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author: ruan yiling, editor: lu zhen

when faced with life's problems, more and more people are turning to metaphysics for answers.

at 11:00 pm, in the live broadcast room of the metaphysics platform, zhang yifan looked at the five elements plate of the girl connected to the microphone, and answered her questions one by one, from career development to love and marriage. half an hour later, zhang yifan ended the conversation with the girl, turned off the microphone, and said goodbye to the dozens of listeners in the live broadcast room.

at this time, there were still seven people waiting for the microphone. on the public screen, messages like "i've been waiting for days, teacher", "i'll be there in five minutes", "i'll be there in five minutes too" appeared. everyone didn't want zhang yifan to leave, and asked to be able to connect to the microphone tonight. it was the same last time, and the five-minute chat turned into half an hour.

there are many people who wait for the anchor to answer their questions. in the live broadcast square on this platform, which is almost non-stop 24 hours a day, all kinds of questions are raised: is there anything i can say about my career? can my husband get a promotion? when will my in-laws stop annoying me? is there still a chance for me and my ex-boyfriend? can my next job be better?

in order to seek answers, they are willing to pay several yuan or even more than ten yuan per minute to let the anchor analyze their horoscopes, horoscopes, and fate charts. when their careers stagnate, they look to their future fortunes for hope. when their marriages are in turmoil and they suffer from cold violence, they can only speculate on their partners’ thoughts from metaphysics. when their business encounters difficulties, they must first ask a fortune teller for advice on how to change their feng shui pattern.

at both ends of the internet, in the difficult late nights, every kind of confusion and pain can be comforted, but at a price. some people indulge in it and eventually spend tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars; others discover business opportunities and rush into the metaphysics industry, doing a few sets of questions and then opening the microphone to "give guidance" to others. behind the hot metaphysics business is a symptom of the times.

the charm of metaphysics

han jiajia was once an intensive user of a metaphysics platform. she felt that when people found that science could not solve their confusion, they would turn to metaphysics.

han jiajia started to get in touch with fortune-telling when she just graduated. at that time, she didn't have too many problems. she just wanted to understand herself and tried some free fortune-telling tools. but soon, troubles began to emerge.

she studied art but was rather depressed at work. the first time she paid to ask questions, she just wanted to see if there would be better platforms and opportunities for her in the future.

the first anchor han jiajia met basically said good things, and she was very happy when she first heard him. later she analyzed,what fortune tellers say from a metaphysical perspective can "give you some blind encouragement" and make it easier for people to put aside reality and believe it.

most people like metaphysics, and because of this, they want to get positive responses from fortune tellers who are a bit mysterious, uncontrollable and authoritative, so as to build their own belief system. fortune teller zhang yifan thinks this is a "looking outward" mentality, which is equivalent to looking for external reasons and external forces, which is contrary to the logic of "looking inward" to know and change oneself.

"a doctor cannot treat himself." fortune tellers also have problems that they cannot solve and need to "look outside." he li is also a fortune teller. she once spent a lot of money on metaphysics platforms to consult with others. she also had a situation where she had to chat with five or six anchors in one night because of emotional fluctuations until her account limit was reached. but she only wanted temporary comfort. "in fact, that person no longer liked me, but i would go to chat with those anchors who deceived me."

han jiajia met a girl in the live broadcast room. on the first day, she asked: master, should i send him a message today? the master told her to send a message at 9:30. on the second day, she asked: master, he has replied to my message, what should i say to him? ——all decisions, even a reply, need to be asked to the fortune teller. no need to worry, no need to be responsible for your own choices, a sense of comfort arises naturally.

but zhang yifan believes that the real answer can only be found inwardly, and metaphysical fortune-telling cannot give all the ideal answers. he has met many clients who refuted him when talking to him, saying: "other fortune-tellers said that we will definitely get back together."

"i say, why are you looking for me? just believe firmly, and the chances of success will be higher. if you get a negative answer from me, your belief system will collapse."

sometimes, zhang yifan would directly tell the other party: "do you want to hear something nice or objective?" most people would choose to hear an objective answer, but a few would choose to hang up directly.

although many people want to obtain the comfort of no burden, it is often difficult to sustain, "similar to taking painkillers," han jiajia said. slowly, other troubles followed one after another, and the little spiritual comfort before quickly disappeared. she could only go on the microphone again to replenish her energy. "after experiencing this feeling, when i encounter other problems in life, i can't help but go up and ask."

in a particularly high-spirited year, han jiajia sometimes went on stage to ask questions three or four days a week. at first, she just wanted to ask a simple question, but as she chatted, she talked about all sorts of things. at that time, she lived and ate at home, had no financial pressure, and had a stable income. as long as she was on stage, she didn't care about the time, and she could earn several hundred yuan a night.

