Learning Day: TikTok Pet Psychics

Many industries were able to thrive under the chaos of the pandemic. Slime is a multi-million dollar business now! There are slime millionaires buying homes with their goo money. However, I would argue that no industry has been able to inflate its market value more than the TikTok Pet Psychic business. We were all trapped in our homes with our pets for way too long, and now we need to know how much of the weird shit we did they can remember.

Of course, the TikTok pet psychic community has rebranded as "animal communicators," much the same way pyramid schemes rebranded to "network marketing," and I rebranded from comedy writer to strategic brand penis joke enhancer. These animal communicators have hundreds of thousands of followers and are charging them bonkers amounts of dollars to tell them that their Chinchilla doesn't love them anymore. Here's the pricing breakdown for Shirley Hyatt, an animal communicator with 200 thousand followers:

I have so many questions. Horses are the most expensive animal to communicate with. Why is it harder to talk to a horse? Talking to a dead animal is only $125, and a living horse is $150. According to these metrics, the boundaries of life and death are easier to cross telepathically than a horse's thick skull. If the horse is dead, does it cost less?

I have a sneaking suspicion that horses and exotic animals cost more simply because their owners tend to have more money. That doesn't seem like a very fair way to dole out your psychic powers, but oh well, I guess the poor will never be able to afford to know their bird's opinion on the stock market. Pet psychic Nikki Vasconez offers a more equitable division of bird thought pricing. No matter the thickness of your animal's skull, it's $550 plus $250 for clarity. If your komodo dragon says he finds you “delicious” and you need to know if that’s a weird compliment or if you need to run, that will be an extra $250.

You're probably reading this and thinking, "Wow, that's a lot of money for no past lives." I know, right? If you want to explore your pet's past and future lives, soul purpose, and life directive, things start to get expensive. TikToker Brent Atwater has 154K followers and she'll do a four-hour-long full reincarnation reading of any animal, even horses, for $1,100.

I would pay someone $1,100 to stop talking to me about my dog after one hour, but this is a full four hours of pet-based improv. I couldn't make up a four-hour-long story about your Yorkie's past adventures as Ted Bundy, but it turns out that if you have that terribly specific skill, you can be set for multiple lives.

You might have noticed the mention of an animal's "soul purpose" in the dog reincarnation reading. This is a piece of animal communication lore dropped exclusively on TikTok. It's the idea that your ferret was brought into your life for some specific reason that it needs to achieve in this lifetime. Usually, it's something like "to love you" or "to help you relax," but I'd like to think every once in a while, throw in a, "Uh oh, it looks like Mr. Fluffy's soul purpose is the destruction of capitalism by any means necessary."

I haven't heard a story about an animal with a destructive soul purpose, which is wild because I've seen several readings on cats. Mostly, the animals think exactly what their owners want to hear; they think they are happy and love doing whatever their parents want them to do. A lot of animal communicators boost their business by giving free readings to celebrity dogs, and their owners are always really impressed about all the information they're able to deliver about their dogs, who have over 500 hours of daily video footage available online for review. Basically, all of these reviews are influencers impressed that someone was able to discern that Grumpy Cat is grumpy.

I do see some animal communicators taking some big swings, like when Nikki Vaconez posted about a camel who was ashamed of his skinny legs. Apparently, the camel's owner had an issue with his skinny legs and transferred his insecurity to his animal. Knowing that our animals can absorb our insecurities makes perfect sense, but it's also terrifying. My cat is currently stressed out about our mortgage, poor thing.

Sometimes, the animals do have notes for their owners. For instance, Jenniffer Hudson did a segment with Nikki Vaconez on her talk show, and the cat told her that she's too loud when she comes home from work. Imagine tuning in to hear Jenniffer Hudson's cat's thoughts on a Tuesday afternoon. That's how popular these pet psychics have become. They're getting booked on daytime talk shows to chat about cat thoughts! If you're on crystal TikTok, which a large chunk of modern day wine moms are, you're only half a swipe away from psychic cat TikTok. You're next-door neighbors with "I accidentally body-shamed my camel."

Another appealing part of the TikTok animal communicator lore is that everyone can be an animal communicator. It's a skill that we're all born with and just need to nurture! Of course, to nurture it will cost $64.99 per month! If you don't pay, they shut off your telepathy. I'm sure it's well worth it to learn how to tell who your chameleon thinks will win The Bachelor; wow, what a coincidence, it's exactly who you think will win The Bachelor!

The MLM girlies have found a way to turn psychic powers into a pyramid scheme. I'm honestly impressed. It's my two favorite areas of study, and they kissed. The biggest TikTok animal communicators offer classes and certification in animal communication, and some, like Danielle MacKinnon, who has 215K followers, don't even do personal readings anymore. The readings section of her website sends you to a directory of certified soul-level animal communicators who have trained under Danielle. She's completely outsourced her psychic powers.

Because anyone can become an animal communicator, you see a lot more hip young moms picking up psychic powers as a side hustle. I know there's a specific picture you get in your head when I write the phrase "pet psychic," and I know it is exactly Brent Atwater. If I had to guess her job, I would say pet psychic first, and so quickly that she would assume I was a real psychic and she was caught. If there was some sort of game show where I had to guess which of thirteen women was a pet psychic, I would kick her off immediately for being too obvious.

However, the hip youngsters of animal communication are all over TikTok, spawning smaller accounts like Carrie Kenady, who only has 5K followers but she's also the only pet psychic hip enough to offer a gay pride month discount for her services. This is the kind of real progress in gay rights that I love to see. We all deserve equal access to our pets' unfiltered criticism. The rent may still be too damn high, but now gay people can get a discount on pet psychics in June, so I think the economy is doing pretty good.

We're in the middle of an animal communicator bubble. In a year or two, there will be a lot of women mumbling to rabbits for no profit at all. The animal communicator crash will hit TikTok hard, but I'm sure they'll find a new kind of teachable psychic power to replace it with. Fingers crossed for pyrokinesis this time!

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Draycen, the alpaca with a crippling gambling addiction who's here on Earth to dismantle the broken American health care system.

You can read this article and every other one on the much better in every way 1900HOTDOG.COM.