Stop Using ChatGPT and Pick Up Some Tarot cards.

By Megan Waddington

Recently, I’ve noticed people treating ChatGPT as a digital oracle, using it to decode texts or justify questionable behaviour, outsourcing messy instincts to a sterile algorithm. We’ve become paralysed by a need for certainty, trading our raw impulses for a curated safety net. Honestly? There is nothing more unchic than a life lived by a prompt.

It hit me while I was at this guy’s house, a place I probably shouldn’t have been in the first place. As he showed me his university work, I caught a glimpse of an open tab: he was asking ChatGPT whether inviting me over had been the right move.

I laughed, asking if he really needed a digital second opinion to justify his own impulses. It was more than just pathetic; it felt dystopian. There is a specific kind of "romance" in being vetted by a processor; a visceral distaste follows when someone who knows you intimately still feels the need to consult the void before making a move. We are trading human instinct for a creeping, data-driven dependency.

We’ve traded spontaneity for safety, and honestly? We are second-hand living, performing an autopsy on our own personalities before they even have a chance to breathe. 

While impulse isn't always a virtue, acting on raw adrenaline and genuine emotion is fundamentally what makes us human. We are systematically stripping that away by outsourcing our inner lives to a machine that is, by definition, hollow. 

It’s something that people have so casually and quietly justified or joked about. When I really don’t see the joke. I can’t be the only one who realises we’ve completely lost the plot. Have we become so paralysed by self-scrutiny that we’ve forgotten how to just live? 

Since when has AI become the voice of reason?

I’ve seen countless videos where people joke, "You can look through my phone, just don’t look at my ChatGPT history," as if it’s perfectly normal to pour out your private inner world to AI. It’s strange and eerie; we act as if there is a "who" behind the screen, when there is no one there. These models are just echoes of the internet, built on human-made data but devoid of human life. 

It’s so pointless to seek guidance from something that has never actually experienced anything. How can it know what’s "right" or "wrong" when it has never felt a pulse? If you need perspective, read real articles by real people who have lived through what you're feeling. It’s more entertaining, authentic, and it saves a lot more water.

Reject the sterile modernity of AI and embrace the tradition of lived experience. I’m talking about the rituals that have a pulse: seeking advice from older family members who have survived their own messes, getting lost in a podcast that feels like a real conversation, or pulling tarot cards with your friends for the fun of it.

People mistake Tarot for an oracle, but it’s more honest than an algorithm. Where AI tries to "solve" your life with a mathematical average of a billion internet strangers, Tarot simply hands you a mirror. A card doesn’t tell you what to do; it asks you how you feel. One relies on a processor to give you an exit strategy; the other relies on a pulse to give your perspective. There is more wisdom in a single, messy handwritten journal entry than in any sterile prompt box. 

I’ve realised we don't always need a perfect answer. When someone ghosts me, I take it for what it is and move on. I refuse to get stuck in a draining loop, begging an algorithm to console me or invent reasons for his silence. He just wasn’t that into you…next. By obsessively seeking 'meaning' in every digital scrap, we’re sucking the fun out of the small things. I’d rather be 'seen' by my friends over a drink than 'analysed' by a server. We are overcomplicating the basics; things happen, and most of them don’t deserve more than five minutes of our time. I must remind myself: no one is overthinking this as much as I am.

Letting it go can make things work out even better than I ever imagined. 

If we cannot converse and talk to real people, who will we become? 

We will inevitably become a lonelier generation. I used to laugh it off when I said too much. For example, like the night I told a friend of a friend in a club smoking area about my recent break-up. I almost bit my tongue, but because I didn't, they offered me a moment of genuine, unexpected grace in return. Or the times I’ve cried in my friend’s car, completely overwhelmed, and she just let me exist in my mess. 

These moments are the antithesis of AI; they are unpredictable and entirely necessary. Never regret being too much in a world that is becoming too little.

"Whimsical" has been the word of the year on our feeds, but it truly is the best way to describe the alternative to a life lived through ChatGPT. The whimsy of life is what keeps things exciting. The pure human nature of acting on desire and being sure of your own actions is what we need to nurture, and not an AI nurturing us in our decision-making.

Human connection is built on decisions that change suddenly, based on whim rather than reason. We need less artificial logic and more whimsy in our choices. Live life as it was intended: tarot card nights over a glass of wine with friends or watching a 90s rom com as the holy grail of cultural commentary (as I tend to do). What makes us human are the imperfections, not the "perfect" answers we think we need.