Love and Lighter wallets.

So what were we talking about? Oh yeah, grief vampires and those that exploit the precious memories of the deceased to turn a profit... On that subject...

I came across this charming lady on my Facebook wall recently, Lillyanne Psychic medium, doing a live stream in which she offers readings to several of her facebook followers. Fans of Lillyanne's page were encouraged to pick one of the following four images and were given a reading based on the image selected.

I'm sure you are already seeing the major flaw in Lillyanne's "reading technique". Her page had 161962 followers at the time of writing. In Lillyanne's live stream, reproduced below, she states that each of the readings given will have "something for everyone" (boy are those words going to bite her in the arse in a minute) who selected the corresponding picture. This means that for a short reading, they are all roughly a minute long, to apply, even in part, to 40491 people it's going to have to be extremely vague and generalised.

This is a technique used by those in the physic industry, especially astrologers who as above have to have their reading apply to vast numbers of people, called Barnum statements. Otherwise known as the Forer effect, it acquired the Barnum statement moniker due to PT Barnum's quote: "We have something for everyone". Sound familiar?

 Here's the Skeptic's Dictionary's definition of The Forer Effect with an example. bare this in mind when you watch Lillyann's video beneath it (skip to the readings at -8.40):

"The Barnum effect is the name given to a type of subjective validation in which a person finds personal meaning in statements that could apply to many people. 

For example:You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. At times you have serious doubts whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing."

 To summarise:

Reading 1: "Relationships are not as good as what maybe they should be... could be intimate relationship, family relationship or family... but it will be fine"

Brilliant hedging of bets here, and it's the broadening of the term relationship that means this could apply to almost every human being on the face of the Earth. Can any of us say we don't have at least one close relationship that couldn't be better? Also, the spirits have awful fucking grammar...

Reading 2: "Dreaming of loved ones. Are they visiting in dreams.... could be passed friends, family or pets..."

Again pretty common experience. More hedging by including pets...

Reading 3: "It's not been brilliant.... at a crossroads changes coming... go with the flow..."

Again could apply to any situations in the sitter's lives, who can say there isn't one aspect of their lives that isn't great and desires that to change.

Reading 4: "Taking a risk... risky business... could be a house move, or a business venture or anything..." 

Lillyanne assures us that this simply can't be a coincidence that these readings fit so many. I agree it isn't a coincidence because by definition a coincidence is "a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection." and there's nothing remarkable here: she's simply described some very mundane facets of human experience!

I don't know about you, but all four of those readings are so vague that they could pretty much apply to me. I'm betting that most of you could fit those to your life too. So on that basis should we be blown away as Lillyanne's fans are? Not so much, because like you lot, I don't have anything riding on the reading. From reading her page it's clear to see many of Lillyanne's fan's clearly vulnerable people, quite a few post messages about being recently bereaved for example. For these people, these readings transcend the reading itself and provide assurance that life isn't a series of random events punctuated by loss and bereavement. In the "evidence" of psychic phenomena, they see the cruelty and randomness of nature given reason and meaning. Whether you agree with Lillyanne's activities or not at this point may well hinge on whether you believe the ends justify the means, that it's acceptable to mislead those receiving the readings, even if it is deception by omission, in order to provide false comfort.

The answer to that moral quandary may become somewhat clearer when you delve deeper into Lillyanne's page and discover it's a front for a psychic reading via text service, promoted on almost every post added by Lillyanne:

Lillyanne is part of Allstar Psychics Ltd, which is a pretty shitty network ran by Justin Toper, an astrologer for "Fate and Fortune"magazine, designed to milk every penny out of the vulnerable and grieving. Need further persuasion that Lillyane's page and public profile is little more than exercise in advertising this text service, check out the multiple endorsements, she posts on it:

PT Barnum had another quote attributed to him, though he likely never said it himself, which neatly sums up the endorsements and praise Lillyanne receives:

"There's a sucker born every minute"

The Source of Denial.

Let me pose you a question:
If I had a product that I was offering, for free, every day on a social media, and you came along and said "That's an interesting product, do you mind if I take some of that free product and do some tests on it?" and my response was to say "No I don't think this product is for you!" and then kicked you from the group, what would your view be of that product?

