PhormTheGenie

Vixen. Genie. Vixdjinn!

Hi! I'm Phorm, and I'm a Vixdjinn!

A Friendly Vixdjinn Says Hello!

I'm a genie girl, who really likes being a genie, and really likes everything about genies (really)! I'm a bit confused, lost, and trying to find my way, but I always enjoy interacting with folks here. (Trans🏳️‍⚧️, occasionally NSFW, Be 18+ or please be gone.)

A Genie Bottle, With A Rising Wisp of Pink Smoke In The Shape Of a Heart

See here for the Genie Lore Index!

Profile Art credit to CinnamonSpots!

Avatar by DVixie
Banner image by BlackShirtBoy



I've been mulling over the options of where to go when October 1st finally rolls around. Time is running short, of course, and I should probably come to some conclusion before then. I keep seeing everyone else sharing their preferred landing locations, and it does feel like there's a lot to consider.

So I sat down and weighed the pros and cons - And I stress this, the pros and cons from my perspective - in a post below. Just kind of had to get it written down to focus my thoughts.

Spoiler: I don't come to a very tidy or easy conclusion.


Mastodon: I'm already there and intend to be there for as long as I'm able. I've got a long history on Masto, but I also appreciate that a lot of folks want nothing to do with it. While my particular instance has the blessing of an extremely long character limit, and I do mirror my fiction there, it doesn't seem like something people want to see on Mastodon. They're there for microblogging and quick posts. Not pages and pages of writing. Still, I like Mastodon for connecting with people and making quick updates and silly posts. And a lot of people I care about are over there.

Pros:

  • Already there.
  • Easy to use, good mobile app.
  • A good population of folks who are awesome are also there.

Cons:

  • It's a microblogging site, so it's not appropriate for long form posts.
  • It has a reputation for friction and conflict, and as such a lot of awesome people (rightfully) want to keep their distance. I know a few folks that I really want to keep up with who I'm certain I'll lose touch with if I keep Masto as my only social platform.
  • While the Fediverse as a whole is fairly robust by this point, there's always the threat of any given local server collapsing - which is a pain in the butt and can ruin anyone's experience on the platform.

BlueSky: I'm resisting going here as long as I'm able. Twitter had problems before the human embodiment of Divorce took over. BlueSky inherited them all. I don't like the lack of protected accounts, the opportunity for all manner of randos to flood your comments, or the fact that the site has a fucking "how much racism do you want" slider. The answer should be NONE. The primary engagement loop on BlueSky is fundamentally identical to that of Twitter, and it's going to have the same result in the end.

That being said, my resisting BlueSky will likely cut me off from a huge number of people. Really awesome people, at that. It's inarguably the platform filling the "social media" void the most currently, and avoiding myself it may be another case of me cutting off my nose to spite my face. I don't want to be there, but FOMO may force my hand.

Pros:

  • Seems to have a good feature set currently, which supports video and gif content.
  • The community has a strong presence there, and there are very specific individuals I could keep up with there that I doubt I'd be able to find elsewhere.

Cons:

  • Another microblogging site. There will be no opportunity to share my writing here directly, and like all microblogging sites, offsite links are not desirable to the platform users - So anything I do write elsewhere will get ignored.
  • While the population as a whole seems way better than Twitter, there's still plenty of people butting into your conversations.
  • The fact that the platform allows bigotry, hatred, and slurs - and that you just get to algorithmically opt out of them - Is pretty much a kiss of death for me. The hatred will find a way to foment and evade. You kill this shit on sight, or you're moderating wrong, and BlueSky seems to be moderating very wrong.

Dreamwidth: I'll be honest when I say this is the option I'm likely leaning toward the most for the purposes of writing fiction. But it's also the one I think is going to be the most likely to be isolating, and for me specifically, the most depressingly so.

As someone who got her start writing on LiveJournal, Dreamwidth would be like a return to home for me. The ability to post long form content is absolutely everything I need for my writing - sparse and stupid as that writing may be. The ability to publish fiction in an environment where it will cross the feeds of individual who want to read it makes Dreamwidth a very appealing choice of platform. It also has the advantage of having built-in comment threads below every post, the ability to follow others, and generally being interactive in a way that I think supports both fiction and smaller, reflective, or stupid posts as well.

That being said, Dreamwidth leaves a lot to be desired. My take is that the active community is small, and shrinking. Beyond that, it feels established, in that way I know all too well. I doubt I'm going to be doing much beyond posting into the void if I make a home on Dreamwidth, but then again, maybe that's all I really need. I shouldn't be so self-adsorbed in thinking I deserve otherwise.

Lastly, the lack of 2FA in the year 2024 feels like a tremendous oversight - to a security paranoid individual such as myself, that's almost enough to be a dealbreaker on its own.

Pros:

  • Extremely long form friendly. An excellent place to post and publish the fiction I'm writing.
  • Good commenting tools, good interactivity options, the ability to watch other posts and interact.
  • The people there would likely be interested in fiction, moreso than microblogging site users.

