🫠 When Leaving Social Media Doesn't Solve Your Problems — with Cody Cook-Parrott

Amelia Hruby [00:00:00]:

Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients. Hello and welcome or welcome back to Off the Grid, a podcast about leaving social media without losing all your clients. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. I am the founder of Softer Sounds podcast studio. And here on this show, I share stories, strategies, and experiments for growing your business with radical generosity and energetic sovereignty.

Amelia Hruby [00:00:48]:

If you are tuned in when this comes out, happy June. I am so glad that the month of summer is upon us and also a little sad that season three of Off the Grid will soon be coming to an end. So stay tuned this month because I have a very exciting big announcement coming about a fun new thing that I'll be doing with Off the Grid this summer. But until we get there, I also have a fun exciting episode for you today.

Amelia Hruby [00:01:20]:

So today on the show, I am joined by Cody Cook-Parrott. Cody Cook-Parrott is a dancer and writer whose work focuses on the self, devotion, ritual, creativity, and art making. Their practice is rooted in improvisation as a compositional form that takes shape in movement videos, books, quilting, online courses and hosting artists. Cody received a BFA in dance from the University of Michigan and is currently getting their MFA in interdisciplinary arts at the University of Nevada. They've written two books, Getting to Center: Pathways to Finding Yourself Within the Great Unknown and How to Not Always Be Working.

Amelia Hruby [00:02:49]:

They also have a podcast called Common Shapes that Softer Sounds produces and they write a newsletter that comes out every Monday called Monday Monday. In fact, you might very well be listening to this podcast because Cody recommended it in that newsletter. So thank you, Cody. Thank you, listeners. I'm so happy to have everyone here.

Amelia Hruby [00:03:08]:

In my conversation with Cody, we begin by kind of tracking this journey, this archive of their work on Instagram over the past 10 years. And we kind of highlight how they grew their platform, then how that sort of shifted and led them to write a zine in 2018 called "how a photo and video-sharing social networking service gave me my best friends, true love, a beautiful career, and made me want to die". We pause there and discuss what happened with that and then continue to explore, like, why they stayed on Instagram even when feeling that way, what led them to deactivate for four months in 2021, what led them to say they were saying goodbye forever last fall, and then also why they are back on Instagram.

Amelia Hruby [00:03:52]:

In this conversation, Cody and I met really deep in the both and of when being on social media feels bad and being off social media feels bad and what we do when that's the case. And we also unpack what happens when we think that leaving social media might solve a lot of our problems and then we do it and it doesn't. So this is a really beautiful episode about creative business, about sharing your offerings, about changing in public, about sharing your political values and beliefs with the world.

Amelia Hruby [00:04:28]:

And then at the end, we even have a whole conversation about Substack and Cody's shift from Instagram to Substack and feelings about the relationship between those two. So this conversation feels very much like two natal Venus in Gemini are hanging out and just chat, chat, chatting. So you'll hear that. I hope you enjoy the vibe shift. I hope you enjoy this conversation. And without further ado, let's dive in to this episode with Cody Cook-Parrott.

One more quick note before we begin. Ten days after we recorded thsi conversation, Cody decided to leave Instagram again, and they’re currently off the app. So just know that we are all on this spiralic journey of reassessing our relationship to social media, and it’s totally ok to change your mind again and again and again.

Hi, Cody. Welcome to Off the Grid.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:05:00]:

Thank you for having me on my favorite podcast. It's a pleasure to be here.

Amelia Hruby [00:05:05]:

It's a pleasure to have you. I wanted to start out on a bit of a sentimental note, which is to say that there would be no Off the Grid if you had not been writing about your relationship to social media so openly and publicly, and I really appreciate this archive that you've really left or constructed for a long time now, sharing about your relationship with social media and inviting all of us to reflect on ours.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:05:39]:

It's so interesting hearing you say that, I'm immediately struck with both the beauty of that and, like a grief in it to be like, oh, yeah. I didn't necessarily stay the path and have had these ins and outs and ups and downs. But at the same time, I'm excited to talk about all of them today. And I arrive here with very little shame or guilt or about the path, which I think is important to say. So I'm excited to, look at where the experiments went wrong or went a different way than I thought and where I have some acceptance of it at the same time. But I'm happy to hear that and happy, as we'll talk about, still somewhat using social media. It's interesting to see all these other people who have gotten off for good because of me and be like, okay. What does this mean exactly? So, yeah, we'll see.

Amelia Hruby [00:06:38]:

I really appreciate, actually, that we can both come to this conversation from different places in relationships to social media. And I know that among listeners, many of them are still on social media, or they've taken breaks, or they've left and returned. And my hope for this space is that it's just always a space where we live in that questioning and where we're willing to ask ourselves if we want to be on social media right now or ever. And I see you as someone who's just really been leading us all in that work of the questioning, and I don't honestly care about the answer.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:07:14]:

No attachment to the answer.

