👋 The Privilege of Leaving Social Media — Being a Working Writer & Valuing Art with River Selby

Amelia HrubyHey there, Off the Grid listeners. Amelia here popping in before this episode with a special announcement. Come to class, which is my three day workshop intensive, where I will teach you how to teach and sell online with confidence and care, has been rescheduled for June fourth, fifth, and sixth. You probably heard me talking about it here on the podcast in May, and I had to push the dates because my beloved dog, Zoe, sadly passed away the week that come to class was going to happen, and I just couldn't teach in those immediate moments of grief. So I rescheduled come to class for the beginning of June, and I added even more support if you'd like to join us.

Amelia HrubySo this is just a very quick message to invite you to head to the show notes and check out come to class. You have until the end of May to sign up. It's going to be a great time. And since it had to be rescheduled, you can still join. Again, head to the link in the show notes to sign up.

Amelia HrubyNow, let's get into this episode.

Speaker 1Let's go off the grid. Okay. Let's go off the grid. Okay. I know that you really wanna put your phone away.

Speaker 1Yeah. Let's go off the grid.

Amelia HrubyHello, and welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast about leaving social media without losing all your clients, or today, a show about why many artists and creatives and writers and small business owners feel like they still have to stay on social media, even when they try to leave and go back and try to leave and go back, and how to begin disentangling that for yourself. I'm your host, Amelia Frooby, and on this show, I share stories, strategies, and experiments for sharing your work and making money online without relying on big tech. In today's episode, I am talking to River Selby, a writer, PhD candidate, and former wildlife firefighter who published their first book last year, which was a memoir about their time working on fires in Oregon, California, Colorado, and Alaska. And that memoir is called Hot Shot, A Life of Fire. It came out with Grove Atlantic in 2025, and I got to see and meet River last year when they came through Nebraska for their book tour, which was a real treat.

Amelia HrubyAnd we had this conversation for the podcast in honor of the paperback version of their book coming out, which just released a few weeks ago as this episode goes live. So if you pressed play on this episode, I'm really glad you're here because we are going to talk about how to quit performing and projecting on social media, what to do when compare and despair becomes unavoidable on the apps, how financial insecurity and not having a safety net might impact your social media and marketing options, why many authors have to hire publicists, but River and I couldn't afford to, ways social media impacts your financial well-being. And at the end, we have a beautiful conversation about how books have become commodities and why we want to treat them like art again and change publishing in the process. So all of that is coming up in this episode, and I'm so glad you've tuned in for it. And since you have, I also want to invite you to go get a copy of River's book.

Amelia HrubyThis is also an episode about being a working writer, about trying to make your living through writing, and that means we need readers to buy the books, to support River, to support other writers. So if you head to the show notes, you will find a link to buy the fresh paperback version of Hot Shot, and I hope you will do that while you listen to this episode. For now, let's dive in, shall we? Here's my conversation with River Selvi.

Amelia HrubyHi, River. Welcome to Off the Grid.

River SelbyHi. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really happy to be here.

Amelia HrubyYou might be one of

Amelia Hrubythe first guests that, like, I didn't know before I started the podcast, and then I met in person before I had you on. I'm always meeting people online and then meeting them in person, but we got to meet in person when you came through Lincoln for your book reading last year, and it's such a treat to revisit and reopen our conversation.

River SelbyI feel the same. It was really exciting.

Amelia HrubyI wanted to ask you if you might sort of take us in by just telling listeners, like, how did you get on social media and what was your initial presence there like? What were the early days of social media like for you?

River SelbySo I was born in 1980, which means I'm like millennial gen x cusp. And when I was a teenager, my mom married this guy who worked in tech and project management. And so they had an office and the internet and all this stuff when the internet was really starting to become a thing. And in my late teens, I found this poetry site where people just wrote poetry and I was on there and it was like a social media site for poetry. And this was even before a live journal and all of that stuff.

River SelbySo that's kind of how I first got online with social media and also started writing online and with real, quote, unquote, social media. I was an early adopter. Like, I had an iPhone when it first came out. I was on Instagram before it was Instagram. I can't remember what it was called.

River SelbyI got on Facebook when it came out. I remember a friend told me about it. And I've always been somebody who is very honest about my experience. And I had blogs before social media happened. So I kind of treated Facebook like a blog and just kind of blogged on Facebook.

River SelbyAnd then over time, it took over my life. I think with Twitter, especially in the late aughts, I was on Twitter. And all this time, I was actually working as a wildland firefighter and nanny. I hadn't gone to a four year college. I wasn't a quote unquote writer.

