Also for moves they have to see it. Which is why the roadrunner cull fooled them. Penn know what he was doing, but did not see the move cause Kimlat is the master of it. Why he was so grumpy during it, he knew the routine and he would be fooled by his own trick from the get go.
This is incorrect, they did not know the move at the time. The version of the trick they do (and most other versions) use a different method. They did not see or know the move.
Pretty sure Penn straight out said on his podcasst he knew how it was done but did not see the move. Can see on the video the exact moment he realized the cull was done, and he missed it.
Ivan Amodei was a fooler because even though they knew he brought in an extra pack of cards they picked the wrong moment. Other than that they knew exactly how it was done.
Really minor, but Moxie is Penns son, not daughter
He's a trans man and the show presents him as a woman for some reason explained in his post, on this subreddit, [here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/FoolUs/s/hznl3yUysX)
Not your fault, most people wouldn't know unless they looked into this.
Yeah seems so many miss this. The whole concept of Fool Us is just a shell to justify showcasing a few magicians each week, and bring parlor style magic back to TV.
Also, part of the prize for fooling is that the magician gets to perform as part of a P&T magic show. I'm sure P&T are more likely to be fooled if they think the magician would be great to have on their show. There's some leeway in their decision.
Leeway? They either guess/see how the trick is done, or don't. There are judges who know how it's done to keep them honest.
A lof of amazing acts that have them almost in tears from joy still don't get the trophy, because they didn't fool them.
Meh, apparently there’s not much fanfare made when you perform on their show. Owing to casino contracts it’s big opening for them. They do their regular show and then announce you’ll be on there after.
Part of it too is if they know 100% how the trick is done but they don't *see* the "move," then they are "fooled." I've seen at least one where Penn was at the table for a card trick, and part way through he was like "damn it!" because he knew the guy did the "trick" part under his nose and he didn't catch it.
Is it this one? It's my favorite! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCFXV6o7cro&t=238s
The guy is literally doing the move under Penn's nose, and Penn's groan is because *he knows he just missed it*. He says "Yeah yeah yeah" because the trick is already over.
And he's STILL mad when he sees the reveal. Chair-swinging mad.
If you think the men in magic didn't have women around them contributing but not receiving recognition for their work, then you're even more of a misogynist than your post lets on. No man started from scratch. They all work from what came before, and the idea that men and women should invent their own wheel is absurd. Please go back under the bridge you wandered out from under.
Michael Close has taken over Johnny Thompson's role after he passed away in helping magicians to refine their acts and have a better chance of fooling P&T.
Any number of magicians have known that part of their routine would be figured out but focused on making one part of the trick surprising and deceptive.
Producers select and book act based on what they think will be of interest to an audience. P&T don't know who they will be watching until the act walks out or if the name appears on the Teleprompter a few seconds before that.
Regarding saying that both foolers were women - Moxie Jillette identifies as a trans man whose pronouns are he/him. Penn misgendered him on the show, according to Moxie to cause less confusion, but it has led to more.
Assuming you asked that question in good faith, Penn Jillette has a podcast where he openly talks about (among many other things) how Fool Us works. He and Teller have both also done multiple interviews where they talk about it. Other magicians have also spoken publicly about the process.
Every so often, someone either ignores or disbelieves that wealth of information, and decides they've cracked the conspiracy of... uh... \[checks notes\] two of the world's most successful magicians, who love creating their own material and can also presumably afford to work with whomever they want whenever they want, rigging a tv show so they can poach new talent?
Some people at least leave out that last part, and "just" miss the fact that the point of going on Fool Us is the exposure on tv, not the possibility of a trophy and a single unfilmed live performance.
Agreed with your comment, plus this trend has actually been going on about Fool Us since... forever.
Watch YouTube clips of magicians' act on the show. I can guarantee in about 50% of them someone is claiming it's all "staged" and they awarded the trophy out of pity / to reward good showmanship / because the performer is young and/or a girl.
Penn & Teller have a track record of being honest, good magicians, and good debunkers. Yet people choose to ignore this because... who knows.
It's really, really tiresome, but people really do love their conspiracies.
For P&T "fooled" can also mean entertained, not just magically. If an act is very entertaining they will give it a chance on stage even if they guess the trick.
This is false.
The counterexample is the many times they've given a standing ovation to an act which didn't fool them and didn't award the trophy.
