The beginning of Sankey's video is not nearly as offensive as I thought it'd be. As for the throw-offs, "leading spectators down the garden path," I have no problem with them provided you later do something that cancels out such methods. The problem with this, of course, is that if magicians can eliminate one method, then they will more than likely be able to deduce the correct method.
In other words, it's perfectly OK to give the impression that you have an object held in palm. Let them believe that you're palming something, but at one point, show your hand open and empty. Don't plunge it into your pockets.
Some of my favorite tricks are the kind where people think they have a method and then you explode it. Effect: the performer fans through the cards face up, casually says, "they're all different, right?"
"Yes."
"Say 'stop' whenever you want."
A card has been chosen and the magician again emphasizes, "You could have picked any card you wanted, right?"
"Yes."
The magician removes four cards from the pack, explaining that "each will tell me something about your card." These cards are flipped over one at a time, and each of them match the selection! Despite the previous confirmation that "all of the cards are different," and the spectator had a free-choice, the scallywag magician is using multiple duplicates. It's evident the spectator did NOT have a free choice! Then the fun moment comes: "this trick doesn't use four [whatevers]. It uses the four aces." And then the selection apparently vanishes and we see all four cards as different aces.
Exploding false solutions is fun. It's not fun when you leave those solutions hanging.
Maybe it was the UK show, but Fool Us had a couple Swedes on and they were performing some trick as a duo where (I believe) a playing card ended up in one of their duct-tape covered pie-holes. When the signed card is removed from the mouth with tongs, there's a suspicious action long-associated with a move popularized in Sankey's Paperclipped. It looks exactly like a switch, which I think is what Penn & Teller guessed. The guys said they did not use ad switch, in which case they did a pretty crappy magic trick.
I can do a trick where a spectator removes a card from the deck. The deck is shuffled. I explain that I can look at each of the remaining cards and deduce, in less than thirty seconds, the identity of the selection. There are multiple ways of accomplishing this effect, and I would be remiss if I did not 1) make it clear that it's a free selection; 2) make it clear that I have not seen the back of the card. Otherwise I could use a variety of methods, and the typical layperson will believe that it's a marked deck.
That situation with Teller in Egypt is different than the one with Sankey It's the difference between giving and taking. The cups and balls magician was giving; he did the trick for Teller. Sankey was taking; he performed for bragging rights.
