Hello, friends, and welcome back to another post!
To be honest, I wasn’t going to read on Safiya. I’m a causal fan at best as I only really started to watch her videos when I was in college because I had nothing else to do. They were fine. All the petty “grievances” people have in regard to how she talks, the length of the videos, how the videos are apparently “too informative,” and the seemingly repetitive nature of what she covers I could not care less about. But until recently, Safiya had suddenly stopped uploading to her main channel in 2020, and many were wondering what happened. Apparently in her moving video (vlog?) last month, she addresses some of the problems she had been wrestling with when it came to her main channel, which is just her name, Safiya Nygaard.
Safiya goes into more detail on her blog she doesn’t use, outlining three main obstacles that have been slowing down the upload process. They were a “growing sense of failure,” “listening to third-party criticism,” and a “growing feeling of isolation/separation from friends and family.” You can read the more drawn-out explanations for yourself, but to surmise, basically when Safiya left Buzzfeed (I think she was one of the first big people to do so and publicly) and opened up her own YouTube channel, her popularity and success soared. Her channel blew up so much that she states that it “sort of felt like the channel was a wild horse that was dragging me behind it, along for the ride. Or like a cartoon car slowly falling apart beneath me while driving until all that was left was the steering wheel.” So, because of this, she was afraid to slow down even a bit due to the fear of people losing interest and her channel stalling essentially. This reluctance to sit down and get organized just fed into her insecurities, however, because she would find that she could never meet deadlines. Everything was a day off which delayed everything else she had lined up. This cyclical pattern of not meeting crucial goals got to her, which likely drove her to seek out validation for this self-defeating attitude in the form of gossip sites.
I will admit I would read those forums too just for fun and many of the people there were honestly miserable. They just genuinely did not seem like happy individuals, so they would latch onto these social media figures like Safiya to whine and complain in order to make themselves feel better in my opinion. But as a creator and just a person, this nitpicky, insufferable energy would demoralize anyone. So, it is no surprise that videos stopped being filmed or scrapped altogether. Being far away from family, especially once the pandemic set in and many turned to social media platforms like YouTube and its host of personalities for entertainment, just amplified everything Safiya was going through internally. But she says that she’s going to fix whatever has been plaguing her career thus far. And one way she seems to be addressing the upload problem at least, is making a separate channel where she and Tyler just livestream things they would normally make into long form videos.
I have watched some of these videos after the live in the background and…they’re not really entertaining. I would personally rather have the long form videos back because the energy is more…awkward and oddly anxious when they’re live. I don’t know. In either case, I was curious about where Safiya will go from here. Can she truly get her main channel into shape and find a workflow and work-life balance that will lead her to success? I wanted to know.
What Had Happened Was?
So, the first question I asked was, “What went wrong?” Although she outlined what exactly led her to stop uploading, I found no harm in asking the cards for any other information they might provide. I got:
9th house: Faith Mars: Force Moon: Soul (reverse) Leo: I Will (reverse) Pisces: I Believe Saturn: Truth 10th House: The World (bottom of the deck) 5th House: Creativity (reverse; bottom of the deck) Sagittarius: I see (reverse; bottom of the deck)
So, a lot of this is just reaffirming what Safiya has already said. Although the 9th house card says Faith, I think it’s more symbolic of what the 9th house actually represents which is long-distance travel. With the Moon reversed, it is evident that Safiya was homesick and not in the right emotional state. She wanted to be closer to family but with Mars also out, she didn’t want to give up. (Mars here can also show Safiya and Tyler moving as well.) Safiya is a Capricorn rising with a Taurus Mars incidentally in the 5th house. Once her mind is set on something, she will be hard pressed to turn her back on it, which is both a blessing and a curse. In this scenario, it is more of a detriment (Mars is also in detriment in Taurus lol) than anything. She just kept moving forward despite nothing working from an organizational standpoint. And this of course messed with her self-esteem and -confidence because, while outwardly successful as she noted, behind-the-scenes was a different story. It was likely just a wave of emotions that she constantly found herself in and unable to crawl out of. With the Pisces card, the imagery of the shell is her spiraling emotionally. Safiya was basically lost in la la land. She lost faith in herself and abilities because she was just absorbing everything everyone was saying about her. (Pisces interestingly sits on her 3rd house of communication which includes social media in my opinion with perhaps the 11th house as well. Her Midheaven is actually in the 11th whole house.) But with Saturn there was some truth to a few of these criticisms.
Safiya Nygaard is a Capricorn Ascendant, Cancer Sun, and Aquarius Moon
While of course the more obvious negative “critiques” (i.e., how she speaks, how she dresses, her perceived weight, etc.) are not constructive, I think with the Saturn card, the other evaluations could have been illuminating had she focused on them. Saturn in this card reminds me of Saturn when domicile in Aquarius—a Saturn that is not about ignorance but enlightenment and shows the native how to structure and coordinate their life. Safiya interestingly has an Aquarius Saturn conjunct her Moon in her 2nd house. However, it forms many squares and oppositions in her chart, maltreating all of her Leo planets and her Mars along with squaring her Midheaven and Pluto tightly by degree. So, Saturn is likely anything but edifying to her.