River SelbyI didn't see myself as a writer. That felt kind of like a pipe dream to me. And when I got on Twitter and started interacting with other writers on real writers, quote unquote, I realized that this was a space where you could be seen as a writer kind of no matter your background. And I think now on social media, you can present yourself as whatever you want, no matter what's happening in your life. So it has been a really interesting journey.

Amelia HrubyYeah. Thank you so much for sharing.

Amelia HrubyI'm really appreciating that just sense of curiosity and connection that I always find with folks who are on, like, the early Internet, who were the early adopters, who had blogs, who had live journals, who were, like, really in those spaces, sharing online, connecting online. And then the ways that that shifted as these platforms sort of calcified, and now the way we present ourselves online, like, it used to me to feel so much like finding myself, and now it feels like performing myself, I guess, for lack of a better phrase. And also, I hear how empowering that could be, right, to, like, be in a world that suggests you can't be a writer unless you go to college and you have publications and people respect your writing and your use of language to go from, like, that worldview to, like, oh, I can just get on Twitter and, like, put some blog posts up and call myself a writer and people will believe I'm a writer. Something I loved about social media was the way that it broke down a lot of traditional hierarchies in industries, especially like publishing, the way that it dissolved some of the gates and the gatekeepers around that.

Amelia HrubyBut I also think most of those gates and hierarchies have kind of recreated themselves now through the lens of how big is your social media platform. So how do you feel about social media now? Now that you've made this transition from being someone who was like, I don't know that I could be a writer to, you know, being a PhD student, having published your first book, now you have those accolades that the world told you were necessary to be a writer. You have them. You don't need Twitter to tell you you're a writer because you have the other stuff that says you're a writer.

Amelia HrubyAlso, I hope some of the, like, you know, inner work and confidence just proclaim you're a writer, I assume, and know that about you. So how do you feel about social media now from this place?

River SelbyIt's funny because I had emailed you about the podcast. And in my email, I was like, let's talk about me going off of social media and quitting all my social media accounts. And as we're talking today, I am back on social media and I feel like that in itself makes it clear that I am conflicted about the social media landscape now. I feel like the way I engage in social media, I really do try to continue to engage in the way that I've always engaged, which is being authentic about my experiences and who I am. I have a Substack and I was on Substack when it first started in 2020.

River SelbyAnd that is very much a space where I just write essays about things I'm experiencing and I haven't niched down. I've tried. It's just not me. So I do feel resistant to a lot of the ways in which social media tries to force users to perform and inhabit these niches. And I think that one of the biggest conflicts I have with social media is how addictive it is.

River SelbyAs someone who personally, I have struggled with addiction. I was struggling with addiction as a teenager and before I became a firefighter and after, and it is an incredibly addictive space by design. But I also think after doing a lot of research that I have learned how exploitative social media is and that when I use it, I feel bad. When I was off of social media and I have taken months long social media breaks, I've quit social media for long periods of time in my life. I think I quit for almost a year at one point.

River SelbyAnd I always notice when I get back on social media that there's a sharp rise in my anxiety. And this is also by design. It is by design that these companies create an environment where things are frantic and things feel scary and things feel competitive. And I also think, you know, comparing my experience now to say Twitter in the late aughts or early 2010s, the focus on engagement on follower accounts, but also the advertising and just a real focus on here are my accomplishments, here's what I've done. And even when I was getting ready to release my book and after it came out, publicist, which I didn't have, like, a publicist that I hired, which I didn't even know that that was a thing people did.

River SelbyIt is.

Amelia HrubyIt definitely is.

River SelbyIt definitely is. I didn't have that, but I spoke to a publicist, then they basically told me that as long as it looks like your book is doing good, that's what people are gonna believe. And I had all these expectations with the publication of my first book, lots of big expectations. I started undergrad when I was 32 specifically to get into an MFA program because I wanted to write and publish a book. I wrote two books before this one that did not even get agented.

River SelbyYou know, it was a long journey and I had a lot of hopes and dreams and there was a lot of heartbreak after my book came out. I'm grateful for everything that happened, but this idea that I had to project success when I was feeling so heartbroken and upset and feeling like the publishing industry was unfair and learning about how the publishing ecosystem works, that silenced me for a while. And finally, I was just like, you know what? I am just gonna be honest because what am I doing if I'm not being honest? I'm a writer who's always been honest about my experience.

