embrace any other method to achieve the effect? The reason why Chris Angels stooge-tricks seems lame is not simply beacuse he is lying, but because it is so easily seen through. Just think of it. Suppose he told a person to think of a number between one and a million and guess it correctly! Imagine if you would NOT think that the spectator is a stooge (but he is!). That would be a totaly amazing effect! Not very tecnically advanced, but as always: the simplest tricks are often the best. But maybe what all boils down to is wether you think of magic as an art or just entertainment. An entertainer can lie unscrupulously. But an artist shouldn't cause it is disrespectful for the art! I dont know... Imho in magic a lie is good lie if it is believed! tl:dr: I still think I am right and Albert is wrong! |
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09-25-2011, 10:59 PM | #24 |
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Haha let me clarify
It's quiet tough to distinguish an unethical and an ethical lie, but let me try. If the lie is part of the patter meant to entertain the spectators, I believe that's completely fine. If the lie is part of the patter meant to one-up himself to making it seem like he has an ability he does not, then that's a bad lie, although the spectators won't be able to tell most of the time. Let me give an example: (Good lie): So, the card goes into the middle of the deck, but with a snap of the fingers, the card comes up to the top (like an ACR Routine) (Bad lie): Perfect example is Toby Bromfield's Engima (falsified palming technique). If that Engima move was used for the spectator as a patter to further enhance the trick, that's fine. We can make act like we did something sneaky all we want. That's the motive to entertain. However, in reality, Enigma was presented as an "advanced palming technique", in which the motive behind it was to fool other magicians into thinking that he created a new move, not to simply entertain viewers. I guess in that sense, Mark made a very good point in simply claiming that lies should be made only necessary, but that can also sound kind of vague unless clarified
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09-25-2011, 11:04 PM | #25 | ||
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But I fully agree that magicians do what people expect from them. This is also why I would support all psychics (even fake ones) as long as they don't do any harm, because they do what people expect them to do. If you would take all fake psychics down, you are not just exposing them, you are messing with people their beliefs which could end up really bad and much worse than those non-harmful psychics would have things end up. Quote:
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09-26-2011, 12:20 AM | #26 | |||
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09-26-2011, 12:46 AM | #27 | |||
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Here's a perfect example. Do you ever perform for a spectator and say "Look! This move I'm using here is an advanced palming technique". No magician in the right mind would ever reveal what they are doing in the middle of a performance, unless their patter flowed nicely with it. I don't think Tom is that stupid or senseless to include the word 'palm' as part of the patter.
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09-26-2011, 12:58 AM | #28 | |
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09-26-2011, 01:16 AM | #29 |
But laymen believe him on not using stooges and camera trickery, and then they buy tickets to his show and find out he is not nearby as good as he seems to be on TV. Even the couple of actual stage performances I've seen him do on Mindfreak were full of performance flaws and heavy video cutting to somewhat get rid of the errors as much as possible. I know quite some people who went to see his show live and returned upset because they didn't get what they expected to get as result of his unnecessary lying Criss does in his TV shows.
If you don't use stooges or video editing, don't say you don't use them. It only implies you actually use them or at least have thought of doing that. If you ask a stooge "we have never met before, have we?" you can only expect an answer that comes off as fake. If you don't say anything about it at all, maybe like "what's your name?" it comes off as real, simply because it is. I don't say "this is a fair shuffle" either. I just shuffle and let the spectators decide whether it was fair or not. And if I say "the card goes into the middle of the deck" when it actually doesn't, it's only because that's exactly what the spectators believe to see. Video and product descriptions just shouldn't include lies because they can and will be seen seperated from the performances. If you perform a palm and manage to show there is nothing in your palm, it's fine to say "see, there is nothing in my palm" during the performance, but then to put in the description that there was no palming involved, is lying without any purpose other than false advertising. And Albert, you may want to take a deep breath before replying next time! You seemed to look tomato red in the reply. |
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09-26-2011, 01:18 AM | #30 |
Move monkey atm
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@Rokk: the thing is, the spectator's were fooled willingly, while we expect the truth, the whole truth and only the truth( court thing, sounded nice) from a conversation with a magician, you can lie to a layman to make yourself look cool, and thus entertain them as well, but if you lie to a fellow magician who would never be entertained by finding out you were not being truthful, you can only be thinking about how to look like the better magician, it's an unethical and lazy way to be a "good" magician.
