I had met this lady a few weeks ago who did numerology sessions on the side of her regular job. She had offered me a session at the time and I had refused. I ended up finding her number a few weeks later and had arranged to book a session.

I had been seeing all these numbers repeating, and thought, why not have some fun, right? I don’t really believe in that kinda stuff, but it would be interesting to see what values people ascribe to things as random as numbers, and see what I think about it. An hour session was gonna come out to upwards of 200+ dollars 💀 .

I apologised saying I should’ve asked for a quote beforehand, but she tries to call me (I didn’t pick up) and she then texts me that “people usually call me when they’re in need and I recommend the session”, but it’s like…of course you would, you’re making 200+ dollars off of me lol.

No disrespect to her, but I hate that everyday interactions are warped by profit 😓. I get everyone has to eat, but damn, wtf?

  • 133arc585
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    1 year ago

    It’s literally just a charlatan scam, like homeopathy, tarot card readings, psychics and mediums, etc. The people who perform that are some of the lowest of the low: they admit that people who come to them are at a bad point in their life and very in need of help, and they prey on that because it’s an opportunity for quick money. Vulnerable people who don’t question your bullshit, that’s an easy mark.

    (Edit: tarot, not taro)

    • Idliketothinkimsmart@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      Lesson definitely learned. There’s always people looking for fools to finesse. I wouldn’t have minded if it was like 30 a session, but 200+ is disrespectful. I think I intentionally rejected the offer because I also wanted to see how she would react. I figured if she left it alone, then she was probably someone a lot of people had reached out to before. Lo and behold, she tries to call me back within a few minutes to try and finesse me lol.

    • diegeticscream[all]🔻@lemmygrad.ml
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      The people who perform that are some of the lowest of the low: they admit that people who come to them are at a bad point in their life and very in need of help, and they prey on that because it’s an opportunity for quick money.

      Not really disagreeing with your overall point, but some of the scam stuff is done by people who sincerely think they’re helping, and some of those really do help people feel better.

      Again, you’re not wrong, but I don’t feel like all of them are malicious.

      I used to act like I could read palms (not for money, just for fun) and you’d be surprised the number of people that can be cold-read into pretty sincere self epiphanies.

    • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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      I completely agree, these grifters target the most exploited sectors of the population that are gullible enough to believe in this sort of stuff.

    • WithoutFurtherDelay@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Tarot apparently has actually benefit as a tool for self-introspection, and has a decent community of people who believe in it without wanting any profit from it, but i imagine the industry as a whole is garbage

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    I think everyone here agrees numerology is a scam with zero scientific evidence.

    What does lemmygradians think of traditional Chinese medicine?

    The scientific reasoning behind specifically acupuncture and cupping sound 100% like bullshit to me, but anecdotally it works for relieving chronic pain for my partner. Go figure.

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      I’m sure there’s a lot of traditional medicine that works, but the superstitious explanations are annoying. Just tell me the science behind it.

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      Traditional medicine, Chinese or otherwise, is bullshit. If some tincture happens to have some active ingredient that actual does something, then that ingredient has almost certainly been studied by actual scientists, purified, dosed, and available as a safe (relatively) form at your local pharmacy.

      Acupuncture and cupping in particular are no better than placebo at relieving pain. Any temporary relief your partner receives from them is no better than a sugar pill that they are convinced will help them, or no better than the pain relief of a massage. What does everyone do when they bang their knee or elbow on something hard? We rub it. Why? Because rubbing stimulates the surrounding nerves and that extra stimulation helps to drown out and dull the sharp pain…temporarily. Any pain relief from acupuncture and cupping is no different and isn’t permanent. Your partner would be better off going to a licensed physical therapist, with an actual doctorate degree and deep understanding of anatomy. They will not only know techniques to temporarily relieve the pain, but also will be able to provide a custom exercise plan to strengthen the affected area to help prevent repeat injury.

      Also a lot of non-scientific “medicine” is extremely dangerous. I know people have had serious injuries from acupuncture, but chiropractors are the worse. Don’t let anyone you care about go to a chiropractor. At best you become a repeat customer and waste a lot of money on a glorified massage from someone pretending to be a doctor, and at worst you end up a paraplegic or dead.

      • o_d [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Don’t let anyone you care about go to a chiropractor.

        Some of the stuff I’ve seen on YouTube and tiktok is horrific.