River SelbyThat's like who I am and how I communicate. And I do think that the way social media is now, so many people who in their writing outside of social media or in their art outside of social media might be really honest about their experiences are projecting something else on social media. And I've been there and I've done that. That's not to shame anybody at all. I think that that is kind of what the social media companies have cultivated and and what other industries have really played into.

Amelia HrubyThe first thing I was thinking as you shared is that I just wanted to say that you are not the first person who has pitched me to be on the show when they were off social media and then was back on by the time we talked or by the time their episode came out. This is actually somewhat common because it's so tumultuous and it's really challenging to step away from or leave these platforms. And, you know, I am here holding the space of, like, I am off and I have been off for five years, but it is not my expectation that everyone does that. Like, I think my commitment to that kind of holds open the portal of off the grid, but but it doesn't mean that everyone who comes here needs to make that type of commitment. Like, that's my job as the host of the show, as the gatherer of this community.

Amelia HrubyThat's not everyone who arrives here's job. And so I appreciate that you're so, like, upfront and honest about that, and also I celebrate it. I was also just really following you and with you on what I'm starting to see as this clear tension between being a writer and being on social media. Because what I feel like you're saying is that there is something inherently contradictory, paradoxical intention between trying to access the truth in your writing and being told you have to perform a success that doesn't feel true on social media. And, of course, that would be hard.

Amelia HrubyOf course, that is kind of impossible. Right? And this is, I think, one of the challenges, but to me, just like impossible hurdles of publishing then is, like, to write the book, you have to go so deep into what's true. It can't just be a performance. But then once you get the book out, you're told by everyone in the industry that there needs to be this certain type of performance, which is also my experience, not in exactly the same language or way as yours, but similarly.

Amelia HrubyAnd I just appreciate you kinda bringing that together and elucidating that because I think it's you know, a lot of us will talk about, like, performing on social media, but, like, that's sort of a novelty or like, we know we're doing it. Branding. Niche. But, like, I think it does much deeper, like, harm to the creative process.

River SelbyI agree. It does do a lot of harm to the creative process for me. You know, I'm not going to generalize for everyone, but for me, it has. I will just caveat this by saying that my publisher, I'm very lucky and that my publisher was like, it's fine if you're not on social media. I'm with an independent publisher, and I don't feel like that's an experience that people have if they're with the larger publishers or even some other indies.

River SelbyBut I knew that I was not gonna have big publicity push, you know, and I was just like, okay. I'm on social media. And I really experienced so much of the sense of scarcity or sense of unfairness. Some of the unfairness was very real, and I would have felt it without social media. But watching other people's success on social media or projected success when you're not feeling the same way is so demoralizing and harmful.

River SelbyAnd for me, it really put me in a place where I was questioning my abilities as a writer, where I was questioning whether my book was any good or not. And I had worked on my book for so long and it is good And that's real. That's a real impact. And I do think that ironically, social media kind of came to be, I mean, every platform came to be in its own way. Not all of them in a positive way.

River SelbyBut the supposed idea behind social media was to connect people. My experience, especially in the past, I don't know, five, six, seven years has been that it is not connecting people, that it is a space where people feel bad about themselves and compare themselves to others and are placing themselves kind of in competition or in a position with others. And I try to resist that as much as I can. And then I'm in a much better place now with myself and and everything, but it did make things so much harder for me after my book came out.

Amelia HrubyYeah. I appreciate you sharing that because I also feel like compare and despair is another phrase that we just kinda, like, throw around and laugh off at this point. But in my experience of social media, it was very present. And I it's something I talk about less. I shared a conversation earlier in the spring I had with someone where I sort of or had with Natalie of the baggage reclaim podcast, where I talked about how I used to just go, like, shopping for flaws and failures on social media.

Amelia HrubyLike, my subconscious would be in a bad way, and I would just start scrolling and be like, oh, well, I am not as attractive as this person, or I am not as accomplished as this person, or, oh, like I joked on that show, which is so true. It's like, well, this person won a Pulitzer. Why haven't I won a Pulitzer? And I'm like, I'm not a journalist. I've never published anything.

Amelia HrubyOr, you know, the more maybe perhaps like normal quote, unquote, the more common one is like Forbes 30 Under 30. Like, why am I not on that list? And I'm like, they've done research of how many people on those lists have been now been accused of crimes because there are things they were doing were fake. So it's like, again, it goes back to that performance, but these apps set us up for this type of comparison. And I think that it's almost like sometimes we expect a sort of, like, superhuman ability of ourselves to be able to avoid that, and I don't find it avoidable.

