A quick poll on reactions.

Who's reaction? There would be as many different reactions as there are people in the world. Scientists would want to study it, religious types would probably call it an act of god. People would embrace it, fear it, want to work out how to make money out of it....

There'd be a lot of different reactions, but I'd bet that they'd all be intense. The religious might see it as evidence that their god is coming to Earth and whip themselves into a fervour, the skeptical might automatically assume that they've developed schizophrenia or a brain tumour, and the shamans might just accept it because they always suspected that the rules of reality were fluid anyway.

No one would just shrug and walk on, although it could be interesting to see how long it took people to get used to it, and who adapted the quickest.

Also, in this day and age (presuming it's an urban fantasy or similar) it'd be interesting to see the media take on something of this sort. I can picture the talking heads at any of the networks arguing over what it means, and calling in guest speakers, and people tweeting "it's the end of the world" and having flame wars, etc.

He who controls the majic, controls the world...

Iran would claim its for peaceful purposes while denying Israel the right to have majic. North Korea would claim their new leader was adept at majic by age 5. In the US and other western nations, big business would try to patent majic so anyone who uses it has to pay a fee.

JimmyB27 said:

Who's reaction? There would be as many different reactions as there are people in the world. Scientists would want to study it, religious types would probably call it an act of god. People would embrace it, fear it, want to work out how to make money out of it....

Click to expand...

This.

But I would add the time-period matters, too. If your story is set present day you're more likely to see people try to categorize it in a scientific way, but if you set it in the 1100s not so much.

Skepticism, terror, awe, lust, shock, indifference...

I'm picturing an event in downtown San Francisco, no deaths or injuries, insignificant to no damage, no obvious one person responsible -
Seconds later, dozens of vids pop up on facebook, stuff gets tweeted, vids go viral on youtube.
Minutes later, the world grinds to a halt, faces glued to computer monitors, phones, etc.
Breaking news on the TV.
Statements from gov't officials.
New crop of vids go viral - scientists trying to prove it was something else, religious people using it as proof of a deity's existence, hopefully - hopefully! some vids of people going "See! I knew it! I knew it all along!"
In the following days - area is quarantined for research.
In general - reevaluation of personal values.
Church sees swell in attendance.
Within five years, if nothing else magical happens, event is discounted as massive hoax.
Everything goes back to normal.

The whole gamut, from incredulity to cult worship.

If the magic is being controlled later on - some religious groups (extra feverent evangelicals for instance) would probably begin condemnations of anyone who acknowledges it - think book burning of harry potter, only with something real. Probably lots of apocalypse hype too.
Lots of conspiracy theories, saying it's a hoax. If it's not worldwide, there would be a lot of disbelief, I think. "Oh, it was just some nuts pulling a hoax on everybody. It's not *real*"
If it permeates daily life, then I'd think there'd be a lot of panic, with people taking financial advantage of other peoples confusion. 'Magic-b-gone, just your life savings for one dose, guaranteed!' or 'Five days to being a powerful wizard just $199!'.
It depends on what the magic coming in is like, really, all said and done.

In medieval times? work of sorcery, god, the devil, the end of the times, etc.

Today?

Various religions claiming the magic is from their belief system.
Various religions claiming the magic is a sign of the end times, sorcery from demonic entities.

Atheists, skeptics will claim freakish light show, video tampering, mass hypnosis/delusions, scientific explanation, weather balloon....

I think it will cause fractures based on religious beliefs or lack thereof.

How many people will see it?
Cameras there?
Video?

"Credible" people see UFOs all the time (and ghosts) and skeptics still poo-poo it.

Edit: Just saw your latest post.

Even with massive tweets and video, I don't think it would last 5 years. Maybe 5 days in the news before someone "debunked" it. If the gov't has something in place where they investigate such a thing, they'll bury it.

It depends on what the magic does and what properties it displays, I think. If it's just a light show, no biggie. If it heals a whole hospital full of cancer patients, makes 150 people levitate and such, you're looking at something completely different.