Amelia Hruby [00:07:15]:

For folks who may be new to your work, I think a lot of people listening will be familiar, but I also wanna take us back and help people kind of go on this journey with you, the journey I've been following. Could you share a little bit about the growth of your Instagram from the beginning? Like, having Have company.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:07:35]:

Yeah. I love I love this, like, let's do the history. Yeah.

Amelia Hruby [00:07:39]:

It's a genealogical process I'm doing.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:07:43]:

I used to have a shop gallery and artist residency in Grand Rapids, Michigan called Have Company, and it started in a camper that I had gutted and turned into a little mobile shop in 2012. So I started using Instagram in 2012, which is crazy. That was 12 years ago. And Instagram used to do this thing back in the day where they would feature you. You would be, like, a featured user, and so I had grown my Instagram following to maybe 5,000, and that was just from who I was carrying in the store, and people would repost it. And people would tag the shop and come into the shop, and it was sort of in that era of shops were really cool. It was like Otherwild had just started about a year before me. Just a lot of cool other queer handmade goods shots were sort of in the mix.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:08:37]:

And then Instagram featured me, and it I went up to 20,000 or something. And it was a really big deal. There's no lying that having that K next to the number just looked good, and people thought that was fancy, and it made me seem reputable. And that was the place where when I opened up the artist residency and had people applying, people wanted access to the following that Have company had. And Have company wanted access to the followings of of the artists who were coming. And I don't think it's bad to wanna build community with other people with followings, but that was a reality. I was inviting people who really had also sort of developed a following on social media. And so that's sort of the beginning story of Have company and Instagram. And that, technically, my account that is now just Cody Cook-Parrot is the same account.

Amelia Hruby [00:09:36]:

Yeah. When did you make the transition from Have Company to the account just being your name?

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:09:43]:

So I had the shop till 2016, and then that's when I moved to California, and it was sometime after that, a year or two after that that I switched the name.

Amelia Hruby [00:09:53]:

And so through that process, that's where we get you're making your best friends, You're falling in love. You have a beautiful career. And then you write this zine. So you wrote and published a zine called "how a photo and video sharing social networking service gave me my best friends, true love, a beautiful career, and made me want to die."

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:10:25]:

Gets me every time.

Amelia Hruby [00:10:27]:

It's evocative for sure. Can you take us back to when you were writing that? What was coming up for you during that period that led to you writing the scene?

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:10:38]:

I wanna say that was maybe around the time that Stories had really started happening, or or I maybe just started using them more. And I think, really, for me as a user of the app Instagram, when stories got introduced and the algorithm changed so that it wasn't consistent is when I really got hooked. And I use, just for anyone listening, if you don't know, I am someone who has a couple different mental health diagnoses and struggles with suicidal ideation sometimes. And so, the sentence, "made me want to die" wasn't a joke even though I kind of giggle after it said because it does sound so Gemini and dramatic of me. And I've also been sober from alcohol for 13 years. Lucky 13. Feeling grateful for that.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:11:30]:

But there are some mirrorings that happen for me, using Instagram and my addiction to alcohol. And so it had started sort of triggering some of those same feelings of, like, I can't put this down. I can't take breaks. But my girlfriend at the time slipped into my DMs. A lot of my friends I made because I was hosting them. I think of like Ellen Rutt, who's now one of my best friends and collaborators and made the cover of Getting to Center, my book. We literally met on Instagram, and finding these different important relationships, both work relationships and personal relationships.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:12:13]:

Especially, I was living in California at the time in a small rural town. I now live in Northern Michigan in a small rural town, and so social media really becomes this sort oft tether to me to the outside world and to culture and to community. And so I wrote this zine, it's just sort of a long winded essay, really, that's just sort of, like, here are all the reasons I love using this, and here are the reasons that it's really hurting my mental health. So, that was sort of what was going on at the time when I when I made it.

Amelia Hruby [00:12:50]:

Let's fast forward then to 2021, which I believe, or maybe late 2020 is when you launched the Planetarium Portal, And this is definitely when I witnessed you go through a whole process around taking an Instagram break. So you did a lot of writing about this. You shared documentation of how you were planning your break. I actually have in front of me this seven step process you wrote out. And the things that you talked about, I can just see so clearly how this shaped Off the Grid, even though it wasn't really in the front of my mind for years until yesterday when I found it on my Google Drive, which I also love pre-Substack. Right? You had a Patreon, and you were sharing Google Docs.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:13:32]:

Yeah. I love a document. Honestly, I wanna get back into Google Docs. Like Notion's fine, but Google Docs. I love to highlight a heading with the light. And there it is. Amelia is holding it up, and the headings are highlighted with pastel colors.