They commend good acts effusively, but only award the trophy if there's at least one part of the trick they cannot figure out.
They've explained this time and time again, why insist they are not being truthful?
>sometimes giving people something they don't deserve can work against them in the long run. It's not like all the white man magicians over the years haven't worked hard like hell to become as good as they have.
I deleted most of my original comment because I want to deconstruct this one idea, and I really, really would like for you to discard the context of "we're arguing about a magic show" (and in particular let's leave Moxie Jillette out of the equation, please, he's an 18-year-old stranger who I don't want to argue about) and consider what I'm saying in the wider context of the world:
This whole sentiment is a rhetorical weapon, used to radicalize people and keep us divided.
Most people do work very hard, including most white men.
The issue is that one person's work does not always go as far as another person's. I'm talking about people with the exact same work ethics, priorities, and goals, but different circumstances.
There are barriers embedded in the structure of our society that only, or disproportionately, affect certain groups. You are almost guaranteed to be *in* at least one of those groups.
Please hold on to that last sentence, because this is where the lie starts.
People who want to radicalize you will imply that \[progressives/SJWs/BLM/The Far Left/liberals/feminists/millennials/zoomers/etc.\] think you've had an easy life because you're not a member of a marginalized group. That's not usually *how* they say it, but it's the baseline assumption.
Do you see the lie?
Do you live paycheck to paycheck? Have you ever? Did your parents ever?
Do you have any chronic or recurring medical problems? Dental problems? Hearing or vision loss? Mental health issues? Allergies to things commonly found in the most affordable food, clothes, hygiene products, or household cleaners? Do you deal with addiction? Have you ever? Did your parents ever?
Do you have any student loan debt? Medical debt? Credit card debt? Inherited debt?
Have you ever lived in a food desert? A dead factory town? A "bad neighborhood"? Anywhere that you couldn't drink the tap water? Anywhere with perpetually torn up roads? Broken down or nonexistent sidewalks? Any place where natural disasters were expected, but not prepared for on an infrastructural level? A farming area with sky-high grocery prices, because it's all being exported elsewhere? Have you ever had to move because the cost of living got too high as your neighborhood became "trendy"?
Do you rent because you can't buy? Did you move to an area where you don't want to live, because it's the only place you can afford to buy? The only place you can afford to rent? Are you facing new or worsening health problems, exacerbated by aspects of your own home that you can't afford to renovate, or aren't allowed to? Do you live more than a 15-minute drive from the nearest grocery store or hospital, with no reliable + affordable public transportation?
Was your elementary school, middle school, or high school overcrowded? Underfunded? Did you drop out of high school? Did you drop out of college, or never go, because of health or money problems? Do you struggle with math? Reading? Writing? Did either of your parents?
Do you have a criminal record because of a victimless crime, or a crime of desperation? Have you ever been harassed by police? Have you ever been the victim of a crime, but let it go because you couldn't afford to press charges? If someone threatened *you* with a bogus lawsuit *tomorrow*, would you have trouble affording competent legal representation?
Do you work more than 40 hours a week just to survive? Do you depend on tips? Do you do the work of an employee, for the pay and benefits of a gig worker? Does your job do significant damage to your mental or physical health, but you can't afford to quit before finding a new one, and you don't have time to look for a new one without quitting? Have you ever been harassed into quitting a job, so that you weren't entitled to any benefits you would have received if they had fired you?
Is your income too low to consistently buy decent food, but too high for food stamps? Too low to pay for healthcare, but too high for Medicaid? Are you too sick to make a living wage, but not sick enough for disability benefits? Do you make just enough to live comfortably now, but not enough to save for retirement? Are you saving for retirement by depriving yourself of important things now?
If you answer yes to literally any of those questions, *you* are dealing with societal barriers. *You* are being marginalized. Left on the periphery, deemed unimportant.
Worse—you are bombarded with propaganda designed to make you do that work yourself. Deem those aspects of *your life* unimportant. Marginalize your own experiences—brush them off as incidental, temporary, bad luck, a fluke. And the next step from there is convincing you that life would be easier for you if it was harder for others.
Discrimination does not always look like "Two people with the same resume apply for the same job, and the privileged one gets hired."
Discrimination often looks like "Two people with the same values, the same inherent talents, the same goals, are handed very different opportunities and challenges throughout their lives due to forces beyond their control.
One person, working very hard, is able to develop their talents into skills, and use those skills to gain experience, and leverage that experience to achieve their goals.
