Crosspost from cohost

(this is my longest post ever. it's also rambly since i drafted it when the announcement was newer, and tried to make some grand statement that tied everything together. since then my feelings have cooled down a little, but the sentiment remains the same.)

i don't actually remember the day i made an account, but my notifications go back to 2022, so i'm taking that as my join year. joined because people i follow on twitter joined, stayed because those people kept posting good posts. eventually, i even managed to find new people to follow. quite a lot of new people, in fact.

"i follow people that make good posts" was pretty much the only reason I used cohost. i only ever lurked on twitter and tumblr, mostly just reblogging and retweeting. so i never got the worst of social media. no one tried to argue with me in dms, and no one tried to harass me because i pretty much didn't exist to most people. i didn't care if someone got mad at me for saying something slightly wrong because i didn't say anything at all. i did make posts, but super rarely. i didn't have any issue with post stats and numbers because those were for other people, not something I got. i tuned them out unless they were 69 or 420.

so while others were coming here to enjoy a calmer social media space, i just found a good website. it was fun seeing twitter people get introduced to a tumblr-style social media. and that was what cohost was to me. it eventually grew into something more thanks to the stuff below, but that's what it was at first.

eventually, i even started posting myself. i think I started because i wanted to finally write posts and not just share them, to create and not read, so that I could share the things I found on the internet. That reason sounds right. And when I made posts, people liked and reblogged them. i got a lot of followers. some of staff even followed me. i got more hits here than on any other site, which is pretty ironic considering what most others like about this place. not that i thought it was anything special. i know I only got notes[^1] because i made actual posts to get notes on. I would have gotten followers and even mutuals on any other website if I'd done so there. it also probably helped that i was posting when there weren't many people here, so it was easier to get discovered here.

eventually, i got caught up in the community enough to start doing more. I posted more. I felt good when cohost got into the news and got recommended as a twitter alternative. I started sharing some of the cool things I found on the internet here, getting in the spirit of old internet revival this place fostered. those were often my most popular posts. i downloaded userscripts and extensions to patch over the unpolished parts of using this website. i even made side blogs.

I started to pick up on good habits here. checking out the profiles of people that followed me here and following back if i liked their posts. Unfollowing people if I realized I didn't gel with their posts on my timeline. I carried those habits into other social media. I've unfollowed a lot of accounts on twitter, every one making it a little less addicting.

best parts of cohost itself

eggbug

one of the selling points i remember cohost touting was combining the best of twitter, tumblr, and reddit. cohost, of course, mostly took from tumblr. i don't know of anything it took from twitter. Pretty much the only thing it took from reddit is "having a mascot".

that being said, eggbug is easily the best thing to come out of cohost. the best mascot. lovely little guy. it's always a delight to see him, in art, in css crimes, anything. it's a shame i never got the plush.

css in posts

the Killer Feature^tm of the site. i enjoyed experiencing every "css crime", and it was worth some of them making mobile scrolling choppy. every one i encountered was a treat, from eggbug playground to blackle's artworks. it felt good when the css posting got cohost into articles, in a cheerleader sort of way.

rhythm games

since audio could be played at the same time, stuff like this could happen. fun as hell times.

artist alley

turns out people will read and engage with ads on purpose if they're optional. in all seriousness, even though I never browsed it much myself, it still felt nice that someone did that. i did install the userscript that replaced cohost corner with artist alley, though that was mostly because cohost corner was mostly pointless to be honest.

stuff i did on cohost

these are not necessarily in chronological order

post, actually post instead of just reblog

like i said, this was the first site (other than maybe my website, first social media site at least) where I actually made posts. the most iconic posts i remember doing were spreading the news of pretendo, netpass, and the spotpass archival project, the nintendo network and xbox 360 marketplace shutdown, and other such news and cool things. i even did a css crime myself, by editing the one i reblogged. there was a brief period at the start where I tried to compile cool tumblr posts I saw and bring them here, but i eventually had to stop because it wasn't worth the effort in the end.

Actually, i think i might have been the person to bring the concept of trick or treating cohost asks during Halloween from tumblr to cohost?

finally sharing a fan character that someone made for a fake wario game presentation was good. i was originally going to say this was probably one of my first viral posts (link goes to a reblog with comments by others because the gif is really what made that post what it is). But that wasn't true. there were viral posts i made before. i can't check my notifications past a certain point, so I can't tell what was my first one, and i honestly don't care that much.

#[EGBG] Flying Eggbugs, the Titanfall 2 Network

I actually got so into the community that I created a network in tf2 to spread the word. Unfortunately, i fell off shortly after. as I say here, i guess everyone moved to northstar anyway.

start a sideblog for text lets plays

i was inspired by a post about bringing back text lets plays on cohost and wanted to go for it. i also wanted to play earthbound beginnings, so I made a blog for that. it was too hard to take snapshots that I could upload to cohost and it got annoying having to make posts as i played the game, so i abandoned that idea and deleted the blog.