Amelia HrubySo when I talk to people about leaving social media, it always comes down to two questions. It's how does it feel and is it working? And I feel like we've really gotten into, like, it feels bad so much of the time, especially if you're someone who has addictive tendencies, you know, has a history of being insecure or unsupported. Like social media is a really precarious place if that is the case. And I experienced that in my own ways as well, for sure.

Amelia HrubyI wanted to weave something else into the conversation that I know you write about regularly and that I've really appreciated your perspective on, which is that as someone who grew up in poverty and has had a lot of barriers around financial success, social media, you know, when we talk about performing success, it's one thing to be in a secure financial place and like perform whatever you're performing. It's another thing when it feels like your entire livelihood is at stake in that performance. I think that the stakes are very different in all aspects of life based on your financial resources, but also on social media. And I'm just curious if you would share any reflections on, like, the role of privilege and resourcing and access when you think about whether you're on social media or not at any point in time.

River SelbyYeah. I have thought about this so much, and there are a few different kind of threads that I have in my mind. One of them is social media is a space where it can feel like you're doing an action. It can feel like you're doing something about something. So when you're somebody like me who does not have a safety net, I don't have a family safety net.

River SelbyI don't have savings. There's no safety net. And we don't have a social safety net here in The US. And social media gives this false often sense of agency, sometimes a real sense of agency, depending it's all subjective. I guess when I left social media this last time, I immediately started feeling panic.

River SelbyIt was the first time this had ever happened. I've left social media many times before, but I I felt this sense of panic because it felt like I had found this sense, not necessarily some somewhat of community on social media, but of connection that feels really vital when you are not feeling connected in real life. And personally, I live in Florida right now. I don't have, for many reasons, not to do with anyone else's fault except for our country. I don't have like a big community here.

River SelbyI don't have a big social support system here. So really social media is where I am connecting with a lot of people other than talking on the phone with friends. And so I did feel this big, just like sense of panic. And I don't think that that would have been the case had I had community or had family or felt supported in my real life. That support system of financial support, family support.

River SelbyAnd I think when we think of scarcity, it's not just financial. Right? So that's a huge factor. And one thing that I learned is that a lot of writers hire publicists. These publicists can cost up to $50,000 and these publicists can do a lot for your book.

River SelbyI learned that very shortly after my book came out and that kind of rocked my world and it changed the way that I saw publishing. And I wanna be delicate when I say this because I don't wanna take away from anyone else's success. Many books find success without publicists. But in publishing right now, a lot of books find success with publicists. And their publicists connections that can do a lot for your book.

River SelbySo, because I don't have that and I can't access that financially, social media became incredibly important for me to try and find a readership for my book. And, you know, I got back on social media and it does help me feel like, okay, I'm doing something. I can't pay someone else to do something for me, but I am at least trying to do something. And I there's more there, but I do think that when you have funds, you can pay people to do the things that you don't want to do. You can pay people to market your things when you don't have the money you cannot, and it makes it much harder to extricate yourself from these systems that have actually become systems of self marketing.

River SelbyThat's really what social media kind of is now is a system of marketing oneself. And then you're subjecting yourself to all of the algorithm stuff, and you have to subject yourself to all of that, which can further put you in a mental place where you're not feeling great. And it becomes just this cycle. You know?

Amelia HrubyYou know, something I often or I try to acknowledge when I talk about leaving social media is the way that social media can be a sort of path out for so many people of a circumstance that they can't escape for a certain period of time or in general. And it can be a place of opportunity. And I really see and hear and feel that. Right? You know, especially, you know, as someone who grew up in the South and very much lived through this time, right, when, like, being queer is not okay, like, being able to access spaces online that present both through, like, representation and shared experience, the lives you might want to lead or the world you might want to live in.

Amelia HrubyI think that's really valuable, whether you're dreaming of just being queer or being a writer or any of these things. Like, I think there's a lot of possibility there. And also I feel like we have to weigh that against them, the harms that come to our mental well-being and health as we navigate those spaces and how toxic they can be. And I really appreciate how you're weaving in this lens of, again, it's like, if you don't have a financial safety net, if you don't have a, you know, in person community where you live, the stakes are just a lot higher to extricate yourself from social media, especially when you add on this layer of publishing, where it is now the author's job to do most of their own publicity. You know, in my experience and with the many authors I speak to, you know, publishing companies will have in house publicity.

