So You Want To Be A Famous Internet Magician
/This video from Rick Lax currently has 218 million views on facebook. It got 175 million views in the first month alone.
If you asked Rick to speak candidly about this video, I’m sure he’d say, “I’m so proud of this incredible artistic achievement. Please embed a video screen on my tombstone so it may run on a loop there for all eternity.”
No, I’m sure he understands that this is profoundly stupid, but it cracked the code of how people want to engage with magic on the internet in the early part of 2020. In months this will change, if it hasn’t changed already. And Rick will have to evolve as well if he wants to keep up. Which I’m sure he will. That’s the game he’s playing. He’s trying out different things, chasing people’s interest and then riding that wave until it crashes. Then trying something else out.
Here’s an idea that sounds logical, but actually is wildly flawed: “I’m going to be the best magician and perform the finest magic so I can become a viral internet magician.”
Those things have little to do with each other.
Rick Lax can do better magic than dousing his groceries in energy drink. But no one wants to see him doing his rendition of Cups and Balls. That’s not the sort of thing that grabs people. And that’s because the internet is not the right venue for what we would typically think of as “good” magic in the traditional sense. (Yes, occasionally an amazing routine by an amazing performer will go viral, but that’s the exception rather than the rule. And often they go viral because people are very impressed by the skill, not necessarily very fooled by the magic.) If you do a trick that fools people very badly, it will be exposed in the comments within four minutes. So the internet doesn’t necessarily reward “fooling” magic. As of now, at least, you’re better off approaching the magic aspect indirectly. As one magician with a strong internet presence told me just recently:
Traditional magic videos get swiped by and skipped so we’ve had to shift to TRICKING people into watching magic so that the viewer is 3 minutes in before they realize, “Shit! I just watched a magic trick.” We’ve done this by hiding the magic within fake science, pranks, riddles, bets, tutorials and puzzles.
Here’s how things break-down:
If you want to do the most affecting magic, then perform amateur/social magic for just a few people at most.
If you want to build your own persona and your own legend and express yourself artistically, then perform professionally. Perhaps with a goal of your own theater show or television specials.
If you want to reach the most people, then perform for the internet and let their somewhat fickle interests guide the material you produce.
Rick Lax will get hundreds of millions of views on his videos, but he won’t have the mystique or aura about him that Blaine or Derren Brown do. People don’t want mystique and aura from their internet celebrities.
Similarly, I can take someone to see Penn and Teller, Derren Brown, or Copperfield and that person may really enjoy the show and find it incredibly entertaining. But I will take them home and have them more enchanted and enthralled with something I show them that I learned when I was fourteen. That’s just the nature of a one-on-one experience done well. But there’s no fame or money in that.
It’s all a series of trade-offs depending on what your ambitions are. You can possibly do it all, but you just can’t do it all at the same time. “I’m going to perform magic that is a pure artistic expression that also generates an intimate connection with everyone who watches and will garner me 100 million views on tik tok.” It ain’t happenin.
