If you’ve ever watched VH1 or MTV late at night, you’ve heard the ads.

Call this number right now for advice from your very own personal psychic!!!

Then digits flash across the screen, you’re promised that your “every question will be answered” and Road Rules: Annoying People vs. Super Self-Absorbed People comes back on, leaving you to wonder if you just missed your chance to know more about that cute lifeguard from the other day at the beach.

Who hasn’t been tempted to dial or talk to a psychic? They’re everywhere. On commercials, on the internet, solving crimes on TV (Psychic Detectives, anyone?) throwing tarot cards in the back of your favorite head shop, and even telling fortunes from the comfort of their own homes.

I’ll be the first to stand up and confess I’ve given money to someone in the hopes they’ll see into my future. It sounds completely ridiculous once you write something like that down, but those people can be so damn compelling! And always so sure of themselves, no matter what they tell you, they say it with such conviction you feel obligated to believe them (even the ladies who answer the door in their bathrobes with a towel wrapped around their heads. Even these woman, who would be considered crazy in any other circle, read your palm so sternly it makes you forget they decided to conduct business sans clothes).

Why do we do it? Why do we believe someone has the ability to predict what tomorrow’s going to be like? Personally, I chalk up my gullibility to wanting life to be full of grey instead of black or white. But the word gullible is definitely part of the sentence.

Desperate might be there too, although I won’t admit to it. I mean, when are you most likely to seek supernatural advice? When life is shitty. When you want someone tell you they see that shittiness fading away. That your loneliness will soon be thwarted by the perfect man. No one pays $20 to a lady selling crystals and angel figurines when they’re content (and if you do, then you’re making incredibly poor financial choices, my friend).

Maybe some people really are psychic, and the crazies and con artists selling fortunes out of their living room are ruining it for us all. Whatever the case, I’ve had just about enough of “you’ll meet a man in 9 to 12 months who will change your life”.

Unless they’re talking about the guy who sprays my apartment for roaches twice a year, I’m not buying it.