Man, 2016 was a terrible year for me. Just absolute garbage from start to finish. I was laid off right after Thanksgiving, my car decided to commit suicide on the highway, and I was feeling completely lost. I was looking for anything—literally anything—to give me a roadmap for 2017. I didn’t believe in horoscopes, not really, but I was desperate and bored. That’s how this whole ridiculous project started.
I remember sitting on my broken couch, staring at the screen, and just deciding to treat the whole thing like a scientific experiment, or at least, a long-term data tracking exercise. If these free daily or yearly horoscopes were going to claim to know my future, I was going to hold them accountable. I needed to know: Was the free daily horoscope for Virgo 2017 accurate?
The Plan I Cooked Up
I didn’t just pick one site. That would be too easy. I figured if astrology was real, there should be some consensus, right? So, in the last week of December 2016, I set out and gathered the yearly Virgo predictions from five of the most popular free horoscope sites I could find. I was meticulous. I didn’t want the wishy-washy daily fluff; I wanted the big, yearly outlooks that covered career, health, relationships, and money.
The first thing I did was download and print out every single prediction. I didn’t just save them digitally; I physically printed them because I wanted to stick them in a binder. This binder became my “2017 Fate Tracker.” I even bought those little colored tabs—red for career, green for money, blue for health. I was treating this like a serious audit.
Next, I established a tracking system. Every month, on the first day, I committed to sitting down and listing out the major events that happened in the previous thirty days. Then, I would cross-reference those events with the yearly predictions I had saved. If something matched, I’d highlight it in yellow. If it was a total contradiction, I’d circle it in black Sharpie. If it was vague nonsense, I just wrote “WTH” next to it.
What Those Free Sites Promised Me
The predictions themselves were hilarious when viewed side-by-side. It was like they were describing five different people. But I tried to categorize the common themes they were pushing for the average 2017 Virgo:
- Financial Growth: Three out of five sites promised a significant boost in income or a major financial opportunity around late Q2/early Q3. They said my investments would stabilize.
- A New Romantic Partner: Four out of five mentioned a “soul-stirring connection” emerging from an unexpected social circle, likely between April and June.
- Travel Related to Water: One site was weirdly specific, claiming a major journey involving the sea or a large body of water would define the year.
- Health and Stress: All five warned Virgos to manage their stress and pay attention to their digestive health in the colder months.
I stuck those printouts right into the front of the binder and started 2017, ready to watch my life unfold exactly as predicted by algorithms fueled by ad revenue.
2017: The Reality Check
The year rolled on, and the absurdity of the predictions became clear almost immediately. Here’s what actually went down:
The Financial Boom?
The prediction for Q2 stability was utter rubbish. Instead of a major opportunity, I spent all of Q2 wrestling with the unemployment office and then took a contracting job that paid exactly half of what I made before. My investments? They didn’t stabilize; they vanished when I had to cash them out to pay rent. The only significant financial opportunity was that I learned how to cook cheaper meals. Black Sharpie all over that prediction.
The Soul-Stirring Connection?
April rolled around, and the only “unexpected social circle” I encountered was the line at the DMV. I didn’t meet a new partner. I re-downloaded a dating app for two weeks, got annoyed, and deleted it. The closest I got to romance was fighting with my neighbor over who owned a borrowed hedge trimmer. That whole love prediction was just generic clickbait.
The Watery Travel?
I kept waiting for the yacht trip or the seaside villa. What actually happened? My bathtub overflowed in July. I spent an entire weekend cleaning up water damage. Does that count as “travel related to water?” Maybe. I gave it a half-hearted yellow highlight, just to be generous to the silly prediction.
The Stress Warning?
This is the only category that was technically accurate, but only because it’s the most vague thing you can possibly predict. Did I manage my stress poorly? Yes. Did I have digestive issues? Absolutely, because I was eating ramen noodles for five months straight. But everyone has stress and stomach problems! I concluded that this prediction was completely useless because it applies to 90% of the adult population during any given year.
Wrapping It Up
By the time I closed that binder for the last time in December 2017, the pages were overwhelmingly covered in black Sharpie and the scribbled note “WTH.” The exercise confirmed everything I suspected about free astrology content.
The few times the predictions seemed accurate, they were so broadly stated that they were statistically guaranteed to happen. “You will experience friction with a co-worker” (Yeah, because that’s called working). “A change in living situation is possible” (A change is always possible). The specific, verifiable claims—like the financial windfall or the significant travel—were total busts.
I spent a whole year meticulously tracking these claims, and what I learned wasn’t about the cosmos, but about the mechanics of human bias and vague writing. I kept the binder, though. It sits on a shelf now, a reminder that if you want a roadmap for your life, you gotta build it yourself, not download it from some dodgy free website.