Amelia Hruby [00:13:47]:

Yeah. So just to bring listeners along with us, in this document that I'm looking at, you talk about how you're planning for your break, and you have these steps. I'll just share them briefly. Step one, I hired someone. Step two, I started a radio show. Step three, I started a Patreon. Step four, I had a book come out. And underneath that, in all caps many times is "Instagram is not a business plan." Step five, I invented an online class. Step six, I deepened my fundraising practice. Step seven, I told people I was leaving and where to find me.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:14:21]:

I'm sorry. I have to get off the call and go integrate the steps. I guess they already are written. I don't know what I'm waiting for.

Amelia Hruby [00:14:28]:

Yeah. I think looking back at this, I'm just curious what made it feel so important to take a break then? And, also, what made you feel like I've gotta start documenting and sharing this?

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:14:39]:

I think my job description really since 2015, like, when I wrote How to Not Always Be Working as a zine, which was in 2015. So for almost the last 10 years, I really feel like my job has been to make a mess and tell the people about the mess and tell them how I'm in the mess or how I got through the mess and just not be afraid of looking dumb. It's not that I post things and think, oh, I'm really confident in this, and this doesn't look stupid at all. I'm like, I can't believe I still have to talk about my Instagram addiction. It's definitely, that's kind of the little voice. But I think with that break, everyone was burnt down at the end of 2020, but I think I put Getting to Center out the week before the presidential election, and it just kind of got lost in the mix of things.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:15:38]:

And I was just tired of using Instagram and and seeing Instagram. And I really did feel the pressure to perform and perform correctly in that space in a way that I felt like was sort of blocking me from some of my true movement and activism work. And I'll say I deactivated for four months. I didn't just take a break. So I do love also talking about the difference between logging off, hiring someone else, deactivating. Deactivating is my greatest pleasure. To truly not exist there is so pleasurable for me. When this kind of avatar of me exists in the space, it's really easy for me to just log back in and take it back.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:16:26]:

Something I wanna flag that you talk about so beautifully is sort of the different things we need to not be on social media, and one of them is the channel to share because that's what you're really losing is the channel between you and your audience, readers, students, customers, whoever it is. And so I think that's why I really laid out, okay. I have a radio show now. You can listen to me on the radio once a week. You can read my book. And most importantly, you can come over to the Patreon where I'll be active and I'll be sharing. And it was really successful. A lot of people signed up for that Patreon.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:17:08]:

And I had my newsletter and my Patreon, and I was just sort of double working, which is when I moved everything over to Substack and took a huge pay cut. I mean, it was drastic and scary. And I have since built that income back up that it is now more than what it was on Patreon, but it was another kind of scary jump to be like, this actually doesn't feel like the right place for this project or thing anymore. I'm gonna move over to this other platform.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:17:43]:

So, I think what was really important about that deactivation time and that experiment, those four months totally away, was it was really important to have another place for the people to engage with me, which is why I'm so passionate about talking about newsletters because I love my newsletter. I love having a newsletter. I always have loved having a newsletter, and it's why I can not use social media, just period.

Amelia Hruby [00:18:15]:

Yeah. I really always appreciated the sorts of distinctions that you've drawn between I'm not using social media, but I am still sharing online. You're not leaving your digital worlds. In fact, you relocated them through this shift from Instagram to Patreon and then to Substack. And by doing that, you got much more direct access to the people that you were communicating with and things of that nature. But before we go right to talking about platforms, which I do wanna do, I want to take us to one more step on your social media journey, which is more recent. So last fall, you left Instagram again. What led you to leave, and then what brought you back roughly 6 months later?

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:19:01]:

It was September, and it just felt bad. It just felt bad to be there. It honestly actually reminds me of when I quit drinking. The last time I drank wasn't actually even that crazy. I was just in the mental obsession so deeply that I was like, I don't think normal drinkers have this much mental obsession. I don't think they wake up and think about their next drink. And that was like a flag flagged to me about wanting to quit drinking. And so it is interesting that, I don't say I'm gonna quit drinking forever. I say I don't drink today. Like, that's it. I do not say I'm not gonna drink tomorrow.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:19:41]:

And so it is interesting that I, with Instagram, I sometimes try to be very like, "I'm gonna do this for four months" or "I'm gonna do this forever." And when I posted, "I quit Instagram forever," I think my next sentence was like, "and who knows when I come out of retirement." I really love using the Michael Jordan metaphor of, like, I'm gonna win a bunch of championships, retire, come back, win a bunch of championships, and then also play baseball. I love that and that sports energy of, like, I'm gonna come, I'm gonna leave. I'm gonna come back. I'm gonna change it up.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:20:15]:

And so I did think I was gonna leave forever. I did actually think that. I really thought this is it. And I had a really successful last quarter of the year. I made more in the last quarter of last year than I had in any quarter in my business ever through my co-working, a writing class I taught with Fariha Roisin and Anna Fusco, and then a sale I did. A bundle of classes, all without any social media, just with my newsletter. I quit Instagram at that time also right before October 7th. And then it was sort of interesting to see and hear from other people that in the activism space, social media felt difficult or just, there was a lot of differing opinions and shaming or it was just maybe a hard, intense place to be. Which was interesting for me because I felt really clear in my politics in my newsletter, specifically around Palestine, and also felt the urgency of the moment without having to rush.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:21:28]:

