Shills

In the early 90's I went with my brother and his wife to see Harry Blackstone Jr. in Atlantic City. We paid a dear price for those tickets and afterwards felt disappointed, but for one incredible trick which he learned (or inherited) from his father, which was truly remarkable. The rest were pretty much large scale versions of magic tricks I’d performed as a kid.

One of Blackstone's last tricks that evening involved taking ten volunteers from the audience and bringing them onstage as assistants. Their role, in addition to executing the trick, was to affirm it wasn't rigged, that indeed it was an impossible escape about to be witnessed. I leaped up, raised my hands to be one of these volunteer participants. To my surprise, he nodded in my direction and I ran up onto the stage. To my greater surprise, he was exceedingly irritated because the guy he nodded toward was either behind or next to me. He had eleven members of the audience onstage and, it turns out, one was just a grinning buffoon who was not a shill.

The trick involved tying a man’s hands so he could not escape. Blackstone gave instructions as the others watched, holding the ends of the rope or generally playing a role that would baffle and amaze the audience. Because I was not supposed to be there, he didn’t know what to do with me other than allow me to stand onstage in front of 1700 paid spectators.

What I observed was that because of the scale involved, ten shills seemed beyond what the audience would expect. Like everything else in the show, it was a matter of scale in which the quantity of pretenders gave an air of authenticity to their innocence. Ultimately it was a grand scam, the ten pretenders helping Blackstone deceive his audience.

Blackstone was annoyed at my presence on the stage. I saw clearly that the man’s hands were not tightly bound behind his back. In fact, they were hardly bound at all. And I'm sure he didn't like me standing there seeing it all so plainly, but there was nothing this big name magician could do but follow through. The shills all agreed that there was "no way" the bound man could escape. The audience pretty much bought in I suspect and it would have been bad form on my part to raise objections at that point.

Shills have played a role in many ventures throughout history. Dr. Ben’s Medicine Show in the wild west utilized shills who testified to the potent powers of Dr. Ben’s All Purpose Healing Fluid. Occasionally Dr. Ben and his shills would get carried out of town on rails, tarred and feathered.

Shills are sometimes used in auctions to bid up the price so as to gain better profits, both for the seller and the auctioneer whose take is dependent on selling price. For this reason, the use of shills is considered an unethical behavior, though it undoubtedly occurs on eBay and in other forms to this day.

In journalism, a shill is someone who mouths the talking points of a point of view, who has a vested interest in one side or the other in a controversial issue. The unethical part of this equation is that the shill conceals his allegiances. He pretends to be just another journalist, and even takes pains to assume this pose. But when called upon, he is only too eager to serve the puppet-master.

What frosts a lot of people is that our incursion into Iraq appears to have been an orchestrated manipulation of public opinion utilizing shills embedded in the media. Evidence was repeatedly hinted at and used as justifications to move forward because the risks involved in remaining passive were too great.

With Blackstone, it was the scale of the scam which proved so convincing to the audience. In today's media, it has become harder than ever to sort out facts from the fictions. Perhaps this is why C.S. Lewis said he didn't read the news at all because you never knew what was true until six months later.