Dustings #57

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Remember when Ellusionist used to have big black Friday events and have a bunch of releases and give away wristbands so the bully’s at school would more easily be able to identify who to give wedgies to? What happened to that?

Now look how their black Friday email starts…

Gee, thanks, Ellusionist.

I like to imagine some guy reading this email and then shamefully putting away his phone that he’s been using while the family says grace before dinner. You know…. they’re right, he thinks. He stands up. “Honey, I’ve been… distant. But all that’s going to change. Today what I’m most thankful for is my family, and a little magic company that puts people over profits. A company whose wise words turned my heart from something that was as dark and cold as an Ellusionist Legacy V2 Black Tiger Deck into something as bright and incandescent as a Ellusionist Pyro Mini Fireshooter. Blessings to Ellusionist as well as all of you, my family and friends. Let’s do ninja.”

This video is a good demonstration of bad misdirection. The misdirection “works” in the sense that it fools the other person in the moment, but when the “effect” happens, they understand they were misdirected. Now, I shouldn’t really call this bad misdirection. This is actually fine for routines that are about misdirection, e.g., card under glass or something like that.

This type of thing is what I call “misdirection of the eyes.” Misdirection of the eyes is good for generating surprise.

What this type of misdirection doesn’t work for is when you’re trying to create a longer-lasting magical moment. If you twirl your wand and people look at it and they look back to find a ball on the table. They don’t think, “That ball magically appeared!” They think, “Whoa there’s a ball!… hmm… Oh, I guess that’s why he was twirling the wand with the other hand.” They may not think that so plainly, but that’s kind of an inherent understanding. If the ball had magically appeared, the last thing you would have done was draw their attention away from where it was appearing.

The type of misdirection that I think works better for creating a more magical feeling is misdirection of the mind. You can find more about this concept in this post from four years ago.

Here’s one way you could use the Name-List Victim framework from Wednesday’s post if you regularly visit casinos.

While at the casino you say, “Do you have $5 to invest in something interesting? I’ve been having recurring dreams for the past … I don’t know…. over two years. And in the dream I’m at the casino with a friend—a different friend each time I have the dream— and they put a $5 chip down on a number in roulette. It’s pretty much a nothing dream. Nothing really interesting happens—they don’t win or lose, I just see them bet. But then one time I was here with my ex and she put her money down on the same number I remembered her putting it on in my dream. I thought it was a coincidence. But then it happened with another friend. At least I think it did, I wasn’t keeping track of the dreams at that point, but I’m pretty sure he nailed the same number. So I started keeping track. I keep a list on my phone and update it after each time I have the dream. The dreams aren’t always accurate, but they’re way more accurate than they should be. I had a dream about you last month and we were here in this casino. Would you mind placing a $5 bet on any number? I want to see if it worked again. I’d pay for it myself, but it is almost never accurate if the person places the bet with my money.”

They place the bet, and while the wheel is still turning you, go to your notes app and show them that they indeed placed the bet on the same number at which their name appears.

Not only is this a decent trick, but imagine they win that bet. If you go to casinos often and do this trick enough, it’s bound to happen. How long before their memory of the trick is, “We went to the casino and he told me to put the bet on 15 and in the next spin I won!”

(You might want to openly dissuade them from picking 0/00, because there is no “zero” in a DFB list. Or you can just chance it.)