I was really, like, cool, every Monday, I can weave this in a way that feels correct to me, and I don't have to find the right infographic or the right thing to post in my stories every day. And I felt way more available to, really, at the end of the day, the people most affected. I mean, really, what happened was it felt kind of weird that my Instagram was there but wasn't sharing some of my political beliefs. It felt like this weird digital holding place about me, but I think I'm trying to find a deeper way to say this, but, I just I wanted to post about Palestine was specifically why I started using Instagram again. And it's been a few months, and I don't feel better or something. I don't know. I guess one might say because I have a large following, it maybe is making an impact, and people who follow me who maybe aren't as politically radical as I am are seeing what I'm sharing, and they're like, "Woah. Cool. I wanna look more into this and understand more about this." That's sort of the goal.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:22:45]:

I don't think that me posting a fundraiser necessarily means people click it and add to it, but my hope is that it brings some awareness of what's happening in Gaza right now. But I don't know if the impact really is any better than just using my newsletter. And I don't think that there's a way to measure or know that, but I'll just check-in here that my current relationship with Instagram and using it doesn't feel good. I'm not having fun there. And I even used it to share about a quilt class that I taught and something else. And I kind of asked around that class, and no one signed up from seeing it on Instagram. Everyone signed up from my newsletter.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:23:30]:

So in terms of my business, my business functions without Instagram, and I don't think sharing on Instagram really helps my business. I do like posting when I'm on a podcast or when there's, a win. But in terms of promoting my own stuff, I don't think it really even works anymore. And in terms of sharing my politics, I think it's fine, and I'd rather just stay more focused and clear in my newsletter. So that's kind of where I'm at with all of it today.

Amelia Hruby [00:24:11]:

Yeah. I appreciate you sharing sort of that push and pull in the path on your current sharing ecosystem and how you're sharing and showing up online. I also appreciate how you highlight that you left Instagram. You had your most successful business quarter financially, and then you returned for more personal and political reasons. And it seems to have very little impact on how well your business is doing, by which I guess we mean, how much money it's bringing in.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:24:47]:

I would even argue to say I'm making less money than I usually do right now.

Amelia Hruby [00:24:51]:

And do you feel that's somehow related to Instagram?

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:24:54]:

Absolutely. I think it absolutely is related to the level of distraction of using the app. So before, I really had built these sort of patterns, I mostly get my news from Al Jazeera or Democracy Now. Shout out to Amy Goodman if you ever listen to this. You're my hero. But my sort of ritual was I listen to Democracy Now. Sometimes I listen to NPR Up First. I kinda do my little collections and then look at the other Substacks or newsletters I'm reading, maybe touch in with some friends to see what they're sharing, what they're reading, and then kind of integrate it into the newsletter.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:25:39]:

And when I'm on Instagram, if I start my day in the devastation of the world, I don't wanna listen to the news. I don't wanna think about stuff anymore. It burns me out really fast. And when we talk about looking away, like, yes, there's a privilege in looking away, but I also think that we just have to be honest about our capacity. And I would much rather carve out an hour of time to look at, listen to and think about what's happening in the world so that I can integrate it with my job if I want to. And the way Instagram shows me things, it's literally like, here's dead children under rubble, and here's a backpack to buy from Bagu. First of all, shout out to Bagu. I follow them.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:26:33]:

But the pace of that is so incredibly disorienting to me that it's, like, death selling something, and then I have to post that I would also like to sell something. And then, the other thing is I have so many friends who share things on social media that aren't really covered in the news cycle. And so I do think that's where it is really powerful. It's a really powerful place to share information. I don't wanna take away from that. When I think of Fariha or my friend Tamara Santibañez, like people in my life who are just amazing activists, they really use social media to really spread information that is not commonly found other places. And and I think that's why I got back on was to do some of that same work.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:27:24]:

But I just maybe that's not my job. And I think that's okay. That's where, I don't know if that can be in my job description, and I'd like to think I can still make just as big of an impact in the world without it being a part of my job description. But, it's also a privilege to have a the reach that I do, and I like using it for good. And I think maybe that was it. I was like, oh, these tens of thousands of followers are just sitting there, and I could be telling them things that are going on. But something that Nicole Antoinette talks about so much is the cost. At what cost of me being there? And, also me posting there, but making less money, and then I'm stressed and can't pay my back tax debt, and I'm nervous about paying my mortgage next month. Like, how does that gonna serve the collective? It's not.

Amelia Hruby [00:28:22]:

I can relate so much to that sort of swirl or spiral of all of the pressures that we feel and desires that we feel to show up and to make an impact and to help create the world that we want to see and the world we want to live in. And I think that it's undeniable that social media shapes that, and that's part of why it can feel like we need to or want to or have to be present there and be saying certain things there.

