I think it was in 2022 that I first realized what it is I was witnessing: the tarot community as I’ve come to know it was dying, though it was also making way for the rise of something else.

The “Dying Internet” Theory

First, tarot trends don’t happen in a vacuum, immune to sociopolitical movements. In fact, we can often tie tarot trends to exactly what’s happening in the global mainstream society. Which is why we’ll start by laying the foundation and address the trending theory of a “dying internet.”

There’s this speculative idea that’s been whispered (or maybe more than whispered as of late) in tech circles here in Silicon Valley about how an organic, people-driven internet that echoes physical society is being replaced by manufactured template content and occupied by bots, more and more being generated by AI rather than written from scratch by a human, resulting in decaying authenticity and homogenization. As they put it, “the internet is dying.” It’s a slow, systemic collapse of feral, original human-authored (can’t even believe we now have to clarify) content being outrun by outsourced content mills, ad-driven clickbait drowning out the authentic individualized voices, monoculture, fake engagement, faked popularity, and more and more paywalls.

The theory isn’t so much saying the internet is dying dying, but rather, the internet as Gen Xers and Millennials have become familiar with is quietly fading away and morphing into something that will be unrecognizable to us. What was refreshingly democratizing about the world wide web is what’s dying.

A “Dying” Niche Tarot Community

I think I need to explain myself here. It’s not that I think the tarot, as a niche interest and esoteric study, is dying or will ever die. That will always reinvent itself and persist. It’s the form of the niche tarot community as those of my generation have known it that’s dying and soon to reincarnate into something we may find unrecognizable.

When the tarot first went online (at least as I recall and per my personal participation) back in the 90s, it was almost entirely conversational. We were discussing tarot, and often in a very nerdy, niche way. We were engaging in dialogue, debating, debunking, sharing, and not merely broadcasting canned information about it.

I feel like discourse used to be more in-depth, whereas now, online content about tarot is keyed to quick consumer consumption, because if you don’t, then your content doesn’t generate high engagement, whereas when you do play the SEO game, your content rises to the top. We’re rewarding homogenization.

And again, this isn’t something that shifted overnight. Any of us who’ve been here a bit have watched it happen right under our noses. Many have griped about it, especially back when the online tarot community was still more conversational. Nowadays there’s no more griping or controversial “drama,” no more raw TMI personal ramblings, because it’s all highly-edited strategically produced vanilla content keyed to generate ad revenue, rather than for sincere interpersonal discourse. The disintegration and morphing into the (to me) unrecognizable didn’t happen like a Tower moment; oh no, it’s been slow, gradual, in a normal wear-and-tear sort of way.

Continue reading “Why the Tarot Community is Facing a Cultural Reckoning” →