PLEASE!! Make it stop!! Take them away!!

In My Humble Opinion
1

I know about free enterprise. I understand the saying ‘buyer beware,’ know about ‘there’s a sucker born every minute,’ and heard about ‘a fool and his money are soon parted.’

But, do we not have some sort of responsibility to the morons, desperate, hopeful and rather stupid people out there getting fleeced by one of the most annoying, absolutely fake, admittedly staged, and just plain teeth gritting scams going on in the States today?

Other nations less rich, well off, educated, and technologically advanced than us have got to be looking over here, pointing fingers and cracking up with laughter as millions call into the Great Con of the 21st Century, the TV phone psychic.

I’ve suffered miserably through scores of these darn staged ads, where not very good actors call in and ask simple minded questions while so called psychics, who often look loony, give off smug, correct replies and solutions, encouraging others to call and spend their cash.

One even earnestly assures the audience that they are actually real. Another group points out how people should not be fooled by fakes, but call them because they are genuine. Famous fairy nice guys, who supposedly are psychics to the stars get on with an army of psychics and urge you to call, sometimes filling up an hour of an infomercial with staged calls, being answered by real psychics.

All for just $1 to $2.99 a minute! Then the first several minutes are free, but the psychic beats around the bush, puts you on hold, answers minor questions and such until the pay timer clicks and then she/he/it responds in such a way to keep you on the line as long as possible.

Now there is a loud, brassy, Jamaican Priestess on, with a laugh similar to a Jackass, speakin’ da hard Jahmakin lingo, mahn, playing with Taro cards in a way it seems no one else does, dressing like a demented clown and all but ordering the weak minded to call in and give her their money.

On all of these, in tiny letters, almost impossible for me and others to read, are the words ‘for entertainment purposes only.’

Even Jerry Springer has had ex-phone psychics as some of his guests who admitted that it is all a big scam. Others have come forward claiming all you need is people skills and a good line of blarney to be a phone psychic, and the suckers line up.

How do we get them off of the TV? Stations which will not show condom commercials, as being immoral put these freaks on all over the place, apparently figuring that lying and stealing from the weak minded is more proper. I notice that the infamous ‘Truth’ b******s, who rail against the lies of the tobacco industry ignore these people.

(Whew!)

They just absolutely bug me. It chaps my a*s that stations which censor ads about condoms, put on family oriented programs, preach family values allow these buggers to get on and fleece the public. It chaps my butt even more to know that I, who have the power to rate TV programs, along with the rest of us, have no power when it comes to getting rid of not only these obnoxious cons, but the boring infomercials that not only clog up night time viewing pleasure, but have started in on day time as well!!

Have we no control over the TV!?

How do we get these con artists off of the screen?!

2

The anser to your first question is: Yes
The answer to your second question is: The remote control

3

Unfortunately, as long as people want to know the unknown, I think TV telephone psychics are here to stay. Reminds me of the fake mediums back in the 20s who would be your guide to talking to the dearly departed.

4

My mother said that her friend used to work for a psychic hotline. She said that when she went through the training, they didn’t spend a single minute talking about how Tarot cards work, or anything about Astrology. Basically they just taught people how to get suckers to stay on the phone for as long as possible.

If psychics were real, do you really think they’d want to share their gift for $2.99 a minute? And wouldn’t they just know you’d call, and then call you? Oh wait, nevermind. That would be MUCH more annoying.

And don’t get me started about medical scams…“herbal energizers”? “Maximizing your spiritual energy” for $50 a pill? Copper bracelets? Shudder

5

about it is: why spend $2.99 a minute to listen to someone tell you stuff *you already know * ?

6

Wait, does that mean… No, it can’t be. But it must. Telemarketers are psychic!

7

Telemarketers are actually reverse-psychic: Instead of magically knowing that you are thinking about calling them, and hten calling you, they magically know when you DON’T want to talk to them, then they call. It’s a weird phenomenon.

8

Well, I find it as hypocritical as heck that television stations which absolutely refuse to promote any form of birth control device, especially condoms, will allow such openly crooked advertisements on. Thhey’ll take the money from scam artists but refuse money from those promoting sexual protection.

Bad enough also is that the very vocal moral and religious minority, who rant and rave about family values, scream about TV violence, faint if a bare breast appears on general TV and fight like heck to keep sexual protection ads off of the TV, are mute when it comes to their fellow sheep being fleeced by a group of liars. Especially liars who profess to be endowed with the arts of the occult, the mention of which should send Bible thumpers scrambling for their tar and feathers.

I’ve had friends get fleeced by these buggers and it burns me up. One girl stayed on the line for 30 minutes, got hit with a $90 telephone bill, just to be told things that were mainly innuendo, vague generalizations and so dispersed that any good personnel manager could have told her about herself in 10 minutes.

It should be against the law to prey on the hopes of the desperate and ignorant.

TV stations tell us how our opinions keep the shows on – which I doubt because Hank Hill and his moronic clan is still there, Howard Stern is still on the air and the cartoon network still fills the channels with crappy, low quality Japanese Anime – but apparently anyone who can pay the cash gets to put an ad or infomercial on TV.

I wonder if the guy who created infomercials knows just how much hundreds of thousands of us would like to spend just 5 minutes with him, behind a building?

Maybe if we start writing in. Trying to get the mailing addresses of some of these TV stations is hard, but they are there.

9

I’ve always been amused by the commercials in which the caller is informed that their significant other is cheating on them. Hubby and I saw one the other day, and mused, “I wonder if you called and were informed that I am screwing around and divorced me if I could sue them? Alienation of affection, or something like that.”

