Behind some young people keen on astrology
Beware of the scam behind superstition
"Virgo takes good luck!" "Pisces are rushing!" "Libra good fortune comes!" Since July this year, constellation blogger Tao Baibai has "quickly gotten out of the circle" on the Douyin platform, saying, "You will search for me." "Tao Baibai?" has become a hot word on the Internet. In more than a month, the blogger's Douyin account has gained more than 10 million followers.
Since the post-90s boy Feng Hao has learned Tao Baibai on Douyin, he has developed the habit of watching the horoscope every week. He hopes to use this astrological method to avoid bad luck.
With Tao Baibai and the "out of circle" of horoscopes, some young people are keen on astrology and other divination behaviors are gradually attracting attention.
Divination has a long history. In ancient China, people used tortoise shells, yarrow, copper coins, bamboo sticks and other methods to infer the future good and bad luck. After that, divination methods such as playing cards and horoscopes introduced from abroad gradually became popular, and were affected by some young people. People sought after.
Is this a modern variant of ancient superstition, or is it young people’s self-entertainment to relieve stress?
The reason for this is worth exploring.
The perplexed youth is the mainstream obsessed with divination
In 2019, Li Taihang, who was in the critical stage of preparing for the postgraduate entrance examination, began to pay attention to Tarot divination.
Due to the greater psychological pressure, he wanted to give himself confidence through divination.
In the beginning, Li Taihang just did free public fortune-telling on the website. After asking questions, the fortuneteller would decide the card array based on the questions. Usually, each fortune-telling only takes more than ten minutes.
What makes him happy is that the result of each test is that he can be admitted to graduate school. Satisfied with the result, he began to take the initiative to purchase tutorials on the Internet to learn how to use tarot cards for divination, and to provide a "reference" for his decision-making.
In his opinion, divination is more of a placebo in life, "Sometimes I am stressed, and I just want to count it, even if it's inaccurate, entertainment is good."
In 2019, Xiaopeng sought the "help" of a fortuneteller when he was unable to choose between two jobs when he graduated.
According to him, he found a good internship job in the city where the school is located. If it goes well, he can become a regular employee. At the same time, he also received a job offer notice from Beijing.
He said that when faced with a choice, he was confused and hoped that someone could give pointers.
After contacting Taobao's fortune teller, the other party asked Xiaopeng to select 3 numbers from 1-10 and give some analysis.
"The'Master' didn't make a decision for me, but only analyzed the pros and cons of the two jobs." Xiaopeng said, after several considerations, he quit his internship and went to Beijing.
When you open a discussion group or forum related to divination, you can see the various worries of some young people: Do you want to break up?
Can I go ashore for postgraduate entrance examinations and public examinations?
What should I do if I want to quit and can't find a job?
The reporter found that these young people are the mainstream obsessed with divination. They project all kinds of anxiety into the unknown "fate", hoping to find a way to break the game.
Zhang Xin, an associate professor at the School of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences at Peking University, believes that both online and offline fortune-telling and divination are designed to meet people's psychological needs.
"There is a concept in psychology called the sense of control, which is the avoidance of uncertainty." He said that people's emotions or life pressure often come from the uncertainty of life.
Beware of the scam behind divination fever
The China Association for Science and Technology once released the "Third Chinese Public Sampling Survey Report on Unknown Phenomena". The report shows that at least one in every four Chinese "believes" in metaphysics, and as many as 40% of the respondents have had fortune-telling. .
Zhou Yunyao is a tarot fortuneteller. He and his team held a tarot training course in Beijing.
According to him, the training fee for the 3-day introductory tarot card course is 5,800 yuan, and there are more than a dozen students who sign up for the first phase.
The fee for the advanced Tarot teacher (practitional) training class is as high as 14,800 yuan. In the course publicity released by Zhou Yunyao, it is mentioned that "part-time annual income can reach about 150,000 yuan".
The reporter learned that in Zhou Yunyao's offline stores, the price of tarot card divination is divided into three types: 100 yuan 1 card, 200 yuan 5 cards, and 300 yuan 8 cards.
Zhou Yunyao said that seven or eight customers can visit on weekdays, and there are more people on weekends, there can be more than a dozen, and the average daily income of shop assistants is about 1,000 yuan.
In Zhou Yunyao's view, professional psychological counseling is sometimes not easy to be accepted and understood by everyone. With the help of the mysterious cloak of Tarot cards, young people can get rid of their guard and frankly talk about the doubts and problems that plague them.
According to his observations, most people who are willing to try the Tarot test are young people around 30 years old. Women are generally willing to consult on emotional issues, while men prefer to consult about career and wealth.
