Remember "Miss Cleo?"
HBO Max is broadcasting a "documentary" about her.
And it looks like it'll be as fraudulent as Miss Cleo is/was.
applegrove
(123,111 posts)(I'm a totally a scientific person) to see if it could offer me some hope. They put me on hold and kept coming on and saying it would be any minute and I would not be charged for waiting.. I gave up after 20 minutes. Never got through and they charged me.
lapfog_1
(30,143 posts)you will be somewhat poorer.
applegrove
(123,111 posts)my first time getting scammed by one of those places they didn't charge me for the cost.
Warpy
(113,130 posts)and I always figured the dopes who fell for that sort of thing probably got their money's worth in temporary comfort even if her crystal ball wasn't any better at predicting their future than a random coin toss might have been. Never mind that she had a whole stable of other fakes answering the phones. The shit might have done some good for people who couldn't afford a therapist and needed to talk to somebody. They were better than bartenders, nobody got hooked on alcohol with them.
Harper's years ago had a whole article on her operation, which is how I know Miss Cleo never answered the phones personally It exposed the techniques used by the "psychics" to make educated guesses. They weren't far off from a lot of techniques psychotherapists use to get people to talk about the thing they least want to talk about but which is eating them up inside.
It's easy to say anybody who believes in this rubbish needs his head examined. However, in a country that places such a low priority on people in trouble being able to afford to get their heads examined, this fulfilled a need.
After the Harper's article came out, Miss Cleo disappeared from late night TV.