A talking point in the community over the past year or so has revolved around the question: “Is cardistry dead?” With views dropping, big name cardists posting less, and new material rarely coming out, there is a valid argument that interest in cardistry could be on a decline. However, I believe in a counter argument. The people who say cardistry is dead are simply looking in the wrong place. Whilst social media platforms such as Instagram or Youtube are seeing declines in views, there is one place that has cardistry thriving amongst laymen like we’ve never seen before: TikTok.
I always felt a need to show cardistry to laymen in a light that made me originally fall in love with the artform. As something to admire, not just as a way of clickbaiting views. After showing a friend a clip of me doing an isolation, they told me, “You have to post that on TikTok!”. So on New Year’s Eve of 2020, I posted my first cardistry video to TikTok. The video gained three thousand views over two days. For me this was unheard of. To think that three thousand random people had seen and liked cardistry because of something I posted felt amazing. So I kept posting. Each video I posted stayed around the same level of views - one thousand to three thousand with the occasional five thousand - but each video kept me hooked on posting. Seeing comments from people in awe of moves that, for me, felt easy, reminded me of how I felt seeing those first cardistry videos, of seeing a spring and thinking it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I wasn’t going viral or anything to that level, but just knowing I was helping new people see cardistry for the first time was something special.
My first “viral” video happened in the summer on my birthday. I posted a video, like usual, and left TikTok for the day. However, when I opened the app later that night I saw the notifications pouring in, comments exclaiming astonishment, begging for tutorials, wizard jokes, etc., all because of a cardistry clip. I was overwhelmed to say the least, but I knew this was my first chance to really push cardistry to these strangers, past the notion of “this is cool” to “I want to learn this!”
I started delving into the odd tutorial, posting the first moves I learnt - riffle shuffles, Charlier cuts - as well as consistently posting clips of cardistry. Unlike before, where the clips weren’t anything special, this time I started focusing on moves that would impress someone who had never seen cardistry before. To another cardist you wouldn’t give it a second look, but for these viewers, who had never seen these moves before, it blew their minds. The account kept growing more and more. Sure, I had dips in views - it’s only natural with how social media is - but after every dip all it took was one viral video to give the account a new surge in views and followers for the next couple months, and subsequently so did the interest in cardistry. Eventually the account grew to a level I could start doing what every cardist has dreamt of.
I started earning money from just posting cardistry.
Now, granted, there are caveats to earning money - at the time of writing, videos that can be eligible have to be over a minute long and have sufficient views that TikTok deems enough to give a payout for. Secondly, the amount of views needed for big payouts is huge depending on certain analytics. However, despite all that, being paid anything to film something I did all the time anyway was a no brainer for me. My account was growing at such a rate that the community, cardists, and non-cardist friends were messaging me that friends and family had told them about seeing someone do cardistry on their “For You” pages. Cardistry was truly alive on TikTok, and with other cardists starting to post as well, the concept of cardistry being “dead” was alien to me.
Now as much as I will praise the use of posting on TikTok, I cannot ignore the other aspect which I believe you should question before you start posting. Like any social media, if you want to grow you have to make some sacrifices. As the years have gone on I have noticed the difficulties of posting “casual” cardistry to social media . With subtle algorithm changes and the changing landscape of social media, sometimes it feels as if you’re fighting to keep afloat with your videos. Something that did well last week may fail the next without a direct reason. With the demand for watch time, shares, comments and likes increasing every day I have even noticed myself having to slip into doing the very thing I hated seeing years ago, with clickbait captions or text on the screen in an attempt to gather the watch time the algorithm demands for each video. If you get caught up in the views and the analytics, cardistry can soon become a job that can inevitably lead to burn out. I end up asking myself, do I follow the current clickbait trends I once disagreed with in an attempt to keep pushing cardistry to more and more people? Or do I go back to my roots, stop worrying about analytics and keep posting for the fun of it no matter the outcome? I don’t know my answer yet, but I still believe despite the downsides that this new platform will be what brings cardistry another step forward.
So I’ve discussed my journey into posting on TikTok and I want to circle back to that initial statement. Is cardistry dying? Maybe, maybe not. If you think it is, you have the ability to help revive it. An audience is there, waiting, and they are just one video away from learning their first cardistry move. TikTok, out of all the current platforms, is currently the easiest way to go viral. Even if 0.1% of viewers actually go on to learn cardistry, just a single viral clip could bring in a thousand new cardists into the community. So maybe we should stop caging ourselves in with familiarity, and start looking into expanding where we showcase this art.
About the author, Max Heathcock:
Hello! My name’s Max and I have been a cardist for roughly eight years now. I am from the UK and originally started cardistry, like many, from card magic; however, I soon switched to cardistry after only a year. I love the freedom that cardistry allows me and I hope to continue bringing the artform to new people, evoking the same feelings I had when seeing cardistry for the first time. You can find me on Instagram @maxhtck_, and on TikTok @stopgoawaythanks
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Always seems the best writings are from the UK. An excellent essay. 🙏