Hexes and the placebo effect
Ironically, skeptics are the easiest people to curse or hex. Skeptics are so keen on disbelieving that they unintentionally cause themselves to believe. The moment something weird happens in relation to a cursed item or negative superstition like walking under a ladder, a part of their mind worries that maybe they're wrong to be skeptical. They brush it off, but then something else weird happens, and suddenly that part of their mind has fuel to its fire. They then try to prove to themselves that they're mistaken, fighting their own mind the whole way. The longer and harder they try to disprove the thing, the more they fuel their unintentional belief.
A believer may have some answering belief to counteract this effect of the jinx. Walked under a ladder? Rub a lucky rabbit's foot to counteract it. The skeptic has no such recourse, though, and thus ends up fueling their own fearful belief without meaning to, and their behavior gets more accident prone the more paranoid they get, so they in effect jinx themselves. Thus, like I say, they're easier to jinx or curse because once you plant the idea in their head, they do the rest of the work for you. To curse a believer, you have to convince them you've hit them with something they don't have a counter for. Depending on their arsenal of beliefs, that can make it very difficult indeed to succeed, if they have lots of belief tools to counteract such hexes.
This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1383754.html
You can comment either here or there.
A believer may have some answering belief to counteract this effect of the jinx. Walked under a ladder? Rub a lucky rabbit's foot to counteract it. The skeptic has no such recourse, though, and thus ends up fueling their own fearful belief without meaning to, and their behavior gets more accident prone the more paranoid they get, so they in effect jinx themselves. Thus, like I say, they're easier to jinx or curse because once you plant the idea in their head, they do the rest of the work for you. To curse a believer, you have to convince them you've hit them with something they don't have a counter for. Depending on their arsenal of beliefs, that can make it very difficult indeed to succeed, if they have lots of belief tools to counteract such hexes.
This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1383754.html
You can comment either here or there.