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09-26-2011, 02:19 AM | #31 |
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WTH? Where did my overly long post go? 0_o
Ok I retyped it. |
09-26-2011, 02:39 AM | #32 |
Move monkey atm
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@Mark: well, i still believe that manipulate is only used for things, sure, if you treat another person as a thing and manipulate them it's fine to think like that( "manipulate" translated to my language is a word that only have a negative meaning, so i use the word only if i want to mean something negatively), but lying there are white lies as well as lies, if it's a lie when you talk to the spectator and entertain them, it's a white lie, as it actually doesn't do any harm, but actually does good from time to time, but if you lie to your fellow magicians who wants the truth, and gets found out( which, seems to happen so much more easily), then it's a lie, a bad one, thus being unforgivable. But a lie is still a lie, whether it's white or not, and thus, i say that magicians lie in every performance they do( well, unless you shut up the whole time...), and not manipulate people( like i said, lying is a lower offense than manipulating)
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"Doubt isn't the same as saying people are bad, it simply means you actually care, 100% trust is nothing more than ignorance"~ Akiyama Shinichi- Liar Game "It's not the destination but the road to it that is worth the trip" "Be careful what you wish for... it might just come true"~ old saying "It's a small world, but only relatively" "Reality is not the world, it is the way humankind depicts the world, thus when you alter a person's way of seeing the world, you alter reality itself" |
09-26-2011, 03:03 AM | #33 | ||||
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But I agree with you: those who don't use deception as entertainment usually use it to get money and are called con artists. Other use it to gather a group of followers and are usually called cult leaders. And those are unethical because they inflict harm unto others. And that is where I draw my line between a good lie and a bad lie: if it harms other people. But lying in a youtubevideo doesn't really harm anyone, does it? At least as long as you dont sell the trick. That analogy I do not understand. Maybe what you meant is: "It doesn't matter how you got the money, ethically or not. It's the fact that you got the money that matters." Is it correct? If so, I agree with you. But we seems to have different viewpoints on what is "unethical" Quote:
Magic is a certain kind of entertainment. With this comes certain kind of things that are associated with magic (and some that is not). Like cards, coins, thimbles,etc. Also different methods that magicians use, like sleight of hand, misdirection, psychology, etc. And also for who the magic is performed, which is usually in front of laymen. And that is how we tend to expect magic to be like. But these things easily becomes clichés, certainly there are other things you can perform magic with, and certainly there are other methods that can be used other then those we usually use. As well as magic doesn't have to be performed for laymen. And that is what I mean by "broadening the art"; to perform new kinds of magic. I don't mean that we should broaden magic to involve unethical things. And maybe meta-magic isn't a very good word (sounds a little pretentious, doesn't it? ). Maybe "Magicians fooler" is a better word? I dont know... Quote:
What I think he wanted to accomplish? Supposing he is innocent it would be to fascinate magicians. Supposing he is guilty it would be to get admiration. Btw by the definition of magic I have given above his trick IS just magic for anyone who was entertained by it. Quote:
It was really interesting to discuss with you Albert, but we live in different time-zones and I have to go to bed. If I said anything that upset you I appologize. We just seem to have diametrically different viewpoints on some things. I hope we can continue our discussion tomorrow. tl;dr. Lying is only unethical if it harms people. |
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09-26-2011, 04:42 AM | #34 | |||||
DarkSleightZ Artist
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You have to know the difference. Laymen/hecklers/(and often)magicians all watch the same trick. However, magicians think differently. Laymen expect to be entertained. They are usually not concerned with the method until they see it happen and once their 10 seconds of initial thinking and logic can't figure it out, they will just enjoy the show. Hecklers is another category of people, but irrelevant in this discussion, so I'll leave the details out. Magicians have a different perspective. As la0o9 has said before, we want out fellow magicians to be truthful to us. A magician lying to a magician are okay in instance where they are a spectator. A magician lying (in a bad way; not a white lie)to a magician to hide the method is not right. A fellow magician should just say, "I can't tell you". It's not something we can explain; it's another part of the magician's code if you think about it. There's just a general understanding that fellow magicians shouldn't lie to another fellow magician. You can avoid the question or hide the method, but telling a completely different method when asked for it is just disrespectful. As I've said, what's written here doesn't convey half of what I want to say; it's something we just know inside. Quote:
However, what I'm trying to say is something a little different. It certainly doesn't have to be performed for laymen. I guess one of the more final conclusions I can make is that depending on how ethical a person is, their views really differ. Mark, for example, will socially corner you and slowly kill you until you become a small rotten cherry that fungus starts growing out of it if a magician is untruthful about their method (maybe that's a little extremely xD) but that's because Mark believe strictly that one should not lie unless necessary, or more accurately, not lie unless absolutely required (I assume?). Maybe you have a less strict ethical approach, so that's why you think that lying is composed of in a broader sense, while I like to really narrow it down. Quote:
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09-26-2011, 11:41 AM | #36 |
@Rokk, I think you forget or don't realize that marketing (and thus advertising) is much more than making money. To get known may as well be the biggest aspect of it. People who lie outside of performances wish to get known, and only once they are known (in the broadest sense of the word) they wish to sell products and services (performances and lectures). There really are no exceptions to this.
That being said, performances can go a lot further than what we see, for instance in case of Uri Geller or the old Asian guy in the Prestige who makes a fishbowl appear. In those cases, it would ruin the complete act if they would say it are just tricks. They live their performances, so in my opinion it is all fine that they are lying. But that goes far beyond what those lying YouTube magicians do. There is no such thing as living a performance of lying in video descriptions. |
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09-26-2011, 07:43 PM | #37 | ||||
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09-27-2011, 12:26 AM | #38 |
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So...back to the topic. Opinions on lying in a youtube vid.
Lying is lying whether it's over the internet or in real life, so for me the title should be simply opinions on lying. But anyway. It's our job as magicians/entertainers to deceive our audience and they fully understand this. So in this sense I don't think there is anything unethical about this type of deception. I find that problems start to occur with these young youtubers' lack of sophistication and tactfulness. It's perfectly fine to have a duplicate go into the center of the deck and have another ready on top, but only if you can do it convincingly, because after all that is an impossible feat. Lying to a magician in an advertisement about a particular method/technique in order to sell a product is wrong. In fact, lying in general where money is concerned is pretty wrong - but that's another story. Lying to your girlfriend is wrong - don't do it kids.
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09-27-2011, 02:17 AM | #39 |
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XD if a magician says "the deck can be shuffled" and proceeds to give the deck a false shuffle, i think its ok, but if he says "shuffled by a spectator" and it cant be, i think its a question of ethics, and its wrong. imagine if people started marketing tricks like that, falsely saying it can be 'shuffled'. that would be wrong.
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09-27-2011, 03:24 PM | #40 |
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