@obslinks

really just me moving my tumblr sideblog here, obslinks was meant to be my version of waxy.org. eventually i stopped posting at all, for these reasons. like that shutdown post said, i wanted to mark it as archived and move on, but never got around to it until the shutdown announcement forced me to get on with it.

@siiva-bangers

what was originally going to be me highlighting funny comments on SiIvagunner videos after the 2024 april fools event produced some true bangers got simplified into siiva-bangers. that was me highlighting some of their best rips, with a touch of additional commentary in the form of me pointing out if a rip was part of an event, funny comments sometimes, and so on. i even accepted user submissions and tried to avoid spoiling the rips.

I wanted to turn it into a way someone could get introduced to the wider world of siIvagunner and high quality rips, post the quirks of the channel. it's a shame cohost would shut down before i could do those, but I plan to send it off with a bang. I'll be doing my own mini event where I post rips with a feeling of finality in the last week of cohost.

i don't know if i'll start this account on some other place again, but if I do, it'll probably be on tumblr. I will, but only after cohost shuts down. given siiva's history with channel ending, this seems fitting. here's the tumblr blog.

try out a BBS

nicky's then new Big Beautiful System seemed like a good way to finally actually try out that. didn't stick around, but it's a good thing that i did it at all. my message on the graffiti wall might still be there.

meet up in vrchat

I was there for only a few UCVRCG meetups, and i didn't talk that much, sorry. never even used vrchat after i my pc got upgraded enough that it could work with vr. I only have two slots for displayport, so I'd have to disconnect one of my monitors to use the headset, which made it too much of a pain in the ass to use.

joined the puzzmo group

I also fell off puzzmo eventually, but I hope my flipart skills (and crossword attempts) helped eggbug's little puzzle freaks in the leaderboard wars.

learnt about corru.observer

while I might have eventually learnt about corru somewhere else, i might not have gone in blind if it weren't for cohost, which was the best way to experience it. I'll always be glad I did it that way.

start a media thread

after seeing people on twitter start one I wanted to do the same myself. i think media threads are one of the best ways to make you write a post. this youtube essay has even better arguments for a media thread that reaffirmed my commitment to doing this.

it's a shame that I won't be able to have everything I played/watched/read this year on cohost. I have no idea where i'll be posting my media thread for the rest of the year.

things i didn't like about cohost

I don't want to give the impression my time with cohost was all positive. maybe partially because I don't want to be seen as a dickrider.

tag-only reblogs didn't show up in notifications

as someone who actively uses tumblr, this never felt like a good idea, and is one of the main improvements from popover notification scripts. most of the fun I got from posting a pic of a scolipede plush was people reacting in the tags, mostly going #OUGH. it wouldn't have been nearly as good if I didn't see those tags, and I know some of the best comments and reactions to people's posts were in tags only, and that they might have never seen them.

i guess I should have argued for it more (on my account and in the forums) and that staff should have implemented the feature.

lack of polish/never got true api support

while it eventually got to a point where the browser webapp was good enough, it's a shame cohost never got a true app, something that would have made something as simple as retaining your exact spot in the timeline easier. in general the website would have been painful to use without userscripts and extensions.

i wouldn't have minded something like bluesky's custom feed system for example. hell, imagine a cohost client that came with an eggbug tamagotchi.

"discourse events"

to be honest, it was only unpleasant because (at least for the ones I remember) they were right. staff should have implemented a dark mode sooner, for example. most counterarguments amounted to trying to figure out what working on cohost is like, something fundamentally only staff would know. any other criticism i could think would basically be tone policing. and I couldn't blame them because stirring up a shitstorm in order to get dark mode WORKED. and might have been the necessary thing to do.

ultimately, it was unpleasant to scroll through cohost when they were happening.

racism

while I at lease never saw the racism forsthand i felt it's effects. i saw someone i follow, who i first encountered on cohost leave because of this. i don't really have anything to say about this, other than this was objectivley a faliure on the part of staff, and any future things that plan to build off of cohost need to improve on.

the long stretches of no improvements

cohost was at it's best when everyone was playing around with the hot new toy staff dropped. it felt great to see a new place grow, to cheerlead cohost into blossoming into something special. those periods of no updates to cohost made it slightly boring.

those were not helped by external factors (florida) and human error (forgetting to post updates). related: staff's attempt to build an intergrated patreon competitor into cohost at the expense of core updates was a mistake. I don't blame them too much, i presume it seemed like a better idea at the time. but it was clear cohost was both understaffed and (in hindsight) that staff were slightly out of there league.

it was the users of cohost that were the main draw, and the only thing keeping it good by sharing cool things, making good jokes, and just hanging out. it was as the landing page of cohost said: the value of social media is its posts.

unfunny memes

carbon ryan reynolds and love honk weren't funny and i guess it's time i finally say it.

