🌈 Your Attention is Sacred Except on Social Media — Book Launch!
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 to Off The Grid, a podcast about sharing your work on the Internet without social media. I am your host, Amelia Hruby. And today, I officially have become the published author of Your Attention is Sacred Except on Social Media. I am so excited.
Amelia Hruby:I'm like, drum roll, please. Air horn sound. Everybody applaud. The book is here. I have been talking about this book probably for at least twelve months.
Amelia Hruby:I know that I decided last fall that I would be writing this book in 2025. I started writing it in January, and now it is October 1, and the book is here. If you were on the wait list, you already got invited to order a copy. And thank you to the over a 100 of you who have placed those orders and purchased your books. I am incredibly grateful.
Amelia Hruby:So, so, so, so, so grateful and so, so, so, so excited because today, the rest of you, everybody here, if you're hearing this, you can now buy my book. All you have to do is go to offthegrid.fun/attention. You know it's linked in the show notes for you as well, and buy the book. Go to the site. Buy the book.
Amelia Hruby:Go to the site. Buy the book. In fact, maybe even do that while you're listening to this. And support me, support my work, support the ideas while you tune in to this show that you know and love and get for free every Wednesday. In case you haven't tuned in all season and I haven't pitched you the book yet, please know that your attention is sacred except on social media is a manifesto for artists, writers, teachers, healers, small business owners, and critical thinkers of all kinds who are ready to break free from the attention economy and reclaim their creative integrity.
Amelia Hruby:My goal with this book is to help us intervene in our very distracted world and pull our attention back to the things that we really care about and the things that we want to create. So if you know that your work matters or you wanna believe that your work matters and you are sick of liking, commenting, subscribing, or scrolling to try to prove that to the algorithm, then this book is for you. Now, last week, I talked a lot about how I'm doing my book launch a little differently than other traditional book launches. One, because it's self published, and two, because I'm me and I love marketing, and I like doing things my own way. So let me just give you a heads up that when you go to the sales page for the book, which again, can find at offthegrid.fund/attention.
Amelia Hruby:When you go there, what you're gonna see is that I am really highlighting the book bundles I am selling. So there's a print book bundle and an ebook bundle. And with these bundles, you get all of the versions of the book, either print and digital or just digital. You get some fun bonuses, postcards for the print girlies, phone wallpapers for my digital friends, and you also get a ticket to the very first off the grid virtual retreat. I am hosting a virtual retreat this fall.
Amelia Hruby:It's happening in November. It's gonna be amazing. And the only way to get a ticket is to buy a book bundle, which when you think about it, frankly, is really a steal. With the print book bundle, it only costs $50 and you get a paperback copy of the book, a digital copy of the ebook, the audiobook m p 3, two exclusive artist design postcards, and a ticket to the retreat. Like, if I was just selling the retreat ticket, it would probably cost more than $50, but you get all of that, including free shipping with your print book bundle.
Amelia Hruby:Or if you're one of our lovely listeners who's not based in The US because unfortunately, I cannot ship internationally, you can get the ebook bundle. And that includes the digital copy of the book. You get an epub and a PDF. It includes your audiobook m p three. It includes a very cute phone wallpaper.
Amelia Hruby:And you get your ticket to the Off the Grid retreat for just $40 USD. So again, just the retreat ticket. If I were just selling a retreat, I would charge more for it than I am even charging for these book bundles where you get all of the versions of the book and the retreat ticket and the fun bonuses. And there are a few reasons that I'm doing this. Let me tell you three of them.
Amelia Hruby:One is that folks have been asking me for a retreat of sorts for months, maybe even years now. And this virtual retreat is my way of sort of testing the waters of seeing how it feels to gather the community at large and what we might do together. So if you've ever wanted to come to an author grade retreat, now's your chance. The second reason is that, as you know, I'm a business owner. And when you sell a book, books typically have a relatively low cost to the consumer.
Amelia Hruby:Right? Like typically you pay maybe $20, maybe 30 for a hardcover book, which my book is not hardcover. So I knew that. And I also knew that my audience was not that large and that if I was selling a book the sort of quote unquote normal way, I wouldn't necessarily make that much money from it. So I put on my retail girly hat and was like, what can I do to increase the average order value for this book?
Amelia Hruby:And I worked with Lexi Merritt, who is amazing. And we came up with this idea of hosting a virtual retreat alongside the book launch that you can only come to if you buy the book bundle. And so that helps me make more money from the book launch, which also then feeds back into the other things we're talking about. Right? Like when I make more money from the book launch, I can go on my book tour next year.
Amelia Hruby:I can come meet you in person. We can begin those IRL gatherings. Like, it all kind of feeds back in. And then the third reason I'm hosting this retreat is because you really can't do this work alone. Like, you can read the book on your own and reflect on it and maybe put some of the practices into action.
Amelia Hruby:But to reclaim our attention, we have to come together and we have to talk about it and we have to be in process with it with others. And so I wanted to create an opportunity for folks who are interested in the book, for folks who are interested in this podcast to gather. And we're going to do that again, November. We begin on the beautiful full moon in Taurus on November 5. And that day will be joined by my friend Grace Allerdice for a wonderful guided practice.
Amelia Hruby:And then I will be teaching a brand new workshop on how to feel better on the Internet, which is honestly so good. I've already prepped it. It's really going to take us into this practice of being online without handing our attention and our agency over to big tech and extractive algorithms. And then day two, November 6, I will be joined by Verena Borrell for a somatic practice. And then I'll teach a workshop on the three keys for making your work resonate.
