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Astrology expresses complex ideas about personality, life cycles, and relationship patterns through the shorthand of the planets and zodiac symbols. And that shorthand works well online, where symbols and shorthand are often baked into communication.

In the meme economy, the market performance of a stock or cryptocurrency is less about forecasting business revenue than it is about gauging a traded asset’s “memeability.” This user-generated, virality-based investment strategy can best be explained by René Girard’s mimetic theory of desire, which argues that “human desire is not an autonomous pro... See more

Now, Silicon Valley tapped into millennial ennui – or, depending on your amount of cynicism, self-obsession – by taking astrology into the app age.

To understand astrology’s appeal is to get comfortable with paradoxes. It feels simultaneously cosmic and personal; spiritual and logical; ineffable and concrete; real and unreal. It can be a relief, in a time of division, not to have to choose. It can be freeing, in a time that values black and white, ones and zeros, to look for answers in the gra... See more

At best, astrology gives people a sense of control in a chaotic world and helps them relate to others by ascribing personality traits and life’s seeming randomness to star signs and the movements of planets. Users may also learn about themselves in the process, as they’re forced to pause and examine their own behavior and feelings.

For Altman, the skill of pattern recognition she developed through astrology is the same skill she uses when analyzing a candlestick chart in technical analysis.

“Both technical analysis and astrology use the same mechanism where you’re looking at past cycles to predict the future,” Altman says. “One simply has a lot of pop culture with magic around... See more