"just like xianglin sao", once she got stuck in it, she would ask the same question many times, such as "when will he come back to reconcile with me?" to one anchorman, or to many different anchorman, "in the end, you don't even know which anchorman is right." later, she felt that being in a state of confusion and frequently seeking help from metaphysics was a bit "morbid", and now she couldn't even remember what she was worried about at the time.

gradually, the fortune tellers' answers no longer mattered.this kind of customized service that allows people to open their hearts without any scruples is intoxicating. compared with talking to friends, you can pay to tell your troubles to a strange fortune teller. you don't have to worry about some things being difficult to talk about, and you don't have to worry about whether you are instilling negative energy in the other person. the live broadcast room has become everyone's emotional trash can, and the fortune-telling anchors serve as everyone's spiritual tree hole.

at the end of that year, her parents asked about han jiajia's savings. she opened the payment app and saw that she had spent more than 30,000 yuan on the metaphysics platform, enough to buy a few nice bags that she usually didn't want to spend money on. she turned a blind eye to it, not wanting her parents to notice her "superstition" about the metaphysics platform at the time.

the nature of fortune telling

excessive obsession with and blind belief in metaphysics usually comes from a lack of knowledge, which yan ge has a deep understanding of.

around 2018, when yan ge was just in college, she was exposed to metaphysics from her roommate. before falling in love, she would first check the synastry chart to see the "fate compatibility" to avoid bad luck and seek good fortune. if she found a good match, she would cultivate the person as a key object.

until this year, after yan ge met her boyfriend, she spent money to find many anchors to measure her and her boyfriend's horoscopes, "saying a few good things, i will take it as psychological comfort." at the beginning, everything went smoothly, and everyone said that the two people's horoscopes were compatible, but suddenly someone said that the two people's horoscopes were not good, and they would not be happy in the future, and even if they got married, they would get divorced.

although it was less than 30 seconds, she could only remember this sentence, "people are like this." this "magic voice" lingered in her heart all day long, troubled her for several months, and made her feel uncomfortable no matter what she did.

at that time, she was doing a remote internship at home, and there was not much to do, so her thoughts were chaotic and she could not do anything all day. she was stubborn and did not give up, so she spent a lot of money to find someone to test her for the right person.

in order to verify that the statement was wrong, she began to teach herself fortune-telling. she stayed up every night, learning about bazi and ziwei on the internet, reading articles on public accounts, and looking for videos of fortune-telling. she had become "a little obsessed."

after studying for about three months, she found that "numerology sounds very mysterious at first, but when i studied it myself, i found that it is actually the same as studying professional knowledge such as law."

she went back to the person who told her and her boyfriend that their horoscopes were not good, and asked how he saw it. he said he couldn't tell her, but only saw the "separation of the azure dragon and the vermillion bird" - a concept yan ge had never heard of. she suspected that he had his own theory. before he finished talking for a minute, he didn't meet the payment threshold, so he stopped talking. yan ge was very angry and shared her experience on social platforms. many people resonated with her, but later her post was reported and the person changed his name and profile picture.

after self-study, yan ge found that many people on the platform were actually fooling people, and in fact, they didn't even know the most basic knowledge of numerology. anyone who was particularly sure and "iron mouthed" must be a liar. she asked people about professional knowledge, such as the phenomenon of "self-inflicted disaster", which even a novice could see, but basically no one responded to her. one of them answered, but said that it was not on the plate. she clicked the report button, and later found that the expert had been blocked.

fortune tellers are not "gods" and it is impossible for every word they say to be correct and come true. many fortune tellers agree that metaphysics and psychology are inseparable.

fortune teller he li said that although they can give an answer, can this answer really solve his ultimate confusion? not necessarily, many problems are ultimately psychological problems, and they are just a mediator in the middle.

but compared with the high cost of psychological counseling, han jiajia feels that for most people, the cost-effectiveness of psychological counseling is actually not as good as seeking metaphysical predictions.

on the one hand, the quality of psychological counselors is actually the same as that of forecasters, with good and bad varying. at the same time, the fees are generally higher. a friend of hers who is a psychological counselor and only gives subjective conclusions has many clients, and the single consultation fee can reach about 800 yuan. if you don't have money, you can only go to the psychology department of the hospital. someone shared a few words about himself on the internet and was sent away by the doctor.

in her opinion, psychological counseling is a very slow process, and it requires you to constantly improve your own energy in order to internalize the truth and cure the root cause. it takes too long, and accordingly, the potential cost is also increased. some people have to spend hundreds of thousands of yuan a year. to expand on this, it is still common to avoid seeing a doctor for psychological problems, and metaphysical counseling has become a new window.

