Comic Strips

just fun

Yeah, no.

People use astrology to make actual life decisions and then call it fun

That comic feels very strawman-y

Generational divides are at least based in broadly shared material conditions, and while they shouldn't be used to make assumptions about individuals, they can be used to draw conclusions about large populations as a whole. Astrology simply has no basis whatsoever for anything.

While the gen-z comment is unwarranted, I have to side with the frog on this one (and not just because of my username), even if he's being contrarian just to feel superior.

'Harmless' things like astrology and other types of magical thinking can become a larger problem if your society has a failing, inadequate or inaccessible education system. Without adequate education of critical thinking, they're taken more and more seriously by wider swaths of society, which can foster mistrust in the scientific method, sometimes leading to deeply unhealthy outcomes, such as using crystals and other alternative 'medicines' for ailments instead of using scientifically backed methods.

It can also lead to increased susceptibility to manipulation via conspiracies and misinformation that confirms the mystical thinking.

Carl Sagan gets to the heart of the problem in his book, A Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle In The Dark:

“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

Frankly the amount of people in my country that make decisions based on astrologers' advice is staggering. If people just did it for fun maybe I would think it's okay but they actually pay scammers and make assumptions about people just from their sign, which is actual stereotyping in contrast to what is shown in the comic

Astrology has one valid use.

If you're a Virgo, it means your parents had Christmas sex

"general era of one's birth" has a lot more impact on well... everything... About a person's life Way more than "time of year"

You are way more likely to be similar to the people born in the 5-10 years around you than to people born 50 years prior but in the same month.

But hey, as long as it's just for fun and you aren't basing major life altering decisions on things.... Why would I care if you like giggling at the little blurbs in newspapers about how ridiculous capricorns are when mars is in retrograde.

This joke doesn't work.

Generalizing about a person based on planetary alignments puts the scale so large that it's pointless to attempt to attribute a personality to it.

However, generalizing about a person based on when they were born attributes things like culture, world events, etc. A really good example of this are children who grew up through the Great Depression were, on record, hoarders of food. The trauma they suffered provided a collective cultural event that could be identified by others that did not live through it.

I knew a girl, whose mother sold off her house because a mystic/fortune teller/crystal fellator/astrologist told her to.

Now, whether she just inferred this on her own, or the scam artist explicitly suggested it, the outcome was the same.

Making real life decisions based off a set of tarot cards is not wise.

Everyone is stupid

Your cohort when you grow up can predict your development because people of a particular generation share a great multitude of environmental factors.

Edit: this does not mean we should foster intergenerational conflict.

Imagine if particle physics got popularized for 10 centuries.

I believe that there are these tiny people called Quarks and they like to spin and have charming personalities

Astrology and religion seems like that. Something that once made sense and then got sorta socially digested.

The problem with astrology is that the position of stars 100’s/1000’s of lightyears away could have a significant and predictable impact on someone’s entire life and somehow those exact same stars predicted the every single person who has ever or will ever be born on those days, not the time someone is born, those are two very different things.

That frog is obviously a Capricorn.