But regardless of how Saturn may impact her, life is never without struggle and trial and error. Saturn teaches us that what we desire in life will rarely come into fruition without hard work to make them a reality. And I think Safiya knows this very intimately but the energy I get from these cards is the opposite; that she doesn’t listen because she is so caught up in her emotions. This is not surprising since she is a Cancer Sun with her Moon maltreated by Saturn in a conjunction, but I feel like she lets her emotions get the better of her far too often.
I understand that in this case, her job is overwhelming. She has been feeling like a failure for a while and is not feeling the love and passion that she likely had at one point. Safiya feels like all eyes are on her to produce something we can all consume (10th house card) but she has nothing else to give energetically and tangibly. She is depleted. I also feel like she is still too plugged into social media (10th house again). She is hyperaware that she hasn’t put anything out for months (notice the clock symbolism in the 10th house card) and what she has put out recently on her main channel was just a moving vlog basically. And this perceived inadequacy that is linked to her productivity pushes her into a panic and to go into tunnel vision instead of looking at the big picture (Sagittarius reversed). I feel like Safiya has a spirit guide that closely works with her that is similar to the figure in the Saturn card. But, again, Safiya seems to be a person who is easily overwhelmed and shuts down. So, whatever this guide is trying to tell her, she doesn’t always listen. Therefore, this in summation, is what went wrong with her main channel, I believe.
Is Livestreaming the Future?
Next, I asked, “Will switching to livestreaming be successful in terms of Safiya’s career as a YouTuber?”
So, here I used my Angel Answers oracle cards, but I finally used the entire deck. In my Lil Nas X video, I mentioned that the author of the deck recommends separating the cards into three piles based on what you’re asking. On this blog I just used the yes/no cards to get simple yes/no answers. But as we know, this never really worked for me lol. Therefore, I used all of the cards and actually got one card: UNLIKELY.
This is interesting because while shuffling, I kept seeing “NO!” A chunk of cards even fell out that I didn’t take and the top one was “NO” with “SUCCESS” interestingly underneath it. Perhaps it meant “no success”? In either case, “LET GO” was at the bottom of the deck after “UNLIKELY” fell out. The booklet has some fascinating quotes for this card. “Stop focusing on how [your situation] can be solved or even why it occurred” and “you may be holding on too tightly to the way your dreams will unfold” (Valentine, pp. 46-47, 2019). So, it is very obvious that the livestream pivot won’t work out well because Safiya is too fixed in how she wants her career to go, which I find interesting because I personally feel like she doesn’t completely know what she’s doing. I feel like her goals in terms of obtaining “success” are vague and nebulous, which is why she found herself in the mess that she was in to begin with. Nevertheless, I went on to ask if fans liked this new livestreaming format.
Once again, while shuffling I kept seeing a specific card, this time, “CHOOSE A NEW DIRECTION.” But almost immediately after shuffling by hand rather than fanning them together, “COMPROMISE” and “NOT THE RIGHT TIME” fell out. “CHOOSE A NEW DIRECTION” was at the bottom of the deck.
Based on the imagery of the Compromise card, I think the fanbase is split. Some like the livestreaming and others do not care for it. At the same time, however, I do not think this was the right time to switch to this type of format. After 6 months of wondering what happened to get a moving vlog and then an entirely separate channel just for livestreaming, I think many fans were confused as to why. I do not follow Safiya closely (but from what I’ve seen she stopped updating her social media accounts almost a year ago (i.e., Twitter)), but I highly doubt livestreaming was ever a part of her content until now. So, when you’re used to long form videos that appear every few months, give or take, it may have been hard for some fans to adjust to a weekly schedule where videos are impromptu. They seemed to have wanted Safiya to go in a different direction instead.
So, I wanted to know why livestreaming will be unsuccessful for Safiya careerwise. I was spicy and pulled some tarot. I got:
Top: 4 of Wands, Ace of Cups (reverse), Prince of Swords, Ace of Pentacles (reverse), 10 of Pentacles, Queen of Pentacles (reverse), 10 of Swords Bottom (of the deck): Judgement, 2 of Pentacles (reverse), 3 of Pentacles (reverse), Temperance (reverse), 7 of Cups, 9 of Pentacles, Princess of Wands
I must reiterate that I’m not well versed in tarot lol. Nevertheless, this is what I got overall from this spread: I think with the 4 of Wands in this deck, Safiya thought she would find success with the livestreaming as it cut down on all the waiting people have been voicing concern about but with the Ace of Cups reversed, it’s not what fans wanted. And yet with the Prince or Knight of Swords, she is going to go full steam ahead with it anyway. Interestingly, the reversed 3 of Pentacles is under it. I found a website that said that this card can mean not learning from one’s mistakes. And indeed, the Ace of Cups reversed can also mean not being emotionally fulfilled with one’s career, adding more evidence that the whole livestream format is not the Band-Aid fix that Safiya (and Tyler?) thought it would be. With the numerous Pentacle cards too, it seems like the livestream channel is not as monetarily successful as the main channel, which makes sense as the main channel is much older and more established with 9.15M subscribers versus >500K.
