Cohost. This is the end, and, a new beginning.
I'm once again sleep-deprived and at work, so I don't have time yet for long-form thoughts; when I do, it will be published on the website instead.
Immediate feelings are complex and contradictory.
Relieved to not have slept through the site going read-only.
Laughing at jae's Sayonara you weeaboo shits final post, which is now the canonical last post.
Sad, devastated, a little scared otherwise. It feels like the way it feels at a funeral. It's not so much that it ended, it's you know eventually people are going to scatter. And there are some I know I'll never see again.
The end...
I signed up for cohost on July 4, 2023, and got posting rights granted to me two days later on the 6th. In total, I have spent just under 15 months on this website. It's not even a year and a half.
This little webbed site showed me people, things, and creatures in between who I could have never met otherwise. They were being as close to their true selves as they could because they didn't need to fear metrics, hot takes, and other mean-spirited individuals who believe the only valuable posts (and by proxy, people) are those that appeal to the most people.
I am in my thirties and I can say that cohost helped me grow up again. Helped me get in touch again with a sense of honesty, a sense of wonder, hope for people and the future. Gave me the knowledge that yes, there are still people and things to be found online who aren't just amazing but feel real. You'll never find this kind of genuineness on traditional social media.
I'm not fully realizing yet the impact cohost had on me. I might write longer-form thoughts on the matter in the future when I've fully processed and grieved the loss.
So, in the meantime, what now? Well...
... and a new beginning
...Life and projects and things go on. They MUST go on.
I'm on a whole 13 new discord servers thanks to all of this. I think one of my new permanent homes from now on is Claret's Atelier server, because in my heart and at the end of ends, what I do best is art and my art is writing.
One of the things cohost taught me is to not be afraid to seek validation anymore. To dissociate the numbers going up from genuine words and opinions. It taught me to ask the right questions. It taught me that if you want people to care even a little bit like you do, you have to talk to them and guide them.
It reaffirmed that I don't just love to make things for myself, because I always will. I ultimately love to make things for the enjoyment of others, and not getting acknowledgment does still terrify me. But at least now I realize it's just a healthy, normal desire to have, and this isn't the same as clout chasing or wanting numbers going up.
It reaffirmed that I don't just seek friends for the sake of filling a friends list.
It's that I care. A lot. To the point that it hurts. You ever heard of the term "boundless love?" I think it feels like this. If you are reading this, I probably care about you. If we don't know each other yet, I still care about you. Even as I write this, I'm thinking of ways to format it a little better, refine my words a little more, because I'm trying to convey that care.
These are not meaningless words to me. But they used to be. They used to be nebulous concepts. Things I understood only in concept.
A world's worth in just words
Only one reminder of reality remains. How do I explain all of this, all that I felt, all the good and the bad of this website, to people who have never used it or weren't active users?
How do I convey that to the other people in my life, those that I care about but who weren't there?
That will be what my long-form thoughts post be about, I think. Summarizing the impression cohost left on me. Explaining the cohost spirit in simple words. The best I can do is try.
I'm just afraid as I always am. I care, a lot. And few things are more negative to me than meeting people who don't care, or refuse to care. We should all care, for each other first and foremost.
But maybe I don't need to write an LFT about this. Maybe the cohost spirit is simple to explain in words. And all the effort and all the difficulty is finding places, or building places where you can apply it.
Maybe the cohost spirit is not about the website, or eggbug, or the CSS crimes, or the memes, or the lack of metrics.
Maybe the cohost spirit is simply about learning who you are, being true to yourself, and - most importantly, this is the part you should not skip - caring for others who are trying to do the same, so that you, them, all of us, can be a little more free to be ourselves.
Be not afraid to care. You could mean the world to someone else.