Last week I was watching Death by Magic on Netflix. It’s a decent magic show, a lot of the old school magicians probably won’t like how it’s shot. It’s done in the “Post David Blaine Style” with a lot more camera cuts. I’ve got nothing against that, however some people (usually older magicians) do.
On one episode he doe a trick where he talks about naming your first car. Then he ends up producing a license plate with that name on it. Sounds like a routine I wrote about in a blog post a few weeks ago. You can read the blog post here.
Obviously the team at Death by Magic didn’t read my post and quickly put the trick into the show. The show’s first episode was four days after my blog post. Someone at the Death by Magic team thought of it, it’s not a huge leap to get from the idea of a license plate prediction to the presentational hook of the name of your first car.
Many magicians think that if they have an idea, no one else could possibly have that idea. That’s 100% false. It’s totally possible and happens all the time. I’ve seen many magicians accuse other magicians of stealing ideas, when their idea was something that you’d think of if you spent any time playing with that idea.
Cases where someone is doing complete act is an entirely different thing. Once you add up all the bits and the order they take place the idea of them thinking the of all of that and ending up at the exact same place is very unlikely.
How I view it, is if someone has the same idea as me and it’s not a blatant case of them ripping me off, I’m fine with that.
TLDR: Don’t get upset if someone has the same idea as you.