Is Substack corrupting?

Is Substack corrupting? *

Corrupting towards psycho-spiritual assimilation into, and support of, the global totalitarian-materialist ideology? 

Yes; it does seem to be. 

And the reason is obvious: Substack exists and is configured to extract payment, and (as of 2026, in this world as-is - it was not always thus) writing for money (even desultory sum of money that most Subtackers collect!*) is corrupting. 

(The Economy is corrupt; already, and ever more so.)

Most Substack outputs are very obviously money collecting operations, e.g. those by ex-journalists, those with clickbait extracts (pay-up if you want to read more!) - and evident reader-pandering (that increases the longer the Substack continues) the rest of it. 

When I say that Substack is corrupting, then I mean that is its tendency - it tends to draw people into the mind-set of writing for money. 

I don't mean that all Substackers yield to the temptation! I don't mean, either, that the corruption is irresistible. I mean that is its tendency: a toehold of instrumentality is yielded, and that mental colonization usually seems to expand. 

We live in an age when the amateur - the non-professional, the not-career - is best. 

Of course, we must make a living - I am just suggesting that if you are serious about your writing, about what you write, what you think; then it is very much preferable Not to make your serious writing the means of making a living. 

Or else to separate your "making a living" type of writing; from that writing where you really are doing your very best.

Someone doing his very best with his writing, best by the highest standards he knows, someone for whom the writing is a significant spiritual activity; does Not make reading that writing contingent upon paying, or even psychologically-associated with paying to read it: not if he can help it.   

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* Of course Substack is not unique in its tendency to corrupt - and the criticisms that follow are intended to apply wherever applicable! But S. has been The Platform in my corner of the internet for the past several years; after the mass sackings of journalists began, and more widely since the lockdown era. 

** It is wanting money from the writing that is corrupting; not the amount actually received, not the success of the money-making operation. 

Note added: For context, as well as being a professional medical journal editor for about seven years; I wrote quite a bit of freelance paid journalism from the late 1980s and for more than a decade: fairly regularly for New Scientist, The Times (of London), Times Higher Education Supplement, and various commercial medical magazines - and odd pieces for The Independent and once for The Guardian.