Had my fortune read on the weekend

[eight bits]

It's funny that in this company I should be the softie on the motives of the fortune teller in saying she wished to be a medium. Perhaps it's just the happy accident that I know well a lady who used to read tea leaves in a funky tea room. She was aware that her tea leaves spiel was performance, but she also thought (thinks) of herself as somebody open to energies, etc.

One thing about what PA's fortune teller said is probably true, that she does this for extra cash, not as her profession. These gigs do not typically afford the lifestyle to which the late Sylvia Brown became accustomed. A little intuition about cold reading and a gift for sincere delivery of "horoscope speak" make this is a nice way to pick up tips for anybody who's a "people person."

_Only's anecdote is nice, too. His schizophrenic "psychic" is a nice illustration of someone who probably didn't study for his performance of cold reading. It's also a reminder that cold reading can be a relationship of peers, and not just a skill (in the sense that the performer "does something" and the person being read is just a passive recipient). The object of the relationship is not necessarily factual accuracy, but a feeling of shared mindedness.

The person-being-read's "How did (s)he know that?" reaction is their contribution to the relationship. What if the schizophrenic had said the therapist was getting married, and the therapist wasn't (whether or not there was something else that elevated the therapist's mood)? Then the incident would be shrugged off; since even a professional can think "Crazy people say crazy things." But a hole in one? The therapist is still talking about it...

And that's what the performer supplies. Not the information (obviously the recipient already knows that), but the shared involvement in the moment, and an experience that can be discussed indefinitely. The key secret of cold reading, then, is what every extrovert knows: People love to talk about themselves.

Included in what the fortune teller actually sells you is a socially acceptable framework for the conversation to be all about you, and a pretext for you to talk about yourself to everyone you know or meet in the guise of talking about the fortune teller. To that may be added real bonuses like comfort for the bereaved, reassurance for the anxious, and any other things that people can and do give each other in social interaction.