Amelia Hruby:So for all of my friends out there sharing things online, like they're just going into the void, that workshop is for you. And then on the third day, I will be joined by my dear friend, Taylor Elyse Morrison. And we're going to have a conversation about softer visions for success, including some wonderful reflection prompts and invitations for you to reimagine what success might look and feel like in your life. And Taylor will ask me some questions about the book. We'll talk about how I've had to redefine success.
Amelia Hruby:And after that, on Friday and actually all three days, there will be sort of social time for you to meet other retreat attendees and off the grid listeners. And we're doing daily giveaways. So I will be giving away some really amazing things from off the grid community members. We've got some worthwhile paper goodies. I've got some journals from cyclical roots.
Amelia Hruby:I'm giving away a tarot journal from Cecily of Typewriter Tarot. There's just like so much goodness happening at this retreat. And again, the only way to come is to buy a book bundle. But that also means you can literally get multiple versions of my book bonuses and the entire retreat experience for as little as $40 USD. So I hope that that has you sprinting to your phone, your computer, wherever you make your purchases to order a copy today.
Amelia Hruby:And if I may ask, if you want to order, please do so sooner rather than later so that I can have a good sense of how the book is selling, if I need to reorder, if the retreat's gonna be totally full and I need to reimagine it, like, the sooner I can know that the better. So you'd be doing me a huge favor if you went ahead and ordered this week. Okay. Have you heard enough about the book now? Hopefully not, because you're gonna keep hearing about it throughout the season.
Amelia Hruby:But in the rest of this episode, I'm actually sharing a conversation that I had for my friend Rebecca's podcast, Imagination State. Rebecca is an interweb member. She joined our coworking clubs over the summer, and she invited me on her show to talk about how I envision a world where creative people don't feel reliant on social media to spread the word about their work. And in this conversation, we kinda go back into, like, my lore and how I started doing community building work, how I came into podcasting, how I started off the grid. We talk about it in a way I haven't really ever spoken of it before, so it was really nurturing and fulfilling for me.
Amelia Hruby:And I hope for you to sort of hear the journey recounted in this new way. And then we talk more about the harms that social media algorithms do to our creativity and our communities and ways that you can intervene in that harm. So we don't directly talk about the book in this episode, I'm realizing, but it's all on the themes that you'll find in the pages of the book. So I hope that you will order a copy of the book today, tune into the rest of this episode, and then please go subscribe to Rebecca's podcast. Again, it's called Imagination State.
Amelia Hruby:I've linked to it in the show notes, and it's really, really beautiful. I highly, highly recommend it. So thank you so much for tuning in to this extended intro. Thank you so much for celebrating my book launch with me. Should we do the sound effects one more time?
Amelia Hruby:Here we go. Book is here. I'm so excited. And all of that said, let's dive in to my conversation with Rebecca Rivola from the Imagination State podcast.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:Where did your conception of this beautiful worldview that you're inviting people into, where did that come from for you?
Amelia Hruby:You know, the origin of the world of off the grid comes from so many places, I think. A lot of it began with my move to Chicago, which was after college. So I grew up in the Southeast in North Carolina. I went to high school there. I went to college there.
Amelia Hruby:And then after school, I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I had a college professor who was, like, really invested in me going to graduate school. He was like, you are very smart. You're a great writer. You would be a great academic.
Amelia Hruby:You should do this. And it wasn't like my dream. It was just like, well, this person believes in me. I suppose I can do that. And I got into two programs, and the one I picked was at DePaul University in Chicago, Mostly because I wanted to move to Chicago and, like, have a reason to be there.
Amelia Hruby:And so when I moved to Chicago, I'd, like, literally moved to a different world. It was so different than where I had grown up in Central North Carolina or when where I went to college in Raleigh. And also for anyone listening who's been to North Carolina, it's very different now than it was when I was growing up there. And so it's much more like progressive and cosmopolitan even than it was when I was there when it still really felt like the capital s South. And when I went to Chicago, I really started to see how steeped I was in patriarchal society, in a vision of meritocracy that had been taught to me by my schooling and the general school and university system, I started to see how steep I was in my own whiteness and how invisible it had been to me and how I had lived in the South for twenty years and thought of racism as something other people did.
Amelia Hruby:Right? And I had to learn how incorrect that was. I had to learn what systemic or structural oppression was. I had to stop thinking of everything as just like a personal action you did or didn't do. And in that way, I had this deep reckoning with my own agency.
Amelia Hruby:I had to realize that not everything was in my control, not everything was my choice, but also I had this, like, deeply radical sense of possibility and belonging and just being who I am. And so this was a total transformation. Like, I I literally do feel like I moved from one world to another. I reconstructed my entire worldview. And, you know, the ways that happened for me, there's these different sites where I had windows into new worlds, and I opened them and I walked through those windowsdoors, I guess, with my mixed metaphor.
Amelia Hruby:You know, one was being in graduate school, I took a number of courses in the women and gender studies program at DePaul, and I learned a lot about feminism from a sort of academic and intellectual perspective. That helped me make sense of the many double standards I'd felt in my life. It helped me make sense of the sort of compulsory heterosexuality that I had experienced, maybe make sense of many of the dynamics that I experienced with men in my life. And then alongside that, I had a number of friends and colleagues who were really engaged in activism and organizing in the city. And so I got to be a part of the Chicago Torture Justice Project, and I got to really see both the deep roots of racist violence and police violence in Chicago and also the people who were using art to fight against it, that was really eye opening and transformative.
