Fall down the rabbit hole that is “Party Magician TikTok” and you’ll find plenty of card tricks, vanishing doves, and pure, unadulterated joy. Most videos there, captioned something like “POV you hired a magician for your 27th birthday,” feature fully grown adults huddled around a sharply dressed main act, absolutely captivated by some jaw-dropping sleight of hand or mind-reading stunt. But the real magic lies in the crazy group reactions to every trick: It’s always dramatic screaming and jumping that leaves the camera shaking too. The clips really capture the disarming and very entertaining beauty of the ongoing party magician renaissance. Because while these performers (allegedly) don’t rely on real magic, they do have the power to make everyone watching them act 10 years old again.

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I saw this effect play out firsthand when Nadav Roet, a 24-year-old NYC magician/mentalist, stopped by the Cosmo office for a quick show. In just under 30 minutes, he made a card appear under a coworker’s watch, guessed someone’s iPhone passcode, predicted the last four digits of another person’s credit card, and left our team in wide-eyed disbelief. (The rest of our workday was spent trying—and admittedly failing—to figure out how any of that was done.) Nadav’s been practicing magic since he was 5, and today he hosts a monthly show called The Bluff. His audience’s childlike reactions (like the Cosmo team’s slightly disruptive squealing) will always be the job’s greatest perk. “Kids get to wonder all the time. At that age, we’re allowed to be in awe, but as adults, not so much. When magicians come to a birthday party or an event, they get that feeling again.”

group of people watching a demonstration at a large table in a modern space
Annabel Iwgebue
Nadav’s show at Cosmo HQ.

Right now, young adults are in a deep whimsy deficiency. After formative years spent in quarantine and a shaky entry into adulthood, shaped by some overwhelming political unrest and economic instability, Gen Z is experiencing historic levels of unhappiness. Which is exactly why magic—and the escapism it provides—is primed for a comeback. The shows satisfy a pretty universal desire to feel amazed. And based on the sheer volume of TikTok comments that say something along the lines of “I forgot you can just hire a magician” or “10/10 use of free will,” it’s clear that magicians’ disappearance from mainstream media made people forget that they were even an option. You could blame the fact that we age out of the assumed target demo for party magicians after the sixth grade, but I recall an era in the mid-late 2000s when the Now You See Me film releases dominated at the box office, and Criss Angel had a stronghold on daytime television segment appearances geared towards all ages. The appetite for the breath-holding, gravity-defying illusions was ageless, real, and consistently recognized in pop culture.

No AI slop or mindless doomscroll can replicate the thrill of a well-executed, in-your-face illusion.

It seems like magic was yet another thing displaced by the rise of passive, quick-hit social media entertainment. Between an endless stream of viral stunts and easily searchable “MAGIC TRICKS, REVEALED” videos, a lot of the art’s mystery and allure was stripped away. But this year, one viral party magician clip at a time, the collective is remembering what we’ve lost. All the full-body reactions recorded prove that no AI slop or mindless doomscroll can replicate the thrill of a well-executed, in-your-face illusion. And if you’re trying to plan a party where people get off of their phones and actually talk to each other, including a magic show will get the job done.

It’s a cool, entertaining icebreaker

“When you walk into a birthday party, people may kind of know each other and make small talk,” Nadav says. “But when a magician is walking around with a deck of cards, it instantly becomes a shared experience.” He’s noticed his act has been the ultimate conversation starter. “One of my favorite things is performing at an event where people don’t really know each other, but afterward, everyone’s bonding. They’ve all just shared the same moment of ‘what the fuck?’ People start to understand that it’s a cool, entertaining icebreaker.’”

Even when seen purely as an icebreaker, the appeal of a magician still harkens back to childhood—a time when you could walk up to someone on the playground and easily become friends. Back then, we were all discovering the world on the same timeline, and that shared ignorance made it easier to bond with everyone else who was navigating the same revelations and growth points. For a brief moment (or a 30-minute show), a magic act puts you back in that place with everyone you’re watching it with. You’re once again forced to wonder how something came to be, surrounded by equally uninformed people who hold no upper hand or extra insight.

Although ignorance doesn’t really sound like an enticing position, when no one around you has an advantage (except the performer pulling the rabbit out of a hat or what have you), it’s actually refreshing to share that feeling of awe and confusion. Sometimes it’s nice to just not know. In fact, given the information overload we face every day, we deserve a moment to be naive—though audiences will forever be begging magicians like Nadav to divulge the secrets behind their tricks.

“I don’t see it as rude,” he admits. “It’s kind of the obvious thing to ask someone who just told you that they can read your mind.”