Amelia HrubyThey'll have a marketing person that's assigned to your book whose job it is to do certain things for you. But in my experience, what that led to was, like, one sort of book event through a bookstore that actually ended up being online because my traditionally published book came out during COVID. And then they sent a bunch of stuff to BookTok and Bookstagram influencers. Like, that's what the marketing did for my book, and they posted some stuff on their social media channels. That that was what they did.

Amelia HrubyAnd it's not that I don't appreciate that, but it's like none of that led to media features. None of that led to the types of things that publicists access for you. And if anyone listening to this is still under the impression that your publisher will hire the publicist for you, that is not the case. I don't know anyone that that's happening for. I suppose that, like, you know, I don't know the, like, creme de la creme of publishing.

Amelia HrubyI'm sure there are some people who that happens for, but it's not anybody I know, not any of the like independent, you know, like we're out here hustling creators and writers. And so I think it's important to just continue sharing that. And I completely understand how, when in the face of that, in the face of realizing, oh, no one else is gonna publicize my book. So I guess I have to. And I have a ton riding on this book financially, emotionally, personally, politically, socially, like on all the levels, like I have to do the thing, and social media is the place I can do that.

Amelia HrubyLike, I I just wanna say I have, like, so much empathy and understanding with that. I mean, I probably would have made a similar decision in that same position. And so I think that, like, privilege is absolutely a part of the conversation of how we interact with social media. And I don't think it's the whole conversation about social media. It's like there's a lot of harm happening there too, And I don't want it to be that, like, well, people have to be there, so they just better deal with that harm or something like that.

River SelbyThe thing is is that folks who come from poverty or don't have supportive communities where all kinds of different factors that go into whether someone people's levels of privilege, often those folks are also more vulnerable to the harmful aspects of social media. So it really is a double bind. And if anything, it's more of an argument to extricate oneself as much as possible, you know, from social media. And we're all in this bind together, whether you're fully off of social media or whether you're fully on social media or anywhere in between, it is really important that instead of taking on shame or guilt or feeling any sort of personal responsibility, to really understand that these social media companies are predatory. They are going to court and facing lawsuits for exploiting adolescents for endangering adolescents.

River SelbyMetta has had whistleblowers. It's a constant barrage for them of lawsuits that they're facing for their practices. These are predatory companies. And I think what feels frustrating for me as an individual is how good these companies have been at exploiting our need for connection to put us in this bind of, do I stay on and stay connected to all of these people that I'm, I will probably lose contact with fully if I get off of this? Or do I get off of this and like lose contact with everyone?

River SelbyAnd in the meantime, they're taking all of our data and learning from the way that we use our algorithms and refining their techniques of exploitation and essentially creating platforms where we have become in a way employed without payment for these companies. I think it's so much more insidious than we often give credit for. These companies do not have our best interests in mind, and that's something that I want to be part of the conversation more. It's so easy to joke about social media's effect on us and, oh, I'm addicted to social media or, you know, this is how often I check my phone or whatever. But these companies are truly harmful.

Amelia HrubyYeah. Absolutely. I'm always like the first person to be a bummer at a dinner party when social media comes up to the point where now my friends, like, don't bring it up or they, like, look at me when somebody says something. Because if somebody as soon as somebody makes this joke to me, that's like, you know, can't leave Instagram, everybody's there and Meta knows everything about me anyway. I'm the first person to be like, well, do you wanna talk about how harmful it is?

Amelia HrubyWould you like to know what's actually happening to your data? Like, it's not impossible to know these things. Something I experience a lot is people sort of joking and sort of just, like, maintaining this veil of ignorance. Like, well, if I can just say at the surface level, this company already knows everything about me, I can brush it off, then I relieve myself of all responsibility to do anything different. And I don't find that convincing at all personally.

River SelbyYou know, in my own research, and I am a researcher, so I love researching. In my own research, what I've found is that it's actually much darker than these companies know everything about me. These companies know more about us than we know about ourselves. They know all of our subconscious thoughts and actions. One moment of lingering, a millisecond of lingering on something will shape your algorithm.

River SelbyAnd that's what's exploitative about them is often we are drawn to things that we don't actually want to be drawn to. For instance, if you have a history of eating disorders, you can be drawn to content that is in some way going to trigger some of those insecurities. And if you linger on those, you're gonna be fed more of that content. And for fully grown adults, that's difficult. For teenagers, it's incredibly harmful.

