Monday, the end of Cohost bothered me but not by a great degree. It's something that I long expected, any month now.
Going into Cohost I told myself that it would be my "last social media" and that if it went belly up, no more. I will just live without "a website," as many people did before and do now. I mostly used this site to freely post my stupid thoughts without fear of tedious weirdos yelling at me, and the freedom to actually curate my own page. I did always feel this was a weaning exercise to make myself less online
But yesterday it sunk in. There is so much on this site that I just passively enjoyed, shared by others, without realizing it. Things from pages that I didn't follow but would be shared by my friends. Things that I will probably never see again since I still do not intend to go to another website. Posts about weird CD-i games and other retro gaming ephemera that few others talk or care about. The occasional @nothingdoingcomic strip. Drawings by @aurahack, @robinandcat, @3amsoda and a bunch of other great artists. Just fucking anything with Eggbug at all. It was all like I was strolling down a colorful street every morning, and every evening, and seeing a bunch of weird and fun neighbors and strangers living their lives. I won't have that anymore.
This is not a post that I would normally make. I don't like showing my emotions-- I don't like being vulnerable. I hate the idea of appearing "Weak." I'm debating just deleting this entire thing right now, or right after I get it out of my system. But fuck it. Earlier I saw a post advising everyone to try to show a bit more vulnerability and I guess I felt that I should while the site's still alive. I'm getting a bit sad! I'll miss this site, I really enjoyed it! I'll feel lonely without it! I've met a lot of great people here!
This really feels like the final vestige of the Normal Internet, where you could just Post and have fun and read things without constantly being subjected to the worst that the world has to offer, or algorithmically being fed crap you don't want, or having everything you say or look at scraped for AI/marketing data. I'll miss having this place as an outlet, a place where I can just Hang Out. And seeing everyone feel the same way makes me sad too.
Life goes on. The sky is not falling. Life existed before and after this. But there was something special and fun here in this brief experiment. It really felt like there was a community here even if I was only in a small fringe part of it over all.