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        Interestingly enough, their physiotherapist has incorporated acupuncture techniques into the practice.

        You see. Patients with chronic pain will try everything. Sometimes at the same time. Scientific, traditional, experimental… They are “happy” to be test subjects, because pain is just too depressing. And after common medicine fails for enough years, maybe the tradeoff of becoming a test subject and discussing the issue with more peers is worth it.

        Don’t get me wrong, I agree with everything you said, I’m just exposing another perspective on the theme.

      • 🏳️‍⚧️ 新星 [she/they]@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Don’t let anyone you care about go to a chiropractor

        I know there’s some quackers, but aren’t there some legit ones who don’t do cracking stuff that don’t claim to be able to fix everything?

    • diegeticscream[all]🔻@lemmygrad.ml
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      What does lemmygradians think of traditional Chinese medicine?

      I’m sure some of it actually works, and some of it might not really work, but have a positive benefit due to the placebo effect or whatever.

      Stuff doesn’t have to be really true to be helpful - addiction isn’t a disease, but “addiction as a disease” is a model that’s helped a lot of people.

      I don’t really have a dog in the fight as long as unproved medicine/treatment isn’t used in place of real, proven medicine. If it’s just a supplemental thing I don’t see any harm in it.

    • lorty@lemmygrad.ml
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      If traditional/alternative medicine worked, it would just be called medicine.

    • commiespammer@lemmygrad.ml
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      traditional chinese medicine is complicated. There’s a lot of good stuff, and plenty of famous doctors came from ancient China. This does not mean, however, that you should take random herbs.

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        Dumb take. Mainstream medicine is still warped by the conditions of the society in which it is developed and practiced. In America, that means politicized/racist drug policy results in prohibition of actually useful drugs while creating a massive legally prescribed opiod addiction epidemic. That doesn’t mean it’s all bad, but there’s certainly a lot of ways in which “alternative” medicine works better than mainstream medicine.

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            1 year ago

            Ok, and? That doesn’t contradict my point. Mainstream medicine in America works a lot of the time, but is fundamentally corrupted by the society it exists in. There are a ton of cases where it doesn’t help anyone or actively makes people’s health worse, so even completely ineffective alternative treatments are better by comparison in those instances. Then you have alternative treatments like cannabis, MDMA, or psilocybin which are prohibited from mainstream medicine, but almost certainly work better for some patients than what can be offered by mainstream medicine. Granted, it seems likely that they will someday be considered mainstream medicine, but that is not currently the case.

            I should add that if your definition of “mainstream medicine” is simply “everything that works”, then you just have a useless definition. It does not capture the real treatment a patient may receive when they see a doctor in America.

  • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    I want to change my previous comment, you should have quoted a lower random price and when she disagreed say “the numbers don’t agree with your price, mine makes more sense”

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    I wonder who the serial downvoter here is. Angry secularist mad that people are talking about numerology and downvoting every comment as a reflex? Someone a bit on the “peace and love man” side who believes all this stuff and is mad people are pointing out it is a scam?

    Or perhaps…perhaps a certain thermonuclear individual’s numbers lined up just right and he felt compelled to downvote…

  • KiG V2@lemmygrad.ml
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    This is all based off my first and secondhand experience:

    Some of these people are legit. Many of them are mostly frauds or total frauds. The thing is, it being $200 an hour isn’t a clear indicator in either direction.

    I’ve paid (adjusted for pre-COVID inflation) roughly the same amount to psychics and spirit mediums, and my experience ranged from “this was formative and life changing and nobody will believe half of it if I even tried”, to “bits of this felt important and related to motifs or thoughts/feelings I’ve had, but overall questionable and possible even just good coincidence and guess work,” to “this was a complete waste of money towards someone who looks at me with contempt as a score and nothing else.”

    I definitely am well aware of the risk of wasting my money when procuring such services. And, truth be told, I’ve had plenty of valuable experiences from friends or strangers that costed nothing. But, I also know that if I could hone my skills and reliably use such powers, I could see myself charging whatever was necessary in order to stay dedicated to the field and not have to work elsewhere.

    137 = 444

    • KiG V2@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Also, if you want to further your schizomania/have a laugh:

      spoiler

      This is some Gematria in my journal. It has helped illuminate a lot of things in my life.

      If you’re interested in Gematria, it’s an easy way to engage with numbers without a middleman.