Compared with offline Tarot divination shops, the online divination style seems to be blowing more hotly, gradually becoming a new "wealth code", attracting a steady stream of capital investment.
According to a report from Xinhua News Agency in May this year, on an online consultation platform for eight-character fortune-telling masters developed and operated by a Beijing company, the fees for the column "Masters" in the "Love and Marriage" column ranged from 138 yuan to 498 yuan.
The "Master" who has received the most orders has received a total of 3,128 orders since entering in 2017.
According to incomplete statistics from the "investment community", a financial service information platform, nearly 20 fortune-telling products received financing from 2014 to 2019.
Data disclosed to the outside world shows that there are 9 projects that have received financing of more than 10 million yuan.
The reporter searched Tianyan and found that there are hundreds of companies that use "feng shui", "divination" and "tarot" as their business.
Subsequently, the reporter searched the mobile phone store with "divination" as the key word, and dozens of apps appeared, one of which was called "Fortune-telling Bazi", which had 14.48 million installations.
In this App, the interface contains consulting items such as fate question and answer, horoscope, peach blossom analysis, and there is also a Fortune Mall that sells cinnabar bracelets, natal Buddha pendants, auspicious Nafu crystal trees and other products, and the price ranges from tens of yuan to hundreds of yuan. Not waiting.
But some insiders pointed out that there are more and more scams behind this.
The so-called "masters" grasp the confusion and pain points of the people who come to consult, use ambiguous words to defraud trust, and then defraud money.
The reporter discovered that recently many divination-related groups in Douban have been banned. Searching for keywords such as "divination" and "tarot" showed that "according to relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results are not displayed."
The reporter also inquired about Taobao, Weibo and other platforms, and found that similar situations existed.
In this regard, Guo Xiaoming, a lawyer at Sichuan Juheng Law Firm, said that according to the methods and purposes of online fortune-telling, a variety of illegal and criminal activities may be triggered, and therefore need to be controlled.
He also stated that the use of fortune-telling to promote feudal superstition, disrupt social order and damage the health of others, constitutes a violation of law and order, and can be subject to administrative detention for up to 15 days and a fine of 1,000 yuan; and if suspected of fraud, criminal punishment will be imposed.
Divination is easy to breed illegal behavior
"Divination is sometimes a way to escape reality." In Zhou Yunyao's view, most young people encounter problems in real life, but can't find the direction and the crux of the problem, they will use the form of divination to relieve emotions.
At the same time, he frankly said that there is no basis for transshipment and prediction of the future.
Then why do many people think that online divination is very accurate?
Zhou Yunyao explained that this is the use of vague linguistics and psychological suggestion to make people feel a general and general description that accurately summarizes their own characteristics and experiences.
Zhou Yunyao said that these rhetoric also cater to the psychology of some people who want to easily solve problems and seek shortcuts. "It is human nature to seek pleasure and avoid suffering."
"Many times, divination is just for psychological comfort, and the actual situation is still considered when making decisions." Li Taihang said that he also learned a lot of divination knowledge through purchasing divination tutorials in private, and sometimes he would calculate it for himself every time. If the result does not meet his psychological expectations, he will choose to re-divine.
In response to this psychology, Zheng Ning, director of the Law Department of the School of Cultural Industry Management of Communication University of China, analyzed that fortune-telling itself has "survivor bias".
Therefore, some young people feel a certain degree of pressure relief during the divination process.
Wang Huiqing, a doctoral student at the School of Law of Nanjing University, believes that "network divination" means that traditional feudal superstitions are put on the coat of modern technology, and modern technology is used to meet the psychological needs of contemporary youth for self-justification.
Currently, online fortune telling has spawned illegal activities such as online pyramid schemes and online fraud. On the one hand, there is a development trend of pyramid schemes, and on the other hand, online fraud has spawned. The operator obtains basic information of the parties, such as age, marital status, and working conditions, and conveys them to the operators. After obtaining the relevant information, the operators use false divination to state the basic information of the parties, gaining the trust of the parties, and then request the parties to purchase Derivative products such as "consecration talisman" and "transit talisman" defraud the parties of money.
"The illegal behaviors spawned by online divination will cause great harm to young people." Wang Huiqing suggested that legal measures should be taken as soon as possible to delineate a legal red line for them to prevent online divination from causing losses to the public's personal and property safety and causing social order. Adverse effects.
(At the request of interviewees, Feng Hao, Li Taihang, and Xiaopeng in the article are all pseudonyms)
China Youth Daily, China Youth Daily, trainee reporter Han Rong, reporter Shi Jia Source: China Youth Daily
Version 08 on November 19, 2021