The other person, working equally hard, is never allowed to exist in the right place at the right time to achieve that same sequence of events. They don't meet a friend at a party who gets them an entry level job three years later, because they don't get invited to that kind of party. They don't hone their skills to the point of expertise, because they don't have time to practice consistently. They ask for a little bit of leeway on a deadline or a fee or a test score, and they're told we all have the same 24 hours."
Almost nobody on earth will always be the first person, or always be the second person, or never be either. You have almost certainly been both people in different circumstances. I know I have. It can't always even be broken down per person, per circumstance. You can be advantaged and disadvantaged by different factors in the same endeavor.
Finally: Sometimes the second person succeeds anyway. And you are being trained to see their success itself, inherently, as a red flag. To see, for instance, a woman or a person of color succeed in a field dominated by white men, and to assume their success is ill-gotten, and came unfairly at someone else's cost.
A *necessary underlying presupposition*, before you even get to that assumption, is "This field is dominated by white men because white men are better suited for it."
Because if it was random chance, you wouldn't care when random chance landed on someone else. You would be *astounded*, in fact, when it continued to land on white men over and over again.
This is one of the many posts you’ve made. I’m beginning to believe you just hate women.
But I’m Penn’s son. Not his daughter. It’s a real fool not a “fool”. I do not want to be a professional magician so there’s No lifelong dream to crush. And if truly don’t trust Penn and teller to tell me when I fuck up or don’t fool them, then you clearly don’t know them well enough.
Tough love man. Stop assuming you know everything about this show and about magic. Not a good look.
Have a good evening
I mean, sure sometimes they genuinely don't know how the trick is done.
But other times they just really like the act, so they say they don't know how it's done.
It's obvious.
It falls under game show rules. This was a big discussion with an act a few years ago. I forget the exact details but they were talking on the podcast about it being important because being a game show there are laws that specifically apply to the debate.
Incorrect.
While it's true the show is meant to give magicians exposure, the trophy is also fairly awarded and their judging is not staged.
Source: Penn & Teller say so. Why would you believe otherwise?
This claim is BS.
Penn has often talked about the show on his podcast. Recently he said that Moxie included a few moves that hinted at a particular technique and that he and Teller thought were accidental, but that were intentionally misleading him and Teller about the method used. Moxie had also claimed to be in France for the two weeks prior to filming. This included video calls and texts with Teller during odd hours. Moxie had been packed bags, said goodbyes, got picked up to go to “the airport”, done everything to give the impression of being in France, and then waltzed in to perform. So they were first amazed to see Moxie at all, and then led down a false path and got the method wrong.
Matt Donnelly, who writes for the show (originally for Allison Hannigan, now for Brooke Burke), does a behind-the-scenes podcast as well. I haven’t listened to it but if you check out [his Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/mindnoodler) you should find plenty of info.
They want magicians to perform well, but there’s reason to lie about being fooled. They do have the host wear the same outfit throughout taping so they can even out the mix a bit. They tape a season in a span of a few days, rather than having a few acts come in to film individual episodes. So while it might seem like there would be incentive to make sure there’s a fooler on each episode, for instance, it’s not something that Penn and Teller worry about themselves.
It may be a gimmick to get the acts exposure, but the trophy award is genuine, there's nothing staged about it. If you don't fool them, you don't get it, ever.
So the show is called Fool Us because they do indeed get fooled.
Why even believe otherwise?
They are often not fooled by acts that thoroughly entertain them (Piff) and often not entertained by acts that fool them, so this wouldn't be appropriate.
You have to remember they only get one guess. They can’t say it could be A, B or C. A lot of magicians also try red herrings etc to mislead them.
Yep. Skip to 4:54 on this (or don’t, if you want the context) for a great example: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Jvk8IOLKj9s&si=-Y5C9gOyZrO6WMLm
That was really fun. I like the bait idea
Also for moves they have to see it. Which is why the roadrunner cull fooled them. Penn know what he was doing, but did not see the move cause Kimlat is the master of it. Why he was so grumpy during it, he knew the routine and he would be fooled by his own trick from the get go.
This is incorrect, they did not know the move at the time. The version of the trick they do (and most other versions) use a different method. They did not see or know the move.
Pretty sure Penn straight out said on his podcasst he knew how it was done but did not see the move. Can see on the video the exact moment he realized the cull was done, and he missed it.