Amelia Hruby:And I'd say, like, the third site that really changed things for me, and I think of site in its multiplicity there, site, like s I t e, like location, but also site, like my vision, s I g h t, and that would have been the community radio station I was a part of. And so when I came to Chicago, I loved music, and someone random on the Internet, on Twitter actually, encouraged me to look up this radio station called CHIRP, which stood for Chicago Independent Radio Project. And I went to a volunteer meeting, and I eventually had a show on air. And then I was asked to be a part of their features department, and I started working on their podcast and interviewing local bands. And I learned how to podcast.
Amelia Hruby:And that is what brought me into audio as a medium, and that's what kind of led me to starting softer sounds. And, you know, I really think, like, without the university, without you know, Chicago Torture Justice Project had a physical location. So, like, without that, without the radio station, which also had a physical location, like, I could really triangulate my sort of inception as the person I am today from those three places in Chicago. And then the world you entered really came from how all of that impacted how I ended up approaching business. And when I was finishing graduate school, I worked for a company called Sister that's based out in California, and I ran a program called Feminist Business School.
Amelia Hruby:And that became this really beautiful radical place where I learned from the founder of that company, Jen Armbrust, how to think about business differently and how to think about self employment as a site of liberation. Because all of those journeys, I never had a traditional job. I couldn't do it. Nine to five corporate work was like always this incredibly uncomfortable thing to me. I felt so allergic to it.
Amelia Hruby:And so through learning about small business and self employment, I was like, okay, I can do something else. I can do something my way. And all of that eventually opened up the world that is now off the grid.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:Off the grid is about taking businesses away from social media and what thriving can look like. The thriving can happen away from social media. That's one piece. But then I think that there's so many broader pieces to what you're talking about, and one of them is that we can just function differently in the world as humans and as businesses, and we can support each other differently. And it can be beautiful in all these other kinds of ways outside of what we have been taught.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:And until I heard those episodes, like, it didn't occur to me that I could not be on social media. And for for years, I've been telling my husband who's not on social media. I've been telling him, like, I don't like Instagram, but I'm here because I have to be. You know? And it's it's so dumb, like, now that I look back on it.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:But you showed me that, but you also showed me that there are ways to support other businesses by myself without even having much financial ability to do so. There are ways that we can be in community, that we can be supporting each other within the structures that were in, capitalistic structures, white supremacy structures. Like, we can be showing up for people in all kinds of ways, whether they're physical or they're online. And both of those things were were super revolutionary to me. And I wonder if you can share, like you can triangulate, like, your origin story in Chicago to these physical locations.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:And I wonder how you grappled with taking some of your learnings, happen in physical spaces, like, to the online world, how you came to sort of, like, translate that because that's quite remarkable. I think there's we miss so much when we're we're online, but you've also managed to bring so much magic, in person magic into the online space. How did you do that?
Amelia Hruby:You know, the way you've posed the question almost suggests that this was an active choice that I made. But in fact, it was really made for me by the pandemic. Because before the pandemic, I was living and loving my Chicago life. I was working on a podcast called 50 Feminist States that I had started and crowdfunded, And I was traveling all over The US to interview feminist activists and artists, working on this premise of like podcasts are better in person. Like, was kind of it.
Amelia Hruby:And I used Kickstarter to fund these road trips that I went on where I drove all over in my little mint green Prius. My practice was so embedded in the physical world, and it only moved online because of the pandemic in many ways. And, you know, I really think in terms of how I've world built online, I think it works because it's all centered in a podcast. And I really do believe that podcasts are magical because the voice is magical. Like, I do think that podcasts allow our bodies to travel space and time through our voice, through the airwaves, and we get to be together in a way that I just haven't found in any other medium, including video.
Amelia Hruby:Like in video, I I look at myself, I become self conscious, or I'm to feel like I'm just watching someone. There's something about, like, hearing and listening to a voice that I think really brings together so much of, like, the human relationship experience. And so there's something about the fact that it all starts with a podcast and off the grid. And then every other space that I open up or create or share with people online, I'm I'm just trying to kind of replicate that feeling. And so I think what people find when they end up on a call with me or they come to a class or they show up for coworking is like, this is where, like, my integrity comes in.
Amelia Hruby:Like, I am the same in all of those spaces. It's not a performance. It is parasocial on the podcast. But then when it becomes actually social and we come together, like, I arrive as the same person you heard.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:Yeah.
Amelia Hruby:And the person you were in parasocial relationship is now the person you get to be in social relationship with. And I think that that is a lot of what, like, allows me to hold the space of off the grid in a certain way. And I think the, like, depth of my own personal development, spiritual development, social development allows me to, like, bring such a clear value system to those spaces. Mhmm. And I don't know.
Amelia Hruby:I mean, you've been in them. Would you agree? This is me kind of surmising how this has worked, but I'm curious from your perspective how it feels.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:Yeah. 100%. And I hadn't thought about podcasts being that way, and it makes me for some reason, you made me think about books and think about how when you're reading a really good book, like, maybe there's something similar there.
Amelia Hruby:I would agree. Absolutely. Books travel space and time as well.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:But then there's this additional magic of of hearing somebody's voice, and maybe you get to know them better. That's so true. And you're talking about translating your value system, and you're talking about showing up the same way, like, from parasocial to actually social. And definitely 100% yes. I remember when I first met you on our consulting call, which was beautiful and so fun, and you made it so welcoming and energizing.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:Yeah. I felt that way immediately. But I wanna just pause on this value piece that you say when you talk about bringing your value set to the spaces you live in and you bring to people that you invite people into. What is that value set? Like, when you're showing up on a podcast, on your podcast, on someone else's podcast, how do you ground in your value set, and can you share more about what that is?
