Written by | Wen Yehao
Edit | Wu Xianzhi
"Is there any result in the relationship between me and him?" Xiao Yan (pseudonym) has been with her boyfriend for a year, but the two always quarrel from time to time over some small things, which makes Xiao Yan begin to wonder if the two really have a future.
One night, Xiao Yan, who was restless and experienced psychological struggle, dispelled his doubts and sent the question to the "master" who had just added it along with his name, birthday and fortune-telling fee of 168 yuan.
Soon, she received a reply saying that the relationship between the two would have some twists and turns, but they would eventually come together. This made Xiao Yan extremely gratified, and this result was exactly what she wanted to hear.
But the predictions of this master, who is "quite famous in our local area", do not seem to be as accurate as the sisters in the Little Red Book say. As time passed, the relationship between Xiao Yan and her boyfriend became more and more tense, and finally ended in a breakup, and the "master" has disappeared from the crowd.
In fact, whether at home or abroad, "fortune-telling" is nothing new. At present, even if the sword of Damocles has fallen, this ancient business still has a strong vitality on the Internet, and fortune tellers, tarot masters and other "side businesses" around fortune-telling are also taking root.
Internet fortune telling, from looking at faces to tarot cards
"The day lord Jia Mu was born in the noon moon, speculating that the hour is Ren Shen, sitting down and being born in the seal, the year and the moon are chanting at noon, the earth branch is meridian, this year's meridian is all three, and it is very reasonable to be in the suspension of work to recuperate." In the comment section of a celebrity injured Weibo, a "master" commented.
For a long time before, similar "half-immortals" seemed to live in Weibo, appearing in the comment areas of various hot searches, catching the birthdays and faces of Internet celebrities and the parties involved in the incident, and came to the conclusion that the vast majority of people wanted to see.
Such a scene often makes people wonder: it's already 2023, and the "masters" with sunglasses, one table and one chair on the streets and alleys are almost gone, who is still visiting fortune tellers? But the fact is that the core audience of Internet fortune-telling is today's young people.
Internet fortune-telling usually has several common modes, the most popular before is free fortune telling, you only need to enter your birthday, name and other information, you can get a simple fortune-telling report - not so much fortune-telling as entertainment.
People are obviously more willing to trust so-called experts than more entertaining machine fortune-telling. Gradually, the masters of oral metaphysics came into being under the dividends of self-media - through self-media drainage, and then through "professional" fortune-telling services.
According to Photon Planet, the aforementioned various masters who have mixed in Weibo, according to the distinction of fame and seniority, the price of fortune-telling usually ranges from a few hundred to tens of thousands of yuan, and fraud cases around fortune-telling are even more common. According to media reports, a Weibo fortune teller was arrested by the public security organs on charges of online superstition and fraud.
Tarot Master Biscuit (pseudonym) told Photon Planet that although young people are superstitious, they mainly stay in the form of forwarding pictures to pray for blessings, and they look at their wallets very seriously, and they will not be stupid enough to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and be willing to be leeks.
In addition, in her opinion, Internet fortune-telling is undergoing a round of succession - today's young people are becoming more and more unbeliever, no one will believe that birthdays, mobile phone numbers can predict fate, the original birthday eight characters seem to have failed. "Today's 'fortune-telling' is more and more out of the metaphysical category of nothingness, and does not rely on asking God to worship Buddha to predict the future, but more pursues something at the subconscious level." Cookie explained.
In other words, the traditional oriental form of fortune-telling, which is full of "half-immortals" with palmistry and equal faces, seems to have been de-enchanted in the young circle. In contrast, Western forms of fortune-telling (divination), represented by tarot cards, have become increasingly popular among young people in recent years.
As a tarot card lover, biscuits know this well. According to her recollection, when she first entered the pit four or five years ago, tarot cards were still a niche circle in China, and because their own interpretation often had subjective factors, they would often help each other interpret each other and enclosure themselves.
Until around 2020, tarot cards ushered in their own out-of-the-loop moment - a large number of newcomers poured into "secret bases" such as Tieba and Xiaohongshu to ask for divination, and social media sharing about tarot cards gradually increased. "Sometimes some of the questions asked by newcomers are really outrageous, such as whether putting a plastic sleeve on the tarot card will affect the luck of the cards, whether eating spicy will affect the accuracy, etc., more and more outrageous."
