Never Get Your Content Strategy From a Psychic
I can't believe I'm telling this story.
This week’s episode is brought to you by the word “daddy” and all the connotations it brings. Happy belated Father’s Day to all the daddies among us.
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Hi friends!
Well, I must admit that I fell back into the Matrix this week. What a time to be alive. What a time to pretend to be a bird the internet. And what a time to dissociate while consuming it all. It was a question of when, not if, the horse (me) would be led back to water (nighttime weed smoking and mainlining my FYP) and boy did I drink when I got there.
I need to go back to the trees and get their wisdom on whether Trump’s recent appearance on Jake Paul’s podcast is worth mentioning. But first, I have some business to attend to.
I know I’m late in sending this again, but you can blame Foster for enabling me with a delightful shoutout on Saturday. He reminded me of my own perfect summer wisdom and also called me an “unhingement specialist” which is the only way I will be referred to, professionally, henceforth.
Welcome new friends who found me last week, I’m simply thrilled you’re here!
I also have an update on the paywall of it all. It turns out that there’s no way for me to paywall the audio version without turning off comments for free subscribers. And that’s a no from me dawg, at least for now. I can’t have comments off because I love when you leave me comments and this is not a time to deny oneself the simplest, most wholesome pleasures. Plus, the reason I was inspired to paywall any of this is so insane, I think it’s time I tell the tale.
Three lifetimes ago (the beginning of April) a dear friend told me she had spoken to a psychic at the recommendation of her therapist. This is Los Angeles — where the walking unhinged attempt to cope with chunks of quartz and oracle decks — and even our trained professionals aren’t immune to the woo. This particular psychic, who is actually in New Jersey, specializes in existential crises. And once my friend told me all the crazy things she’d said, I needed her number immediately.
And that is how I found myself, a rapt audience of one, on the phone with Psychic Mary, google doc open to take notes and memorialize her take on my life. “You have leprechaun energy,” she began, “are you Irish?”
“No,” I said, “I’m about as Ashkenazic as they come. But I AM extremely lucky.”
She spent a solid chunk of time talking about one of my soulmates and gave me some annoying dating advice from my great-grandmother who was communicating with her from beyond the grave.
I got on the call hoping to ask her about the book proposal I spent most of February and all of March writing at the Coffee Bean while eavesdropping every afternoon on the ersatz AA meeting that takes place on the patio. So, finally I was like, Mary, girl, can we please talk about my writing.
The first thing she said to me was, “You need to ask a subscription price,” which she seemed genuinely surprised by. “What’s that about?” she asked.
I told her about this newsletter. To which she responded, "climb the tree, shake the tree, and make some noise.”
Soothsaying is having a moment. In a world where normalcy has been irreparably fractured, it’s wildly comforting to hear about a version of the future that isn’t just fascism and/or AI seeping into all the cracks, leaving no room for the light to get in.
I know I’m not alone in seeking reassurance from other realms. I obviously called my closest friends (and favorite focus group) to recount Mary’s predictions and nearly all of them asked me for her number.
And then there’s the subculture of TarotTok — where for the past few years the TikTok algorithm has aligned with “destiny” and inspired a whole new generation of tarot readers to proclaim, “if you’re watching this, it’s meant for you, no hashtags” as they feed collective delusion into a front-facing camera to the tune of billions of views. Each view coming from some poor schmuck going through it, the only time the tarot readers find your algo (I speak from personal experience).
Psychic Mary wasn’t reading tarot, though, she was pulling her takes straight from the universe. When she told me, with the brute verbal force native to the tri-state area, that I give away too much for free, yelled at me to put a price on it all, and then, more gently, added that my lack of visibility is coming from a blocked chakra, I had no choice but to try something new. I am, notably, a professional content strategist. Not that week, though, that week I was just Psychic Mary’s worker on the line at the unhingement factory.
And you know, I think she was right. Once I gave the option, before I even paywalled anything, a solid group of you became paid subscribers and showed me that people will pay me to write this newsletter. This isn’t (yet) the work I do to pay my rent, I have my meme retainer for that. But doing this work, writing about how fucking nuts I think everything is, it pays dividends to my soul. And it keeps me as sane as I’m going to be.
This is a very strange time to be someone who makes a living filling up the containers of the internet (the content of it all). There is so much instability across every single facet of media because what was once a digital boom is now a massive retraction. And subscription is the model of the day, so from Hollywood streamers to The New York Times to independent writers, there’s roughly a kajillion platforms and people asking us to subscribe and to pay up for the privilege. All that and the suits are holding the doors open for AI. Who knows when the jobs will start to disappear? I mean, they have already for some.
I make social content and the demand is still high. But I’m an octogenarian in internet years, and though age doesn’t stop our politicians from never retiring, I would like to not know what the next Skibidi Toilet is.
Psychic Mary didn’t know that her advice to simultaneously be more visible and put up a paywall would give me a headache on and off for two months. And she definitely didn’t know how annoying the Substack UX is. Or that it would foil my scheme to make my voice notes the initial bonus content for paid subscribers while still building a sense of unhinged community.
All that to say, for the next few weeks, I’m leaving everything outside the paywall as I reevaluate my strategy. Thank you to my paid subscribers, your support truly has meant so much and your money is the only reason I still record these so you can listen to them while you do the dishes or whatever it is you do, you beautiful, multitasking freaks. And if you love reading these unhinged missives of mine and want to support me, you know what to do.
Have a great week and let me know if you want Psychic Mary’s number — she read me to filth and predicted some really wild shit that will slay if true. That call was a very notable pit stop on 2024’s ~journey and well worth the price of admission.
Less Lessons More Blessin’s™️
Liz