Amelia Hruby:Yeah. Absolutely. I have this urge or this belief that I should have, like, a list of, like, here are my five core values, values, and I don't quite have that. Like, I have written those lists many times. Like, they even exist on some versions of my websites.
Amelia Hruby:But I I really wanna try to distill something maybe more meaningful or radical or deeper than, like, just giving you a list of a couple words here because I could tell you that, like, Softer Sounds website has the values listed of, like, clarity and resonance, and I picked those words for reasons. But I'm interested in reflecting on, like, what really is the value set that I'm trying to show up with? And maybe it's more like the guiding principles of how I live my life. And I think that I am certainly always trying to get free. I think liberation from oppressive systems is at the core of everything that I do.
Amelia Hruby:That was also part of why I had to leave social media because it is an inherently oppressive and extractive system, or those platforms are in and of themselves on purpose exploitative and extractive. So this value of liberation. I also really like to call myself, like, gently no nonsense. By which I mean that I'm really invested in permission and all of us giving ourselves permission to arrive as we actually are. And I'm also invested in the personal accountability of being aware of how you actually are.
Amelia Hruby:Like, I think I've definitely seen spaces where it's like, we have permission to show up however you arrive, be whoever you wanna be, But then there's no accountability to, like, take responsibility for the fact like, oh, I'm super dysregulated, and I just, like, threw that into the space and dysregulated everybody else. Right? Like, show up with the honesty that you're feeling dysregulated, but also with the awareness that that's the case and that that can shape your actions. So permission, liberation, self awareness, shared accountability, gentleness, but a sort of open eyed honesty. You know, I called my business softer sounds, and I talk a lot about softness in my work.
Amelia Hruby:And I think sometimes people think that I'm gonna be, like, super fem or, like, triple water sign kind of person. Like, they think that I called it softer sounds because I am inherently soft, but it was actually quite the opposite. I'm an Aries sun, Capricorn rising. I work really hard. I know how to, like, force and push, and I can be really blunt and fiery.
Amelia Hruby:And softness for me was like a purposeful softening when I realized, like, those qualities were so upheld and uplifted by the society that I didn't respect or didn't want to be complicit in. I was like, okay. How can I soften? How can I still be myself to live within that sort of tension of like the strength of my will, but like the softness of how I want to be in relationship? And so all of that is on my mind when I am showing up or holding any space.
Amelia Hruby:And I think what that does is it allows people to arrive as they are, but to feel clear that we're all centering, like, liberation and permission in that process. And I think that's at least where I land with it for today.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:Thank you for that. I've heard you tell the story of of how you came to realize that you've you had to go. You had to leave social media. And I wonder if I could ask you to share a version of that story because you talk about these values and you talk about liberation especially. I think maybe, like, focusing on on liberation, you came to realize, like, you could not exercise these values in a place that does not allow people to be free in all different kinds of ways.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:And thinking specifically, you talk about how you had this, like, this inner tug of war. Like, you were just trying. You were workshopping all these different ways that you could try to make social media fit within your values. And you're like, if I approach it this way and if I only use it in this ways and if I treat my community this way, then maybe it can work. Is that correct?
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:And then at some point it broke, and you just realized that that's not
Amelia Hruby:the case.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:You just can't.
Amelia Hruby:Yeah. I think that there were kind of two levels of my experience. So one level was precisely that. It was that I was really developing this feminist politics and praxis. And the more I tried to implement it in my life and also stay on social media, I was like, this space works against so much of what I'm trying to do.
Amelia Hruby:Yeah. And more specifically at the time, like a big part of my feminist uprooting, awakening practices had a lot to do with the sort of like radical acceptance of my body. And I built out this body of work that I called Selfies for Radical Self Love. And I taught a course. We had a practice group around this.
Amelia Hruby:And so I was really grappling with like, okay, what does it mean to learn to look at my body through the tool of a selfie in a sort of feminist way? And I was sharing this on social media, and I was bringing other people in, and it was great, and it did free me so much. I mean, I I really healed my self image through that practice, and I'm really happy that I was able to do that with other people. But through that work, I really realized that, like, social media in and of itself, even if I was showing up there trying to fight the current of objectification and self criticism and self hatred that was present there, that riptide was too strong. And so I kind of realized this work can't happen here.
Amelia Hruby:It's not gonna work here. That was one level. And then I think simultaneously, was starting to see on a structural level that social media platforms were claiming the right to surveil and track us with everything we did on their apps and off of them on our phones. And they also claimed the right to everything we shared there. I think still in Instagram's terms and conditions, they can take one of your images and do whatever they want with it.
Amelia Hruby:It's technically in there. And so I just realized that that went against the entire ethos of what I was building as well. And so there was this sort of systemic level where I was like, this is not aligned with my values. Then there was also a very personal level. So this maps onto my feminist awakening as well.
Amelia Hruby:Right? Like there was this sort of intellectual structural learning, and there much more like a personal uprooting and learning. But in relationship to social media, what I started to realize is that I had really developed this very codependent relationship with the app, I kind of outsourced my self worth to it based on how many likes my post got or how many followers I had or how much engagement there was. And I was very anxiously attached. My behavior presented as very anxiously attached.
