Star signs are determined by the position of the sun when a person is born, and they supposedly significantly influence a person’s personality. The truth is that they were invented in 2005 so that strangers could justify being horrible people on the internet to other strangers. Back in the early days of the internet, people were faced with the daunting task of describing themselves without the use of astral pseudoscience. The creation of star signs was prefaced by a simple question: How can I easily convey that I’m high maintenance, uncompromising, and cold in my dating profile?
These simple symbols give us a deeper insight into the human mind and spirit. They also give us convenient reasons as to why we’re still single and can even reveal what emojis represent us based on our signs. In an increasingly tumultuous world, it’s answers like these that remind us that we’re still human. But so what if I’m just too good for people to date me? Being a winky face emoji doesn’t change that, so what’s the point? Why invest so much faith in star signs? The short answer is that we will believe anything as long as it’s convenient and vague.
Another example of this phenomenon is the Buzzfeed Quiz. They consist of answering a series of personality questions to find out what kind of food I am, or that Gary Busey is my soulmate. They operate on the simple premise that people are constantly looking for a way to belong to a group, even if that group is being one of of “Gary’s personal boy toys.” Star signs provide nonspecific answers that people latch onto with a fierce passion. A person will mold their personality to perfectly match the result of the quiz or the sign of their birth month. Eventually the entire world will be defined by internet quizzes and star signs. We will identify know all this? Simple. I’m a Scorpio.