Perhaps sensing new business opportunities, almost overnight, many "feng shui masters" who had been repeatedly reviewed and knocked by the platform instantly transformed into tarot masters, from selling peach wood swords to selling crystal balls.
"From order to chaos, it's a matter of moments."
With the influx of "feng shui masters", the cookie slowly felt that the tarot card circle changed its taste, and the sword of Damocles also fell.
Not long after leaving the circle, the tarot cards were labeled as 'foreign superstitions', and even the Douyin account where cookies shared relevant information for free was banned. "It said that feudal superstition was detected, it was forbidden to speak, the name became a number, and the avatar and profile were blocked. The B station video was also labeled 'don't be gullible'. ”
At the same time that Douyin was blocked, the supervision of tarot cards by Tieba and Little Red Book became more and more strict, and cookies were briefly banned by Little Red Book for helping Xiaobai interpret it for free. Under repeated blows, the "lair" was either occupied by the end or businessmen, and the Internet spirit in the heart of the cookie gradually dissipated, and a few former circle friends pulled a small group, unwilling to share too much on social media.
Strict supervision drove away the original circle, but it could not drive away the players who had already set their sights on the divination business. Under supervision, this ancient business turned to the dark side and became more and more secretive.
The occult, a new side hustle for young people?
Different from the "numerology housekeepers" who can be distinguished at a glance on Weibo, the tarot masters on the Little Red Book not only whitewash their own skills, but also have a large number of trolls that are no different from amateur users, flowing in the comment area of various related notes every day.
"Sisters, don't trust others easily, many of the comment areas are trusts, we have a local master who calculates accurately, and the fee is small, after all, those who can really tell fortunes are not greedy for money, but people don't play Little Red Book at all." In the comment area of a note about the divination business, a message reads.
In the subdivided comment area of the message, more than ten users replied "seeking privacy". Stripped of a few real follow-up replies, all of this is actually a false atmosphere deliberately created by the fortune-telling team - through multiple accounts to sing and harmonize, so that the so-called "master" becomes real and credible. If the user has not noticed the hundreds of similar comments under different notes, it is obviously easy to fall into the set trap.
In addition, soothsayers are also good at "playing dumb puzzles" in their personal profiles to guide users to guess their WeChat ID; Or guide users to click the group chat button through the homepage background image, and then achieve diversion through eye-catching group chat names such as "V:xxxxxx"; Or pretend to be an amateur user and tell your own journey - the story is different, but the end point is the same.
Fortune-telling teams that are familiar with platform mechanics have apparently learned how to circumvent platform censorship. Once the user is imported into the private domain, Fangcai's promise will evolve into "punching".
Xiao Ji (pseudonym), who calls herself a "leek", told Photon Planet that the fortune-telling and divination services on the Little Red Book are usually priced within 100 yuan, focusing on "affordable fortune telling", which is very suitable for a student party like her who does not have a bulge wallet.
And the tarot division that Xiaoji met usually had a variety of businesses. "If you just want to judge the general trend, just roll the star dice, and the roll is generally between a dozen and thirty yuan; If it is a tarot divination, you can generally choose to charge by question or by time. In addition, there are custom astrolabes for hundreds of dollars. ”
Xiaoji took a tarot master she had patronized before as an example, the price of a single question is about 58 yuan, and a number of questions enjoy a certain discount, questions can cover love, peach blossoms, career, studies, interpersonal relationships, choices and many other aspects, valid for three months, but not including health, the question templates given by each family often say bluntly - "Please find a Taoist priest for birth, old age, illness and death".
Other issues other than peach blossom luck can be charged according to the time. "Voice is 5 yuan per minute, including the time of shuffling and drawing cards, the longer the time, the lower the unit price per minute, for example, 80 yuan for 20 minutes."
It seems that the price is clearly marked and Tong Suo is not deceptive, but as a "comer", Xiaoji knows the pit behind it.