Amelia Hruby:I checked it all the time. I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything. I wanted to make sure I hadn't got a comment or like something I had to delete or like something that I wanted to boost or like somebody hadn't tagged me in a story. And I had this sort of realization at the start of 2021 when I did, as you kind of mentioned, like I wrote this long list of rules for how I was going to show up on social media that would feel okay for me and stay in alignment with my values. And by the time I finished writing that list, I realized just the impossibility of it.
Amelia Hruby:And that led to me announcing that I was gonna leave the platform by my thirtieth birthday, which was that April. And then I took a couple months to like talk more about that, write more about that, share more about that, and eventually make my exit. So, yeah, like, my journey off of social media came from this place of, like, there is a deep misalignment between my values, what I can do on this platform, and what this platform is inherently doing to all of us. And then also, I'm noticing that it feels bad to be here. And that's really where the clarity of like, this is optional.
Amelia Hruby:Like, I am opting in to this app, and I could just not. You know what I mean? Instagram is not the state. Right? Living in The US, I have to have a social security number if I want certain things, or I will be surveilled by the police no matter what I do just by the fact of living in a city.
Amelia Hruby:Those are unavoidable things. I can't opt out of that. But I can opt out of Instagram. I think I felt the force of the should around Instagram as strongly as I felt the force of the should around traffic laws. And I was like, it's not a traffic law.
Amelia Hruby:Could just delete this app and never get on it again.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:And so kind of radical. I wanna point out that it's radical for me what you're saying, and I think it's probably radical for so many people. Like, I do think that the imagination work of you realizing that it's optional, especially for somebody who was creating so much, who had so much community around your work, around your explorations, it seems obvious now. And for me, I think it took seeing somebody like you, and now I see this whole constellation, this whole ecosystem you've built around yourself. And I've been exposed to so many other people who are talking about their experiences with leaving these spaces.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:But I don't know what it would have taken for me to have that realization. Like, I do think that imagination work that you did, like, where you realized, like, I don't have to be here. I just wanna linger on that for a second because it's not a small thing. Like, did you see communities? I mean, you already mentioned that you have this worldview origin story in all these physical spaces.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:So I wonder if maybe there's something there, like, where you realized you could have the good parts, if we can say there are good parts of social media that you were accessing at that time? Like, did you see that, like, okay, if I leave, like, maybe it won't go that well, but, like, maybe I'll lose a lot of these things. I'll lose connections. I'll lose a space to create content, but, like, I can already see the world beyond, or did you not see that world and you just kind of, like, hoped you would be able to make it up as you went?
Amelia Hruby:It was a both end. So I did feel very clear on what I would lose by leaving social media. And I essentially shut down the sort of micro business that I had running there. So I sold stickers and I sold zines and I sold little these little practice groups I mentioned. Like, I I had a few offerings that I sold through my social media accounts.
Amelia Hruby:And when I left social media, I knew that that would just kind of all go away because I didn't really have a clear mechanism for reaching people. I had a very small email list with a few 100 people on it who'd mostly already bought things from me. So I was like, okay. This way of working is going to end. And I felt very clear that I was going to lose that.
Amelia Hruby:And I felt excited about what I might gain. I think it helped that I already had like this beautiful community around me. You know, when I moved to Chicago, I spent years meeting people, making friends, building community, volunteering for things, showing up for stuff. Like, I felt very socially rooted there and I did not feel isolated. And I say all of that, but now I'm realizing even as I say this, like in my timeline, I left social media after I'd already moved to Nebraska.
Amelia Hruby:So it's interesting because I had a beautiful community of friends and supporters, but I am relatively isolated where I live here. I don't have a lot of friends IRL in Lincoln. I haven't built as many as I had in Chicago. But I think just the fact that I had so many people that I adored who I knew would support my work even if I wasn't on social media. I felt like I could make more friends on the internet through many different ways, through podcasting, through emailing, through going to courses, through signing up for communities.
Amelia Hruby:And I knew I only had more of that to gain. So I suppose I felt clear on what I was losing. I felt pretty clear about what was possible. And I remember this distinct sense of, like, people are going to leave. And I wanna do this before ever like, everyone's getting off.
Amelia Hruby:I want to kind of venture out ahead. Feel like bitter end. I mean, there's definitely a different sentiment now, and that's been interesting too. Right? Like, when I left, when I started off the grid, people thought it was, like, weird or novel or like
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:How did you get that feedback? They told me.
Amelia Hruby:They're like, okay, we'll be back. Or like, you know, we'll see you in six months. Or like, I also saw it. And just like the podcast, the first season didn't get a lot of uptake. I think people weren't so invested in this idea.
Amelia Hruby:And then it really grew. And this year, would say like 2025, it feels like the sentiment has shifted so dramatically. It feels like everybody wants to be off of social media now. And I'm glad I've been doing this for years and can really step into that space. But I didn't know this would like, I think I knew more people would wanna leave, but I didn't know the sentiment would shift this much.
Amelia Hruby:I didn't know it would happen in this year. And, like, I couldn't see all of that ahead of me. So I just remember for me asking, what will I lose? What will I gain when I leave? What's possible from here?
Amelia Hruby:And then what happens on the other side? And the way we've kind of talked about this, it may sound like I knew I was gonna start off the grid when I left social media. I didn't. I didn't start off the grid for almost a year after I left. And I only started it because people kept asking me how I had started Softer Sounds.
Amelia Hruby:Like, how is Softer Sounds going without social media? Is it working? Are you doing okay? Can you have a business without social media? Is this possible?
Amelia Hruby:Like, I got a lot of questions. So that's why I started the podcast. It was not like, I'm gonna leave social media. I'm gonna start my business. I'm gonna
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:start the podcast. Out of it. Yeah.
