Online divination "spoiler" life? There are many numerological metaphysical routines

Is online divination "spoiler" life credible?

The reporter investigates the fortune-telling scheme of fortune-telling

□ Reporter Han Dandong

□ Yang Huijia, an intern of this newspaper

"Good luck", "success in the college entrance examination", "smooth feelings"... More and more young people have become fascinated by horoscope analysis, tarot cards and other online divination in recent years, and the cost of a divination is not low: the charging standard is determined according to the length of time and the content of divination, such as love divination charges hundreds of yuan or even thousands of yuan per hour.

Due to the fast pace and pressure of study or work, young people choose to use network divination to decompress, but some "people with hearts" have set their sights on this market, either inducing consumers to buy "crystal", "cinnabar" and other "evil products" to charge a lot of money, or leaking consumers' personal privacy to carry out fraud and other illegal crimes.

Recently, a reporter from the Rule of Law Daily conducted an investigation into online divination and found that numerology metaphysics has become a deceptive trick of some "network fortune tellers". In this regard, the interviewed experts believe that whether it is offline divination or online divination, it has the attribute of "feudal superstition", reminding consumers to polish their eyes and not to be deceived.

Emotional academic divination is large

Charging rates are set arbitrarily

"Occupying things in case of trouble" has increasingly become an entertainment lifestyle for young people, and every time node such as exams and New Year's Day will usher in a boom in online divination.

Public information shows that the audience for horoscope divination is showing a younger trend. Taking Tao Baibai, a recent "out of the circle" zodiac sign emotional divination blogger, as an example, more than half of the nearly 20 million fans on its short video platform are young people aged 18 to 24, of which 87% are women.

The reporter's investigation found that academics, emotions, work, etc. have become the main content of young people's enthusiasm for divination, and the charging standards of "network diviners" are different.

A blogger with 322,000 fans @ wine friend Trot provides three levels of divination services for fans on an online platform: the first is free academic divination, which can provide students with free learning status testing, with a fixed free quota every month; the second is a single specific question of 90 yuan / one, 40 places per month; the third is WeChat voice divination of 360 yuan / hour, which needs to be booked according to the situation, except for minors.

The reporter noted that the blogger said that due to the excessive workload, he had stopped providing the first two divination services since August 3. Some fans said that they had been making an appointment for the blogger to choose a school for his divination examination from April to May this year, but none of them had been successful.

A blogger @ Dragon Girl Tarot with 466,000 followers charges as much as 2,000 yuan / hour. Despite the high cost, the appointment schedule has been scheduled for a month later.

The popularity of online divination has made many "student parties" smell business opportunities and are eager to try. Yu Hong (pseudonym), a student at a school in Beijing's Daxing District, has been acting as a "transporter" agent and operating a "divination hut" for some time. She told reporters that she was a nearly 30-year-old career-oriented woman as a customer divination, the customer is mostly female, aged between 20 and 35 years old, there are college students and married women.

Yu Hong sells crystals and other "kaiyun" items in the "divination hut", with prices ranging from 100 yuan to 1,000 yuan. "The general process is to first drain the flow through free divination, sharing learning materials, etc. on some apps, and then recommend the crystal to them."

Luo Ling, the "network diviner", is also a college student like Yu Hong, but he does not have a shop, but promotes himself through the live broadcast platform, and then makes money by voice, telephone or video divination. A single question is 60 yuan, a series of questions in one aspect is 140 yuan at a time, and a love divination is 360 yuan.

"Trans-shipments" cannot be transported

Numerology and metaphysics are many

For online divination enthusiasts, what kind of psychology do they have when they buy divination services? Will the divination results actually achieve their expectations?

Zhen Zhen, who lives in Beijing, has recently had a bad relationship and has just broken up with her boyfriend. In order to "transfer", she bought a string of "transfer powder crystals" from a divination micro-merchant for 288 yuan. The seller said that the crystal bracelet can help him lose weight and "bring peach blossoms". In order to meet a new relationship, Zhen Zhen spent a year to lose weight, but in the end, the weight loss effect was not great, and she did not encounter a new relationship.

Guan Li, who is studying in graduate school in Beijing, used to seek psychological comfort from a "network fortune teller". When preparing for graduate school, she often looks for some interactive divination videos to see, "The results said by the fortune teller are quite good, but my divination results are not accurate, and I am still relying on my own efforts to be admitted to graduate school."

The reporter noted that for online divination, many young people's ideas are the same as Guan Li's, only as a kind of psychological comfort, but even so, they are still eager, why?

Zheng Ning, director of the Law Department of the School of Cultural Industry Management of the Communication University of China, analyzed that young people have great academic and work pressure, lack of social experience, and increased uncertainty about the future, and they need to find a space to relieve pressure, while network divination has a psychological suggestive function, which can allow people to obtain a certain degree of stress relief. At the same time, divination itself has a "survivor bias", the results will be infinitely magnified when accurate, and the results will be ignored or excused when they are not accurate.

It is worth noting that providing decompression services for young people's divination can be understood, but some people have targeted this market, using different words and techniques, under the banner of "technology", such as the use of artificial intelligence, face recognition and other high-tech faces, looking at hands and other defrauded money.