some parting words

here's a draft i never finished about my thoughts whenever people post about their finances. the title is a bit awkward now that cohost is shutting down proper, but I stand by some of my points.

i guess i figured something big would have needed to happen to take down cohost. I guess a -100% change in net profit counts.

but the point is, i believed we all could handle cohost shutting down. that everyone who wanted to find each other will do so again. that even though it will be sad because losing a place that you enjoyed is inherently sad, we could still move on.

but learning about the shutdown (from this tweet) still managed to take me by surprise. i was only accepting of the shutdown, not expecting it.

that being said, seeing everyone start blogs, post resources about rss, start websites and discords to keep some of the userbase together, even convincing me to finally up my website's features. i think that will be kind of like seeing flowers grow from the ashes, turning into a beautiful garden. cohost might be dying, but at least people are making their web prescene their own out of it.

also, at least it's going down on a good note and not because people started to hate it.

honestly, given the issues of cohost that did exist, maybe it was never meant to be the one to succeed. maybe it was always meant to be a stepping stone to something better, whether that would be a new social media site or no more social media sites. just because it failed to be profitable doesn't mean the core ideas were bad. the amount of users who enjoyed cohost and no other social media site proves that. this post sums it up, i think.

what happens next

in the immediate aftermath, we all will be doing a lot of leaning up. removing the app icon from phones, deleting the browser bookmarks, cleaning up all the cohost userscripts and extensions, removing the links to our cohost profiles or marking them as archives within our other socials and websites. then, of course, we settle in on our new homes.

much will be bandied around about what cohost (read: staff) could have and should have done if it wanted to stay afloat. arguments will be made regarding the realities of web development, the mistakes of staff, external factors, features that should have been implemented, and so on, by all sides. people will argue whether stuff like not showing metrics and keeping one's likes, followers, and following private is a valued and beloved feature or a mistake. did stripe's policy change do it in or was it because staff tried to add tipping in the first place? of course, we can never definitively say that cohost died because of one singular thing. we can only speculate on what would have changed if various things had gone differently. it's all in the past anyway.

i wonder how long those cohost tools will be online. in the case of things that basically spit out html with css style tags (prechoster, the backloggd and letterboxd post formatter, the chatlog generator), those can be repurposed for general use on websites.

it sounds like the code could be used to do something. don't know what. as long as eggbug rights aren't locked away, i'm fine.

it sounded like cohost was a super friendly place for nsfw creators[^3]. i hope they can find another place that treats them as kindly. same for artists who want their image quality to be as retained as possible during compression.

maybe sometime in the future a new social media site aimed at reviving cohost will appear. i can't quite tell. on one hand when social media sites die, their features don't tend to get copied, so there might not be another social media site that would let users use css in posts. there's still no 6-second video site after Vine shut down[^2]. then again, Spacehey, literally a clone of myspace classic, recently got to 1 million users. regardless, hopefully someone can take the best parts of cohost into consideration when making their thing.

maybe in the distant future cohost retrospectives start getting uploaded onto blogs, other social media, and youtube videos. maybe they'll be made by cohost users.

conclusion

i've always thought of cohost as an anti-virality social network. something designed against getting popular, a place that placed as much control as it could in the hands of users regarding how much of themselves they want to put out there. an argument that more fame meant more problems.

of course, it was a lot more to many. a place to cleanse themselves of toxicity from the rest of the internet. a place to unlearn bad habits. a place to be themselves, no longer needing to contort your thoughts in order to get by an algorithm[^4]. people made friends, and presumably lovers, here. at least one person had their life saved thanks to cohost.

to me, however, this was where i finally started being social on social media. a place where i glimpsed the potential of css as posts. where I actually contributed to the community.

to hell with it, now that cohost's dying, i'm using chutils to finally see my follower count.

it's 239

@siiva-bangers is 52 and @obslinks is 74

that's a lot of people. considering how few bots are here. more than i ever had anywhere else.

to every one that followed me here, thank you. to everyone that i followed, even if i eventually unfollowed you, it was nice to meet you. to everyone that followed obslinks and siiva-bangers, or even that deleted lets play blog, or joined Flying Eggbugs, thank you. to everyone who liked, reblogged (with or without tags/comments), or commented on my posts, or sent me an ask, on ANY of my pages, thank you. to everyone who responded to my asks, thank you.

to staff, you made a good social media site with good ideas. that you never made a profit doesn't change that.

to whoever in the future is hoping to build off of cohost, i hope you can look at the successes and failures of staff and everyone else and make something better.

and finally, to eggbug, have a big hug from me

i'll see everyone elsewhere.

THANK YOU FOR PLAYING...

[^1]: if i may use tumblr terminology here [^2]: that's popular enough for me to know of, anyway [^3]: "artists" sounds too restrictive, and i don't want to assume everything that was nsfw here was porn. [^4]: if you think about it, by not having an algorithm arbitrarily reward posts, cohost is actually great at fostering free speech.