It sounds like a fun story. Good luck with it!

I got an image in my head of Penn Jillette going on TV and mocking it loudly before there is any solid proof.

An incredible chaos. I imagine wide-spread panic, and various clamp-downs/attacks against groups that 'practice' magic.

See, it's funny, but I imagine for the most part, there wouldn't be chaos.

Sure groups (religious, governmental, and so forth) would have big reactions. But I think the average person would go to work, collect their paycheck, gossip about it a bit, and get on with life. It's what people do. We survive. We move forward.

KSandoval said:

See, it's funny, but I imagine for the most part, there wouldn't be chaos.

Sure groups (religious, governmental, and so forth) would have big reactions. But I think the average person would go to work, collect their paycheck, gossip about it a bit, and get on with life. It's what people do. We survive. We move forward.

Click to expand...

That's what I see too. September 12, 2001, I went on with my daily life. I had a six week old girl, there was no choice. The only thing that changed for me was what they talked about on TV and the things that didn't air.

Governments and scientists may feel a need to act, regular folk feel a need to keep being regular folk.

David Copperfield and Chris Angel try to figure out how the trick was done for their next HBO specials.

Most people, religious or not, would assume it's some kind of technology or natural phenomenon, and, if it poses a threat, we'd try to destroy it.

JSDR said:

I'm picturing an event in downtown San Francisco, no deaths or injuries, insignificant to no damage, no obvious one person responsible -
Seconds later, dozens of vids pop up on facebook, stuff gets tweeted, vids go viral on youtube.
Minutes later, the world grinds to a halt, faces glued to computer monitors, phones, etc.
Breaking news on the TV.
Statements from gov't officials.
New crop of vids go viral - scientists trying to prove it was something else, religious people using it as proof of a deity's existence, hopefully - hopefully! some vids of people going "See! I knew it! I knew it all along!"
In the following days - area is quarantined for research.
In general - reevaluation of personal values.
Church sees swell in attendance.
Within five years, if nothing else magical happens, event is discounted as massive hoax.
Everything goes back to normal.

Click to expand...

I think this pretty much hits the likely social reaction (at least Western society) if it were to happen today, plus minus 5 to 10 years. This was pretty much what I envisioned as the reaction.

I think everyone's already got it pretty much covered in the event that this happened on modern-day Earth and if it happened in medieval times.

What reaction you get would depend pretty heavily on the culture you plot the event on. Does it have all the elements of our modern society, or similar? If so, then the reactions from scientists, religious people and so on would be about the same as described. If it's a fairly pre-industrial society, well, they may already BELIEVE in the existance of magic, but when actual magic is used/appears/explodes, it could be completely different from everything they had already labeled as such!

Really, this is very interesting to think about.

I think everyone would tweet about it.

First reaction: Panic, if only because people tend to fear things they cannot understand or explain.

2nd reaction: Either violence or attempts to contain the magic and those who practice it. Also, probably a lot of vivisection in this part of the story, possibly some law passed to strip magic users of their humanity, thus enabling the vivisection.

Or maybe my mind is just a really really dark and scary place to hang out.

Depending on how apparent the magic trick is... like if its a big boom I'd imagine it would be akin to a how people react to a terrorist attack.

Katalyst said:

In a world where magic has never been seen before and it suddenly appears in a fairly public way what do you think the reaction would be?

Im really not sure on this one

Click to expand...

In our real world, people react in all kinds of ways to everything, whether it's true or not. It's almost like people choose what they want to believe, regardless of evidence and data. Sensible people would be sceptical. Scientists would either dismiss it due to lack of documentation, or want to study it if the phenomenon in question really seems to have happened. Religious believers would take it as a miracle from their favourite god, or an abomination against him. Then there is the type of people who believe there are conspiracies everywhere, and they would think it was the aliens, the lizard shapeshifters or the government up to no good.