River SelbyAnd so I do think I'm also a downer at the dinner party if people are talking about social media. I mean, I know people are really depressed, but it's also like, we don't have to do this. And we do because, like, I'm saying we don't have to do this. I'm on social media, but there's a huge part of me that is just like, okay, everyone. Can we just collectively decide not to do this anymore, please?

River SelbyCan we just, like, make a collective decision to not do this anymore? Because that's the only way we're gonna get out of this. Yeah. And I will just mention, like, I got into this big I never use this word, but I got into this big tizzy about the general strike, which I think is you know, general strike's great. And I was like, why are we not blacking out social media for that day?

River SelbyLike, why are we not making social media part of this? Because if you're not shopping, if you you're saying Amazon is bad, this needs to be a part of the conversation. And it's not because we're so addicted to it. It is it's so much has become part of our whole landscape that it's even hard to kind of decouple social media from our general experience as humans. You know?

Amelia HrubyYeah. It's become incredibly pervasive in that way. I would agree. And I think that I really appreciate what you said about, like, we have to make these changes together. I think that's true from, like, you know, political praxis sense, but also true from a surveillance capitalism sense.

Amelia HrubyBecause in the ways you had mentioned that, like, social media apps are tracking our behaviors, they also track, like, where you're connecting to the Internet from. So if you live with someone and that person's on social media searching things, that can impact your search traffic or your what's coming up in your social media profiles. If a friend comes over and uses your Wi Fi and they search, you know, I don't know, yellow Nikes, you'll start seeing them pop up in your feed. That's where that sense of, like, oh, my phone is listening to me comes from. It's not actually that your phone is listening to you.

Amelia HrubyIt's that not only are we being tracked and surveilled individually, but that's happening in networks as well. And I think that this is where the behavioral manipulation is so intense and so unnoticed. And something I should say more often is, like, frankly, I have just saved so much money by not being on social media, tons, because I'm not buying stuff anymore because I'm influenced to buy it. Right? I have shifted my, like, field of awareness.

Amelia HrubyI don't even know. I will regularly hang out with somebody and be like, oh, those are cute sunglasses. What are they? And they'll be like, oh, they're such and such. Haven't you seen them on Instagram?

Amelia HrubyThey're everywhere on TikTok. And, like, then I go look it up and I'm like, oh, this is like a huge d to c company that's blown up in the past year that I know nothing about and have never been influenced to buy because I'm not on social media. And I now, like, protect my search behavior much more intentionally as well. But this goes back into, like, the double bind. Right?

Amelia HrubyIt's like, also, if you're someone who does not have enough financial resources, if you live or grew up in poverty, you feel like you have to be on social media, but also social media will perpetuate cycles of debt and poverty because the only reason any of this is free to you is because they believe they can manipulate your behavior to get you to buy things. And it's so insidious.

River SelbyThat's so true. And I'm just thinking about, like with my book, a big aspect of my book is the history of fire suppression in The United States and how it is really linked to colonialism and colonization and how Europeans came here and stole land and manipulated narratives throughout history to leverage power. And they exploited the weak, not the weakest people. They exploited the people who did not have access to some of the information that they had tools that they had. And this is what capitalism is.

River SelbyRight? But this is what colonialism is. This is what white supremacy is, is this structure of domination and control. And it sounds so dark because it is really dark. And I think that that is something that is not part of the larger discussion when we're discussing social media, like you said, because it's so the water we're swimming in.

River SelbyAnd these companies don't want us discussing that. You know? But it's true. So much of what I see on social media is buy this, buy this, buy this. Luckily, I don't have a lot of money, So that doesn't really work on me as much as they would like.

River SelbyBut it's true that we'll keep people in literally in poverty because they feel pressured to buy these things. You see something over and over again and you buy it or you impulse buy it and then it's yours. And yeah.

Amelia HrubyYeah. And and social media is just once again, selling us the same old, like, gross capitalist trick of feel lonely and buy something to make it feel better. Right? Like that's been happening before social media, but it's only exacerbated in that space. The space where we go to connect that actually then alienates us, such that we feel bad.

Amelia HrubySo we wanna buy something to feel better, and the cycle just repeats and repeats and repeats. And then they give us, you know, the Klarna pay in four installments. You can have it today for $9, but you'll be paying $9 for the rest of your life. So, like, it's again, it's just really insidious and really challenging. And for me, it has been the reason to stay off of social media.