Amelia Hruby:No. Not at all. Some kind of magic. Yeah. Yeah.
Amelia Hruby:It was that resonance. Can you
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:talk about what happened? Like, what did the world look like? Like, were the colors different? What were your senses, like, awakened? What was what was your experience like in the world when you left?
Amelia Hruby:Something I always like to say or just like to hold to is that leaving social media will change your life, but it will also not change your life. Like, it's still your life on the other side of it. Right? So when I left social media, I definitely felt this, like, huge surge of creative energy. I think that because I was a content creator, I was pouring so much of my creativity into social media and so much of my energy there.
Amelia Hruby:And when I logged off Instagram and that was no longer a part of my life or my work, like, the creativity was still there. I like I like produced a lot of other stuff within the first, I'd say, like six or so months. After that, I think I kind of returned to what I think it was like a more human pace, a more seasonal rhythm. I like actually found my own internal creative rhythms when I wasn't trying to, like, produce at the speed demanded by social media, Instagram particularly for me. So, like, it shifted how I related to my creative practice and what I thought was most important.
Amelia Hruby:You know, it used
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:to be
Amelia Hruby:that anything I made was perhaps only as good as the, like, little square tile I could turn it into on Instagram. And I don't feel that way at all anymore. I don't even make little square tiles of most things I make. Right? Like, that doesn't exist.
Amelia Hruby:Yeah.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:What do you think happens to people's imagination and creativity sort of on this broad level in these algorithmic spaces? And I know since you left, there's probably been, like, 10 changes to in zero. Right?
Amelia Hruby:So many Right.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:Right. So much. So so maybe you can't even comment on how they're hijacking people's, like, attention and ability to, like, imagine and ability to, like, conceptualize their relationship to the outside world and to others, etcetera. But you named a few interesting things there. And I wonder if you can speak to that.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:Like, just I guess, is, like, maybe getting at, like, the opportunity cost of for people who decide to stay. And, of course, I know you you don't tell people, like, you have to go. You you should not be there. Like, you should delete your social media apps. But could you do you feel comfortable talking to me a little bit about what the opportunity costs might be to staying engaged in these types
Amelia Hruby:of spaces? Absolutely. This is something that I've been writing about in my book, and I think it's something I approach from my philosophical background. So I think I've mentioned graduate school. I may have mentioned I have a PhD.
Amelia Hruby:It's in philosophy, which helps me ask questions and really dig in So good questions? Yeah. Underneath everything. That's like my philosophical background. So from that, something I've been talking a lot about a lot lately is the pattern of memeification on social media and the way that the creative constraints of social media are actually like very constrained.
Amelia Hruby:Like, you can create in these formats. You can hop on these trends. And social media is taught as a way of copying and memeing original ideas.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:And I'll just say that for people who decide to be outside of that memeification, you're punished. Right? So it's you can do what you want, I guess, technically, to a point, but that's not rewarded. That's not seen.
Amelia Hruby:The algorithm will not promote your work to as many people. You may feel like your actual followers don't even see your work, and that may be very true, which happens frequently on the platforms. There's this demand for that sort of hopping on trends, copying memes, creating in the already templatized ways available to you. And then there's the reward and punishment system of rewarding those who succeed at that and punishing those who don't. And so as an artist, as a creative, as a visionary or a person who's trying to imagine different worlds, it's a very hard place to do that.
Amelia Hruby:And I think that social media really shapes what we believe to be possible in that space, and that bleeds into all areas of our lives. It's very hard to think, be, do, dream otherwise on these platforms where all of the actions you can take are predetermined for you. Right? I see the most beautiful work of art I've ever seen on Instagram. I can like.
Amelia Hruby:I can comment. I can DM it to somebody. I can put it in my story. Right? None of those are reactions I would actually have to a beautiful work of art.
Amelia Hruby:These are like contrived, specific user experience designed moments. And the likelihood that I would actually like have the attention to notice that I'm being presented with a life changing work of art in the scroll that is predetermined on social media and algorithmically defined is so unlikely. Right? Having an experience of true awe, social media is not designed for that. And so while I do love creative constraints as a way of imagining and producing work, I think that social media dictates very prescribed possibilities for what our dreams and lives can be.
Amelia Hruby:And I just think once you get off of those apps, it can be anything. Literally, even the orientation of the images you can share on social media apps is very specific. You have three options. Right? You get off social media, you can make a painting of any shape and size.
Amelia Hruby:You can print a photograph of any shape and size. You can, you know, do so much more. And so while I do appreciate creative constraints, I just think they are so, again, predetermined and policed on social media apps through that reward punishment system of the algorithm and of visibility that I just don't find it to be a place where we can cultivate radical possibility. And I think that earlier when social media first started, it was a place of pretty radical connection. And I think that I had mentioned before, you know, part of what made it possible for me to leave social media is I I felt very socially connected.
Amelia Hruby:I think it's much harder to leave social media if you feel isolated because it does present as like a window into relationships, into parts of the world you can never see, into parts of yourself you can never see without the mirrors of social media. Like, I don't devalue how transformative it can be. And I have seen firsthand and for others, you know, especially for other folks in my queer communities, the way that social media allowed them to see versions of themselves that they could not see without those models and examples.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:Not to see but connect with potentially.
Amelia Hruby:Yeah. See and potentially connect with. Yeah. Yeah. I know that.
