“I may at all times be incorrect. I’ve been incorrect earlier than. And I feel each astrologer has been incorrect 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 soar by 30,000—she now has greater than 200,000 followers on the app. She additionally added 466 folks to her paid tier on Patreon, the place she fees between $5 and $22 per thirty days.
Joe Theodore, an astrologer on TikTok who began his account in mid-July, now has almost 10,000 followers. His first video, wherein 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 slightly, however I did not anticipate that in any respect,” he says.
Although astrology itself has been practiced in some type or one other for 1000’s 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 Occasions that he estimated the “mystical companies market” was price upwards of $2 billion. In 2021, the astrology app Co-Star raised $15 million and has been downloaded greater than 5 million instances on the Google Play Retailer since launching in 2017. The Chani app, launched by astrologer Chani Nicholas in 2020, reached greater than one million downloads in 2023. Lots of the astrologers who spoke to WIRED educate programs on-line or have their very own apps as effectively.
Rivers acknowledges that looking for out astrological predictions, significantly round politics, may simply lead customers down a conspiracy rabbit gap. “Folks, when they’re scared, gravitate to perception. And other people really feel very powerless,” she says. “It’s so vital to grasp talk in methods which are accountable.”
New Age spirituality, of which astrology is commonly thought-about an element, 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 type of got here collectively in a swirl of connectivity due to the way in which platforms have been making ideas,” 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, an expert astrologer and host of the astrology podcast Ghost of a Podcast who has 117,000 followers on Instagram. “The easiest way to get someone engaged is to feed them conspiracy theories and cultish content material, which astrology may be for some folks, relying on the astrologer and relying on the motivations for the one who’s consuming astrology content material.”
Nowhere is that this pipeline extra evident than within the current case of astrology influencer Danielle Johnson, who had greater than 100,000 followers on X the place she posted below MysticxLipstick. Johnson had spent the higher a part of a decade constructing a platform speaking about astrology on social media, however tweets towards the top 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 yr, Johnson killed her accomplice and two kids earlier than taking her personal life. Her final publish on X was a repost from a QAnon account, warning folks not to have a look at the eclipse, and that “one thing large 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.”
