“I might all the time be mistaken. I’ve been mistaken earlier than. And I believe each astrologer has been mistaken earlier than,” she says.
The technique appears to be working. Rivers says that within the weeks following the June 21 presidential debate and the assassination try on Donald Trump on July 13, she noticed her following on TikTok leap by 30,000—she now has greater than 200,000 followers on the app. She additionally added 466 individuals to her paid tier on Patreon, the place she costs between $5 and $22 monthly.
Joe Theodore, an astrologer on TikTok who began his account in mid-July, now has practically 10,000 followers. His first video, during which he predicted that Harris would win the election, garnered greater than 350,000 views. “The couple of movies I placed on there have been simply blowing up a little bit, however I did not count on that in any respect,” he says.
Although astrology itself has been practiced in some type or one other for hundreds of years, it has seen a resurgence in reputation, pushed largely by millennials and Gen Zers. In 2019, investor David Birnbaum instructed the New York Times that he estimated the “mystical providers market” was value upwards of $2 billion. In 2021, the astrology app Co-Star raised $15 million and has been downloaded greater than 5 million occasions on the Google Play Retailer since launching in 2017. The Chani app, launched by astrologer Chani Nicholas in 2020, reached more than a million downloads in 2023. Most of the astrologers who spoke to WIRED train programs on-line or have their very own apps as nicely.
Rivers acknowledges that in search of out astrological predictions, significantly round politics, might simply lead customers down a conspiracy rabbit gap. “Folks, when they’re scared, gravitate to perception. And folks really feel very powerless,” she says. “It’s so essential to know talk in methods which might be accountable.”
New Age spirituality, of which astrology is commonly thought-about a component, has been an entry level into conspiracies like QAnon and is correlated with anti-vaccine beliefs. “We’ve seen how conspiracy, elections, politics, well being, wellness, crystals, protein shakes all sort of got here collectively in a swirl of connectivity due to the best way platforms have been making recommendations,” says Jiore Craig, senior fellow of digital integrity on the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
“Our algorithms are pointed towards outrage and engagement,” says Jessica Lanyadoo, knowledgeable astrologer and host of the astrology podcast Ghost of a Podcast who has 117,000 followers on Instagram. “One of the best ways to get any person engaged is to feed them conspiracy theories and cultish content material, which astrology could be for some individuals, relying on the astrologer and relying on the motivations for the one that’s consuming astrology content material.”
Nowhere is that this pipeline extra evident than within the latest case of astrology influencer Danielle Johnson, who had greater than 100,000 followers on X the place she posted underneath MysticxLipstick. Johnson had spent the higher a part of a decade constructing a platform speaking about astrology on social media, however tweets towards the tip of her life point out that Johnson believed antisemitic conspiracy theories and conspiracies about Covid-19. Within the hours earlier than the April 8 photo voltaic eclipse earlier this 12 months, Johnson killed her companion and two kids earlier than taking her personal life. Her final submit on X was a repost from a QAnon account, warning individuals not to have a look at the eclipse, and that “one thing huge is coming.” On April 5, three days earlier than the eclipse, Johnson had posted, “WAKE UP WAKE UP THE APOCALYPSE IS HERE. EVERYONE WHO HAS EARS LISTEN. YOUR TIME TO CHOOSE WHAT YOU BELIEVE IS NOW.”