Cons:

  • Likely to be a lonely black hole, interaction wise. Communities are set and established by now, and newcomers aren't likely to get a foot in the door.
  • It does feel like it would be a challenge to post anything but fiction on Dreamwidth. I'm not sure if Dreamwidth would be the place for the silly shitposts I frequently make - Or if there would even be a community for that.
  • No 2FA feels like a nightmare.

PillowFort: I'll be honest. I don't know much about PillowFort.

Ostensibly, this should be the platform most likely to fill the void of CoHost - at least if you look at the feature set. It allows long form content, in addition to other forms of media. It mirrors Tumblr strongly, without having the baggage of Tumblr's moderation and leadership.

However, to be blunt, my only exposure to PillowFort is via people on PillowFort saying how much everything that isn't PillowFort sucks ass and how much people who use those platforms that aren't PillowFort are idiots who deserver suffering. I've never seen the platform being used for something positive, only as a kind of artificial drama-cultivating petri-dish.

That's likely an uncharitable picture of the site that's been forged from my limited, and negative, experiences with some of the posters there and how they use the site. But the fact remains that such communities seem to thrive and flourish on PillowFort, and that makes me nervous as hell.

Pros:

  • Seems to support a feature set that would allow for long form content, smaller posts, and community interaction.
  • A Tumblr-like platform without Tumblr's moderation baggage and leadership bigotry.

Cons:

  • Unclear if the community there would be in any way similar to CoHost. Additionally, unclear if there really would be a place for me there.
  • Previous interactions with the site have been toxic and negative.

Tumblr: The OG, as it were. I have an existing Tumblr account that I use mostly for following a few friends and the stream of reblogs they share. The platform seems to support everything I might want: The ability to make long form posts, share fiction, make silly posts, comments, and follow and interact with friends. It was a platform I used for a long time to make elaborate lore posts that I couldn't fit onto Twitter.

The leadership, moderation, and stark transphobia of the platform make it unappealing for continued use. Enough said.

Also, their mobile presence sucks.

Pros:

  • Has good support for fiction posting, as well as shorter silly posts.
  • Has reasonable support for interaction and community.

Cons:

  • Blatant transphobia, and inconsistent moderation, make this a platform not worth touching. Particularly for someone who wants to post queer fiction, and share queer art that's going to be NSFW.
  • The above point pretty much killed any community that might be worth it.
  • Mobile access to the site is awful.

Neocities: I see Neocities put forth as a superb option to forge one's own path on the web after CoHost. However, this really seems to be a option more for artists, or people trying to ply their trade online in one way or another. A sort of central landing point where one can present and collect their own work.

I've very little ability to make my own website, and I'll be honest when I say that no one would want to visit a website run by me (And for those that did visit, I doubt it would be more than once). I don't have a gallery to present, a streaming career to promote, or services that I offer. I'm just some schlub of a failgirl who wants to interact with friends and share some scraps with them when I can. The fact that such a website would be, by definition, isolating, makes it unappealing.

I could host fiction there, that's true. I suspect that that's where it would go to die.

Then again, as I said previously, maybe that is the best option.

Another aspect of this that I find unappealing is that web maintenance and upkeep are super not my bag. Back in my past I was in charge of maintaining a website for... let's call it "work". Not only was it frustrating and stressful, but it also was harrowing given the number of vulnerabilities arose that needed ASAP patching - And the number of times the website got compromised. I'd prefer not to invite that back into my life.

Pros:

  • Total control over a website that I would design.
  • Absolutely would be ideal for hosting fiction and presenting it in whatever manner I feel best.

Cons:

  • No interconnectivity to others.
  • Unlikely to be visited by anyone. Difficult for anyone to know when updates occur.
  • No skill in designing or publishing webpages, or graphic design, or layout.
  • Maintenance and upkeep are an undesirable pain.

RSS Feeds: An appealing notion in its own right, RSS feeds presumably allow anyone to keep up with myriad different websites as they update. The ability to follow anyone on Bluesky without having to join Bluesky, for example, is a great option. This is also a wonderful option for seeing updates from disparate personal websites that people are making.

Unfortunately, it is entirely one-way. It's not even necessarily a replacement option for CoHost, so much as a tool to keep up with the vast array of other replacement options that everyone is tapping into. It provides a way to centralize and focus inbound posts, but the ability to interact and make outbound posts is left as an exercise for the user via other options.

Again, it's not really a platform, it's a tool.

Pros:

  • Easy monitoring of multiple different websites for updates.
  • Allows following of people on platforms without making an account on that platform.

Cons:

  • Not an option for interactivity or outbound postings.

Conclusion:

I don't fucking have a clue.

After sitting down and taking all this in, it's clear that nothing's going to replace CoHost for what I want or how I use it. In a best case scenario, I'm guessing that I'll keep using Mastodon, while supplementing with Dreamwidth for posting fiction, and using an RSS reader to follow other people on BlueSky and/or their personal websites. The security issues with Dreamwidth make it very unappealing from that angle, but if I make a hardened burner email account and a strong-and-unique password then even if I lose the account the impact will be minimal (though, in that eventuality I'd lose everything published there).

