It was a typical friday night. I was slinging coffee to sorority girls and fraternity himbos alike (you’d be amazed how much cold foam Hayden from Kappa Appa Yip Yip wants on his iced coffee. I’m seriously judging). In between cold brews and espressos however, I took part in that Great American Pastime; doomscrolling on twitter. What else is a boy to do? Let me tell you, you can be as familiar as you want with the chaotic content of twitter dot com but nothing prepared me for this.
Photo Cred. Mark Baker, Associated Press
Apparently, the town of Christchurch, New Zealand is getting rid of their town wizard. The wizard, Ian Brackenbury Channell, has been a fixture of Christchurch’s tourism scene since 1998, and got paid around $10,000 a year for “Acts of wizardry, and other wizard-like services”. As far as I’m concerned, that’s worthy of an olympic gold medal in improvising a resume. However, like everyone’s favs, Channell has some problems. His off-color comments about women kind of disqualify him.
courtesy NPR
Yeah, not great.
According to the town tourism board, they’re trying to revamp their promotional strategy, choosing instead to “showcase a vibrant, diverse, modern city that is attractive to residents, domestic and international visitors, new businesses, and skilled migrant workers.”
In other words a weird, white stunt double for Dumbledore waving sticks in the town plaza just doesn’t quite pass the vibe check. Plus you can’t give the old man too much credit for dressing up as Gandalf. After all, New Zealand is the backdrop for Lord of the Rings. It’s like choosing to wear Mickey ears to Disneyland; the inspiration was already there.
But while I laugh at Ian Brackenbury Channell and peruse his, um, stylish website, I can’t help but think about the function of wizards in our society. We’ve seen prestidigitators pop up at odd moments all throughout history, with such wild examples as Grigori Rasputin, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Alva Edison. If you’re feeling bold, and lord knows I always am, you could say people like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have taken their place in the modern day.
What makes them wizards? It’s not their dress, although you’d be hard-pressed to show me a photo of Zuckerberg without a hood. No, men like these operate very simply; they promise us things that the uninitiated would mistake for magic. Edison gets credit for the lightbulb, Musk has led an electric vehicle revolution, and Zuckerberg built what is now a networking behemoth.
I think very few people can deny what small (or in some cases not-so-small) boons these inventions have been on the world. They’ve helped to make our daily lives more accessible
What all these men have in common, Christchurch’s wizard included, is that they’re just weird. They’re kooky, or eccentric if that word is slightly more polite. They’ve made names for themselves by “breaking molds” and “disrupting systems”. They invent a sort of charm by being refreshingly different from the banality of the rest of the world. And at a certain point, we as spectators become complicit in their rise. We buy the product, we use the platform, we drink the electric powered kool-aid.
The problem with this lies in our collective dismissal of red flags. We might convince ourselves that actions, comments, or policies enacted by these men might simply be a part of their eccentricities. It’s uncomfortable to consider how we’ve something magical they’ve made, and how our enjoyment of it came at a cost to someone else. Edison tried to engage in outright patent theft, while Facebook has been reported to prioritize profits over its users’ mental and sometimes physical wellbeing.
I won’t deny wizards are cool. They’re refreshing. They take up such large spaces in our mythologies because they give us an escape. But it’s worth considering whether the magic they grant is worth whatever harm they might do. What morals guide them? What responsibility do they feel to help the most vulnerable?
I’ll speak personally; no amount of former high school classmates I can stay in touch with online is worth even one person suffering body dysmorphia.