tools for making money

after spending a lot of money and meeting many fortune tellers, han jiajia found that some fortune tellers sounded like they had a low level of knowledge and only learned a little about the eight characters before talking to her. fortune tellers want to create a sense of mystery, but after a few more words, you can find that the other party does not understand many terms and their views are very arbitrary, all exposed. in addition to the fortune-telling level, she can even quickly guess the other party's education and family situation.

she came to the conclusion that the threshold for fortune-tellers is actually very low. as long as you learn a little bit of professional concepts, be thick-skinned and talkative, you can cultivate fans. han jiajia believes that there is a formula for solving the theoretical fortune-telling method. "i have good expression skills and am relatively empathetic. at my current level, to be honest, i feel that i can also be a top anchor."

the popularity of metaphysical fortune-telling has indeed attracted more and more people to come in and make some money in this trend. as the number of people who want to settle in the platform continues to increase, the platform's admission examination has also been changed from once a day to once every two weeks.

the difficulty of the platform exam is actually quite high. many people take several months to pass the exam if they study on their own. this has also spawned a gray industrial chain - selling question banks.if you randomly like a post on a social platform, someone will send you a private message: a set of questions in different categories, 50 yuan for a beginner set, 80 yuan for two sets; 60 yuan for an intermediate set, 100 yuan for two sets. zhang yifan once met someone who offered him 3,000 yuan to sell him a course.

many experts actually did not study the eight characters and ziwei doushu in depth, but just memorized the questions and passed the certification, and then started to broadcast and give advice to others. even if the level is not high, you can still make money, "because everyone has a basic understanding that no matter how accurate the prediction is, it is impossible to be 100% correct, so its tolerance rate is very high," said han jiajia. if the calculation is wrong, generally they will not go on the microphone. some people have no bottom line and say anything, but they may make more money.

● there are many posts on social media selling question banks. image source: screenshot

most of the time, users can only know the level of a fortune teller after spending money and stepping into the trap. before that, they can only choose the fortune teller based on his level and evaluation. the platform has set eight levels for the experts who have settled in, and the upgrade mainly depends on connecting with more users. the higher the level, the more expensive the price per minute of connecting. currently, no one has reached level 8, and there are 3 experts at level 7. the ordinary connection is 36.8 yuan/minute, while the new anchor is only 0.3 yuan/minute.

the platform takes 50% of all income. fortuneteller zhang yifan is at level 4 and charges 4.8 yuan per minute. he broadcast intermittently for 10 days last month and earned more than 4,000 yuan. he needs to connect with 180 more people to upgrade. fortuneteller bi min has been broadcasting for a long time and now earns more than 60,000 yuan a month. in order to avoid the platform's commission, they will also open accounts on other platforms to facilitate fans to contact them for private one-on-one consultations.

in this industry, the longer and more you talk, the more you earn, especially in a model that charges by time, which literally means "time is money". in order to make money, many anchors will "drag the microphone", such as thinking for a long time before answering a question, or rambling and not getting to the point. what's more serious is that if making money becomes the first goal of fortune tellers, and they are well versed in human nature and eloquent, it is very easy for many people with unstable cores to fall into the dreams carefully constructed by fortune tellers and become dependent on them.

han jiajia has learned some psychology knowledge, and she feels thatwhen a person completely gives his or her mental decision-making power to a fortune teller, it will lead to "learned helplessness" over time and produce an addictive sense of dependence, as if he or she is being manipulated by that person.it’s okay if the prediction is inaccurate, but i’m afraid that if the prediction is accurate, once you believe it, you will keep asking questions.

han jiajia once chatted with a fortune teller, who said that he had met a girl who often went on stage and felt on the verge of a mental breakdown. one day, the girl called him on the beach and said that she felt particularly bad. the fortune teller cast a divination and judged that her life would be in danger today and told her to hurry home.

the girl was going to jump into the sea that day. han jiajia recalled that the fortune teller spoke of this incident with a proud tone, thinking that he had saved the girl's life. but she thought that perhaps what the girl needed was a more systematic psychological treatment, rather than pinning her thoughts and feelings on the anchor of the metaphysics platform.

it takes time for most people to wake up and break free from this state of decadence, but time is the greatest value. for the platforms and some fortune tellers who value money above all else, this addiction is a rare business opportunity and the source of their money.

secular knowledge

most of the metaphysical fortune-telling questions are about academics, careers, and relationships. in the live broadcast room, you can actually get a glimpse of the various aspects of human life. a fan of zhang yifan's live broadcast room said that he would come to listen to his stories every day.

zhang yifan sometimes feels very sad when listening to other people's stories. recently, a client took great pains to find him, wanting him to help her see if she could get back together with the man who abandoned her and her child to marry someone else, and then take revenge on him. as she spoke, she started to cry. after listening to her, zhang yifan did not help her find the answer to this question, "i don't want to make this money either." hearing that she was looking for a job, zhang yifan even asked his friends if there were any suitable positions for her.

fortune tellers have seen too many "dog-blood" stories like this.