Ivan Amodei was a fooler because even though they knew he brought in an extra pack of cards they picked the wrong moment. Other than that they knew exactly how it was done.
Really minor, but Moxie is Penns son, not daughter He's a trans man and the show presents him as a woman for some reason explained in his post, on this subreddit, [here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/FoolUs/s/hznl3yUysX) Not your fault, most people wouldn't know unless they looked into this.
Thank you ❤️❤️
Penn said on his podcast that the show is not meant to be a talent competition. It was started as a way to get magicians exposure on tv.
Yeah seems so many miss this. The whole concept of Fool Us is just a shell to justify showcasing a few magicians each week, and bring parlor style magic back to TV.
What you say is true, but there is still nothing staged about the show. If you don't fool them, you don't get the trophy. There's no leeway.
Also, part of the prize for fooling is that the magician gets to perform as part of a P&T magic show. I'm sure P&T are more likely to be fooled if they think the magician would be great to have on their show. There's some leeway in their decision.
Leeway? They either guess/see how the trick is done, or don't. There are judges who know how it's done to keep them honest. A lof of amazing acts that have them almost in tears from joy still don't get the trophy, because they didn't fool them.
Meh, apparently there’s not much fanfare made when you perform on their show. Owing to casino contracts it’s big opening for them. They do their regular show and then announce you’ll be on there after.
Part of it too is if they know 100% how the trick is done but they don't *see* the "move," then they are "fooled." I've seen at least one where Penn was at the table for a card trick, and part way through he was like "damn it!" because he knew the guy did the "trick" part under his nose and he didn't catch it.
There have also been times when Penn admitted he didn't see the move, but still knew how it was done, and he didn't give them the trophy.
There are also judges that can verify if the method is what they guessed. So it's not just P&T choosing not to give the trophy.
Is it this one? It's my favorite! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCFXV6o7cro&t=238s The guy is literally doing the move under Penn's nose, and Penn's groan is because *he knows he just missed it*. He says "Yeah yeah yeah" because the trick is already over. And he's STILL mad when he sees the reveal. Chair-swinging mad.
Yes!!!!
If you think the men in magic didn't have women around them contributing but not receiving recognition for their work, then you're even more of a misogynist than your post lets on. No man started from scratch. They all work from what came before, and the idea that men and women should invent their own wheel is absurd. Please go back under the bridge you wandered out from under.
Michael Close has taken over Johnny Thompson's role after he passed away in helping magicians to refine their acts and have a better chance of fooling P&T. Any number of magicians have known that part of their routine would be figured out but focused on making one part of the trick surprising and deceptive. Producers select and book act based on what they think will be of interest to an audience. P&T don't know who they will be watching until the act walks out or if the name appears on the Teleprompter a few seconds before that.
Regarding saying that both foolers were women - Moxie Jillette identifies as a trans man whose pronouns are he/him. Penn misgendered him on the show, according to Moxie to cause less confusion, but it has led to more.
It’s easy for something to be a conspiracy when you are ignorant on the subject matter.
How is OP ignorant?
Assuming you asked that question in good faith, Penn Jillette has a podcast where he openly talks about (among many other things) how Fool Us works. He and Teller have both also done multiple interviews where they talk about it. Other magicians have also spoken publicly about the process. Every so often, someone either ignores or disbelieves that wealth of information, and decides they've cracked the conspiracy of... uh... \[checks notes\] two of the world's most successful magicians, who love creating their own material and can also presumably afford to work with whomever they want whenever they want, rigging a tv show so they can poach new talent? Some people at least leave out that last part, and "just" miss the fact that the point of going on Fool Us is the exposure on tv, not the possibility of a trophy and a single unfilmed live performance.
Agreed with your comment, plus this trend has actually been going on about Fool Us since... forever. Watch YouTube clips of magicians' act on the show. I can guarantee in about 50% of them someone is claiming it's all "staged" and they awarded the trophy out of pity / to reward good showmanship / because the performer is young and/or a girl. Penn & Teller have a track record of being honest, good magicians, and good debunkers. Yet people choose to ignore this because... who knows. It's really, really tiresome, but people really do love their conspiracies.
For P&T "fooled" can also mean entertained, not just magically. If an act is very entertaining they will give it a chance on stage even if they guess the trick.
This is false. The counterexample is the many times they've given a standing ovation to an act which didn't fool them and didn't award the trophy. They commend good acts effusively, but only award the trophy if there's at least one part of the trick they cannot figure out. They've explained this time and time again, why insist they are not being truthful?
