Scam Artists in Sweatpants
Once upon a time, you could call a 1-900 number, fork over five bucks a minute, and some stranger wearing pajama pants and fuzzy slippers would tell you that “great changes are coming” to your love life. Ah, the good old days, when hope was expensive and delivered in fifteen-minute increments by people who failed community theater auditions.
Psychic hotlines were a beautiful scam. They didn’t even try that hard. They lured you in with promises of unlocking your destiny, connecting you with long-lost relatives, or explaining why your boss hates you (spoiler alert: it’s because you’re terrible at your job, not because Mercury’s in retrograde). All you had to do was keep talking while they kept the clock ticking. The longer you cried about your ex or your overdue mortgage, the more money they made.
The so-called “psychics” were usually actors, bored retirees, or teenagers trying to fund their spring break trips. There was no magical insight, no mystical power. Just a lot of vague platitudes and a deep understanding of how desperately lonely people could get after midnight.
When the psychic hotline bubble popped, the grifters didn’t vanish — they just moved online. Now you can get the same quality of cosmic advice from a TikTok witch with a ring light and a PayPal account. Lucky you.
Final thought? If you’re still paying strangers to tell you what you want to hear, you’re not searching for answers. You’re just buying more bad decisions, gift-wrapped in tarot cards and desperation.