Energy Reading and Commentary: Substack (Online Content Platform)

I perform distance readings for others for a trade. This is a simple, impersonal reading focused on Substack, an online platform for content creators (where I currently am also). Reading performed Sept. 2026, energy reading pertains to that moment in time.

Substack allows its creators to not just express themselves in terms of their creativity, but allows them to toy with the prospect of earning from it. It could be argued part of Substack’s energetic “offering”, if you will, or of its vibe, is the promise or perhaps chance of approximation to the experience of empowerment and independence through one’s own artistry. Not to say other venues don’t offer the same or similar things, but that’s nonetheless part of its energetic signature.

Substack is a young-ish tool/website that happens to sit at an interesting junction of modern human experience. It is my perspective that as a collective, despite our numerous flaws and challenges, we’re steadily walking towards some thresholds of how we understand and organize life and society. One of these thresholds has to do with how we perceive the role of employment and money-making.

Gradually, over time, the path we’re on will eventually come to regard the 9-to-5 (in practice often a 7-to-7 or later) as obsolete. But not just that, perhaps in time the notions we have about earning sustenance and having jobs to support our general existence in the world. Human beings will likely always have to learn in education systems and serve and contribute to their society in some way; but the ways by which these are imposed, and the weight they bear upon individual lives, might come to be revised.

It is the inkling of this real and tangible possibility, that exists, perhaps somewhat unconsciously, in the promise of this and other platforms.

When the user, creator, independent thinker, newcomer, first connect with what the platform offers, what they resonate with, at least in part, is the promise of lifting, and becoming free or more free from, those things imposed as obligations that are pervasive to our lives. A promise carrying a sense of hope, upliftment, empowerment, freedom, lightness.

Still, for now and on a societal level progress in this regard is slow. Not much has taken place in terms of changes in this regard. Bills will keep coming; prices will keep going up; and you’ll continue to square up against the idea, perhaps vague but nonetheless ever present, of personal bankruptcy. Of the prospect living in the street, or going back to your parents’ house, if they’re still around, if you’re not sufficiently successful.

So, energetically, Substack tries to be like a gated community in a zombie apocalypse.

Meaning, it wants to live in a new version of planet Earth. It offers the promise – more or less explicit, more or less understated – that we can do better. That you can find freedom, sovereignty, and independence through work you love, and through the sheer power of your hope and commitment to fuel it. That it is possible for you to live while working instead of working to barely live.

But outside the old gears are still turning.

Zombie analogy aside, Humanity will continue to rub shoulders against scarcity for as long you have to prove your worth by earning a living. And Substack, along with any others touching on the promise otherwise, sits at the crossroads of these two worlds, without being able to leave the old one behind.

So inside the gated community things often look rosy and uplifting. Which is to say, creators generally put forth positive and uplifting messages under a conscious effort to do so. They’ll seek to connect and help others connect. They’ll try to find success while also fostering for others. They’ll try to promote that upliftment; they’ll try to hype the hope. They’ll want be inebriated in the glamour of the energy of hope that the promise brings.

As they do, they’re working towards their own success, money, and subscribers in the process; but they’re not necessarily out of integrity i.e. there isn’t deceit or falsehood in doing so. They’re just following the premise the community was built upon. Which is in part inspired by the underlying premise, in itself positive and hopeful.

But the world outside is still not safe, at least not completely. Hence, to the trained eye there’s a hint of nerves or tension, perhaps very subtle, pervading every exchange, post, note, comment. While it might appear you have things figured out, or you’re making your strides steadily/hopefully towards that stage, what’s shared isn’t coming from a place of safety. In that sense, there’s often a subtle hint of falsehood, or of unsupported trust perhaps, running through what’s posted across the platform. Not with ill-intent mind you; but just as a reflection of the fact an answer of true safety, relative to the underlying premise, hasn’t been found yet.

In readings I can’t and won’t try to predict future events, only assess past and present circumstances, and at most extrapolate possibilities for the future.

When a platform like this is created and used, the energies of both its creators/owners and their broader spectrum of those who become the users arrives to inhabit and “fill” it. Their energy becomes its energy and vice-versa.

One of the energetic patterns that can develop – which would certainly not be exclusive to Substack, but possible given the space of hope and solutions it inhabits – would be promoting (or inducing) hustle as a way to run away from hustle.

Essentially you’re trying to find your way towards (more) personal freedom and independence through what your own means, and what you create/express. Ideally, the underlying promise would be escaping the burdens that arise from work. But, doing so inserted in a somewhat uncertain and competitive environment, in a world still pressing on the buttons and levers of its old machinery. So you may find yourself running on a mindset of hustle and effort: to try to make headway, to grow, and/or maintain any amount of growth you may have attained. Hence users and creators may be constantly tempted lean on the pedal and hustle, ironically when the intention underneath it was (at least in part, in some way) not to have to.

Insofar as this pattern comes to apply, the unfortunate part is that doing X to escape X will result in more X rather than less. In other words: in participating in the website, one may find inadvertently working precisely against its underlying energetic promise, as opposed to towards it.

Finally, the energies that are brought to inhabit the website are dual: they contain and represent both A) the creator’s and users highest and most noble dreams, goals, aims and ideals; but also B) those burdens, beliefs, difficulties, and experiences that might make it difficult or stand in the way of getting to the former.

Even if sometimes the power of A sees a website start stronger and brighter, there often comes a point further down the road where B accumulates and overtakes it. This process that can take place the more hurriedly, the more A’s ideals and promises can’t be maintained in a sustained manner, and experiences more resonant with B accumulate and can’t be transformed (“transmuted”) into A.

When this happens a tipping point is reached, where a website (or a system, group, organization, or any human construct for that matter) can start to cave and collapse under its own weight. For websites, this is when owners/shareholders start to take away from the system more than what’s put in; it’s when the priority is solely profit rather than the promises and ideals with which the site was built; it’s when the human element starts to be taken away, perhaps replaced with algorithms and AI. It’s that familiar feeling when artificiality, nonsensical choices, and the fabled enshittification start creeping in.

This point isn’t necessarily an unchangeable sentence; but it represents when a critical junction is reached, where the next choices determine whether a bump in the road becomes a step for further evolution – or a irreversible downward spiral develops, that leads to the demise of the community, and the promises it once held.