Here Come the Jerx: The State vs. Craig Petty

Here Come the Jerx is a feature I did once before, over six years ago, and promptly forgot about. At that time I wrote:

I'm the best person to settle magic disputes. Why? Well, I'm smarter than most of you. I have more common sense. And I don't know or care about any of you personally.

These days I’m smarter than I was, have more common sense, and care even less, so my judging abilities are reaching Judge Judy-ian levels.

When I asked in my last post for people to write in with anything I might have missed from the past month, the thing I heard about them most was that people wanted my feelings on the controversy over the trick Quantum Deck by Craig Petty.

Now, I was aware of this trick and the issues surrounding its release because people had been writing me about it for a couple weeks. Here is one of the emails I received that covers the basic issue people are having with the marketing of this trick.

I wanted to call your attention to what I think is a very deceptive piece of advertising: Murphy's trailer and ad for Craig Petty's Quantum Deck. They say the deck is "examinable," and Petty repeats that claim to a number of well-known magicians who profess themselves baffled, gobsmacked and clueless. (He's performing for them over zoom so they're taking him at his word.)

To their credit, Vanishing Inc. added a pretty striking disclosure about what "examinable" means in their description:

The concept is quite clever, even brilliant, and allegedly totally original. But the suggestion that everything is examinable means all the notable magicians shown watching Petty perform it on zoom (many of whom probably correctly discerned the method, more or less) were perhaps manipulated into believing they were totally fooled by his claim that that everything was examinable at the end. And became inadvertent endorsers of a trick that perhaps when all is said and done maybe didn't really fool them.

Neither Petty nor Murphy's ever actually say the cards are "normal" but I still find the wording quite disingenuous.

I do think the "examinability" flies for laypeople (since a deck of blank cards isn't really much of interest to examine, and they're unlikely to detect a secret they don't even know to look for). And Petty does detail a way to make a somewhat more examinable version that would definitely fly past some magicians. But still...VERY iffy claims in the trailer and in that Murphy's description.

So maybe this can serve as a nice example of the difference between an ethical and a (somewhat) unethical trick description? —JS

Before passing any type of judgment on this, I should put my biases on the table.

I once called Craig’s former review show with David Penn, “everything that is unlikeable about magic.” And referred to them as “two charisma-free dimwits.” Now, I admit, in some circles that would be considered an insult. But actually, in magic, charisma is frowned upon. And being a dimwit is a step up from your typical magician who is a total nullwit. So, see? I was kind of complimenting him.

Okay, it’s true, I was busting his balls. But I still feel I can give this situation a fair assessment.

The truth is, since he returned from his exile from the magic community a few years ago (there was a debacle with him releasing a trick that wasn’t his), I have been impressed by the work and effort he puts into creating content for his youtube channel. I’m not particularly interested in watching other people talk about magic, so I haven’t watched a ton of his videos. But I’ve certainly watched some of his content and I appreciate the effort he puts into it, even if I don’t particularly resonate with his style or intentions with his magic.

The person I feel worst for at the moment is David Penn. Craig used to do reviews with David. But these days he does them with his son who is like 6? 12? Shit… I don’t know anything about kids. At any rate, Craig’s son is a fidgety, sputtering, ball of kid-energy who gives every trick he partially likes a 150 out of 100. And yet… the review shows aren’t particularly any less insightful with Craig and his son than they were with Craig and David.

The real value in Craig’s reviews (from what I’ve seen) is he almost always demos the trick. And an unvarnished performance of a commercially available effect performed by someone other than the person releasing the effect, is very valuable. Why you would do a video review of magic products and not demonstrate the trick—as many of the youtube reviewers fail to do—is mind boggling to me.

But whatever, that’s not what we’re here to talk about. Today I’m here to judge if Craig Petty lied in his promotion of his new trick, The Quantum Deck.

Here is the 8 minute and 20 second promotional video for the Quantum Deck?

(8 minutes and 20 seconds?

C’mon, Craig.)

You don’t have to watch the full demo. If you watch the first 2:30 you’ll get what you need to see.

People take an issue with what he says to Adam Wilber in that opening demonstration:

Craig: “If you were here, you could examine them.”

[…]

Adam: “And that deck really is examinable?”

Craig: “It’s examinable.[…] It’s genuinely just a double-blank deck of cards.”

Now, as your honorable judge, it’s not easy to make certain pronouncements about this deck of cards in regards to examinability. And that’s because examinability isn’t binary. Examinability is a spectrum.

I will say, as someone who is particularly averse to getting busted with gimmicked stuff, I would be very comfortable handing this deck to a layperson. Judging by my own experience and what people are drawn to, I don’t think most people would be that interested in an unprinted deck. Yes, it’s more unusual than a standard deck, but not in a particularly interesting way. So I think few would care to examine it. And the sort of thing they would be looking for after the effect (extra printed cards) isn’t what they’re going to find here. So my first judgment is that it is fair to call this trick examinable in a general sense.

But is it examinable by magicians? This is where my personal bias does factor into my opinion. Guys, you need to stop performing for other magicians. You’re like a bunch of prostitutes paying each other to fuck. If you want to work stuff out with other magicians, that’s fine, but it’s a very weird end goal. We act like it’s some noble pursuit to try and fool magicians. But really it’s just easier than performing for laypeople. It’s a way to perform without putting yourself on the line to really entertain or enchant your audience. At best it’s about fooling them, but sometimes even that isn’t even really the goal.

Do I think the trick is examinable by magicians? If they have an idea what they’re looking for I would say, “No.” To be fair, Craig apparently has a way to make it more examinable for magicians. But there’s clearly some sort of trade-off there, or that method would be the method.

While the question of examinability by magicians is somewhat up in the air, I think the most clear untruth in the trailer is when Craig says to Adam, “It’s genuinely just a double-blank deck of cards.” It’s definitely not “genuinely” just a double-blank deck of cards. At least not in the sense that you could replace it with any other double-blank deck. So I think it’s fair to call that misleading. Do I think Craig felt he was actually “lying” in that moment? Probably not. I don’t know. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. When Adam Wilber asked, “And the deck is really examinable?’ Was he asking, “Examinable by me? Adam Wilber, professional magician?” Or was he asking, “Examinable by the average spectator”? I can’t really say for sure, but if it’s the latter I’m sure Craig’s thought process was. “Yes, it’s examinable and it’s [seemingly] just a genuine blank deck of cards.”

Here’s the thing, Craig should have realized this would be misinterpreted. He spends a lot of time critiquing magic trailers, so he should have seen how his own trailer could be easily misunderstood. And the ad should have been written more clearly. So for that I find him GUILTY. But the crime is a misdemeanor, in my opinion. His punishment is that his son should spank his naughty bottom on an upcoming video. Okay? Does that satisfy everyone?

(Now, if any of the magicians in the video do feel duped and manipulated to give the type of reaction they did, then I think that would be a more serious violation of standards. But until one of them comes out to say that, I’m not going to get too worked up about it.)

The truth is that there are a lot of magicians who don’t particularly like Craig for one reason or another. So they are going to be poised to jump down his throat. And whoever put the ad together didn’t do Craig any favors by making this an issue when it didn’t have to be. And Craig probably could have put the issue to bed just by saying, “I wasn’t trying to mislead people, but I see where it could be confusing. We’ve added some clarification to the ad,” or something like that. At least that’s how I would have handled it because I would just want to get on with my life and be done with the issue. Which is sort of how I feel about this now. I may have more to say about this trick in a future mailbag. But for now, I’m done.