the alexreadstarot situation is so weird to me. the scriptedness and vague wording choice and heaaaaavily coded language from somebody who is so well-known for being almost brutally honest that hailey williams put "alex reads tarot reads the shit out of me" in a song......... suddenly deleting all of her videos and "finding jesus" "jesus saved me" with the most deadpan look in her eyes, simultaneously admitting that she's been having a crisis of faith for the past year and a half (all the meanwhile still making videos and talking money for readings while pretending she still fully believed in what she was practicing, which to me is the part I'm actually genuinely upset about, because that's extremely unethical imho)
and she changed her username on all platforms to "alexintheordinary", which i can only assume is a reference to a very popular christian song ("ordinary" by alex warren) about finding your faith. and like. for one, i don't think there's a contradiction between christianity and practices like tarot. there are plenty of christian tarot readers out there, including ones who have commented on the situation.
and i think it's important to note that around a year and a half ago was exactly the time when she was being threatened with a lawsuit by someone who got catfished and scammed, which makes me wonder if this is some kind of traumatized mental gymnastics and/or she got a sour taste from tarot due to that incident. because I remember at the time she was very very upset about it and honestly terrified that she was going to go to jail or get in serious legal trouble (even though she never scammed them). it's just. it's the lying that is disturbing for me. when you're having a crisis of faith for that long, why are you still taking paid readings. i get that you need money, but you're literally lying to people. she could've been honest about that the entire time but she wasn't. she could've still been doing readings while being upfront about how she was wavering in her beliefs and being honest about how she was feeling. but I have a feeling she didn't do that precisely because she recognized that she'd lose a bunch of followers, people might cancel their readings (and avoid ordering them in the future), etc. if she was honest the whole time. so instead.... she hid her intentions and her beliefs and pretended nothing was amiss, so that she'd still get financial benefits from people who trusted her. ik the economy is shit but there's really no excuse for deception, and at some point it kinda turns into fraud. but idk. maybe it's parasocial to assume there's funky stuff going on, but something isn't right about this whole situation and the worst bit is the deception aspect. a year and a half is not a short period of time to be knowingly deceiving your followers and customers.
and I'm not saying this to be snarky or shittalk, I'm just. weirded out by it, I guess? I have nobody to really discuss this with. it's a strange ethical issue imo.