Amelia Hruby [00:28:58]:

While at the same time, many of us within that practice start to realize that the platforms themselves are detrimental to those efforts. It's really challenging. Like, this is why there's no easy answer. This is why there's no formula. This is why this podcast exists because of the both and of we, to some degree, need social media to learn that these things are happening, to see beyond the veils of mainstream media coverage. But also, at this stage, we've totally lost a lot of context for what we we're looking at. We don't know where it's coming from. We don't know if it's real in the era of AI generated content and images and videos and voices.

Amelia Hruby [00:29:47]:

I don't think there's an easy answer to this, and that's part of why I appreciate your willingness to just show up and be like, "Well, I was off it because I felt bad. I'm on it and it feels bad." You're just kind of using different techniques, I wanna say. You're just in a different practice right now than you were then. And maybe where this is going for me is you're saying it still feels bad to be there. What are you orienting toward in your practice? Because for me, it is a lot of pleasure and what feels good and impactful, but what are you orienting toward in your practice that you feel like Instagram matters again right now?

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:30:22]:

I mean, that, and I say this with no judgment to myself, just feels like what I'm orienting it to in my practice is completely out of alignment with being on Instagram. Like, those don't match up. So that's just maybe a helpful answer to I'm not sure what's keeping me there. Because what I'm orienting to really is the dirt that got delivered from my flower beds and the actions that are happening in my town and what's going on with my neighbors and what's happening at my studio with my 73-year-old studio mate and making quilts. That's what I wanna turn towards and to turn towards grad school and just my art practice and my writing and my next book. And, yeah, none of that includes Instagram, which I think is part of why I don't feel good right now is because I'm turning towards that when they're sort of all these other things to really be turning towards.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:31:25]:

But it's interesting. Just I really do think that the thing that Instagram is so good for is mutual aid and finding information in that way. I needed to move my camper into this little spot and post it on Instagram yesterday. And sure enough, my new neighbor who I met at the up north pride fundraiser a couple weeks ago was like, "I have a truck. I can move your camper." And came over, and I maybe could have thought, I wonder if Jasmine has a truck, and texted her. But I really posted it on Instagram and found the answer. So I think in some ways, it's fun sometimes. It's fun to go in there and see what everybody's up to.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:32:06]:

But, yeah, I think in general, when I really ask myself what is my practice right now? What do I want to be prioritizing? Instagram has nothing to do with that.

Amelia Hruby [00:32:16]:

Yeah.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:32:17]:

I think the other thing that's just coming to me right now is after you say you quit forever, how do you take a break again or something? I'm really addicted to the quitting forever. I feel like I keep waiting to quit again because I need to be able to quit forever. I don't know what that is. Any therapist on the line? No one else wanna chime in?

Amelia Hruby [00:32:42]:

My armchair analyst inside of me is, like, yeah, there's a dopamine rush in quitting, just the same way there is a dopamine rush in engaging.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:32:49]:

Yes, god. Absolutely. Yes. The thought of quitting makes me feel high. I'm like, that sounds amazing. I would be free again. I feel like I haven't heard this on Off the Grid, so I'm just gonna be honest. I also get hooked into wanting to see what people are doing. Straight up. Like, what's my ex up to? What's that person I have a crush on up to? What's this hot skater girl doing today? What are my friends posting about Palestine or Sudan or anywhere? Both in the of service things, what are people up to? But also in the social fabric, what's everybody up to? I wanna know.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:33:32]:

I mean, that's some Venus in Gemini shit maybe, but I'm trying to find out what people are up to. Who's single? I'm single living in the woods. I'm not trying to not know who's single. But, yeah, I wanna be honest about that hook for me, especially living rurally in Michigan. I'm like, what is everybody doing? I'm supposed to not know what everybody's doing today. But even looking back at that time when I was off for six months, I had a great time. I I found plenty of people to hang out with and didn't care what anybody was doing. And the people who I really wanted to know what they were doing, I would just text them. But that hooks me. That hooks me in. I'll be honest.

Amelia Hruby [00:34:13]:

Yeah. I think that's very real, especially, I don't know if I've said this publicly before, but I don't think I could have moved to Nebraska if I wasn't partnered, and I don't know if I would have stayed off social media if I wasn't in this healthy, securely attached, beautiful partnership. And I think that's very real.

Amelia Hruby [00:34:35]:

Congrats.

Amelia Hruby [00:34:35]:

Thanks. It was a journey. I think that's a big part of it. These are some of the things I also think people don't talk about enough. There is a social isolation to leaving social media when your whole community uses it. That's a piece of it. Who has the flexibility and space and support to to isolate themselves in that way? What does that require?

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:34:56]:

Yeah.