Some insiders revealed to reporters that the "diviners" were all performing at the beginning, and slowly there were believers. Believers continued to promote it to those around them, and then people came to visit. "Faith is actually a matter of words and odds. Someone comes to tell fortunes, and the fortune teller will generally calculate the basic information of the person, most commonly the parents and family, and through some ambiguous words, the real situation is drawn from his reaction. ”

"For example, if you speculate that there are several brothers and sisters, you will generally use the phrase 'Taoyuan three knots of righteousness, a single plum branch'. If he is an only child, the master can say that there are brothers in your life, but you have a high life palace, leaving only you one, just respond to the single plum branch, it is right; if it is two brothers, the master can be so round, you hit the original brothers, for what reason to kill one, the remaining two, Taoyuan three knots, remove the plum one branch, three minus one, not the right two? If there are brothers, it is directly the taoyuan three knots, which cannot be wrong; if there are four, three knots and one branch, three plus one, four, it is correct. The industry insider couldn't help but laugh when he finished.

The reporter's investigation found that there are still people under the guise of "network divination" to induce consumers to pay but do not provide divination services. Under the comments of a divination app, some users said, "Paid 280 yuan but no one paid" "Paid no one replied, customer service can not contact people." Currently, the software is still available for download. Because these app users lose so much money, they can't choose even if they find themselves cheated.

What's more, with the development of science and technology, some criminals have come up with many "new tricks" through network divination to brainwash consumers, so that consumers believe that divination and money are voluntary behaviors, rather than being deceived.

In April, police investigated and punished a shop in Shenzhen that carried out superstitious fraud in the name of tarot divination. In the name of tarot divination, the shop provides a variety of services such as "divination and fortune telling" and "communication between yin and yang", and the "fortune teller" combines Eastern and Western myths to form his own set of theories to help "repay yin debts" and other reasons, induce customers to buy "crystals" and "cinnabar" to ward off evil spirits, and charge tens of thousands of yuan. The prices of various services on the price list vary, such as "Know Your Own Aura" 699 yuan, "Power Pyramid" 739 yuan, "Pranic Healing" 1389 yuan, etc. Until they were investigated and punished by the police, some victims still believed that they were voluntarily transferring payments and not fraud.

In addition to inducing consumers to shop, there are also "network fortune tellers" suspected of leaking consumers' personal privacy.

The above-mentioned industry insiders told reporters that some "network fortune tellers" will require customers to fill in their real names, birthdays, mobile phone numbers, ID numbers, etc. on the web page, and the purpose of designing similar web pages is usually not simple, and most of them exist in the back-end server. After clicking on the test page and writing down the full name, the owner's name and WeChat account will be associated in the database. The database continues to accumulate, various advertisements and intermediary posts will be continuously sent to the owner's mobile phone, and some criminals can even use the owner's personal information to carry out fraud and other illegal and criminal activities. ”

Fictional facts induce divination

The amount reached the standard is suspected of fraud

In the view of Wang Xueshan, a lawyer at Hebei Li Jingyu Law Firm, online divination has the attribute of "feudal superstition". If the "diviner" induces customers to buy so-called "crystals", "cinnabar" and other "transshipments" for various reasons to ward off evil spirits, and often collects tens of thousands of yuan from consumers, it has been suspected of price violations.

He pointed out that simple divination fees are not exactly equivalent to cheating money, and often do not constitute fraud, but some divination is on the surface the voluntary behavior of both parties, but subjectively it is the "fortune teller" to fabricate facts, maliciously exaggerate the effect and function, and objectively adopt fraudulent methods, such as brainwashing, fabricating praise from others and other methods to defraud property, which will constitute illegal crimes.

"It only takes a few cards to calculate careers, fortunes, and the use of 'supernatural forces' to 'predict the future' and other acts are malicious exaggerations and fabrications. If the 'fortune teller' fabricates facts, causes the consumer to fall into a wrong understanding, and then is misled to pay the relevant fees, and the amount paid meets the criteria for filing a fraud case, it is suspected of constituting the crime of fraud. Wang Xueshan said.

According to the Criminal Law, the crime of fraud refers to the act of defrauding a relatively large amount of public or private property for the purpose of illegal possession, using fictitious facts or concealing the truth. According to the Interpretation of the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate on Several Issues Concerning the Specific Application of Law in handling Criminal Cases of Fraud, where public or private property is defrauded of 3,000 to 10,000 yuan or more, 30,000 to 100,000 yuan or more, or 500,000 yuan or more, it shall be found to be a "relatively large amount", "a huge amount" or "a particularly large amount" as provided for in article 266 of the Criminal Law.

"In the event of metaphysical fraud, consumers should keep chat records, transfer records and other evidence." Where the value of the fraudulent property exceeds 3,000 yuan, it can be reported to the public security organs. Zheng Ning said.

In view of the chaos of online divination, in order to prevent consumers from falling into online divination fraud, Zheng Ning suggested that, first of all, multiple departments should strengthen joint law enforcement, form a joint force, and strengthen rectification; second, strengthen education and guidance for the public, advocate scientific spirit, pay attention to psychological counseling for young people, provide professional psychological counseling, and help people establish the correct three views; finally, Internet platforms should earnestly fulfill their main responsibilities, investigate and deal with illegal acts, and report them in a timely manner.

Source: Rule of Law Daily