I’m sure that there are people out there that would take what a phone-in psychic so seriously that they would leave their partner if informed by one of these frauds that their partner was straying. “I know what you’ve been up to, you bastard! It was all in the tarot!”

10

Then there’s the one with the woman CRYING…and saying, “I’m sorry…it was just so real…so beautiful.”

I want to cry myself when I see that. God, are people getting dumber everyday?

11

I’ve done work in some areas, like the ever mentioned Trailer Parks, where the folks living there are prime suckers for these scams. Not real bright, economically challenged, opinionated, somewhat desperate and hopeful and willing to grasp at straws. So half of the rent money goes to the psychic lines as they strive for a little good news in their normally troubled and confined lives.

It really needs to be a crime! Houdini never found a real psychic so at the very least the law should require these folks to display the ‘for entertainment only’ disclaimer in big letters, preferably readable ones, across their commercials at intervals. It would help if the psychics informed the listening audience that the program is for entertainment only.

At least anyone who calls one of these 1-800-chixs lines knows that they’re being charged a bundle to have a girl, who often sounds better than she looks, to talk dirty to one. From the amount of those ads, we have a lot of ‘phoneophiles’ lurking around the nation, but they know what they are going to get.

Phone psychic networks count on the ignorance and desperation of the callers … and on the apathy of others who could get them exposed and shut down.

12

That always cracked me up.
“You’re carrying a baby, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am.”
“But your boyfriend doesn’t know it’s his brother’s?”
“Oh my God! You’re right!”
Who cares if it’s right? You already knew that! For $2.99/min, I want some winning lottery numbers for next week or something.

13

I was listening to my favorite radio talk show, mainly because the music sucks big time around here with only a choice of already played out oldies or hip-hop, and lo and behold, on came a girl who had worked for the current psychic scam and still does! She was answering a question concerning the infamous phone psychics the host had posed.

She writes the scripts for the newest floozy, that Jamaican broad, for the ads which are shown all over the TV including - get this the so called clients who are calling in! She also commented that the psychics are trained on how to answer calls, how to ask questions and how to reply, and that the current bimbo has worked for a couple of other psychic scams!! Since I’ve not spotted her on the ads before, I assume she was previously a phone jockey and probably has cultivated her heavy Jamacian accent.

I’ve written in complaining about these scams. I’m going to be writing to congress shortly. In my opinion, far too many people believe such crap on TV and I’m so damn sick of predators preying on suckers on national TV and using loopholes in the law to do it. TV is an immensely powerful medium, which the original stations and governing bodies understood and used laws to keep it reasonably safe, but over the years, standards have been dropped and barely legal cons are allowed on the tube so long as they can pay for the slot.

The lady pointed out that the highest suckers being fleeced are not the upper income, well educated people, but poor minorities and those of low income and low education. They have also discovered that if they display a black psychic, then more minorities call.

So, it stands to reason that if you dress her up in Afro-ethnic clothing, give her a predominate accent from a majority black nation, call her a priestess and let her make vague innuendo about voodoo, then many more black people will call in. Especially when you start doing ‘live’ interviews consisting of mainly black women in a mall or something.

Nothing like clever market psychology applied. In a series of commercials I’ve noted over the last 2 years, the predominate caller interviewed or who is a voice on the phone runs predominately to black females, ranging from those who act well educated to those right in the ghetto, then come the Hispanic and Asian females, followed by white trailer trash. Very few males of any race are targeted in personal interviews. There are males targeted in the phone calls, again having blacks predominately used, including one guy who changes his voice poorly to try to seem like a second caller.

Until currently, the majority of the psychics have been young or middle aged white women, though with the increase in black callers, those answering the phones are increasingly black.

Do I detect a bit of racial manipulation here? The deliberate targeting of racial and economic groups? Could this not be considered a form of racism? Were not a cigarette company and a beer producer hauled up by the short hairs not too long back for doing the same thing in advertisements?

Well?

Anyone else going to write in?

14

to the government trying to save people from themselves. That can get really ugly really easily.

Given that these people are not actually physically ill and being sold some bogus cure for an illness, thereby having their very lives put in jeopardy, I can’t really get too worked up about it. If they want to believe in that shit, it’s their right.
stoid

15

I have to agree with Stoidela on this one. You can’t protect people from themselves. If you make the psychics illegal, they’ll just think of something else to try and fill that hole in their empty, pathetic lives.

Well, since this has been going on since man could walk on two feet, I doubt there is anything that anyone could do about it.

16

They should get her to do other commercials.

I can see it now . . . for Velveeta Shells & Cheese . . .

(sob) “I’m sorry . . . It’s just so CREAMY!” (sob)

17

For a while, when I was deciding what career I might want to have (I still am, but I’m more or less decided) I actually considered maybe getting a position at either the FCC or the FDA. So I could stop people advertising psychic lines “for entertainment purposes only” (yeah, those callers in the commercial seemed to be entertained when the fake Jamaican lady told them they all need to break up with their white trash husbands) And I’d stop people from selling bogus medicine and/or addictive mind-altering drugs as “dietary supplements.” And then there’s the whole story about the shoddy hearing aids being sold as “amplifiers” (there was a 20/20 report on that. It was called CrystalEar or something. Why would you buy something that amplifies sound and sticks into your ear if not as a hearing aid!?)

(BTW, is there some kind of vB code to make the text small? I could’ve sworn I’ve seen people use it, but I don’t see it on the help page.)