Amelia Hruby [00:35:00]:

Are you feeling fed up, burned out, or totally sick of social media? Are you wondering if your business might be able to be successful without it, or if your creative work would still find its way out in the world without you posting it on Instagram or TikTok every 10 minutes? If you can relate to any of these musings of mine, I wanna invite you to join me in the Interweb. The Interweb is an annual membership for creatives, artists, small business owners, freelancers, influencers, entrepreneurs and creators who want support sharing their work and making money without social media.

Amelia Hruby [00:35:38]:

When you join, you get access to on demand courses taught by biz friends across the Internet and quarterly live events with me, Amelia. If you love this podcast, I hope that you'll head to the show notes to learn more and sign up so that I really can see you off the grid and on the Interweb. Now let's get back into today's episode.

Amelia Hruby [00:36:04]:

Something else I'm really interested in, especially with some of the friends and peers you've mentioned, Nicole Antoinette, Anna Fusco, Fariha Roisin, Tamara Santibañez. I think of these as all folks who have, to me, I'll be really vulnerable here, enviable artistic careers, people that I look to, and I'm like, yes, please. More of this also for me.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:36:31]:

Yes. Yes.

Amelia Hruby [00:36:32]:

And, I see, not all of them, but most of them still present on social media, navigating these platforms in their own ways. And, I think part of what's enviable to me is the shaping of a career and a really different sort of path that pulls in a lot of different things. And so I guess I just wanna ask, what is the shape of your career right now? And does your return to Instagram fit into that in any way?

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:37:03]:

I love this. Well and I think some of the friends I just mentioned or that you just mentioned, I share with them this crossover of we are artists running business who are also public people. I struggle to use the word public figure. It sounds too fancy or something. But, you might know those people's names and vibes before you're thinking about their business structure. It's like you don't necessarily look at Cody Cook-Parrot and think "the business they run."

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:37:35]:

So one thing that is interesting to me that is, I think, a benefit of social media, and part of why I use it is, I love how you can kind of look there and pretty quickly understand who I am, my politics, my projects, and what I'm up to. In the same way that I feel like I've been thinking a lot lately about updating my website to be a little clearer in that way. If you went to my website right now, you might not even know I was nonbinary. I don't even know if my pronouns are on there or something.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:38:11]:

There's just little things that because we all relied so heavily on Instagram, it just became the place where you kind of put everything, which is scary because you don't own it, and it could go away at any time. And it's not a website. And and so as the algorithm shows your work to less and less people. So if you're listening, get a newsletter, update your website. But, I think that is part of the shaping is in the same way that writing is how I understand myself, I do think that sharing on Instagram is how I understand myself. And my newsletter sort of is that, but it is a really different energy.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:38:56]:

So shaping my creative ecosystem right now includes Instagram for sharing wins in my career and political things that feel important to me. And then outside of that, I don't think I'll use it to promote my next class sort of thing. But, I'm thinking about it right now because I am teaching this class in June, The Shapes of Our Offerings, which I taught last year as well. And it's sort of thinking about what is the shape of the ecosystem. And I think a big question to ask is how does Instagram fit into that? Or does it or does it not and does it need to?

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:39:36]:

And that brings me to something we've talked about a little bit, but if I was just running a business, I think I would maybe have an easier time just being like, "I'm gonna leave social media." But I think the public person author part of it makes it different or or something. And I know that there's people who identify that way and still get off social media, but I think in terms of, back to the kind of shaping, I use social media to shape my public figure-ness, and I wanna be there. And I'm about to sell my next book to a publisher, and I purposefully am not deactivated right now. My Instagram is up right now, and a lot of the book is about divesting from Instagram. And I'm curious how writing it will impact my usage of it.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:40:45]:

And thinking about it coming out in a year or two, it's hard to say. Is my publisher gonna push me to use it? And I think that's the big question for a lot of people who wanna leave and that stops people is book writing and book deals and just the reality that you're more apt to get one if you have an active social media account, which I think is too bad and not representative of if writing is any good or not.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:41:12]:

But kind of to answer maybe lots of different questions that you ask today is also on my mind. It's just like getting this next book deal and then asking myself will I use it while I write the book? Can I stay off of it while I write the book? Will I use it when the book comes out? I think are big questions I'm asking myself.

Amelia Hruby [00:41:31]:

So something we touched on at the beginning of the conversation that I wanna bring back now is sort of the platform supremacy, as I've been thinking of it, in our marketing ecosystems. And I'm curious for your perspective on the shift from Instagram to Substack. What do you feel is similar or different between those two platforms? Especially because Substack has changed a lot since you first landed there. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it as of right now.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:42:04]:

I think the thing that feels the most similar is the metrics. That there's metrics in the way that when my newsletter, I used to just host it with Mailchimp, there was no likes. There was no comments. There was no resharing. And so I don't really pay much attention to open rates and unsubscribes. Out of all the dopamine things and addiction things, I, for some reason, have been spared caring about those. But I do notice I get hooked on the likes sometimes. I'm like, oh, that must have not really hit. The newsletter where I announced my name change, has a ton of likes and shares, or the one that I announced I'm was leaving Instagram is my most popular newsletter. With Instagram, it works the same way where I feel like I make a post or write something, and I'm just like, "This is it. This is brilliant. This is really gonna reach the people." And then 10 people see it. And I'm like, "Oh, okay."

