OK, I've not really been feeling like I have the energy or words to write a 'last post' or make some kind of grand gesture. I'm not even sure I'm very good at writing. But, I'll try to see what I can summon up.
When I came to Cohost, it was during the invite-only period, and I had managed to get some invites sent my way from someone else in my group of VRChat friends. I thought it was cool that there was a site that allowed somewhat arbitrary HTML/CSS (within limits, though those limits were continually broken by various users of the site, including me at one point. I think I may have contributed to there needing to be a position: absolute fix), and while I was still somewhat happily using twitter at that point, it seemed like it would be good to have a site like Cohost around.
I don't feel like I ever really used that particular aspect (CSS crimes, that is) to its fullest potential, in part because I've just had other stuff on my plate for a lot of the time cohost has been around and I had been meaning to make my way back to fucking around with the possibilities of CSS crimes more. It's fine, though, because I have the ability to make whatever CSS nonsense I want elsewhere; it was just cool to be in a collaborative environment of people doing cool stuff and showing it to each other.
I did eventually get into posting audio once that was added, and eventually posting WIP tracks to Cohost became one of the primary ways I got interaction with/feedback on my music from people around me. I was actually in the process of writing a post just a few days before the shutdown announcement about how Cohost was fulfilling a need I hadn't had fulfilled since SectionZ.com shut down; a musician community of the 2000's that in many ways Cohost reminds me of, for better or worse, and one that also shut down eventually once its maintainers couldn't keep it going anymore. I had a lot of similar feelings when that shut down that I do now.
I also really appreciated the comfort that a weird furry porn creators felt posting their work here. KCAtomheart was talking on Bluesky recently about how other sites just don't feel the same when it comes to sharing the weird stuff, and I think the lack of sites where this kind of environment is available is a massive blow to furry artists and other niche creatives. I really liked being able to talk about my own creative work alongside posting weirdo furry stuff that I don't always feel comfortable posting openly everywhere.
Once the Elon Musk-ification of twitter was really underway, too, Cohost was part of what made it possible for me to move away from there. When Bluesky and Mastodon didn't work for me, Cohost felt like it would help soften the blow. I knew deep down that it was likely to fall apart at some point, but I kept maintaining some hope that we'd just get through it.
I don't really want to relitigate Cohost's many shortcomings here because I don't think I can do them justice, but it certainly weighs on me that despite everything this place did well, it didn't provide that experience consistently to everyone. I share the hopes of everyone else who's talked about this that new communities that may come out of Cohost do a better job in the ways this site has failed, also. Both when it comes to general sustainability and also accessibility and equability. Everyone deserves to have a good community to be a part of. I really like what I'm seeing coming out of the Website League, and also seeing new communities like the Cohost Web Forum project taking cues from their mission statement as well. I'm hoping to participate in some of these communities as I'm able to, and I will be thinking about the lessons of cohost as I do.
Thank you to Staff, thank you to folks like Alyaza and TV-MA and Renkon speaking up about their/others experiences in the hopes of improving the site culture, thank you to my friends on here, all the people who made great chosts, people who used this site to run their cool weird art projects, and thank you to Eggbug, my baby buggy boy.
