Superhandz Warz… not just against magicians

De’vo loves to go on about how the wars were important for identifying the art as being separate from magic, for not being belittled by magicians, for paving the way for so many new manipulators.

Now keep in mind, my introduction to this art was actually through De’vo and so I’m very grateful to him for that.

But what he conveniently fails to mention is that these wars were not just against magicians but were also against many other practitioners of “his” art. He wasn’t just fighting magicians, he was fighting the very people he said he was trying to help out. Spreading lies about the members of his own forums without a joke notice, and many people take what he says at face value. Many of which are also easily-influenceable young people.

I don’t like talking about this, but it’s not the first time De’vo sort of attempts to re-write or ignore some key part of history. And then the new people simply believe what he says at face value, which just doesn’t sit right with me.

This fighting with the other practitioners of this art has made it so that the most popular websites are in fact NOT his own. Decknique is the largest cardistry-only (or whatever you like calling it) community. Of course his reason is that anybody who isn’t on HL was banned. But I, like many others, choose not to go back.

Amazingly, though sadly, De’vo keeps his forum members on a tight leash. Once there you will quickly realize that you must agree with his ideas and opinions in order to stay. Most people there are too afraid to express their own opinion and are simply rewarded for supporting De’vo.

Of course don’t get me wrong, there are some talented people on the HL forums too. CIAPPI has great stuff, FatFingerz made it to TV. I’m not saying anything against those people. I don’t think they post much on the forums these days either though.

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And on Decknique/theory11 we have Daniel Madison (Lethal/Dangerous), Dan and Dave (earliest inspiration to many of you), Chris Kenner (the guy who invented the sybil), myself (created the largest cardistry community), Virtuoso (4 impressive people if you didn’t know), Andrei Jikh (amazing and very fresh now), and many others. All amazing people, and they aren’t forcing you to look through their window of the world and agree with everything they feel.

In reality, I think De’vo’s biggest and best influence was really his manipulation and NOT the wars. The manipulation is what got me on the bandwagon, and I’m sure it’s the same for many others. The wars and fighting actually turns most people off and away from him. I’ve wished forever and tried to help make it so that SH/HL deleted its vicioius Player Haters forum full of libel (which thankfully is gone now even though I was once demoted from moderator for deleting it), but since gave up on that vision and brought it forth with Decknique instead. That was obviously successful since we grew to be the largest community.

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Just a bit of a history lesson. I dislike talking about it, but having lived through it the last 5 and a half years, I believe it’s very important that people don’t lose sight of what happened and that history repeated itself time and time again.