Amelia Hruby:But I still think on the other side of that, like, think we've moved even beyond that where, like, force of the algorithms, the extent of the surveillance, the shadow banning, the banning accounts, Social media platforms are taking all of that away anyway, and we have to build it elsewhere. It is not safe on those platforms anymore. I'm so glad so many people have found and do find it there, but I don't trust those spaces, I don't think anyone should.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:And I think what you're speaking about from the artist creator perspective, also, a lot of it translates super easily to a viewer. Right? I think a lot of people who are listening to this maybe are not artists, are not trying to present their work online. But just what you say about having these constraints in how you create, having constraints in how you consume, you mentioned how do you even experience awe in a in a scroll, endless scroll. I think that is incredibly valuable for people to think about even if they're not trying to make a business or just share art in any way, shape, or form.
Amelia Hruby:Yeah. I do try to differentiate between the sort of creator experience on social media and the user experience on social media. And I do think that, like, if you are just a user or consumer of social media, then you will have different relationships and feelings about the platforms. Because so much of what my experience was as a creator, like, got wrapped up in a lot of that anxiety around if I was being seen or not. But I found that for many of my friends and family members who just use the apps, they don't maybe they post something every once in a while, but they're not trying to build a platform.
Amelia Hruby:They don't wanna be more visible. Many of them, in fact, don't want to be visible at all. They have very private profiles. They don't let people follow them. But even there, your choices are being dictated by the apps.
Amelia Hruby:Your taste is being dictated by the apps. Your attention is being reshaped by the apps. I think that creators sometimes we have this sort of like false belief in our agency on social media for users. I just don't think that agency is very present at all. Maybe you don't have that false belief.
Amelia Hruby:And maybe you're getting something else out of it. Like I find, again, while I was writing this book and talking to people about their social media use, I find that most users go to the app searching for connection or entertainment. And a lot of people just go to social media to be entertained, and that is what they find there. And they find that gratifying. And I find entertainment elsewhere.
Amelia Hruby:I just don't do it on social media. So I think it's about the clarity of what you want. And most of us have been so conditioned to just open the app all the time that we don't actually ever ask ourselves what we want from
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:Right.
Amelia Hruby:Showing up there.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:Maybe at least having some awareness of what different types of entertainment are doing to you, I think, is always a good line of inquiry for oneself.
Amelia Hruby:Yeah. Absolutely. I think that the pervasiveness of numbing out by scrolling is not beneficial for anyone. And so much of that is what we call entertainment.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:Amelia, now that you have left social media, I'm not going to assume that the world that you're that you've created around you is perfect. And we know that these insidious forces that I don't know if we've actually named too many of them, but maybe we wanna name some of them. But they're they're trying to get I guess, like, worm their way into our lives in all different kinds of ways. You have a really clear sense of of what your values are and how you wanna engage in the world. And I think when you were on social media, you're naming that there was such a contradiction that came to be that, like, you couldn't ignore anymore.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:And you were incredibly brave and courageous and you left. Now that you're no longer there, are you still on guard for your creativity, your creations, your communities, like, being seized, co opted, like, infiltrated in in different ways? Just, like, how you approach, like, looking at all the ways in which you engage in the world to sort of be aware of what's happening and who's potentially, like, creeping in and and starting to, like, manipulate you or any of us unnoticed.
Amelia Hruby:Yeah. I'm just noticing the sort of language that you've used of, like, being on guard or things creeping in or manipulating. My fear
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:my fear of my existence right now in this country?
Amelia Hruby:Well, I think that somehow I have this ability, and I don't totally know how. I can't necessarily teach it to anyone. But, like, I both feel very sensitive to the ways that my attention is extracted, manipulated, and directed toward things I didn't choose. I feel sensitive to that without feeling like I have to be hypervigilant or like I need to close myself off from the world. I think that I maintain a very kind of open aura to many degrees.
Amelia Hruby:And I think there are a few reasons I'm able to do that. One is that I have left the platforms. The places I'm sharing and showing up now have a lot more agency in those spaces. Podcasting is a space where I get to kind of broadcast from my mic and my desk at home. I mostly show up on my own websites and in my own community that people have paid to join.
Amelia Hruby:And so that provides me with a lot of felt sense of safety. So I'm not worried about those things. I also think that the fact that I've moved to an area where there isn't much community around this. I don't really know small business owners here. And that means that I'm not living this sort of weird public life.
Amelia Hruby:I get on my computer, I do my things, I meet the people, and then I get off my computer and I just live my normal life. I've thought about if I was doing this in Chicago, I think it would be different because I would feel a different pressure because there's a lot of listeners there. And I might see them in public. And what would it mean to be in my pajamas at the grocery store and somebody's like, I listen to your podcast. Like, don't have to do any of that because nobody here is listening to my podcast.
Amelia Hruby:So I've really created both this like physical distance from my work and my online life and like chosen these spaces where I can show up. And that allows me to be really open and really generous and still feel safe. And that is paired with then this like cultivated sensitivity to the dynamics of just big tech and the fact that the dominant mode of monetization on the internet is still data mining and ad sales, right? Maybe eventually that will change. Maybe data and ads will one day not be the most valuable thing and our experience of the Internet will totally change.
Amelia Hruby:But I have seen people who've gone through horrible experiences online, who've been doxxed, who have had to shut themselves off from the world because of the ways that they have been surveilled or persecuted. And that's really challenging. And I feel very lucky that has not been my experience, that I've been able to sort of maintain this openness and sense of safety. And yes, I receive some mean emails and like, yes, I get some comments here and there, but it's not overwhelming. And I think about this a lot as I think about how big I want my platform to grow.
