Blessed are the hustlers, for they shall inherit the sponsored post

A stumble through capitalism, hustling, influencers, and our absurd loyalty to money … with wisdom hidden inside sarcasm, queue rage, and at least three martinis

Good morning, sinners, sceptics, and anyone who clicked this thinking it was an inspirational newsletter about clean living (oops!).

Today’s reading comes not from parchment or prophet but from the holy scroll of Instagram, chapter hustle, verse #RiseAndGrind. Gather close, for we live in the Age of Hustle, where every passion must be monetised, every sneeze hash-tagged, and every queue endured like a silent trial of faith. The theme of today’s sermon is simple: blessed are the hustlers, for they shall inherit the sponsored post, the affiliate link, and possibly a discount code for teeth-whitening strips.

The glory of the hustle

Capitalism is humanity’s longest-running improv show, where the rich write the script and the rest of us play unpaid extras. Forget false balances and dodgy scales, we’ve upgraded to dynamic pricing and shrinkflation where the loaf of bread is smaller, the subscription fee is larger, and let’s not even mention energy prices. We’re shuffled into queues, manipulated by algorithms, and told to budget better.

We live in a marketplace where survival isn’t about feeding yourself but about performing your life for others.

• You can’t just bake bread; you must livestream it.

• You can’t just jog; you must track, hashtag, and produce a time-lapse reel set to Dua Lipa.

• Even sadness must be repackaged into a “relatable” post.

Influencers aren’t people, they’re glossy pamphlets disguised as friends.

And we cheer, we double-tap, and we subscribe because we’ve been sold the lie that hustling, glorious, endless hustling, is the way forward and the path to that mythical passive income stream. Spoiler, it’s not!

But deep down, we know the system is rigged, so we fudge the bill, cut a deal, shave a corner, and pretend we’re playing chess while actually moving spoons around the board. Hustling today isn’t just survival; it’s survival with branding.

Take queues, for instance, the purest, most democratic form of suffering. You stand, you wait, you shuffle forward with the patience of a saint and the inner monologue of a rioter. Queueing is capitalism in miniature: you wait for what you’ve paid for, while someone with ‘priority status’ sails past, clutching their latte and their smug grin.

And do we revolt? Do we heck! No. We clap politely for ‘efficiency’.

Dating apps are a simple swipe left or right. The market of human affection, love itself, has been hustled and packaged into profiles, optimised with algorithms that whisper: “Upgrade to Premium if you want to be truly seen.” Even romance has a paywall. You cannot serve two masters, unless one is Tinder Gold and the other is Bumble Premium.

Then there’s AI, capitalism’s latest hustle. A machine that writes sonnets, generates cat memes, and sells your data faster than you can say ‘terms and conditions’. AI doesn’t sleep; it dreams of your wallet, and pretends to be useful while in reality it’s selling you back to yourself in neatly packaged ads. “Hey, I noticed you wrote a sermon about influencers. Would you like to buy a ring light?”

And yet, we continue. We scroll, we hustle, we worship. Because money doesn’t just pay for things; it asks for loyalty. You don’t serve money the way you serve a drink, you serve it the way you serve a jealous god. You offer it your time, your attention, and your hope that maybe, just maybe, this hustle will be the one that sets you free. But capitalism is like a dodgy barman, no matter how much you pay, he waters down the gin.

Meanwhile, dignity waits quietly at the bar, nursing a warm pint.

Nobody tags it on Instagram.

Nobody writes a course about it.

Dignity doesn’t trend.

And yet, when the Wi-Fi goes down, when the hustle collapses, when you find yourself staring into the abyss of a Monday morning with no emails to answer, dignity slides over and says: “Shall we just… be?”

Here’s the paradox: capitalism wants us endlessly shrewd but never truly free. It rewards the dishonest manager for his cleverness, but punishes anyone who tries to step off the treadmill.

• Take a day off? Lazy.

• Refuse to monetise your hobby? Irresponsible.

• Decline the influencer starter pack? Unambitious.

You are only as valuable as your hustle.

And so, we bless the hustlers, even as we mock them. They are mirrors of our own absurd loyalty to money. We don’t envy their products; we envy their audacity. They found a way to survive this absurd system with a cocktail in one hand and an affiliate link in the other. And deep down, we’re all trying to do the same, make friends with dishonest wealth so that, when it disappears, someone will still invite us over for a pint.

The 10 Commandments of the Hustle

1. Thou shalt monetise thy hobbies.
   For what is knitting if not the embryonic stage of a side hustle?

2. Thou shalt rise at 5 am
   And post a selfie with the caption ‘No excuses’, despite clearly having made excuses for the last six years.

3. Thou shalt worship the algorithm, for it giveth visibility and it taketh it away.
   Blessed be the shadowban, for it keepeth the humble humble.

4. Thou shalt not rest without guilt.
   If thou darest watch Netflix, make thou sure to call it market research.

5. Thou shalt diversify thy income streams.
   For a single stream is but a puddle, and multiple streams may just pay for the Wi-Fi.

6. Thou shalt treat every friend as a potential networking opportunity.
   Especially at funerals, weddings, and awkward urinal encounters.

7. Thou shalt brand thyself.
   Not with tattoos, but with hashtags and colour palettes no one asked for.

8. Thou shalt sell courses about hustling once thou hast hustled long enough to fool three strangers on LinkedIn.

9. Thou shalt deny burnout.
   And if burnout smiteth thee, thou shalt rebrand it as a ‘transformational sabbatical’.

10. Thou shalt never stop hustling.
    Even thy eulogy must include a discount code.

What does this mean for us, pint-clutching mortals in the grand pub of life?

It means we need to stop pretending loyalty to money will save us.

It won’t.

It will buy us same-day delivery, a phone we’ll replace in two years, and the illusion that hustling harder makes us better humans.

But it won’t buy us peace, joy, or someone to hold our hair back after the sixth gin.

The trick is not to stop hustling … because let’s be honest, the landlord still wants rent.

The trick is to hustle with awareness. Play the game, but don’t pledge allegiance to it. If you must sell your soul to the corporate overlords, charge interest. If you must post the influencer reel, at least wink at the absurdity of it all.

The takeaway pint is this: money is a tool, not a temple.

Loyalty to money is absurd, it’s like worshipping the hammer while ignoring the house. So, hustle, fine, but don’t confuse the hustle for the point of life.

The point is the pint, the laugh, the absurdity of queueing together, the moment of dignity in the middle of the madness.

Closing thoughts

And so, dear hustlers, influencers, queue-sufferers, and faithful scroll-disciples: go forth into your week.

Grind if you must, swipe if you dare, hustle if you have the energy … but for heaven’s sake, drink your pint before it goes warm.

May your Wi-Fi be strong, your delivery windows short, your AI polite, and your dignity unshaken.

Serve money if you must, but don’t let it own your loyalty.

Amen, bottoms up, and don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe, but only ironically, of course.