You probably wouldn't trust it, right? You'd probably feel justified warning people to be wary accepting the product. You'd probably feel that testing was desperately needed. Right?

Anyway....

Readers of this blog who have come here from my Facebook page The Rational Paranormal or one of the many links I post on Facebook, are probably well aware of my plans to run a test of psychics who offer readings of "selfies" on various pages. If you've not come across this practice before (and you probably won't have unless you visit paranormal/psychic pages) here's how they tend to go:

This initial post is then normally followed by a series of individuals, claiming psychic abilities, giving readings about the sitter's personal circumstances, the personality or their deceased loved ones. I'm sure that you can see there is an immediate glaring issue here. Photos are linked to Facebook account, meaning that much of the information that is given COULD, potentially, be gleaned by a little to the sitter's Facebook profile, or searching the sitter's name on other social media. Also the provision of a photograph gives ample opportunity to do some cold-reading.

Now I decided to design a test which would minimise the opportunity for psychics to glean information from the sitter's Facebook. Would receive the sitter's "selfie", check it is non-searchable, assign it a random number from 1-100 using a random number generator, and then pass the corresponding "selfies" to the 10 numbers the psychic being tested selects.

The full protocol will be posted to this page in a few days hopefully, but what I am sure is abundantly clear is that I will need at least 100 viable "selfies"/sitters, and some psychics to test. On the sitters front this has been ticked over quite nicely. I've posted about this on a few Facebook pages and I've received a steady amount of volunteers since then. The psychics, unfortunately, have been less keen to participate.

Now, I am aware that I don't have much to offer as a reward here. Unlike Skeptic supreme, James Randi, I don't have a $1,000,000 reward on offer. What I am offering however is a small source of validation. The opportunity to at least demonstrate that there may be an iota of truth to the claim they are making. Surely that's worth something? And as they are offering these readings for free anyway, there's no loss. They would only be doing what they are doing anyway, just with no searchable information.

This message was posted to two of the largest groups on Facebook offering readings on photographs and selfies:

"Hi Guys, thanks for the add. Hope I'm OK plugging this here. I am looking at organising a test for psychics who offer readings via photographs on Facebook. 

 I Should be ready to post my testing protocol for social media psychics, who claim to be ale to give readings from photographs, to my blog (http://skepticsboot.blogspot.co.uk/) within the next few days. I'll be looking for upwards of a hundred unique "selfies" never posted to social media before to be read. And of course I'll be needing psychics to take part in the test. Know any that claim this ability? Or anyone who is willing to submit a selfie and receive a reading (or ten)? Send them here!https://www.facebook.com/rationalparanormal"

In both cases the poster was immediately blocked from said group.  And we are talking within minutes here. Its almost as if  the admins didn't want their users, who between them offer hundreds of readings per day, to see the test. Or was it because these admins themselves claim these abilities and don't want to have to explain to their members why they declined to take place.

Here's the message I received when I posted the above request to the Facebook page Spirit Source:

Now take a look a some of the readings offered on the page, I would say they fit exactly the criteria of my test! Is it relevant where "on their journey" a psychic is? If they are claiming an ability, and using it to do readings everyday then what difference does doing it within the parameters of the test make?










Photo to be read.                                                           Reading given

                     

        

                 

Wait!
Who is that giving the last reading? Its Kerry Carter who told me the group wasn't the target audience for my test, at 11:19 pm on 13th June despite that fact that she had herself been performing the exact act required by the test a few hours previous!

So who was Kerry protecting her novice users or herself?

The worst thing about all this is that some of the stories related on these pages are absolutely heart breaking, grieving parents, siblings, children....there are some people genuinely suffering here and looking for help. The individuals on these sites that are more than prepared to use their vaunted "powers" to intervene in delicate and intimate situations, but aren't prepared to show that they actual exist in the first place are exactly the type that we should be steering people away from. Because I suspect that they are the ones who know or suspect that they are playing make-believe games with people's lives.

If you are interested in submitting a "selfie" for reading, or you consider yourself to genuinely psychic and aren't afraid to put that to the test contact me here:  https://www.facebook.com/rationalparanormal

I hope to have the full testing protocol posted here very soon.