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:43:11]:

So I think it's not devoid of those parts of the brain loops of just, am I liked? Do they like me? Did I do a good job? And so it really requires the same kind of just detachment. And I think just real commitment and trust with the work and that the people who need it will receive it. I've tried to use Notes a little bit, which is Substack's social media, kind of like Twitter, and it just doesn't really land for me. It's also just sort of like the writers of Substack talking to each other, and I think that's also not what I care about.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:43:56]:

When I joined Substack, it was very much like, here is a newsletter provider that you can turn paid on. It was that simple. And I was like, "Perfect. That's exactly what I want." And I always just called it a newsletter. I didn't realize it was gonna become, like, "Substack, the platform where we're talking to other Substack people, and there's check marks." The check marks, your subscriber count is public. I think you can actually turn that off.

Amelia Hruby [00:44:27]:

You can turn it off.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:44:28]:

Yeah. I could turn the solid orange check mark off, but why would I do that when it looks so fancy? It's that kind of shit that just both sucks, and I guess I'm grateful for because it works in my favor. I definitely have moments where my income is so dependent on Substack at this point, which, again, is a huge privilege and was the goal is to get to have a job as a writer is so amazing. And sometimes it's confusing because I also have a job as a teacher of writing and quilting. And sometimes, I just miss the Flodesk email marketing separate from Substack. And so I do use Flodesk separately to email people who are my past students or have downloaded my lead magnet, The Creative Ideation Portal. But it's not so streamlined and can be a little clunky sometimes. There's a lot of imperfections of Substack that make me frustrated. It's just not the same as when I started using it.

Amelia Hruby [00:45:41]:

Yeah. Now people will say, "I have a Substack," not "I have a newsletter." And, also in the same way that people will now ask you about Substack, whereas in the past, who would have asked you about Mailchimp?

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:45:53]:

Exactly. Exactly.

Amelia Hruby [00:45:54]:

And I think this is really where Substack is trying to be a platform or also an app as opposed to being an email service provider, which is just a very different thing. And, Mailchimp, Flodesk, those are email service providers. You are paying for a service, they provide a service. Substack is trying to do something else, and its promise is discoverability and pay. And I know to some degree, it seems like you've benefited from Substack discoverability, and your newsletter has grown significantly since moving it there.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:46:29]:

Yeah. I think I looked the other day, and from recommendations alone, so other newsletters recommending Monday Monday, I have gotten 14,000 subscribers.

Amelia Hruby [00:46:41]:

Wow.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:46:42]:

And I'm really grateful for that. I think that is huge. But what I'll also say and this is where it's like, what is a newsletter versus what is email marketing, which I love to talk about and how they go together and how they're separate. But, my numbers for my classes, well, my writing class, actually, the numbers went up exponentially of how many people signed up. But for most of what I do, most of my other offerings, I haven't seen, from an 8,000 person list to a 29,000 person list, that hasn't equaled that same times amount of people signing up for what I do.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:47:30]:

Because a lot of them just wanna read the newsletter. They just wanna read the essay. They just are there for the project that is Monday Monday, and some people are there to get the information about the next class. And I could talk about that all day, but it's just another dance to play in the newsletter marketing, shaping, offering, platform dance that we have to do.

Amelia Hruby [00:47:59]:

That makes a lot of sense. So even if your list has tripled or quadrupled or more in size, it doesn't mean that your client base has grown at that same rate. And with the proliferation of Substacks, I think there is a dilution of the power of the email to some degree. People's inboxes are fuller than ever. Quote unquote, everyone has a newsletter, and it may mean that we need more subscribers to hit the same number of sales from our lists.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:48:29]:

And this is something that someone was asking me the other day of just the question of, is it too late to join Substack? And I definitely think the answer is no, and I think there is a reality in the saturation of it. But that is where I can't tell if it's just because I'm looking at Notes, and I'm like, "Who the fuck are all these people?" I literally am like, who are these writers who they're showing me? Just for anyone listening, if you've never looked, they show you a feed that are not people you follow or subscribe to. So it's just this really weird experience. It's a lot of people talking about Substack on Substack, which, I've done that too. I've talked about Instagram on Instagram, and it's circular in this way that it just doesn't feel very radical. I'm like, who curated this list of people for me because it's not very exciting.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:49:35]:

And I try to remember that again, and I call it my newsletter. My newsletter goes into people's inboxes. 97% of the people who read my newsletter, I don't think have ever even looked at Substack.com. They're not in the app. They're not on the website. They're just getting an email newsletter still, and that's what is important to me. And so I try to remember that they don't really care where it comes from. They're not like "Substack!" They're just like, "Oh, Cody has a newsletter, and it goes in my inbox." I guess if they pay for it, they have to kinda figure it out.

