No harm in star-gazing, horoscopically speaking

If there is one thing people are consistently snide about it is star signs.

Any sensible adult will splutter indignantly about how they aren't going to be taken in by that new-wave corporate blend of nonsense, and yet print media has been consistently publishing monthly horoscopes for at least as long as I can remember.

There is no real point in my arguing about whether horoscopes and star sign readings are largely garbage we read to find some sense of purpose in our bizarre and alienating lives, or whether there might be some truth behind them; there is enough of that out there already.

All I'm going to say about my own proper opinion is that I am sceptical and am happy to remain that way.

There is, however, a rather amusing trend cropping up across the internet.

We witty millennial children have come up with a way to satisfy curiosity about our cosmic identities that doesn't cost us a cent and appeals to our never-ending need for stimulation and our hunger for pop culture.

Of an evening, I will read out to my flatmates anything regarding their star signs that might pop across my screen.

So far, I have discovered that, as a Libra, I would be in a celebrity squad with Harry Styles (of One Direction), Kim Kardashian and Bruno Mars, that I am the perfect person to be in a relationship with, and that I am likely to be stressed but simultaneously well dressed.

These are not things that I necessarily wanted to know about myself but they make me laugh and I get some satisfaction when my star sign gets something better than the other star signs.

Obviously, these blog posts have absolutely no basis in astrology and are nothing more than what has popped into the author's head while considering an entertaining but menial question.

I think the reason I find them so appealing is that while they satisfy our narcissistic impulses, they don't claim to have any truth behind them.

Any 20-year-old with a sense of humour and grounding in reality is not going to take a blog post about which celebrity their star sign is most compatible with very seriously.

Most 20-year-olds are going to take everything they read on the internet with a grain of salt.

Unless they are my flatmate Peter.

But that is because he's a Taurus: the star sign most likely to smash their iPod on the floor because the internet told them that would fix a corrupted hard drive.

We want to know about our lives but if someone is going to lie to us to make us feel better then the lie needs to be out of this world.

Unfortunately, as with anything people might enjoy, there are some individuals who cannot let a good time be.

These blog posts are littered with people crying about how horoscopes are not real and that we can't possibly predict anything about our lives.

In some ways these people add to the fun because, of course, we can't say that you are more likely to go to the moon if you're a Sagittarius than if you are a Capricorn and it's silly to get so angry and wound up about something that has so little impact on your life.

I suppose, to conclude, I feel like I should say that in the grand scheme of things horoscopes aren't really doing anybody any harm.

Sometimes, they bring people a great deal of joy and if we already believe a multitude of lies about our existence, does it hurt to consider a few more?

Millie Lovelock is a Dunedin student.

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