River SelbyIt's been one of the primary reasons I want to be off of social media. It's one of my primary motivating factors. I think another thing that I found in my research is this concept of the attentional landscape, which is a term that was coined by these, social scientists in Finland. And wherever we go, we are in an ecosystem and we're in a landscape and we're experiencing what's in front of us. And so if we go for a walk in the woods or in a prairie or outside wherever, or in a mall, we're experiencing the world around us and getting input and engaging with it.

River SelbyOn social media, we are in a landscape and an ecosystem. It's not that reciprocal relationship like in other landscapes. It is pulling our attention from us. It's draining us. It's dissociative.

River SelbyAnd that is really harmful to be in the space where we're so inundated with information, with images often that are depressing and the media does not report the good news can really put us in this space of hopelessness, then we're there. We're in a space of hopelessness and we believe that it's hopeless and we give up. And when I've gone off of social media, I think one of a couple of the most pronounced features of my life when I'm not on social media is that one, I am more present. It's almost like I, my eyes are more open. My life feels quieter.

River SelbyI feel more engaged. I'm more in my own space. That is the best feature of being off of social media. And I do start to reach out to friends in real life. And when I'm on social media, I can feel that it almost feels like there are two of me.

River SelbyThere's the person of me who is on social media. It's like this little part of my brain. That's like still attached to social media. And then there's me who feels less engaged in general in my constant longing to be without social media. It really is a longing to be in deeper connection with the world and with myself and with the people around me.

River SelbyEven more than I don't wanna be a part of this evil system. It's like, actually, I just I wanna be living my life, you know, Because I'm a human being, we only got this life. You know?

Amelia HrubyI think that's a really beautiful reflection and is so poignant, obviously, for this podcast. And it also has me thinking about like the life of a writer. Right? I think of writers as part of our job is to hone our attention, to be able to notice things, to weave together experiences, our own or otherwise. But particularly, I think in nonfiction writing, we have to have, like, a very clear outwardly focused attention that's, like, drawing from the world, from research, from our lived experience to weave that together into an essay or a book or, you know, if you're not a writer, but you're a visual artist, a painting or a film or whatever it is you might be creating.

Amelia HrubyAnd I often reflect on what it means that writers who want to be published now also have to be marketers. It's not optional. And I love marketing. I love being in business. I don't mind having to create a whole business in order to publish my work and share it with the world.

Amelia HrubyBut I don't think that that is common among writers necessarily, and I know it's an ongoing topic of conversation, but I I feel like the landscape of publishing has just gotten so much more and more challenging as these, like, financial pressures have increased, and then now is, like, the pressure of AI has entered the chatbot, we could say. So, like, I'm curious for you, how are you thinking about being a writer and publishing your work, you know, in 2026 and beyond? Your debut book has come out. I know you're working on other projects. I know you're finishing your PhD.

Amelia HrubyLike, do you see yourself staying in the landscape of traditional publishing and academia? Do you want to go elsewhere? Like, how are you sort of grappling with the present and looking ahead?

River SelbyI think first I want to kind of get at what you were saying as far as what it means to be a writer in the world and how much attention that takes. You know, as writers, we really are weaving together so many different, I call it, this is the name of my newsletter. I call it gathering, like just gathering. And this is something that I love so much. And that that takes attention and observation and presence and lots of kind of thinking, which is not happening when you're on social media.

River SelbyAnd you save whatever Instagram things that you never look at again. And so I think that looking ahead for myself, I really I do want to get off of social media. And my paperback comes out in a little less than a month. I think it will be out by the time this is out. But I think that once my paperback is out, I do want to just stop for a while.

River SelbyAnd maybe this time, I don't tell myself I'm gonna leave social media forever, so I don't have panic attacks about it. And I want to find a way to write and put things in the world without needing to market myself on social media. I think that there's a lot that I can learn from you. There's a lot of people I can learn from who do that. And I also think that one of the reasons I do use social media is because it feels so easy.

River SelbyBut like with my newsletter, it is harder for me to write a newsletter than it is for me to make a quick social media post about something. But what I'm getting back from writing an essay is so much more than anything I'm getting back from posting on social media. I have been on the academic job market. It has been horrible. I do not like it.

River SelbyI don't think that academia is the right place for me. Maybe my mind will be changed. I have a year left in my PhD. I I probably will go back on the market next year, but that's a really challenging space right now. And I'm working on my next book.