Amelia Hruby [00:50:09]:

I think this is also what happens on Notes. It's a very insular community, and then it can be really easy to be convinced that Substack's all about the app, but from every reference point I've seen, the vast majority of people who subscribe to Substack newsletters are just getting the emails in their inbox. They're not engaging with the app or reading on the app or being in Notes. That's where the people writing Substacks are hanging out, not where the people reading them are hanging out, which is an important distinction if we run a business or just trying to share with the people.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:50:42]:

And Notes is where I posted that I changed my name and couldn't find someone to help me change my Instagram handle, and someone there saw it, who I didn't know, who didn't subscribe to my newsletter, who my note popped up in his feed. And he was like, "I have a contact", and I literally couldn't change my handle. It was just my old name, and I don't know how I would have ever figured it out. So another example of...

Amelia Hruby [00:51:10]:

Internet magic.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:51:11]:

It worked one time.

Amelia Hruby [00:51:15]:

It happens everywhere, even in places we feel ambivalent about. I think what I'm taking away from this conversation is the way that social media has become a really integral part of how many of us construct our sense of self and relate to ourselves and others, and I think that can be a neutral thing. I think we can use social media for self construction in ways that are playful and magical and allow parts of us to be seen that have never been witnessed in any other area of our life.

Amelia Hruby [00:51:55]:

And, simultaneously, I think that when we turn to Instagram or TikTok or any social media platform for recognition and connection, we can be met with rejection and betrayal and taken really far away from ourselves and lose ourselves in that process. But at the end of the day, I think social media is a technology like many other technologies we use to understand ourselves, and it's all part of this dance that you've been describing for us. And I know I'll be just reflecting on many of these themes and ideas for weeks and months and years and the rest of my life to come.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:52:42]:

Yeah. That was such a beautiful summary of what we talked about. I feel like that's what I'm coming away with too. Instead of using the word dance because I use it so much, I've been replacing it with waltz lately. Because it does feel like 1,2,3,1,2,3. It's like, I'm in and I'm out, and I'm in and I'm out. And my dance mentors, the architects, when we make a dance together, we all stand on the perimeter of the room together in a big circle, and you enter the circle when you're a part of the dance. You go in. But what we say is when you're in, you're in, and when you're out, you're in. It's about holding the deep, deep presence for whoever's in.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:53:29]:

You're always ready. You're always ready for what the dance needs. Am I gonna go in? And another question that we ask is, is it more generous to go in, or is it more generous to stay out? And so I think that framework is really what I'm using even when I use social media. Is it more generous for me to post the infographic today, or is it more generous for me to not add to this today and to save it for Monday's newsletter or to save it for a conversation with a friend? And when I'm out, I'm in still. I'm holding it all still. And the less I'm on there, the more my capacity strengthens to hold it all. So, that's what I'll say.

Amelia Hruby [00:54:12]:

When we're in, we're in. And when we're out, we're in. I love that so much. To wrap us up, I would just love if you could share how can people tap into your creative ecosystem right now?

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:54:26]:

Yes. Well, if you're listening to this the day or two when it comes out, I'm teaching The Shapes of Our Offerings, which is kind of my mini art business class. And that is three Saturdays in June. The 8th, 15th, and 22nd with two coworking times, so I would love to see people in class. Sliding scale, scholarships, payment plans. I love to work with people. Come on over. You can subscribe to Monday Monday, which is my newsletter that's free every Monday at codycookparrott.substack.com.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:54:57]:

And if you're into praying every day, I actually started a new newsletter called Ordinary Practice where I send out a prayer every day for the next year. It just started, and then I'm gonna self publish them into a daily prayer book next summer solstice 2025. So those are sort of my main places. I would say, I guess, you could follow Cody Cook-Parrott on Instagram, but even by the time this comes out, I might have disappeared again. So don't count on finding me there, but I do exist there. And snail mail, PO box 252, Cedar, Michigan 49621. Those are my places you can find me.

Amelia Hruby [00:55:39]:

Thank you, Cody, for bringing us all of this wisdom, for reminding us that we can have a business without social media.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:55:48]:

Yes, you can.

Amelia Hruby [00:55:50]:

But we can still use social media for other reasons if we so choose, and it's all a part of our freedom and liberation portals that we're traveling through, hopefully, together.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:56:01]:

Yes. Freedom and liberation portals that we're traveling through together. I just wanted to say that again for myself.

Amelia Hruby [00:56:45]:

I can't wait to have you back on when this new book is out in the world so we can discover everything that comes up as you're writing more about your digital public sharing practice. Listeners, you can find links to everything Cody does on the internet in the show notes, and thank you for joining us for this conversation. Until next time, we will see you off the grid and on the Interweb.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:56:47]:

Let's go off the grid. Okay!