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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 11/05/2007 : 04:53:08
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It is said that, "You get what you pay for and you pay for what you get." While that might look good in print, off the page and on the street it only works at gunpoint. howsomever, here is an example of folks paying for one thing and getting exactly what they're looking for: someone to tell them what to do, when to do it, and to give them a wipe afterward. Psychics' clients get just what they pay for
October 28, 2007
I'll call her Crystal. She's 19, dark-featured and really concerned about my aura.
"I want to help you," Crystal says as she looks up from my hands. "I want you to let me help you."
From this point on, my $60 palm reading in a Westside storefront becomes a prolonged sales pitch for a $575 "psychic cleansing," which Crystal insists is needed to restore my gloomy aura to its previously golden hue.
Most people making plans to shuffle off this mortal coil consult estate lawyers or financial advisors. But many others -- from celebrities to civilians -- turn to psychics, astrologers and others who claim special insights into what the future may bring.
Since the Biz section is preoccupied today with matters of mortality, I figured I'd take a look at those who employ otherworldly means to help people prepare for the inevitable. It's an industry that, by some estimates, runs into the billions of dollars annually. |
This might require registration. If so, Bugmenot is a pearl beyond price.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Siberia
SFN Addict
Brazil
2322 Posts |
Posted - 11/05/2007 : 11:55:15 [Permalink]
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On an aside, I've a friend I grew up with - since I was six - who has since become an astrologer, an event started when I was young and stupid (and already skeptical of astrology in general and astrologers in special, though I played with it for the kicks) and fulfilled while we were separated by my moving out of state.
This weekend she visited me and happily printed out and read my astral map, as well as my sister's, mother's and sister's boyfriend, free of charge. While I played Playstation with her boyfriend, she read them.
My sister's and mother's went quickly; she, after all, lived from age six to age fifteen in constant attendance to our home and spent most of her childhood in our company. While she read my sister's boyfriend's map, I watched in skeptic joy (naturally tarnished by friendly compassion) as she squirmed when he didn't say a word through the whole reading. He aptly pointed out that all she said was vague enough to fit nearly any person.
Mine was no surprise; she only said things I knew and, by proxy, she knew as well, being my best friend for most of our childhood. I didn't say a word, either, which I suppose warned her to not say much. She knows - or if she didn't, now she does - that I don't believe it. I don't have the heart to say that outright, though.
But I did find out astrologers are, apparently, upgrading their maps to include the new objects found in our homely star system. Evolution, baby.
She also says I like to belong to groups.
All four of us, apparently, are in for success - financial and jobwise. Mine may or may not come from my artistic endeavours. Considering I write since I was 9, that we used to write, and that she'd just seen my deviantArt account and I commented on a vague desire to sell prints of my manips, that's hardly surprising.
I don't think she does it with the express purpose of fleecing people, though. I think she truly believes in the con she's playing. |
"Why are you afraid of something you're not even sure exists?"
- The Kovenant, Via Negativa
"People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs."
-- unknown
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Karma in Woo-Woo Land?
