Interview: Kismet Magic, psychology, magic and YouTube

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We spoke with Kismet Magic, the youtuber magician who already has more than 31,000 YouTube subscribers and he told us a bit about how he combines magic and psychology

Nicolás studied psychology and is now a magician. He combines his two passions in his daily life: in therapy, on the street, in theaters and on his YouTube channel. He has been practicing as a magician for ten years and now he has become a mentalist and an illusionist with more than 31,000 followers on YouTube, which challenges him day by day to extract new tricks and illusions. In LatinAmerican Post we talked with him.

Leer en español: Entrevista: Kismet Magic, psicología, magia y YouTube

LatinAmerican Post: First, tell us a little about yourself and what you do.

Kismet Magic: On one hand, I dedicate myself to magic: I'm a mentalist and an illusionist. I do shows for companies, private events, restaurants, family. I also have the YouTube channel, which is where I upload magic and mentalism content. On the other hand, I am a psychologist so I do hypnotherapy and that same side is connected with another part of my profession, which is that of conferences. So I do conferences for companies and for an open public on issues of purpose, leadership, entrepreneurship, happiness, but I do it in a more existentialist perspective. It is not coaching nor the typical "come on, you can do it".

LP: How do you think magic comes into the psychological issue?

KM: Let's say I started with cards, which is where normally anyone starts. But there was a point where I was very interested in psychology and I wanted to know how the human mind worked, how to influence others. Then I started to read psychology topics, body language issues, influence, and persuasion. I was filled with this knowledge. There is a side of magic called mentalism. Mentalism is divided into two: the tricked mentalism, which consists of tricks; and there is a kind of mentalism that combines psychology with themes of illusionism to persuade someone to think about something you want them to think or read body language and through it, know what the person is thinking. Then I started to combine that, my two passions, which are magic and psychology.

LP: How did you learn? Where does one go if wanting to be a magician?

KM: Here in Bogotá there are magic schools. I, however, have always been a self-taught person so I started with videos on the Internet, on YouTube. I learned a couple of tricks and then I started to be very passionate, so I bought books and DVDs, and with practice, there is a point where you already have a very broad knowledge of techniques and it's about you innovate and invent your own tricks.

LP: We already know how one can be a magician, now, how can one become a YouTuber?

KM: I started simply as an experiment and uploaded a couple of very bad quality videos. They had certain views that at the time seemed good to me, I thought "well, suddenly it may work". I tried then to create a bit more specialized and better quality content. I started uploading videos very sporadically at the beginning, one every two months. There were some that had a peak, they went viral. That gave me the impetus to continue and not give up. Now there are many people who want to upload content and be YouTuber. I started four years ago and now there is too much saturation on YouTube. Your content must achieve hitch. My recommendation is to persist, keep uploading content every time better so at first, you have only 100 or 200 views, which is practically nothing, but with a video that is viral is enough to follow.

LP: Tell us about the video that gave you fame

KM: It was a video of guessing the color of the thongs. I went down the street and asked people to think about the color of their underwear and I guessed it. The video reached a million views very fast and the others also shot and the channel jumped on. There began much more interactions, had a lot of impact, for example, in Mexico.

Also read: Top 10 of YouTube's most disliked videos

LP: Tell us about your style as a YouTuber, what kind of content do you like to generate the most?

KM: I try to make a mix on my channel. I was shaping it. In the beginning, I said that the channel was not going to raise issues of mentalism because at that moment I thought that people liked video on visual things more suddenly. I started to upload levitation things and with letters. Then I made the attempt with one of mentalism and I realized that people liked it. Then I did a survey and I realized that people really like mentalism on video. In mental matters, mentalism always works more because you involve the whole public, but I did not know that in a video format it would also be a hit. I started to make videos even with tips to read people and obviously not leaving the others aside.

LP: Let's talk a bit about your style as a magician now.

KM: I consider myself a psychological illusionist. I make entertainment for the mind. There are classic magicians with the rabbit in the hat, children's magic, close-up magic, which is more personalized and involves objects such as cards or coins, and there is mentalism. Mentalism has different branches such as psychological, which is what I do, esoteric and comedy magic.

LP: How do you reconcile magic and science, which are two things that seem to contradict each other?

KM: I have never liked to say that magic exists, nor that I have supernatural powers. Some people say it does and that is part of their character. I am very sincere with that because there are people who do fall into the error, so to speak, of believing that everything is real and can create a kind of cult towards someone. I have always said that there are tricks in magic and there is mentalism, which does have to do with science because I study, for example, body language, among other things. In that sense, it is something scientific, because it is studied, that is, it is a discipline.

LP: Finally, tell us about your name and your character, who is Kismet Magic?

KM: Kismet means "destiny". Destiny, because in mentalism the prediction is fundamental. When I found the word it resonated in my mind and it stayed there.

LatinAmerican Post | Juliana Rodríguez Pabón

Translated from "Entrevista: Kismet Magic, psicología, magia y YouTube