(With apologies to The Roots and their excellent album …And Then You Shoot Your Cousin.)

This post is a bit of a rant, with a moral and actual advice at the end.

I’m warning you, today we’re going to be looking at YouTube comments. Don’t worry, this isn’t a feature where we’re going to look at an assortment of comments, or anything like that. I wouldn’t put you through that. What I am going to put you through, however, is looking at one of the stupidest comment threads I have had the misfortune of seeing in quite some time. So stupid that I’ve come back to it weeks later, to write a post about it.

The comment thread is on a reupload of Moxie Jillette’s charming performance on Fool Us last month. You should probably watch it for context, if you haven’t. It should be noted that Moxie is a trans man, and has not detransitioned. The incorrect pronouns were used to “avoid confusion” on the show, but it has obviously only caused more confusion.

Before we start, there have been a lot of people insisting that Penn and Teller couldn’t have possibly been fooled. I’m here to tell you that they 100% were. You know how I know? Because I was in their position, and I was just as fooled.

But, you may protest, they clearly knew what gimmick was used. So did I. But, you may protest, they had even performed the trick before. So had I.

Much like Penn and Teller, I had long since forgotten about the trick, and the structure thoroughly fooled me. I thought that double-decker cards were being used, yes, but like them, I assumed that the deck must be full of roughed pairs to be able to show all the cards as being different while still forcing the right cards. This would leave no room for the final revelation, unless you had triple-decker cards. That was why I was fooled.

Indeed, the top comment on the r/FoolUs discussion board regarding his performance was fooled in much the same way myself, Penn, and Teller were.

“The first two tricks [were] “invisible deck” tricks with thin cards. I don’t know how [he] did the “37” trick. My guess is that [he] stuck the 37 card to the back of the target card. I’m also skeptical that [his] act was a legitimate fooler.” (Fuck off, dude. You don’t know and you’re skeptical?)

As Penn says on his podcast, Moxie handled the deck in such a way as to make it look like he was handling roughed pairs, which you can clearly see in the performance.

Alright, so, the comments.

What the actual fuck am I looking at??? Are these people so far gone that an open prediction is incomprehensible to them? How do they handle foreshadowing?

“Yeah the Weird Sisters definitely weren’t supposed to say ‘Macbeth shall never vanquish’d be until great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane hill shall come against him.’ It was supposed to be revealed as great Birnam Wood coming to high Dunsinane hill, and THEN the Weird Sisters show their shirts.”

Jokes aside, my picking on some random stupid comments has a deeper meaning: Sometimes, your audience is just beyond saving. I showed Moxie’s performance to three different laypeople I know, and they all got the trick and disagreed with those comments. But clearly, at least 10 people did agree. What’s going on?

One time, I was performing Ignition by Chris Smith for a friend and some drunk girl he knew. This is a trick where a key penetrates through a bill. As you can probably imagine, it’s angle proof and looks great. Basically the same method as John Cornelius’ Perfect Pen and a lot of other penetration effects out there.

When I was done my friend, who was used to my magic at this point, was smiling and looked over at the girl.

“Okay,” she said.

“Do you get it?” he asked. I blinked.

“Not really,” she said, looking very disinterested.

“The key went through the dollar bill,” he said.

“Ok? Is that magic?”

“Yes!?” he said, and looked at her dumbly. “Do you know how it was done?”

“I dunno.”

I moved things along, and I didn’t perform any more magic for her.

Don’t try and argue with someone who thinks what you did isn’t magic. Technically, it wasn’t, and if they missed the impossibility while it was happening you’re not going to gain anything from trying to convince them something impossible happened earlier. Especially because they probably saw it! She saw a whole ass key going through a whole ass bill, and saw nothing remarkable about it when the bill was whole afterwards.

If there’s no light on up there, don’t kill yourself trying to change the lightbulb.