Spectator Belief and The WYW Book Club
/Today’s post is going to hit on a few different ideas, but the inspiration for the post were a couple emails I received a little while ago.
[First e-mail]
So I finally tried out DFB [Digital Force Bag] in a very non magician-centric way. I placed a book in a sealed envelope, then got home, told my mom I'd gotten a package in the mail that had no return address, and left it on the table. Then I told her I'd made a list of books to read and I needed her help choosing one, I forced the book, then we talked some more, I opened up the envelope to see what it was and.....it was the book. She couldn't believe it, best reaction I've ever had to a trick, and she's seen it all! I played it straight and didn't tell her it was just a trick, and she tends to believe in connections and coincidences, she made me swear it wasn't something I'd organized. Anyway, now I'm not sure whether to admit to anything or let her believe there was some sort of crazy coincidence/connection thing. I guess I feel a bit guilty, but also it's not anything really bad to be believing in.
[Second e-mail]
A follow up: I think there has to be more of a premise than "hey I got a random package", to make it clear that it's all meant to be taken as fiction, something more unbelievable maybe...but then I'm not sure if the lines between the trick and reality would be blurred enough so the spectator can engage enough with it. This is definitely stuff you've written about before, it's just the first time I experience it firsthand. —ML
Yeah, I think you figured it out. What you were missing was a story. You essentially just gave her the coincidence. So, of course, she’ll react to this as if it’s just a crazy coincidence. As you saw, this generated a really strong reaction. If the only metric that mattered to you was getting strong reactions, then orchestrating moments that seemed incredible AND real AND weren’t focused on you and your power would be the way to go.
But there are two main issues with this strategy.
The first issue is: Depending on what types of experiences you’re creating, it’s a least a little ethically questionable, and potentially massively ethically questionable. Personally I don’t have an issue with faking a crazy coincidence for someone. That doesn’t feel “harmful” to me. Because you’re faking something that is real. Coincidences do happen. So as long as you don’t pin that coincidence on something else (e.g., “God sent us this coincidence as a sign!” or, “The power of our connection created this coincidence!”) I’m okay with it.
But that’s one of the few premises I’d be comfortable having a spectator really invest their belief in. The only other audience-centric premises that I’m okay with the spectator believing are the ones that make the spectator feel smarter or more capable than they really are. I know there are purists who would argue against that—and I used to be one of them. But fuck it, I don’t care about that sort of thing anymore. If I can do a trick for someone that’s going to make them feel a little more optimistic or more positive and they want to choose to believe it’s real? I’m okay with that.
I won’t lie to someone about the state of the world just to make them feel better. I won’t use deception to make them think their dead mother is safe in heaven and watching over them, or that they have genuine psychic powers or something like that. But I don’t mind a trick that plays on their sense of belief in themselves in a positive way.
The second issue with trying to create moments the spectator believes are “real” is this: It’s not sustainable. Even if you wanted to always do “audience-centric” material that the audience believed was real, you couldn’t. There just aren’t enough premises that would both feel possible and amazing. And once you’re around when, like, three of these amazing moments happen, it soon becomes clear that you’re orchestrating them. So unless you’re moving town to town like The Incredible Hulk or The Littlest Hobo, it’s going to be obvious that you’re pulling the strings. And when the audience knows what you’re claiming is real isn’t real—whether it’s you saying, “I’m a psychic” or you saying, “The universe is full of crazy coincidences,”—you will seem like a delusional weirdo if you keep pushing the idea that what’s happening is genuine.
That’s where the story of the effect comes into play. Story-centric magic tells the audience that what they’re experiencing is not necessarily intended to be believed and it gives them a reason for why you’re showing it to them other than your own glorification. (I’m not saying the reason magicians necessarily perform is for their own glorification, I’m just saying that’s frequently how it comes off to the spectators if there’s nothing for them to take from the performance other than how clever you are.)
So here’s an example of how you could give the same basic effect mentioned above a story (or context).
You have two padded envelopes, each with a book inside, and each addressed to you. You could physically mail them to yourself or you could just have your name on them as if they had been dropped off at your place, or you could print a couple phony mailing labels. However you want to handle it is fine. The return addressee is something like “WYW Book Club.” You place these on your porch so there they’re when you’re coming into your house with someone else. Or just on your kitchen table as if you brought them in earlier.
