Wednesday, June 13, 2012

WMF Tim David

Tim David is a magician who somehow thinks he knows a lot about magic. Enough to teach it. And of course he is above moral debate and ethics. So he is free to spoil magic secrets and he makes it really easy to get them. Via video.

The sad part, he isn't alone. He is one of many, many lost souls. But I think he has not lost it yet. He may still turn the wheel around and drive the car back to the road.

On his website he has a section he calls Free Magic Tutorials.

Readers of my blog will know where this is going.

Magic exposure. He's teaching stuff he didn't come up with. Why? I don't know. This in fact is the question that drives me crazy. Why would anyone want to teach magic. If you are a creator and you want your creation out there to be appreciated by the magic community I would get it. But this is not the happening in Tim David's case. He is clearly not targeting the magic community, but luring in new wannabe magicians.

Don't we have enough losers among us? Just saying.


I know about the human need to communicate knowledge. And I also know that a certain type of human feels the need to teach. But with magic something is at stake. The secret. Giving out any secret means that you had to think about doing it. Otherwise you didn't see it as a secret. Teaching a magic secret for free means you regard it as being irrelevant in any moral debate.

It might be that Tim David has not stumbled upon the issue but no... on his website you'll find this:
Teaching magic is different than exposing magic because teaching magic is good and exposing magic is bad. Tim vehemently opposes unnecessary magic exposure. “Stop magic exposure.” – Tim David
A little too black and white for my taste.

A secret has professional value. You have to understand that. A lawyer (at least here in Germany) is not allowed to give out free advise. The same way that a guy working at the gas station is not allowed to give out free gas. Simply because the "advise" and the "gas" have a value. Doing so would hurt all of the other professional lawyers and professional gas station owners. That's why laws are in place to protect the value.

In magic that doesn't exist. If a guy like Tim David gives out free secrets he is hurting all of the other professional magicians.

A value is a construct in a very strict business sense; tossing out all moral and ethics here. If you are the only one owning something, no matter how much it is worth, you can set the price. (Monopoly)
If everyone has it (or has access to) the price is disparaged. The value is lowered.

So giving out secrets for nothing has the value of any idea nullified.

Tim David: Stop eroding your future income doing professional magic. You claim to be a long time, full-time pro magician. How about you act that way and recognize that the secret is best kept secret.

PS: Bullshit...

There are more effects. What about Transpositions? You seem not to have thought about it enough. Don't you read my little theory nuggets of wisdom?

3 comments:

Michael Jay said...

The kid obviously hasn't spent any time on magic theory:

CARD EFFECTS CLASSIFIED by T. Page Wright (from The Sphinx, May, 1924)
1. Production
2. Vanish
3. Transformation
4. Manipulative
5. Memorization
6. Guessing problems
7. Transposition
8. Location and revelation
9. Productions from cards (as water)
10. Indestructible card
11. Prophetic
12. Arranging of cards (as spellers, dealing hands, etc.)
13. Naming cards
14. Discovery of number selected or moved

ANALYSIS OF CONJURING FEATS by S.H. Sharpe (from Neo Magic, 1932)

1. Productions (From not being to being)
2. Disappearances (From being to not being)
3. Transformations (From being in this way to being in that)
4. Transpositions (From being here to being there)
5. Natural science laws defied
a. Anti-gravity
b. Magical animation
c. Magical control
d. Matter Through Matter
e. Multi-position
f. Restoration
g. Invulnerability
h. Rapid germination
6. Mental phenomena
a. Prediction
b. Divination
c. Clairvoyance
d. Telepathy or thought transference
e. Hypnotism
f. Memorization
g. Lightning calculations

SEVENTEEN FUNDAMENTAL EFFECTS By Winston Freer (from The Linking Ring, date unknown)

1. Production
2. Vanish
3. Change in position
4. Change in material
5. Change in form
6. Change in color
7. Change in size
8. Change in temperature
9. Change in weight
10. Magnetism
11. Levitation
12. Penetration
13. Restoration
14. Remote control
15. Sympathy
16. Divination (Comprising all feats of mental magic)
17. Prediction

THE NINETEEN BASIC EFFECTS by Dariel Fitzkee (from The Trick Brain, 1944)

1. Production (Appearance, creation, multiplication)
2. Vanish (Disappearance, obliteration)
3. Transposition (Change in location)
4. Transformation (Change in appearance. character or identity)
5. Penetration (One solid through another)
6. Restoration (Making the destroyed whole)
7. Animation (Movement imparted to the inanimate)
8. Anti-Gravity (Levitation and change in weight)
9. Attraction (Mysterious adhesion)
10. Sympathetic Reaction (Sympathetic response)
11. Invulnerability (Injury proof)
12. Physical Anomaly (Contradictions, abnormalities, freaks)
13. Spectator Failure (Magicians' challenge)
14. Control (Mind over the inanimate)
15. Identification (Specific discovery)
16. Thought Reading (Mental perception, mind reading)
17. Thought Transmission (Thought projection and transference)
18. Prediction (Foretelling the future)
19. Extra-Sensory Perception (Unusual perception, other than mind)

Justin said...

Slow down there, chief.

Unknown said...

he makes videos like this becuz he hopes to sell them to enough people to make some money.
i know that's obvious so what do you mean?
he doesn't care about the damage this might do to the profession becuz, firstly, he's probably figured, wrongly or rightly, that he stands to make more from these videos than working professionally. or that the videos aren't going to have much of an effect on whatever niche he's made for himself professionally.
secondly, he's probably seeing that there are tons of other videos people are paying for or even watching free on the internet that are exposing these secrets anyways. so it's very easy for him to rationalize that his repackaging of this same easily obtainable information is essentially harmless. practically speaking, that is.
i mean, i agree with your sentiments, but i think to work yourself up into some state about this is pretty ridiculous.
and then to go on to criticize him for what he doesn't mention in these videos really doesn't make any sense.
even to mention him on this blog is just drawing more attention to him.
weird.

don't give life to false enemies, it just makes you more vulnerable to your real ones.
i know there's a catchier way of saying that. probably said by Sun Tzu, actually.

i'll admit i haven't looked into his 'course' on magic at all, but i'm assuming he's just covering the basics and revealing some pretty standard principles and variations of common routines. you've never read books/read articles/seen videos on these same things?

things like videos and books exist in order to pass information on to people who don't otherwise have access to this information..
honestly, man, i don't know much about magic technique, but it's pretty obvious to me that the art isn't very much about 'how' a trick is done, but it's about performance. things like pacing, how you act out your whole rap, the salesmanship of naturality.
don't worry about it. the only people looking up videos like this are people who aren't gonna buy your act in the first place. most people just want to be entertained by it all.