Clueless Spectators

Last month I was writing a lot about clarifying the conditions of an effect to make the magic moment hit harder.

One of the emails I got from reader Anthony O. shared a number of examples of some of his spectators missing the point of the effects he was showing them. He felt maybe this was an issue with failing to clarify the conditions. And maybe it was. But these stories seemed to go beyond that.

Here they are in Anthony’s words…

1. I did a full ambitious card routine to these girls including the card to mouth and the part where the bent card jumps to the top. I know for a fact I said things like "your card goes into the middle of the deck" when I was placing it in and "It jumps to the top" when I revealed it on top. Despite this, at the end of the trick, the girl said "That was cool, but I know how you did it. You saw the reflection of the card in the window behind me" and her friend agreed. What I think happened is that as she was picking her card, she realized that I might be able to see the reflection of it in the window behind her, concluded that that's how the trick was going to be done, and then checked out for the entire routine because she thought she had already figured it out. If that was the case, I'm not even sure how you'd counteract this. 

2. I had done the "two card monte" (Eddie Fechter's Be Honest, What Is It?) with the standard patter of "follow the ace of hearts, not the ace of diamonds". I always show the cards as much as possible before the reveal. At the end, I revealed the two jokers and said something like "You see, no matter where you bet, you would have lost". They replied "I'm sorry I think I messed up the trick. This whole time I thought they were two aces, not two jokers". 

3. One time I did Michael Ammar's Tiny Hand for someone and told them I have a Canadian Leprechaun friend who helps me make coins disappear (I say he's Canadian because the coin that came with my hand was a Canadian coin). I did the trick as it grabbed the coin, I said a high pitched "Sorry" in a Canadian accent. When I was done, they said "That was pretty cool but I could see the tiny hand come out and grab the coin."

4. Another time I was doing the invisible deck and my presentation was that I had already put a single card upside down in the deck and asked them to make a card piece by piece (color, suit, then value). After I got to the reveal one guy said "You just had it upside down in the deck the whole time" as an explanation. Then their friend had to explain to them why that didn't make any sense as the solution to the trick but they weren't getting it.

Now, look, I have no idea what is going on in these situations. Anthony might not have been a strong performer at the time (these incidents were 5 or 6 years ago). Maybe he has dumb friends. Maybe there’s something about his presentation that is lacking. I can’t really know without seeing video evidence of it.

But it could just be bad luck. Generally I don’t ever blame the spectator for the lack of a response. I would find a way to make it my fault (which means it’s something I can fix). But sometimes you just get a truly clueless spectator. They might not be stupid, they might just be coming to the interaction with misguided expectations and so they’re just not on the same page with you the whole time.

I don’t really have any advice for this, because I haven’t dealt with it too much. The closest I’ve had recently is spectators who just wholly buy into the premise too much. (I remember doing an ESP matching effect a couple years ago and my friend’s response was really underwhelming. She basically said, “Yeah, you sent me the symbols with your mind and I picked up on them. So what?”)

I love hearing stories about clueless spectators. I find it so fascinating how spectators’ minds can work. And I think there may be something we can learn from them. I just haven’t cracked the code on what that is just yet.

So this post is really just to ask you to send in any stories you’ve had of clueless spectators. For my entertainment, mainly. But if I get some good ones, I’ll share them in the future.