What A Horoscope Will Never Tell You
When I was starting my job as a copywriter, I received a surprising offer: a well-known psychic portal invited me to make the weekly horoscope for its readers. “It is a simple and fun job,” they told me. For the first time I had evidence that many of the horoscopes are not made by astrologers, nor by experts in esoteric matters, but by professional drafters.
But the most surprising thing was not that. What was really disconcerting was that a few weeks later I saw that another writer, who had accepted the proposal, had thousands of readers daily. A year later he became an Internet “guru” and has made a fortune.
How to explain that in the XXI century there are so many fans of horoscopes, if it is clear that in most cases it is only a blatant lie? The thing has its science. Horoscopes use a few tricks to win and keep millions of followers around the world. Here are some of them.
Those who read a horoscope want to believe in it
A horoscope is consulted to find hope or hopeful explanations. If a person is sure of himself and what he is doing, he does not feel the need to inquire about his future through the stars. The client is usually someone who is confused and invaded by a strong feeling of insecurity about his life.
Horoscope messages are, and should be, encouraging. They portend successes, surprises, encounters and a whole series of pleasant situations. They also foresee dangers and behave as accomplices of the client in the face of them: “beware of overeating”, “be careful with stress”, and so on. They are friendly and protective, which is why they become a strong ally in moments of doubt.
That is why people want to believe that the horoscope is true and find a way to apply what it says there to their daily lives. In addition, it is proven that “horoscophiliacs” forget the mistakes in predictions and choose to remember only their apparent successes.
Horoscopes are based on the profile of readers
Those who read horoscopes have some traits in common. As we said before, these are people with a significant degree of confusion about who they are and what they are capable of doing. The typical horoscope reader does not know himself well enough, or has doubts about himself. That is why he does not manage to visualize the future as the result of his actions, but as the action of forces superior to his own will.
These are people with difficulty managing their love relationships and with problems asserting themselves through their work. Horoscopes use generalities that people like to hear when they feel frustrated or insecure: “You have been through a lot of difficulties, but you will get a great reward.” For someone confused and scared, reading the horoscope is absolutely rewarding.
The kingdom of ambiguity
The crux of a good horoscope is to write it with the appropriate resources: enough metaphorical language, great ambiguity in the statements and construction of enigmatic prophecies, difficult to interpret. An example of metaphorical language: “Love is that drop of rain that you need in your desert. Don’t let it evaporate ”. Conclusion: with pseudo-poetic words nothing is said.
An example of the ambiguity in the statements: “You will have great financial success, if you put enough effort into it.” If success comes, they were right; if it doesn’t come, it was because of your lack of effort. An example of enigmatic prophecies: “As the sky and the sea unite, your destiny is to unite with the horizon of infinity.” There are millions of situations that could fit that ethereal statement.
If you are one of those frequent horoscope consultants, it would be worth stopping to ask yourself a question: why do you think that what happens to you does not depend on your actions, conscious and unconscious, but on the way the planets move? ? And one more question: Why have those who “see the future” not found the prosperity that they so often predict, and that is why they charge piecework?
Image courtesy Ekaterina Koroleva, Mustafa Soydan
