Prediction or smart arse!

We all have our views on whether cards should be used in mentalism or not. I enjoy the card type effects but more by not using playing cards, white star, from hell etc.

But I was re reading a few effects last not and whilst reading one of the effects, basically a card prediction by text, it stuck me that is this really menatlism or is it just a case of being a smart arse and being able to manipulate the cards to get the spectator to the correct prediction?

I always reframe it, as do others, as manipulating the spectator to make certain choices. Often times people come across, as you say, as a smart ass... but then these same people can tie their shoe laces and come across the same way. Again, the tired ol' cliche, it's about how you present it and what your presentation brings out in you and says about you.

//Daniel

If you present a prediction implausibly, with no indication of why you'd want to predict such a thing or how, an 'able to manipulate the cards' interpretation may well seem more likely (even more dramatically congruent and appealing). I agree that smart-assery (and complacency and egotism) are more closely tied to you than to particular effects.

There are lots of ways to present the effect-structure of events or decisions matching a pre-existing record. Different modes of divination and precognition (dream-prophecy, Docc Hilford's 'Dream of May'), participant's actions as a twice-told repetition of former events, or unconscious spirit-possession, mental time travel (Bruce Bernstein's A Matter of Time), thoughts matching an externally existing imaginative reality (as in Christopher Taylor's 'Being There'), different sorts of non-causal correspondences, poetic echoes, astral-magical influence . . .

Yes I agree about the framing, I think this particular effect was just so badly written it just jumped out at me.