I remember having this website through so many strange overwhelming life events.
although It hasn't been perfect and there are a lot of things that could've been addressed..
but now... that's not an issue anymore... It frustrates me that this internet can't support a site like cohost, one of the few websites that isn't trying to just endlessly sap your personal information so it can bombard you in 24 hours about a nifty trinket on sale.
Instagram is just ads
Twitter is mind poison
Tiktok is mind poison with positive communities scaffolded and suspended amidst the algorithmic nightmare
Tumblr is alright but also like tiktok with an outright vindictive anti-trans and anti-black sentiment among moderation and owners.
There was so much negative to fixate on and especially when musk bought the site.
Everything has felt so unreal, and then Cohost came around and I at least thought. "Thank goddess someone had the resources and the decency to build a big enough ark.
But i took the ark for granted, and it wasn't a perfect boat it was a boat built in spite of everything else going on. I think a lot of the philosophy and goals Cohost has is something I will carry along with me throughout the years.
It's something I'm still not able to fully fathom. the loss.
everything in me wants to scream "NO STOP LETS FUNDRAISE LETS DO SOMETHING" but especially with how so many of these things run on labor, especially volunteer labor.
Cohost was run with love.
Every post I saw was one out of love.
All the conversations and discussions and comments.
Love as a foundation for the web, it feels true.
it feels fundamental and important for anything you do in life.
Other than a blog, a neocities, a link to an mp4 file... How else do you congregate in this era of the internet... It's a question I hope will continue to be answered in different iterations and voices and lenses. The internet (social media highway) has become puritanical, christo-fascist and its goals have long since shifted for attention retention.
I have been working on an RPG, a cute-em-up rpg... I was looking forward to the day I could post the official announcement. Working on something for so long and trying to keep as quiet about it as you can until you have something to SHOW. So it's not vaporware and empty promises. I'm still working on it and I plan on following through to the end but I was hoping it was going to be in a world where Cohost was still around.
As silly as it is, and as much as I gawk at "the plush website" I really regret not getting an eggbug. I wish i had the money to buy one or ask around for someone to ship me one but I think that may be a moot point too.
I've come out of the past few years not sadder, not more depressed, not angrier, but just...
craving...ever more, hoping evermore... needing community evermore.
I'm a sparkledog system who's deep into the kink scene, has been working on video games since 2014-ish and Music since 2007.
I love writing essays and walking around pretty views or liminal spaces.
I love impromptu singing and stimming and dancing.
I love yapping and my girlfriends just...smiling and loving me all the while.
I love getting better at music production, and learning how to do my hrt shots.
I love making art and I hope to get better at that too.
I was here.
We were here.
All i can feel... so excruciatingly... is a phantom potential, all the things I wanted to share, a rhythm, a rapport to establish. But all I want now more than anything is connection.
My Discord is mothdystopia
my email is azzyfeelsfine@gmail.com
I have accounts all over the web but what good is it if they're just for retweeting or gawking and lurking at a monster the other side of the web has become.
I want to make more friends this year.
I need to finish my website.
I hope that, in some form or another... We'll get something like this... even though
I don't think we'll have anything like cohost in this form.
I will stick to working on building the future for kids who are like me, kids who aren't around yet but are going to need people to lay the groundwork for making sure they're safe, that they know they aren't the only ones like them. To know that there is a place for them to carve out. It doesn't need to be restricted to customization buttons and prebuilt UI and Squarespaces and white controversy reaction channels and unreality ads and dropshipping with a side of mass-produced exploitation.
I want to keep the web radical
to keep my art unpalatable.
To keep everyone who was here... in one form or another with me.
I have an itch.io and a youtube channel.
Original woman on youtube where the other month i posted Psychadogchick, a mixtape about coping with the growing liminality and unreality in our world through music.
My itch.io is Mothlanturn iirc, I made "The Tour" and "Snowdaze"
I hope for you all who were here to play Starshine.
I will keep sticking around where I can, amongst this capital labyrinth of Babyback ribs and toystory 9. Among the dogwhistle memes and strangely beautiful out of nowhere sincerity that haunts you.
I will be standing in the middle of abandoned malls with not a soul around.
I will be on the far end of the cul-de-sac.
I will be inside the dogeared page of your favorite book.
Somewhere.
I was there. I am here. We are. We were.
I love you.
~Azalea.