Is Cardistry Dying?

There’s a widely-held sentiment that cardistry has lost a bit of steam in recent years.

Back in 2017-2018, The Virts videos hitting millions of views and Fontaine snippets making the front page of Reddit were a common occurrence. However, cardistry clearly isn’t hitting the same heights that it used to.

But besides a viral video with distinct metrics such as views and likes for comparison, how do we actually assess the current state of cardistry?

While getting a total count of the number of cardists is a difficult task, one option would be to look at the members of the cardistry subreddit (currently 104k). But how many of these members actively do cardistry? A quick look at the growth metrics of the subreddit are not exactly encouraging.

On the top, we have total subscribers to the subreddit since November 2012. Things started off slow, with peak growth between 2018-2019. Then the growth got slower, and slower, and slower. Eventually reaching today where the sub only gets a handful of subscribers every month.

Below that, the posts per day don’t look much better. What was once an active community averaging 10-15 posts per day, they are now lucky to get 1 or 2 (keeping in mind this graph starts in October 2018).

I don’t show these to be a downer, all of this fails to account for the strong cardistry community that Instagram maintains. And of course, YouTube remains the central hub for posting performance videos – the cornerstone of cardistry.  

But why do these graphs look like this? While I don’t think these fully describe the cardistry community, one observation is that this decline in growth appears to begin around the start of Covid. It’s certainly possible that the stressfulness of a changing world led some to put down their hobbies, perhaps never picking them up again. On the contrary, I have personally met new cardists who tell me the pandemic is when they first discovered cardistry. Given a community that primarily lives online, and with the abundance of free tutorials for any beginner, it’s equally as likely that social isolation led many on a search for new hobbies, ultimately landing on cardistry.

That said, short of a global census asking people whether they do cardistry or not, it’s tough to say where the community is at. Clearly these metrics suggest a lack of growth, but these metrics certainly aren’t everything.

While it’s possible cardistry is in a downswing at the moment, I believe such is the cycle of a community. Skateboarding, for example, had several setbacks on its way to universal takeover.

Playing cards also aren’t a fad. They’ve been around since the 9th century, so I don’t see cardistry going the way of the fidget spinner.

At the end of the day, I’m hopeful. As cardists, we are the ones who ultimately decide the direction of the community. If you’re worried about the current state of the artform, take it upon yourself to reach out, actively engage, and introduce others. As Socrates remarks, “the secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

— Conor