When a little boy wishes to be ‘big’ in the film of the same name, he doesn’t really expect the mystical machine to grant his wish, or that it will transform him into Tom Hanks. The astrology app Co–Star has also experienced an unforetold growth spurt since launching in 2017, with over 20 million downloads by April 2021. This is ironic, of course, because Co-Star is in the business of foreseeing. The app combines “astrological interpretations” with “NASA data” and AI to provide daily observations and recommendations for its users. The prompts range from standard suggestions – “Build on what you have now” – to the seemingly random – “Binoculars” – to the absurd – “You and Jess are a mob of enormous, glimmering tardigrades, ambling across the waterlogged terrain and eating everything in your path.” The horoscopes lurking in the hairdresser’s old copies of Cosmo are old news: astrology apps also provide your precise birth chart and can connect with your contacts to analyse friends’ compatibility. And you don’t need to believe in astrology to use them. 

Co–Star’s success is one solar system in a larger galaxy. The global astrology market is predicted to be worth $22.8 billion by 2031, after a swell in popularity which began in the 1930s when the Sunday Express printed royals’ birth charts and has been reignited by millennials and memes. Astrology apps are a cocktail of modernity and mysticism – Co–Star employs “poets, astrologers, and technologists”, and its most recent feature, ‘the void’, takes inspiration from Soviet computers, NASA machines and Zoltar booths at carnivals. It achieves in the twenty-first century what Carl Jung did for astrology in the twentieth by making it more practical and less associated with the supernatural, therefore more appealing en masse. Co–Star and a spate of other similar apps like Sanctuary and The Pattern have not created a sudden surge in interest in astrology, but they have capitalised on it. 

As of spring 2021, Co–Star hadn’t spent any money on marketing, yet it had been downloaded by a quarter of women in the US aged 18-25. Many people looking to explain the popularity of astrology and its apps deem it detritus from a generation living with increasing uncertainty (pandemic, politics, climate… you know the drill) who look to organised religion less and less for guidance. But these reasons are an oversimplification and a statistical fallacy. The percentage of Christian Americans who believe in astrology is only slightly lower than nationwide (26% compared to 29%), and among Catholics belief in astrology is higher (33%). Astrology apps were booming before the pandemic hit, so we can’t blame it all on COVID either. And none of these factors explain the bizarre appeal of astrology apps to those who don’t believe in astrology, a phenomenon I have observed among my friends at Trinity and in myself. 

The question of ‘belief’ when it comes to astrology is complex, though. Many people who engage with the practice view it as fact, not faith, rendering the question of belief irrelevant. When Dr Nicolas Campion asked attendees at a British Astrological Association conference whether they believed in astrology, the proportion of positive responses was just under a third: the same as the general population. When he queried those who claimed not to believe, they responded that astrology is a reality, not a belief. Astrology is commonly deemed a pseudoscience – meaning it has not been proven using the scientific method, but is often mistaken for a science – however, even categorising it in this way is disputed. It is therefore hard to measure whether ‘belief’ in astrology is really rising or its popularity is more akin to a curiosity in the practice that does not necessitate subscribing to its tenets. 

My friend Mal studies Theoretical Physics and has “no” belief in astrology. But he has Co–Star. He downloaded it in sixth year when lots of his friends did as “entirely a social thing and just a bit of fun.” Similarly, my friend Jess (the tardigrade from earlier) and I regularly send each other screenshots from the app despite neither of us having faith in its predictions. Even Co–Star’s founder, Banu Guler, separates the reliability of astrology from its popularity. “The question isn’t whether astrology is real,” she says. For those who don’t believe, I think the app provides the same itch-scratching satisfaction as a good meme. It is a precise blend of humour and unexpected truth which prompts a slight – albeit not unpleasant – vulnerability. Just because you don’t think astrology has a scientific basis, doesn’t mean Co–Star’s advice won’t strike a nerve. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly (and as the statistics I quoted earlier demonstrate), these apps are particularly popular with young people. Margaret Gray, an Astrologer and Psychotherapist who owns a Psychological Astrology practice in Dublin, told me that although her clients encompass “all demographics”, most are “between the ages 20-45. I think younger people are more open to all the tools available to us to evolve, including astrology”. This image is perhaps hard to conflate with that of a generation known for its focus on science (our futures are tangibly altered by whether people act on the science of vaccinations and climate change). Often, this contradiction is explained by another trope of youth: narcissism. “The selfie-loving nanoinfluencer generation is eager to hear that they’re unique and special”, the New York Times posits as a reason why millenials and Gen-Z have taken up with astrology. But if I’ve learnt one thing from growing up with a twin sister, it’s that your birthday – the basis of astrology – does not make you unique. Far from assuaging us with compliments and stroking our heads, Co–Star is known for its acerbic tone, which was responsible for much of its initial clamour online. Guler has admitted that it might have been “a little bit brutal” when its users were receiving repeated notifications about death, though. 

If Co–Star isn’t directly comforting, then surely it indirectly provides solace through the illusion of control that astrology fosters? Daily predictions of how we – and the world – are doing hypothetically enable us to regulate these fickle variables. Yet my experience of Co–Star has been the opposite. I might be coming to it with the wrong intentions (read: checking it every few days and sending my friends the funny ones), but engaging with astrology in this way has only cemented my feeling that there is relatively little within my power in this absurdly vast universe. Astrology seems to encourage an acknowledgement of fatalistic forces, rather than butting up against them, in spite of Co–Star’s reminder to users that “no star can compromise the human faculty of will.” Its occasionally banal commands, like today’s – “Don’t look at your phone first thing in the morning” – advocate consciousness of your own actions, but its very basis – that our personalities are rooted in the stars – is a reminder of just how small we are. The occult, unknowable quality of astrology is only intensified by Co–Star’s confusing methods and technology. If algorithms are defined in part as “processes that are used to make decisions of such complexity that inputs and outputs are neither transparent nor obvious to the casual human observer”, then astrology might have more in common with contemporary science than we think. 

Not everyone is a fan of these apps, just as not everyone loves astrology. Margaret Gray explains that “apps are generalised and although they can foster an interest in astrology, they are not a substitute for the real astrology.” Grey conducts reading for clients, often couples, and imparts her findings to them in a way she deems helpful and informative. Co–Star reminds users “not [to] follow the stars blindly.” but they cannot know – or mitigate – how their advice will be received. Lucia, a friend of mine and student of English and Philosophy, does sheepishly believe in astrology: “a lot of the information I’ve seen has resonated with me in some way.” In spite of this, she’s heard that “most astrologers hate Co–Star”, so uses the app as a source of occasional entertainment with friends rather than a guiding force. If those most aligned with astrology’s teachings consider these apps unreliable, then maybe Co–Star and the like are fulfilling a different role than the obvious.

My inkling is that Co–Star just happens to be an astrological app. It provides an acknowledgement of the flightiness of the material world, whilst couching opportunities for self-reflection and connection in the acknowledgement of its unseriousness (would any self-respecting astrologer really use ‘tardigrades’ – also known as moss piglets – as a metaphor?). Its amalgamation of the mystical and the modern plays into young people’s trust in science whilst allowing us to ‘romanticise our lives’, as a patronising influencer might say. After all, the idea that we are all made up of stars is pretty romantic. Now we have an app to notify us daily of that fact.