positivestress

just a regular guy like you or me

podcaster πŸ™‚ refer to my pinned posts for the shows of your life


for anyone who doesn't know: mentalism is a form of magic where the goal of the trick is to make the performer look like they have mind reading powers of one form or another. almost always bringing an audience member on stage, having them pick a number, a letter, a color, a word, [doing something], and then revealing that you know what it is. the reason I hate mentalism is that it is fundamentally about telling you what will happen, and then doing it. the [doing something] step is where the magician injects their personal style into the routine, but the beginning and end are always, always, always, always, always, always the same. I don't care what quirky thing you do in the middle, I don't care if you pretend to get it wrong the first time, I don't care if you tell a little joke. the performance is the same

mentalism is the magic equivalent of a joke where the setup is telling you the punchline

"knock knock! hey, is someone crying on the other side of the door?"
"who's there?"
"boo! I swear, I hear someone crying!"
"boo who?"
"aha! I was right! you sound like you're crying!"πŸ˜‚

that's what mentalism. and the most frustrating part for me is that I truly have no idea how it works, ever. I need to learn the principles of mentalism so I can be more smug about how much I hate it


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in reply to @positivestress's post:

Well a lot of mentalism tricks work simply by making sure there's only one answer. Like, they'll do some convoluted routine to supposedly make your choice even more random, when the routine actually just ensures that there's only one possible outcome. Then if you're willing to try something a bit more risky there's always the power of suggestion. I once watched a magician do a routine where they told the subject to pick a number between one and ten and then did a very obvious routine suggesting they should pick seven, including "inconspicuously" repeatedly drawing the number seven with their hands.

I didn't say he was a GOOD magician.