Credits: Eva Rinaldi / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 2.0.
Kim Kardashian acknowledges that she failed the California bar exam and promises to take it again. The admission, posted on Instagram on November 8, 2025, responds to an anniversary clip. In it, she blasts “psychic scams” and criticizes mediums. She calls them “pathological liars.” From the personal to the public, the episode sheds light on a booming psychic-reading market in the platform era. It also reopens the debate over its regulation.
The Birthday Clip and the Public Admission
The scene unfolds in a few seconds shot in the warm glow of a birthday party. Kris Jenner turns 70. Amid the laughter, her daughter Kim Kardashian lets out a cold burst of anger. She takes aim at “psychics” and denounces a psychic scam tied to her success with the California bar. She calls them “pathological liars,” in her own words. That same day, on Instagram, she confirms the essentials: she did not clear the summer exam and she will take it again. No wavering. “No shortcuts, no giving up,” she sums up.
The announcement is picked up in a chain reaction. The media relay the video and the message. The platforms amplify it. In the viral froth, one detail remains: the planet’s most scrutinized celebrity tells a plain, unvarnished failure story and pairs it with a promise: keep going until she succeeds.
A Long-Haul Candidate
Since 2019, Kim Kardashian has followed the alternative path known as the Law Office Study Program, an apprenticeship-based track outside traditional law school, allowed in California. She passed the First-Year Law Students’ Exam in December 2021, after several tries. She patiently checks off the boxes, from the MPRE to long-term review. She is not a lawyer and has not yet passed the bar exam. She wants to become one and does not hide it, without holding a law degree. Her father, Robert Kardashian, was one. The legacy weighs heavily, and so does the times.
The exam she is facing takes place over two days. It includes five one-hour essays, one 90-minute performance test, and 200 multiple-choice questions on the American common law core. The State Bar of California details its scope and subjects on its website, without romance and without leniency. The summer 2025 sitting delivered results on November 8, 2025 to candidates; the institution published overall statistics in the following days. Kim Kardashian says she came “very close.” She clings to that “almost” the way you’d cling to a handrail on a slippery staircase.
This path runs against the grain of another, glossier pop narrative. The star plays the lead in All’s Fair, an American legal drama distributed on Hulu and Disney+. The contrast is stark. The brilliant heroine on screen, the determined student in real life. The fiction has received harsh critical reviews in the United States. Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer nearly hit rock bottom, a sign of a rough reception despite the media power behind the project. Still, the star keeps promoting it, confident the audience will ultimately make up its own mind.
Anger at Psychic Readings and Scams, Not a Verdict
Back to the outburst. The words spoken in the TikTok clip target specific people: mediums — Kim Kardashian accuses them of making false promises. Explicitly attributed to Kim Kardashian, the phrase reflects a heat-of-the-moment reaction. It cannot be taken as a blanket judgment on “psychics.” Let’s not jump to conclusions. The episode is nonetheless telling: belief, even among the most rational people in Silicon Valley or Hollywood, still has a powerful pull. When it’s time to decide, doubt, or tremble, many look for signs, cards, voices that reassure.
A Solid, Quiet, Many-Sided Market
Psychic reading is not some fringe bit of folklore. It occupies a real market, fed by old habits and new platforms. France sits high in this landscape. Estimates vary, but they point to an annual turnover of several billion euros in the country, with a sprawling offer: in-person consultations, premium-rate audiotel lines, text message services, TikTok and YouTube live streams, and specialized marketplaces. The number of practitioners runs into the tens of thousands. In population surveys, opinion polls show a constant: a notable share of French people has consulted at least once, and another says they might.
Globally, the purely online segment is growing fast, fueled by real-time streams and the habit of micro-payments. The market now talks about remote “readings,” video packages, and credits converted into virtual gifts. On live streams, every animation triggers monetization. The platforms take their cut. Visibility serves as both storefront and authority. The smartphone becomes the table where the cards are laid.
How Does It Make Money?
The economics of psychic reading rest on simple pricing models. In person, the session is billed by the time: an hour or sometimes 30 minutes. Prices range from the “trial” consultation to a few dozen euros. They also include the more ambitious fees charged by well-known card readers. Remotely, audiotel bills by the minute through premium-rate numbers. The 0892 lines and similar ones have enriched call centers. They also aggregate profiles, standardize scenarios, and streamline queues. In live settings, the logic flips: access is public, personalization is paid for through money-valued gifts, converted into diamonds, then euros. On TikTok, the gift grid runs from cents to symbolic hundreds of euros. The platform keeps a substantial share of the revenue. Altogether, these mechanisms create a rente powered by continuous audience attention and repeated microtransactions.
