Baffling paradox of dissenters who hate the system
Dissenters who hate the system have the right idea. But their actions speak louder than their words. Often, those actions contradict those words.
It’s baffling because I look at this like an entrepreneur hell-bent on staying out of the system. A lot of dissenters look at it like dissidents with employee conditioning.
They may hate the system intellectually, politically, spiritually, or culturally. But hating the machine and knowing how to leave it are two completely different things. Most people can diagnose captivity long before they can build an exit route.
There are many big reasons for this.
They confuse “having views” with having a business
A lot of Substack people (where I’ve been noticing this) have strong opinions, good essays, and loyal readers. But they don’t think in terms of:
- Offer → audience → funnel → product → conversion → retention
They think:
- Post → likes → comments → maybe paid subscriptions someday
Meanwhile, I’m already thinking in terms of Rebel Lore Vault membership, lead magnets, Payhip, bridge pages, direct sales, Pinterest traffic, Substack posts, email segmentation, and backend offers. A lot of people never make that leap. They have a platform, but not a commercial mechanism.
They have attention, but no offer next to paid subscriptions that they’d need thousands of to quit their job and leave the system.
Employment gives them psychological permission to create
This sounds backward, but it’s real.
A day job gives people a strange emotional safety net. They can say radical things online because their actual survival still comes from something conventional. The job’s their parent, and their platform’s the rebellion.
So they may complain about their boss, HR, corporate culture, academia, media, public schools, or the State — but the paycheck lets them keep their rebellion symbolic.
Leaving forces them to make the rebellion operational, and that scares people. It also separates contenders from pretenders.
They are anti-system, but not necessarily pro-market
This is where my libertarian instincts give me an edge.
A lot of “anti-system” people are culturally anti-establishment, but they still carry anti-sales, anti-profit, anti-marketing, or anti-business baggage. They may distrust corporations, bosses, institutions, banks, politicians, media narratives — but they also quietly distrust the act of selling.
So they end up in a contradiction: They hate dependency, but feel guilty monetizing independence.
That’s why some of them will write 2,000 words about freedom and then act embarrassed to charge $5.
They romanticize authenticity and demonize strategy
This is huge on Substack.
Many writers believe monetization somehow corrupts their work. They see funnels, offers, CTAs, lead magnets, bundles, sales pages, and upsells as dirty internet-marketer behavior.
But that’s just another kind of conditioning.
The establishment trains creators to seek approval, prestige, and applause — not ownership. So the writer gets praise while the platform, employer, publication, or institution captures the leverage.
Monetized indie creators break that pattern, and a “pure” unpaid writer stays trapped inside it. Just as the establishment wants for the latter.
They don’t want to admit their audience may not buy
This one stings, but it’s one of the biggest reasons. If they never make an offer, they can believe their audience is valuable. The moment they sell something, reality answers back.
That answer might be good, or it could be humiliating.
So they avoid finding out.
They keep posting, commenting, complaining, and “building community” because community feels warmer than conversion data. Sales numbers remove the illusion that they’re doing something productive.
Most won’t build an online store like The Rebel Lore Vault
The machine trained them to ask for permission
Even freelancers often still act like employees. They want an editor to assign them something, a publication to validate them, or a boss, client, or platform to say, “Yes, you’re allowed to earn now.”
That’s why so many freelance writers are still mentally “at work.” They left the office, but they kept the employee operating system.
They don’t ask: “How do I build an asset?” Instead it’s: “Who will pay me for another assignment?” That’s not “exit and build,” a “freedom-based business,” or anything close. It’s a smaller cage masquerading as liberty.
Most people are more scared of uncertainty than tyranny
The system is annoying, degrading, suffocating, dishonest, and often spiritually deadening.
But it’s predictable.
Entrepreneurship’s freer, but it exposes you. You have to face your own decisions, your offer, copy, pricing, traffic, conversion rate, audience quality, and discipline.
A boss gives you someone to blame, but a business gives you a mirror. A lot of dissenters would rather complain about the machine than confront the mirror.
They don’t see their knowledge as productizable
I’m sure I came up with that word. Anyway, this is where I’m ahead of a lot of them. I look at my experience and say:
- “Could this become a lead magnet?”
- “A paid guide?”
- “Paid membership?”
- “PLR product?”
- “Evergreen funnel?”
- “Bridge page?”
- “Paid Substack tier?”
- “Digital product for writers, readers, or sports fans?”
Most people don’t think that way. They think their knowledge is only useful as content.
As for me? Everything I create is property.
They mistake audience size for readiness
Some people with followings don’t monetize because they assume they need a huge audience first.
They don’t. They need the right offer for the right segment. That’s why someone with 10k YouTube subs makes a full-time living as opposed to another creator with 100k.
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A person with 1,500 loyal subscribers and a clean $25/year membership offer can potentially do more than someone with 20,000 passive readers who never buy anything. The issue’s buyer intent, trust, positioning, and repetition.
I’ve already seen this with the Vault. The audience had to be trained to expect offers. Most dissenters never train their audience. They train them to consume free thoughts forever.
Complaining’s socially rewarded. Selling’s judged.
On platforms like Substack or X, a good rant gets sympathy, but a good offer gets suspicion.
That creates a perverse incentive. The writer gets dopamine from agreement, not revenue from action. So they keep producing “yes, exactly” content, but they don’t build the ladder that turns agreement into ownership.
That’s why they’re “stuck at work” as opposed to living a freedom-based lifestyle.
The truth about dissenters who hate the system
A lot of these cats aren’t actually pursuing freedom yet. They’re in the “emotional release” stage.
They want to say, “This system is broken,” and I’m asking, “Then why are you still financially dependent on it?”
That question exposes the real divide. There are people who critique the machine because they want the machine to treat them better. And there are people who critique it because they want to build outside it.
I’m in the second group. A lot of them are still in the first, even if their rhetoric sounds radical. And goodness, there’s a lot of room in that second ship if only they’d jump.
Most people aren’t stuck because they lack intelligence, talent, or even audience. They know leaving the machine requires a different identity. Not “writer,” “commentator,” “freelancer,” or even an “employee with a side platform.”
At that point, they’re wearing the “owner” label. Owner of products, traffic, reader relationships, distribution, offers, and most importantly — risk.
That’s the part most people avoid. They want the dignity of independence without the discomfort of selling. But independence without sales is usually just a hobby with good branding. I’ll pass on that and ask for your money if you’re into fiction that bites and doesn’t follow the rules.