Either way, when someone else is around, you act like you just received these packages or you just remembered that you got them earlier.
You pick one up, notice the return address. “Oh sweet.” You think to yourself for a moment. “Oh, I hope it’s the new Stephen King book.” You open it up and it is. “Nice!”
The other person may or may not make a comment on the book or your reaction to the book/package. Either way you take the conversation in this direction…
“I love this service. Have you heard of this?” You point to the return address. “The What You Want Book Club? i found it on facebook a few months ago, although I think their page got shut down or they moved it or something.
“It’s kind of cool. I’ve been wanting to read more books but whenever it comes time to pick a new book I can never decide. Do I want to read something dumb and fun? Or do I want to read something smart? And do I really want to read something smart? Or am I just forcing myself to? Or whatever. Even if I know I want to read something for pure entertainment, I get overwhelmed with all the options.
“That’s where this book club comes in. You send them a list of 100 books you want to read. And every month they send you one or two books. And they claim these are the books that you really want to read at that moment. Whether you know it or not.
“It’s nice because you get to make the broad decision of all the books you’re interested in, so you’re not reading anything you don’t like. But then they send you the books based on their own algorithm, so you never have to do the actual choosing yourself.
“And it really does work. Like they really do somehow know what it is you most want to read. I can’t explain it. The first few months I thought I was just kind of retroactively justifying their selection as being something I was particularly in the mood to read. But that’s not the case. I don’t know how they do it, but it’s like spookily accurate.
“Last month my friend called me and he mentioned a book he read recently and loved. It was a book that was on my list, but it wasn’t one I had been thinking about at all. I wouldn’t even have been certain that it was on my list without checking. But after he talked it up I was really excited to read it. And when I opened that month’s package… that was the exact book they sent me. And the thing is, that package was sitting on my table unopened when I had that conversation with my friend. A book I hadn’t thought of in months just happened to be the one they sent me. As if they knew I would have this conversation with my friend. It’s crazy.
“I’ll show you. Look. Here. Hold this.” You give your friend the unopened package to hold.
You turn on your phone. “Let me get my list… Actually, let’s make it completely random. Give me a number between 1 and 100.”
Your friend says 44. You have her open your notes app and go the note that says “Book Club List.”
“What’s at number 44?” you ask.
She scrolls down and tells you, “The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James.”
“Okay,” you say, and nod your head. You pause, then say theatrically, looking to the heavens, “Oh man, I really, really, want to read The Sun Down Motel next!”
You pull your hands back and give a shrug. Could it possibly be that easy?
“Open it,” you say.
They open the package and find the randomly chosen book you just said you wanted. They flip out.
So it’s the same trick, the same moment of magic, and the same level of impossibility as the trick that was mentioned in the original email. But because it’s embedded in a somewhat fantastical concept, you’re much less likely to run into someone who will truly believe it.
Of course, if this was the very first thing someone saw from me, then maybe they would believe it was real. Or, worse yet, they might think that I wanted them to believe it was real.
But this wouldn’t be the sort of thing I’d perform for people who didn’t know what to expect. This is the type of trick that would fall around Step 8, in this progression of how I get people accustomed to the immersive style of presentation.
What I’m shooting for with this type of presentation is that it starts off relatively normal, but then it slowly gets progressively stranger.
From their perspective:
I got a book in the mail.
I belong to a book club.
It’s a book club where I choose the books I’m interested in, but they make the decision of what book to send next.
The book club not only knows “what you want” because you provide them the list of books. But also because they have some “process” or “algorithm” they use that will supposedly pull the exact book you (consciously or subconsciously) want to read next.
This somehow seems to work even if you decide on what you want after you’ve received the package in the mail.
I can demonstrate this right now.
Now, I’m guessing if I performed this for someone who knows me, then somewhere between 3 and 4, it would dawn on them that there is a decent chance that we are now “in” a trick. Then at 5-6 they would be almost certain of that fact.
My hope is that when the climax of the trick happens and they know for sure it must have been a trick, that they still find themselves being pulled back to the story despite themselves.
So the idea is to take “belief” off the table. Instead, success is measured by the strength of their engagement with the story and the experience of the trick. This isn’t something you can really “measure” but when you get it right you can definitely feel it.