What hurts magic more? Bad magic or people encouraging bad magic?
How many times have you seen a photo of a girl online in some very pre-planned pose (and likely filtered/photoshopped) that is meant to look off the cuff but probably asked the person taking the photo to re-do it 5 times to get it just right? Plenty I am sure. Now look below the photo. What do you see? The same one word praise "Beautiful", "Gorgeous", "Sexy", etc.
Now I am not here to debate about girls putting images online for whatever reason. It's more the knee-jerk praise that feels a little insincere. It's like... filler text because that person wants to be seen saying something but can't be bothered to write anything of substance... or... do they really mean it because they are easily impressed by a shiny object?
That is the crux of my discussion here today. Are encouraging comments on bad magic videos placed there because they want to be seen doing so or are they themselves bad magicians and think it's good?
First, we should probably define what "bad" magic is. Is it like porn and "we'll know it when we see it"? One bad trick can be gold in another's hands. I propose it's when the method is obvious and doesn't actually fool 80% of non-magicians. So perhaps bad magic is just poor performance? (or as per usual, no performance at all)
Social media is chocked full of quick videos of people doing magic quickly and poorly. Chances are they don't know it's bad and they are pretty proud of it. Now perhaps I am just being harsh and overly-critical as usual, but I see so many people who "know better" saying things like "so great" on these videos when it's... not.
I understand being encouraging. I'm all for it. However, you can be encouraging without it being a lie. Personally, if I see something that has merit but isn't executed great, I will message the person and offer constructive criticism without tearing it down. Some people just don't know certain things because they haven't reached a certain level of knowledge and I get that.
On the other side, I see people do questionable things and get praise for it and it makes me wonder if that person commenting is just trying to be seen in the community or if they too just have really bad judgement. There is no way to know, unless you are friends with them. Then you can message them and be like "WTF are you doing?" It could also just be habit. Much like people mindlessly clicking "like" on a post without actually reading it. Pavlov would love the internet.
Let's go back to my photos example. Are they commenting on the image just because they are female? Are they offering false praise because of their (perceived) gender? If you tell someone who is not good they are, they will stop striving to be better and perhaps that is my biggest problem with any performer in this scenario. Heaps of hollow compliments make them think they are doing a good job and don't try to improve because they are clearly not harsh enough on themselves or they might not have posted that video in the first place.
Yes I know "bad" and "good" are subjective as $^%&. It's hard to write about this without sounding like a judgey dick and I know it. "Yer just over-thinking it" I am sure some of you might be saying. You also might be right but at the same time, I might not be. Hell I have been guilty of it too when it comes to magic. However, when I say "that's real nice", I mean it but perhaps that is the problem. Too many people do mean it and their vocabulary and mental capacity is just that limited.
I guess my point is, be mindful of what you say to someone online and perhaps try to contribute to the conversation with more than one word that you might not actually mean.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
