If you pay close attention to what people actually do in online hypnosis spaces, you begin to notice something slightly uncomfortable:

a large part of modern online hypnosis culture is really a mixture of:

• behaviorism • pop psychoanalysis • simplified neuroscience • rituality • eroticism • narrative • dissociation • placebo/nocebo • trance aesthetics • identity construction

In other words:

almost everything except openly admitting they are doing science.

And perhaps the strangest part is that many people reject scientific labels entirely.

Which is, ironically, one of the most scientific things imaginable.

Because science is not merely a construct. It is an animal to be domesticated.

And very often, it refuses to behave the way we want or expect.

So what do we do with that?

When someone asks a question and the answer turns out to be science, perhaps we should not panic.

Perhaps we simply embrace it as a necessary evil.

Science is not a refuge. It is not an enemy.

It is a tool.

And denying that you are using it does not prevent it from breaking.