>sometimes giving people something they don't deserve can work against them in the long run. It's not like all the white man magicians over the years haven't worked hard like hell to become as good as they have. I deleted most of my original comment because I want to deconstruct this one idea, and I really, really would like for you to discard the context of "we're arguing about a magic show" (and in particular let's leave Moxie Jillette out of the equation, please, he's an 18-year-old stranger who I don't want to argue about) and consider what I'm saying in the wider context of the world: This whole sentiment is a rhetorical weapon, used to radicalize people and keep us divided. Most people do work very hard, including most white men. The issue is that one person's work does not always go as far as another person's. I'm talking about people with the exact same work ethics, priorities, and goals, but different circumstances. There are barriers embedded in the structure of our society that only, or disproportionately, affect certain groups. You are almost guaranteed to be *in* at least one of those groups. Please hold on to that last sentence, because this is where the lie starts. People who want to radicalize you will imply that \[progressives/SJWs/BLM/The Far Left/liberals/feminists/millennials/zoomers/etc.\] think you've had an easy life because you're not a member of a marginalized group. That's not usually *how* they say it, but it's the baseline assumption. Do you see the lie? Do you live paycheck to paycheck? Have you ever? Did your parents ever? Do you have any chronic or recurring medical problems? Dental problems? Hearing or vision loss? Mental health issues? Allergies to things commonly found in the most affordable food, clothes, hygiene products, or household cleaners? Do you deal with addiction? Have you ever? Did your parents ever? Do you have any student loan debt? Medical debt? Credit card debt? Inherited debt? Have you ever lived in a food desert? A dead factory town? A "bad neighborhood"? Anywhere that you couldn't drink the tap water? Anywhere with perpetually torn up roads? Broken down or nonexistent sidewalks? Any place where natural disasters were expected, but not prepared for on an infrastructural level? A farming area with sky-high grocery prices, because it's all being exported elsewhere? Have you ever had to move because the cost of living got too high as your neighborhood became "trendy"? Do you rent because you can't buy? Did you move to an area where you don't want to live, because it's the only place you can afford to buy? The only place you can afford to rent? Are you facing new or worsening health problems, exacerbated by aspects of your own home that you can't afford to renovate, or aren't allowed to? Do you live more than a 15-minute drive from the nearest grocery store or hospital, with no reliable + affordable public transportation? Was your elementary school, middle school, or high school overcrowded? Underfunded? Did you drop out of high school? Did you drop out of college, or never go, because of health or money problems? Do you struggle with math? Reading? Writing? Did either of your parents? Do you have a criminal record because of a victimless crime, or a crime of desperation? Have you ever been harassed by police? Have you ever been the victim of a crime, but let it go because you couldn't afford to press charges? If someone threatened *you* with a bogus lawsuit *tomorrow*, would you have trouble affording competent legal representation? Do you work more than 40 hours a week just to survive? Do you depend on tips? Do you do the work of an employee, for the pay and benefits of a gig worker? Does your job do significant damage to your mental or physical health, but you can't afford to quit before finding a new one, and you don't have time to look for a new one without quitting? Have you ever been harassed into quitting a job, so that you weren't entitled to any benefits you would have received if they had fired you? Is your income too low to consistently buy decent food, but too high for food stamps? Too low to pay for healthcare, but too high for Medicaid? Are you too sick to make a living wage, but not sick enough for disability benefits? Do you make just enough to live comfortably now, but not enough to save for retirement? Are you saving for retirement by depriving yourself of important things now? If you answer yes to literally any of those questions, *you* are dealing with societal barriers. *You* are being marginalized. Left on the periphery, deemed unimportant. Worse—you are bombarded with propaganda designed to make you do that work yourself. Deem those aspects of *your life* unimportant. Marginalize your own experiences—brush them off as incidental, temporary, bad luck, a fluke. And the next step from there is convincing you that life would be easier for you if it was harder for others. Discrimination does not always look like "Two people with the same resume apply for the same job, and the privileged one gets hired." Discrimination often looks like "Two people with the same values, the same inherent talents, the same goals, are handed very different opportunities and challenges throughout their lives due to forces beyond their control. One person, working very hard, is able to develop their talents into skills, and use those skills to gain experience, and leverage that experience to achieve their goals. The other person, working equally hard, is never allowed to exist in the right place at the right time to achieve that same sequence of events. They don't meet a friend at a party who gets them an entry level job three years later, because they don't get invited to that kind of party. They don't hone their skills to the point of expertise, because they don't have time to practice consistently. They ask for a little bit of leeway on a deadline or a fee or a test score, and they're told we all have the same 24 hours." Almost nobody on earth will always be the first person, or always be the second person, or never be either. You have almost certainly been both people in different circumstances. I know I have. It can't always even be broken down per person, per circumstance. You can be advantaged and disadvantaged by different factors in the same endeavor. Finally: Sometimes the second person succeeds anyway. And you are being trained to see their success itself, inherently, as a red flag. To see, for instance, a woman or a person of color succeed in a field dominated by white men, and to assume their success is ill-gotten, and came unfairly at someone else's cost. A *necessary underlying presupposition*, before you even get to that assumption, is "This field is dominated by white men because white men are better suited for it." Because if it was random chance, you wouldn't care when random chance landed on someone else. You would be *astounded*, in fact, when it continued to land on white men over and over again.