River SelbyAnd in order for me to work on my next book, I need to have that space to do it where I'm not getting constant feedback about what is important in publishing right now or what you should write. After my book came out, I had a whole so many discussions with people who had just published books, who were like, should I write a cozy romance, or should I write, like, a sci fi blah blah blah? Like, you know, people who had published not cozy romances or sci fi and no shade to cozy romances or sci fi. You know? But, like, how do I have to shape myself?

River SelbyAnd that's something that I do not want to do in my life. I do not want to write something for an industry. I want to write something that feels really true to me and that comes out of me in an organic way. And so I do think that there needs to be, for me, space without feedback from what people are doing, what people are publishing. Who got this publishing deal?

River SelbyWho got that publishing deal? Who won this prize or that prize? It's really important. I am paralyzed if I'm not giving myself that space.

Amelia HrubyYeah. I think without that space, the writing just becomes a commodity. Right? I mean, I'm not trying to critique writers who are like, I'll just do the cozy romance. Like, I get it.

Amelia HrubyBut when we're operating from that place of, I need to find a trend and then write for it so that it's saleable and I can make money. Like, that, that's a commodified approach to a writing project, which is different than what you're describing.

River SelbyYes. Totally. I actually was rereading a bunch of Ursula Kaeligan, essays, and she wrote this essay for Harper's called Staying Awake, Notes on the Alleged Decline of Reading. And it's really a critique of the publishing industry. And essentially what she's she talks about in the essay is how there's this constant dialogue around whether reading enough people are reading.

River SelbyAnd her argument is that not everyone has always been reading. There's always been a large portion of the population that's not reading. And she writes about how publishers have commodified books, have made it a commodity. And one of my favorite lines is, but then the stupidity of the contemporary corporation owned publishing company is fathomless. They think that they can sell books as commodities.

River SelbyAnd she really writes about how reading is not supposed to be an entertainment, that in order to read a book, readers need to enter with their mind and their heart and open themselves to a book. And I think that that's what's so special about reading is, you know, this can happen with film too, where there's so much happening underneath and there's so many different techniques being used where it really can be an experience and you can come out on the other end, literally a different person than when you started reading the book. That's why I'm a writer. That's why I love reading because there are few things in our world that can do that, that can really put a reader through an experience and create a new understanding of something in a really in-depth way. And I feel like when we commodify books, that's not what's being prioritized.

River SelbyWhat's being prioritized is, is what's gonna sell. And frankly, something I learned from publishing is that they don't know what's gonna sell. They have no idea. Yeah. They have no idea what is going to sell.

Amelia HrubyThat's so true. That's so true. Thank you for bringing in this essay and this point because, you know, my dissertation was on aesthetics and the ways that our experiences of beauty and sublimity can radically, like, open and change us and how that can be the sort of, like, practice ground that can become, like, an ethics that reshapes how we interact with other people without preconceiving of them or overly conceptualizing them, etcetera. And I deeply believe in the way that we can be changed by art, and I am incredibly aware when I'm reading something that's changing me versus when I'm reading you know, I read a lot of romance, for instance, and I love romance, but, like, you know, if it's a book that is heavily based on a trope where I know exactly what's gonna happen, the characters feel like types more than individuals, then I I'm not gonna be changed by that book. I'm gonna enjoy that book.

Amelia HrubyIt's in gonna be entertaining to me, and I see the value in that, but it's so different than when I'm reading something that I'm like, this is changing me. For instance, I see tilt behind you on your bookshelf, and I loved that book. I was like, oh, it's sticky. It opened something. It it made me think in a new and different way.

Amelia HrubyI don't know that I was a totally different person on the other side, but I was different, and I could feel that. And honestly, film is the same way. Right? Through the mechanism of Hollywood, we see all the challenges of films being able to be art in a world where they are told they should be a commodity. We see the same thing with books, and I think that there's so much at stake in all of this.

Amelia HrubyAnd it now becomes the role of, like, each writer, artist, creator to carve out a space where they can maintain that creative act, where something can still be art even in the face of these, like, commodifying industries. And I don't have any answers for that for us today, but I'm glad that you and I are both in the fight for that because it feels really important.

River SelbyIt is really important. And I do think that, you know, something I think about a lot is how the act of engaging with social media makes it harder to engage with complexity. It is really hard to be nuanced on social media, not just like with a solo social media post, but with the reaction to the post and the conversations that are happening on there. And, and our brains are influenced by that. We have neuroplasticity, you know?

River SelbyAnd so I do, I think about how lovely it feels to watch a film that is slow and really saying so many things to allow myself to experience that. And it's such a different