"all those who come to see fortune tellers are escaping from the current reality," fortune teller hu xiaoshuai concluded. because the present is not satisfactory, they need to seek hope for the future, find a breakthrough and psychological comfort, and use it as "spiritual opium" to believe that the future will be good, so that they can find light from metaphysics.

"fortune-telling is a very secular science," he said, "just like seeing a doctor. it must be that you have encountered something. when all businesses are not doing well, our business is doing well instead."

traditionally, the main customers of metaphysical fortune-telling are young people who have encountered marriage and love problems. there is a very popular video on the internet with the theme of "love brain feeds half of the metaphysical circle". hu xiaoshuai met a client who would send messages to ask for fortune-telling in the middle of the night. but compared with emotional problems, fortune-tellers prefer to show people the trajectory of their entire life, including their temperament, talents, career progress, etc.

hu xiaoshuai found that many young people actually have good horoscopes, but now it is difficult for them to succeed on their own. "i don't really care about personal ability now, but first look at your parents and how many houses your family has. the most important feng shui in life is amniotic fluid."

he once met a boss in the maternal and infant industry, who had made a lot of money in the past ten years. he had a spa today, a big meal tomorrow, and flew back and forth between japan, south korea, and hong kong. he could use skin care products worth tens of thousands of dollars a bottle. but this year was not going well for him, he went bankrupt, and everything went wrong, so he asked him to read his fortune.

"it's bad luck," hu xiaoshuai said. he could only ask her to find a way to find a rich boss to "have a mistress" and get resources, just like in "fang hua" written by jin yucheng, where he introduced people to wild ways at a table in shanghai, and someone else's aunt made a lot of money as a mistress in japan; like in "the golden lock" by eileen chang, where desires were exchanged for money, and people schemed against each other, and the love field was like a battlefield - the secular society is like this, it's nothing more than "food, sex, and love".

hu xiaoshuai has met people who earn millions a year, but are not happy, have bad marriages, and have no place to spend their money. on the contrary, someone who earns 5,000 yuan a month, has a harmonious family, and is content with his life can be considered to have a good fate.

"sometimes, what is calculated is not fate, but one's own desires. many people come to ask, and the word they mention is 'yes'. do i have money? will i have status in the future? but they overlook the word 'no'. am i free from illness, disaster, worry, or anxiety? this is the most important thing. no 'bad luck' is actually a good thing."

hu xiaoshuai feels that the meaning of fortune-telling is to look at life from a macro perspective. talking about theory is empty, but when you put the eight characters in front of you, you can feel it realistically, just like socrates' famous saying "know thyself".

"destiny is like a gust of wind, it will push you in that direction." there is an old saying in the industry, "heaven, earth, and man each account for one third." heaven refers to the horoscope read by fortune-tellers, but what is more important is subjective initiative, to discover one's own talents, to play to one's strengths and to avoid one's weaknesses. the more vulgar a person is, the more likely he is to be pushed by fate.

the significance of the past period of time to han jiajia was that it made her realize her own weakness, helplessness and human frailty, and she spent tens of thousands of yuan to learn a lesson. she has gradually learned to use the power of metaphysics more appropriately.

the last time han jiajia asked a fortune teller a question was at the end of last year. she wanted to know whether she should study abroad for a doctorate. after graduating from graduate school, studying for a doctorate has always been her dream. by chance, she met a professor abroad last year and learned about the channels for applying for scholarships. she began to formally consider this path.

but she is already in her early 30s, married and has children. although her husband supports her, the resistance is that she is worried that even if she gives up her job, leaves everything behind, and invests a lot of money to study for a doctorate abroad, it may be of no use and the return on investment will be too low.

the master advised her not to bother, because she would be too old to enter a university, and it would not be of much help to her major. the fortuneteller's words hit her hard, and she fell back to reality from her fantasy.

"in the adult world, you still have to weigh the pros and cons," she said. she was no longer in her twenties. her physical skills declined, her opportunities for trial and error decreased, and it was difficult for her to change her life. after consulting a fortune teller, she made up her mind to give up her doctoral studies, and now she has no regrets.

(at the request of the interviewees, zhang yifan, han jiajia, bi min, he li, and yan ge are pseudonyms in this article.)