Nevertheless, I feel like Safiya desperately wants to be successful with this whole independent YouTube thing with the 10 of Pentacles upright. I think she feels likes she has to prove to her parents, the mother more specifically perhaps with the Queen of Pentacles reversed, that she is an adult and knows what she’s doing. But she doesn’t know what she’s doing. The reversed Temperance card indicates that. Again, emotionally, Safiya is simply not in the right headspace to organize what needs to be organized. This makes sense as livestreaming is not really structured. It can be but with technological issues, which they have faced in all of the videos I’ve seen, things can quickly be thrown out of whack. Also trying to moderate a chat and entertain an audience as well can make juggling everything that is going on difficult. This is likely why the 2 of Pentacles showed up. Safiya is trying to balance too many things at once and it is not working. This can also explain the reversed 3 of Pentacles showing up alongside the 2 of Pentacles, suggesting that Safiya needs to better delegate things.
Additionally, with the 3 of Pentacles reversed clarifying the Prince of Swords, I think Safiya needs to listen to other people’s ideas more. But with the Princess of Wands, Safiya has fire in her to frantically make this YouTube stuff work at all costs. But with the 10 of Swords, Temperance, Ace of Cups, and 7 of Cups, there is just a lot of emotional and mental conflict going on. She may be indecisive and still second guessing herself, and you can see a bit of this in the livestreams where Safiya, in particular, sometimes comes off as anxious and a bit scattered in energy. But again, like she even said in her blog post, there is no foresight, no concrete plans when it comes to her videos; just things all over the place.
“No method, only madness!” Sounds about right.
I see this reflected the most in Temperance and the 7 of Cups. (The 10 of Swords in this deck also alludes to a psychotic break.) The woman in Temperance has her eyes closed and face turned away. How can she tell she’s pouring the water into the pond if she isn’t double checking? Similar to the Pisces card, I feel like with the 7 of Cups, Safiya is not all the way there mentally. Not in a mental health sense but in a maladaptive sense. It’s like not completely engaging with the here and now is how she copes, which can also be seen in her natal chart where her Neptune is not only retrograde but conjunct her Ascendant. I think with the reversed 3 and 2 of Pentacles, Safiya should let others take the load off her or she needs to take a giant step back. I do not think adding a livestream show to a back catalog of older videos is necessarily wise. Perhaps then she can split her team? Maybe she can rely more on Tyler to keep one of these channels running by allowing him to make more original content on them while she rests or works on those other videos. She can also ask her team for more ideas on what to do as well so it doesn’t feel like she has to do everything herself or think that she alone is what makes or breaks these channels. I don’t know. These are just suggestions.
Do Or Don’t Call It A Comeback
Finally, I asked about the future of Safiya’s main channel. I asked, “Have [Safiya and her team] solved whatever problems that were plaguing their main channel?” For that I got “YES.” “BIG, HAPPY CHANGES” was at the bottom of the deck.
So, it seems like things are looking up for Safiya! This is great news, especially since the livestreaming channel may not be as viable it seems. I didn’t pull any other cards for more information because we have already gone over what went wrong. Therefore, I concluded by asking, “Will [the] main channel continue to be successful after this ‘relaunch’?” For that, nothing wanted to fly out at first strangely. Eventually, however, I got “MEDITATION BRINGS ANSWERS,” “ASK FOR HELP FROM OTHERS,” and “YOU’RE READY.” “REMAIN POSITIVE,” “OPPORTUNITY,” and “YES!” were all at the bottom of the deck.
So, it seems like the channel will be okay but a lot of it sort of depends on Safiya and her confidence in it. I think this make sense as I doubt her fanbase experienced a large hemorrhaging in the months they were waiting for uploads. I think the livestream channel has placated most of them, so when Safiya does return to her main channel, I think the majority will celebrate it more than anything. But she does need to remain positive about this comeback and be more preemptive in asking others for help. I think this will curb a lot of the previous issues that first plagued the channel.
So, that is all I have for Safiya. I hope you all liked it. Perhaps down the line I will do a luck in career reading on her since her birth time is accurate. Anyway, think about supporting me on my Ko-Fi or through my Amazon Wishlist.
Astro Lola 