"Taking the measurement of peach blossoms as an example, according to the tarot master, the reason why peach blossoms cannot be charged by time is that if the customer does not have peach blossom luck, there is nothing to analyze. But later after I went to find out, I learned that they just wanted to make more money, because more than 90% of customers came to ask about love and peach blossoms, and they had already prepared various answer templates. ”
And when she paid 48 yuan as required and asked if she had any peach blossoms in the next three months, the so-called tarot master talked a bunch of terms, and finally only vaguely told a rough idea - "Yes, it will appear in the people you know now." Then said that if you want to accurately predict the personality, appearance characteristics, appearance time, etc. of the peach blossom object, you need to add an additional 40 yuan "make-up" to understand.
In addition, the tarot division's circle of friends will update the promotion activities from time to time, giving full play to the marketing value of the private domain. For example, a limited-time discount, 38 yuan to ask a question, even if the customer does not have time that day, you can save it and ask later; Or a monthly package - 800 yuan a month, during which you can ask any question at any time, unlimited times. Recently, this tarot master, who had stated that he never sold transshipment items, silently sold crystals in the circle of friends.
In fact, fortune-telling or divination is a paid service, and it is not unreasonable for offline stall masters and online tarot masters to charge a certain fee. But as mentioned above, when the tarot divination, which belongs to the minority, explodes out of the circle, the original circle inevitably becomes muddy after all.
In the Little Red Book, a tarot master who claims to have three years of experience analyzes his mental journey from entering the pit, to studying, and then gradually starting to charge in his notes, and the language is sincere and inevitably empathetic. Unfortunately, he made the mistake of forgetting to hide his Little Red Book collection.
His favorites are full of notes on "those projects that no one wants to do, but are very profitable", "how to make money by using poor information", "how to find a side hustle on the Internet", and one of these high-praise notes is to teach people how to become a soothsayer.
The Ship of Theseus
From niche to explosive, and then gradually silent, as one of the witnesses of the rise and fall of domestic tarot cards, Xinyu (pseudonym) now helps people read cards from time to time, but compared with his eager self in the past, he is now lying flat.
People are becoming more and more mixed, circles are becoming more and more chaotic, and problems are becoming more and more nonsensical, which is his biggest feeling in the past two years.
In the past few years, Xinyu has personally seen the "Chinese tarot master" who is looking for someone to ask for the eight characters of birthday; the "perfunctory literary master" who directly expresses the meaning of the card throughout and sets the pattern of speech; student parties that use tarot cards as a side hustle; As well as a second-year girl who tries to wrap herself in the occult ...
Once, he even received a cooperation invitation from "scalpers" in Xiaohongshu, and the other party was responsible for helping him pull people, and he was responsible for divination, replying, and taking a proportional percentage.
While the bull, ghost, snake and god showed his powers, the questions also made him more and more puzzled - "There are those who want to rely on divination to find things, some want to rely on tarot cards to bet on questions, some to calculate whether the weekend will have a physiological period, and there are mobile game players who come to divination to ask 'when can I draw SSR'"." In contrast, questions such as "did his crush look at my circle of friends" that once puzzled him seemed extremely normal.
The treacherous present makes him miss the past immensely.
In Xinyu's eyes, tarot cards do not have so many metaphysical things, nor are they self-deceptive cards as public opinion thinks, but a way of self-examination. "Tarot cards are like a placebo, the process of meditation and interpretation is actually a process of self-reflection, even if you already know the answer in your heart, you still want to find some solace in it."
Therefore, in the process of reading cards, rather than being a soothsayer, Xinyu's role is more like a "barefoot psychiatrist", listening to the joys and sorrows of others, the current difficulties or childhood scars, to understand their true thoughts, and advise them to do what they want to do. "Sometimes this communication is a two-way street, and I can get a lot out of it myself."
But this is also just wishful thinking on his part. Although psychologists have studied the use of tarot cards in psychotherapy, the tarot cards in the public perspective are still the most mystical divination tool. It is also doomed that tarot cards will inevitably be pushed to the forefront.
From out of the circle, to the fingers of thousands of people, platform suppression, and now, the domestic tarot card circle is like the ship of Theseus - those who want to make money are still changing their methods to attract and make money, and the condemnation of public opinion has also objectively popularized tarot cards, leading a group of newcomers into the pit, giving birth to a secret industry.
And those marks that belong to the niche period are returning to the niche and even gradually disappearing. In the final analysis, God's to God, Caesar's to Caesar, in the era of opportunists, can only follow the corresponding gameplay.