Twitter’s first online séance with the dead will take place on All SaintsSuckers Day October 30, 2009. This hilarious social networking woo-a-palooza–or in proper twitter speak, “Tweance”–will be run by psychic Jayne Wallace, says the Sun. According to the associated twitter account , you can take part in the fun:
Tweet your nominations for departed celebs to contact in the Halloween Tweance and what to ask them to @tweance #tweance
-@tweance (Angels Fancy Dress), 12-10-2009 14:07:47
The Sun explains the event further:
Tweeters can choose which of their deceased idols they want to talk to, pick a question — then follow the “Tweance” in real time using the social networking site.
Jayne [Wallace] — who has been a natural clairvoyant since she was seven — will quiz four late stars nominated by Twitterers between 10am and 12pm on Friday October 30.
“Natural clairvoyant” really means “talented showperson” and “dewoosional hustler,” right? Yes, I just made up the word Dewoosional.
So, which easily-imitated dead celebs can we contact via twitter? Is there a high speed internet connection in heaven now? Have they upgraded from parchment and scrolls since the bronze age?
What do you think will happen during this stunt?
(via @mashable)
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I prefer to stick with iOuija. (OK, so I made that up.)
Seriously though, this is right up my alley. I'm a big fan of any kind of divination or psychic gobbledygook. I actually have a pretty decent collection of fortune-telling paraphernalia, including about thirty Tarot decks and two Parker Brothers Ouija boards. I'm a rational person who collects irrational toys.
What is it that draws you to collect things associated with idiocy?
My roommate has a gorgeous Tarot card set with Victorian illustrations, so I can see the appeal there, but in general what attracts you?
Wouldn’t the estates of these dead celebs, or the legal representatives of those estates, be interested in this? One can’t just go around impersonating celebrities, even deceased ones; those likenesses, names, and other things associated with said celebrities are more often than not registered as trademarks.
I mean, if the medium wants to call up Cicero or St. Augustine or Rabbi Yehudah, those famous persons have no one to sue on their behalf…but they also would probably not be speaking in English.
It started out as just a passing interest in something "forbidden" to my Bible Belt neighbors. Once I started collecting them, and researching the history of them, I was hooked. In a way, Tarot cards have a lot in common with religious texts. Each card represents an "archtype": a personality or situation common to all human experience. That's how they "work." They're vague enough to fit any person's situation, but specific enough to make the average person feel as if they're getting a glimpse of something unknown. The archtypes involved follow some of the same archtypes as the Bible and other mythological stories. There are heroes, mystics, prophets, etc. I just find the whole thing intriguing, as well as the mystical groups which inspired so many Tarot collections: alchemists, Kabbalists, the Golden Dawn, Aleister Crowley.
As for the Ouija boards, it started the same way. I found one in a junk shop when I was in high school. I was already a skeptic (of a deistic bent) back then, and I knew about how the ideomotor effect worked, so I didn't have the irrational fear of them that my predominately Baptist classmates had. That was a big draw for a geeky kid in the Deep South. Just knowing that I could handle something without fear that had my theist friends and family quaking in their shoes! One of my best friends even told me that I was risking my eternal soul by just having it in my possession. For a young skeptic, that was like candy-coated crack.
Interestingly, Carl Jung talked about the use of Tarot cards, ouija boards and other fortunetelling mechanisms as tools to access the subconscious. I guess you could say that's what I do with them, because I do sometimes pick a card at random to help come up with blog topics, to inspire my design or writing or to just help me clear my head. For me, they're tools for self-psychoanalysis, not a window into the future, and I place no special value in their usefulness beyond that.
I'm not as deeply interested in seances and psychics, but the whole skill set involved in becoming a successful charlatan is related to the same mechanisms that make the cards work the way they do, especially cold reading.
I think people should nominate Celebs who are still actually alive, but whose careers are dead.
I nominate Rosie O'Donnell!