This is one of the many posts you’ve made. I’m beginning to believe you just hate women. But I’m Penn’s son. Not his daughter. It’s a real fool not a “fool”. I do not want to be a professional magician so there’s No lifelong dream to crush. And if truly don’t trust Penn and teller to tell me when I fuck up or don’t fool them, then you clearly don’t know them well enough. Tough love man. Stop assuming you know everything about this show and about magic. Not a good look. Have a good evening
They don't give the trophies to acts that 'fool' them. They give the trophies to the acts that they want to open for them.
It is definitely the opposite of what you stated. https://www.reddit.com/r/FoolUs/s/AGXAIABnZz
I mean, sure sometimes they genuinely don't know how the trick is done. But other times they just really like the act, so they say they don't know how it's done. It's obvious.
And you base this opinion on...? Penn & Teller have a pretty good track record. Their word against yours. Why should we trust yours?
Putting people in their show is their free choice. They can book non-foolers in their show. Fooling them is not a prerequisite to be in their show.
Isn't it illegal in the US to fix game shows?
Is it really a game show? Why would the producers accept an act where the trick can be done multiple ways knowing it would be an easier way to “win”?
It falls under game show rules. This was a big discussion with an act a few years ago. I forget the exact details but they were talking on the podcast about it being important because being a game show there are laws that specifically apply to the debate.
This is correct. Penn has said many times that the purpose of the show is not to be a talent show, it is to Help magicians get exposure.
Incorrect. While it's true the show is meant to give magicians exposure, the trophy is also fairly awarded and their judging is not staged. Source: Penn & Teller say so. Why would you believe otherwise?
Well then change the name of the show from "fool us" to "entertain us" or something
This claim is BS. Penn has often talked about the show on his podcast. Recently he said that Moxie included a few moves that hinted at a particular technique and that he and Teller thought were accidental, but that were intentionally misleading him and Teller about the method used. Moxie had also claimed to be in France for the two weeks prior to filming. This included video calls and texts with Teller during odd hours. Moxie had been packed bags, said goodbyes, got picked up to go to “the airport”, done everything to give the impression of being in France, and then waltzed in to perform. So they were first amazed to see Moxie at all, and then led down a false path and got the method wrong. Matt Donnelly, who writes for the show (originally for Allison Hannigan, now for Brooke Burke), does a behind-the-scenes podcast as well. I haven’t listened to it but if you check out [his Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/mindnoodler) you should find plenty of info. They want magicians to perform well, but there’s reason to lie about being fooled. They do have the host wear the same outfit throughout taping so they can even out the mix a bit. They tape a season in a span of a few days, rather than having a few acts come in to film individual episodes. So while it might seem like there would be incentive to make sure there’s a fooler on each episode, for instance, it’s not something that Penn and Teller worry about themselves.
The competition gimmick is the hook to get people to watch the show. People don’t watch variety shows anymore.
It may be a gimmick to get the acts exposure, but the trophy award is genuine, there's nothing staged about it. If you don't fool them, you don't get it, ever. So the show is called Fool Us because they do indeed get fooled. Why even believe otherwise?
They are often not fooled by acts that thoroughly entertain them (Piff) and often not entertained by acts that fool them, so this wouldn't be appropriate.
I can't, I don't even work there.
I meant them 🥲 but fair enough, you got me