I have been bombarded by TikTok tarot readers and what I like to refer to as “prophets”...Or women who start videos with “I don’t know who needs to hear this but….(insert some over-therapized phrase here, often using these words in abundance “narcissist, soul tie, twin flame, divine feminine). This video has found you with no hashtags, meaning it is divinely for you. For your for you page. It is usually a video of a TikTok tarot reader, she’s either 80 or 22 and she has vague Amazon corporate hippie paraphernalia in her makeshift media room where she goes live and asks for donations. She will give you an individualized reading if you send her three roses. She usually will tell people their ex is coming back or their dead grandma will appear as a butterfly. Comments of “claim, CLAIMING, 111 I needed to see this” in nature are plentiful, so plentiful it is overwhelming.

The world of astrology, anything mystical, always bets on vagueness and hope. And preys upon really desperate people. It has become a full-fledged religion on TikTok, where everyone can be a prophet if they are willing to invest in a 12.99 pack of tarot cards and a room with just enough lighting for a beauty filter to be on their face but not quite. The comments proliferate somewhere within me and make me like myself a lot more. They read as at best; women desperate for men to return home from war like in the 40s or at worst meth-induced psychosis. It’s depressing. The comments are 95% of women indulging strangers with the details of their breakups or friendship deaths. It always related to a breakup, or somehow always equates to these women being wronged. The pastor always relieves them and tells them that whoever wronged them, at that very moment is being slapped with guilt, the realization they were the one in the wrong, and that they will be returning soon, and to claim the message that they must comment “claim”. The profiles of these women seem semi-sane. Maybe a little cringey but overall sane. They all seem to be either teenage girls or old women.  They seem to have really low self esteems by the way they cover their stomachs in their tiktok dances, or they pose with their hands over their lower faces. They have jobs, families, ex husbands. They look insane and schizophrenic in these comments sections, their comments do not read as someone mentally sound. Hyperbole or not; the simple facts are alarming. That people are legitimately convinced God (or something) put a video on their feed in which it indicates their emotional state and a promising look at their emotional future.

The videos, if screenshotted, almost resemble paleo-Christian or primitive art in the nature of their dramaturgy. It is a meaningful facsimile of a loving and knowing smile, vignetted by words or angel numbers. It includes zodiac signs (so you are incredibly reassured the message was divinely for you), 

Tiktok’s creator fund FAQs seem to answer many questions. Anyone can apply for the creator fund and be surmounted money based on views and engagement. Pretty run of the mill. I wonder how much the pastors earn from VIDEO TO VIDEO. I wonder if they feel guilty. Every tiktok centers a twin flame meeting, one that makes you wonder a) what the fuck that even means b)if statistically speaking it is even possible for that many people to have twin flames….,. TBD

This mass spiritual psychosis resembles a decentralized religion. Where live streamers are pastors, nurses, and ultrasound technicians find side hustles in the form of an ersatz prophet. No one designated to confess your sins to, no actual leader to pray especially hard for you, just blind faith in an algorithm and finding what is divinely for you. It seemingly affects mostly women…. TBC