Amelia Hruby:I don't want to be mainstream. I don't want to be huge because it comes with all of that. I don't want that degree of public scrutiny and attention. I much prefer a smaller, more curated relationship to my work and the people who appreciate it. And I guess that's how I'm thinking about this right now.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:One thing I love about the way you think is that you think by creating. Like, that you have a question, you have an interest, you're curious about that something, and you leap right into creating a project or a collaboration or a community, a podcast. And I'm wondering what is the question that you're sort of within right now without having a clear cut answer yet.
Amelia Hruby:I think a lot of this year for me has been about when do I say yes and when do I say no. And I have this sort of underlying belief that I've built my career around saying yes to everything. I've been a big say yes person, but also I'm, like, tired. Yeah. Also, like, and I think this comes up because you mentioned collaborations and projects.
Amelia Hruby:And so it's like, I have this urge that every invitation I get I should say yes to, or every idea I have I should say yes to executing it. And I have a very high capacity for doing things and being out in the proverbial world and like all of this. But I'm really trying to cultivate a different story and a different sense of the yes and the no so that when I am showing up, it is like in my fullest and with clear intention. And, you know, something I've learned from you, Rebecca, in the experience of being a guest on this podcast is that that's not all on me. Like, actually, the way that you showed up to invite me to be a guest and the intentionality that you brought to that invitation and to the preparation for it, like, one, made it such an easy, honest, excited yes, and two, like, facilitated me showing up in this way.
Amelia Hruby:And I think that that's really something I'm sitting with is this sort of mutuality of every invitation. And, yeah, I just feel excited for more collaborations of this kind.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:That is so kind. Last question. Do you have an imagination invitation for the audience? I mean, the obvious one is just to take a break from social media, but I wanna leave it to you anything that you want to give just to have people check-in with how they're imagining the world and their place in it.
Amelia Hruby:I mean, I'm always here to encourage us to put our phones away or take a break from scrolling. But, you know, I think what's really come through this conversation is the sort of importance of asking ourselves why we're doing something and of investigating every thought we have that we should be doing something or behaving in a certain way or showing up somewhere. So if folks want to, you know, leave social media, I have a whole free toolkit for that and a whole podcast with over a 100 episodes about that. But I think what I wanna share here is a practice that I learned years ago from Alex at Rec Center. I was in a course with her, and she had us do should diaries.
Amelia Hruby:And so for a day, job was to write down every time you had the thought that you should do something. And that was really illuminating for me. It just brought up how much I had that thought. And as I say this to you, I have pulled it up in my phone note, and I did it for a couple days. And, like, the shoulds were so clear.
Amelia Hruby:Like, I'll just read a few. I should get out of bed. I should shower. I should not spend money on that. I should go back to sleep.
Amelia Hruby:I should go to the farmer's market. I should wear this face mask longer. I should sit at my altar. I should should reorder my perfume. I should mail these gifts to my friends.
Amelia Hruby:I should clean today. I should put things away. I should read something. I should take a break. I should keep working.
Amelia Hruby:I should quit working. I should keep working. I should quit working. That's a whole list of those.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:Oh my goodness.
Amelia Hruby:Doing that practice and then sitting with and kind of investigating those lists and being like, that keep working, quit working is pointing to something deeper that's going on in my story around work and how can I pull that out? And I think that you know, this happened a few months after I left social media, but it would have been really helpful if I had done it before. I'm sure it would have surfaced so many shoulds around Instagram that it would have led me to get off the platform perhaps even sooner. Mhmm. And so I just think starting there, starting with surfacing and articulating all of these shoulds that show up in our lives, that will point us toward the areas that perhaps we are operating from a sense of what the system wants instead of what we want.
Amelia Hruby:And then that can help us get to our actually, like, our core desires and the things we really wanna be doing and being in the world. And that's really what I'm invested in. Like, getting off of social media is important for that work, And I talk about that so much because I think it is a major site of transformation for so many people. But whether social media is like a sticking point for you or not, investigating your shoulds will lead you toward a more liberated life. Like, I truly believe that.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:Oh, I appreciate that so much. What is one thing that you want to do today that's not a should?
Amelia Hruby:That's a great question. I think that, you know, in this immediate moment, I want to eat something, and I feel like I should reply to this email that just showed up in my inbox before that, but I'm not gonna do that. I'm going to listen to my body and get a snack and get some water and step away from my screen after this beautiful recording session. Thank you so much for tuning in to my conversation with Rebecca from the Imagination State podcast. I really wanna encourage you to go check out her show.
Amelia Hruby:She makes beautiful visuals for each episode that you can see in Apple or Spotify or on her website. And she just had so many great conversations beyond the one she had with me there. So please go check out Rebecca's work. And then, of course, if you enjoy what I share here on Off the Grid, please grab a copy of my book. You can find it at offthegrid.funattention.
Amelia Hruby:And of course, I invite you to buy a bundle and come to our retreat November. It's all virtual. It'll be super reflective, connective. And of course, recordings are provided, but only if you buy the book bundle. That's the only way to come.
Amelia Hruby:So that's it for today. Thank you so much for joining me on a book launch day. And until next time, I will see you off the grid. Thanks for listening to off the grid. Don't forget to grab your free living social media toolkit at offthegrid.fun/toolkit.
Amelia Hruby:This podcast is a softer sounds production. Our music is by Melissa Kaitlyn Carter of Making Audio Magic, and our logo is by N'atelier Studio. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. And until next time, I'll see you off the grid and on the interweb.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer:I know that you really wanna put your phone away. Yeah. Let's go off the grid.
Creators and Guests