The Mechanics of Credulity in the Age of Infinite Scroll
Why does it work so well? Because the promise speaks to an emotion. Psychic reading aims to reduce uncertainty. It offers ready-made stories you can project yourself into. Social psychology studies describe the appeal of general statements that seem tailored to each person. The vaguer the formula, the more widely it applies. The algorithm, meanwhile, pushes what we have already liked. A well-lit tarot sequence, a soothing tone, ethereal music, and we linger. Social proof rounds out the picture: the comments roll in, the “it works” messages reassure, the screenshot posts comfort. The audience becomes witness, then echo chamber.
In this landscape, celebrities sometimes act as barometers. Their use of readings becomes public information. Confidences are mined for clues and turned into trends. The Kardashian case illustrates this shift. In fact, a failed exam and a few statements are enough to reopen the conversation. It concerns an economic universe that thrives quietly, except when failure shines a harsh light on it.
Notorious Scams, Case Law, Red Lines
Recent history has seen some high-profile cases. In the United States, the so-called “Miss Cleo” saga left a mark. In the early 2000s, the Federal Trade Commission secured an agreement forcing the operators of the hotline to give up hundreds of millions of dollars in claims and pay fines, after practices deemed deceptive. The political message came down to one line: commercial promises must be kept, even in the world of divination.
In France, the law is clear on one point: belief is free, but deception and abuse of weakness are criminally punishable. Authorities remind the public that sellers who exploit a person’s vulnerability face heavy penalties. Decisions also make clear that no guarantee of results can be claimed for a psychic-reading service. The offense of fraud takes shape as soon as schemes are used to extract money through false promises.
In the field of phone-based services, premium-rate numbers have long been a red flag. Convictions have punished aggressive schemes. Platforms today outsource part of the oversight to internal rules: age limits, price transparency, bans on unsupported promises. The filter remains porous. Moderation has tightened, but the gray area persists.
What The Kardashian Case Says About Our Time
One thing is clear. A star capable of scripting her own narrative to the millimeter can, in a few stories, soften a setback. She can turn it into a parable of perseverance. The episode could have stayed private. It becomes a public moment that raises another question: why hand that burden to mediums? In fact, when the outcome of an exam known for its difficulty and its published scoring should be announced differently. The answer may lie in the solitude exposed by competitive exams. We like it when someone says “you’ll make it.” We pay for that. We like it, share it. We go back.
The California bar has not changed, though. It has codified a format, set a stable threshold, and spelled out a method. The statistics show that not everyone gets through, even after serious work. Kim Kardashian fits into that human average. She is not alone. She is facing it with a persistence that commands respect. If the series she stars in draws critical mockery, her legal journey is being written in the future tense.
Toward Clearer Regulation
Should it be regulated more? The debate comes back with every scandal. The arguments are familiar. On one side, freedom of belief and entertainment. On the other, the need to protect consumers from practices that sometimes target vulnerable people. One path is to clarify price disclosures, regulate advertising, and require a clear notice: psychic readings do not guarantee anything. Another focuses on platforms: make the commission taken visible, indicate the true value of gifts, and make recourse easier in cases of abuse. The state, through its agencies, already reminds people of their rights and complaint options. It still needs to step onto the new live-stream stage.
The issue touches broader questions. What we know about cognitive biases meets what we do in interfaces: an endless feed, a string of promises, the compulsion of the swipe. Media literacy must now include a chapter on these economies of attention. We need to learn to spot the moment when solicitation turns into persistence, then harassment. We need to learn to recognize the pseudoscientific dressing of certain discourses. Above all, we need to restore the right not to know.
After Failure, Perseverance, and Keeping Oracles at Arm’s Length
Kim Kardashian failed an exam. She said so. She blasted psychics who promised her the inevitable. She goes back to work. It’s a more ordinary story than it seems. It reminds us that success remains a moving target and that a promise is not a contract. It also says something about our time: the search for certainty is monetized, and so is doubt. In between, rules remain. Institutions publish them. Authorities explain them. The rest belongs to each person’s judgment.