Even with this setup, there's a pretty harsh reality to all this: There's just going to be less interaction, less community, and I'm going to lose touch with some people who are important to me. It's just going to be inevitable as people scatter.

CoHost got me back into writing fiction after years of hanging it up, specifically because it was so easy to do. I could throw it on my page here, and people got to see it, and choose if it was something they wanted to read. I was shocked when people did read it - and people who I had never met before, at that.

I'm unlikely to find that anywhere else.

It also let me make all kinds of stupid, silly posts that people shared and enjoyed - right on the same account. And let me vent my troubles - right on the same account.

It also let me see everything that everyone else was creating, and thinking, and sharing.

Some portion of this is going to go away, even with efforts to bridge the gap.

It's depressing and it makes me sad.


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in reply to @PhormTheGenie's post:

I think you've got a good handle on each platform actually, and I agree with each point you've made about them. And yeah, it's not a great set of choices at present.

What I would say about Dreamwidth and a potential community there, is that with Cohost users scattering, and DW taking on at least a couple of new chosters each day (a couple of which are more well known and likely to lead to a bit more adoption as they're posting their essays and such on DW now), it may be possible to carve a NEW community space out there over time. No solid data yet, but it's possible.

On Pillowfort; I fiddled with PF a bit shortly after its release and it looked promising for the reasons you stated, but there were too few users there at the time for posting to feel like anything other than talking to oneself. I've heard that most of the energy and interaction on PF happens in community spaces, which have been described as being unintuitive to find or get a handle on. Also, in the time since I last peeked at PF, it seems to have been adopted by a set of users who would be at home on KF. I haven't seen it myself but several cohost users have talked about running into harassment from those users, and it feels like Pillowfort may have run into the "nazi bar" situation and made the wrong decisions. If the KF types make up a sizeable enough segment of the user base, then kicking them out isn't something that PF is likely to do now. But that also decreases the chances of others, who the KF types would see as targets, adopting the platform. More info needed on it but I would be hesitant until getting that info.

I'm hopeful about the Website League, but as it's still being hashed out I don't know what shape it will ultimately take. It is being created with the policies cohost championed as a base, and there's visible work being done to learn from cohost's shortcomings in moderation so that it can do better in those areas: https://cohost.org/website-league/post/7769635-introducing-the-webs They're hoping to have a "first instance" online by the 1st.

Also, I find their direct answer to the question of, "My political beliefs skew to the right. Can I participate?" being a simple, "No." refreshing =u=

Dreamwidth does seem like the place I'm going to wind up landing, security concerns aside. It seems the best suited to what I want to do, and I can hope that it'll pan out as being a liferaft for a lot of the awesome folks here. I do have some misgivings about whether I need separate accounts for fiction/other stuff - or even if I need alternative accounts for genie stuff vs. Transgressions stuff - But I suppose I'll have to sort all that out. Oh, and also, the mobile presence is something I don't know yet. Heck, CoHost was so nice to use on my phone at work...

I kind of agree with your take on PillowFort from end to end on this. I didn't want to say anything, but the comparison you make is pretty much on the money in my experience. That sort of terrifies me. I guess that's a 'wait and see' situation, to determine the extent to which it's true, but even so it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

And thank you for informing me about the Website League! That's something I'll be following closely, to see how it actually all comes together.

... And yeah, honestly, having a platform that - By Default! - doesn't give oxygen to people who want me dead is kinda nice.

Someone just needs to mirror cohost but make it fiscally viable. Pillowfart is like cohost but the image size is "potato" or "bigger potato if you pay us", I mean I'll use it but I sure as fuck won't pay for it like I did for my art accounts on cohost. Like they have a long list of unfixed bugs and no bug for a mascot. Shitty aspects aside I made one (SpottyCatIllustration) and I have found many wayward friends of eggbug. From Yo Free Pizza to Belarus I see familiar faces, even some eggbug-chan posts so I'm starting to feel at home. Sadly the interface is absolutely terrible unlike here where it works across phones and computers, landscape and portrait. Time will tell, perhaps Pillowfart will hire some of the designers of this place or hell they might end up getting the source code somehow. Whoever has that golden ticket has the next great social media site on their hands.

I do suspect Dreamwidth will be very quiet (or 'dead' in the common parlance), but if all I can do is get people to jump there from Bluesky et al, read my stuff and maybe comment on it, that is not entirely terrible...

I never really gave Mastodon a chance. Maybe I should get onto your instance! (so to speak)

One unexpected and possibly doomed plus of Bluesky is that you can turn off all reposts and quote posts, so you can tune out all the garbage your well-meaning friends feel you need to see. (I pretty much only repost my friends' porn. <3)

I'm pretty sure I'm going to wind up heading to Dreamwidth, all things considered. I'm not sure if I'll be able to make it work, but being able to follow the people who have already gone there, having the ability to comment over there, and just having the old LJ feel back (with multiple icons available and such) is pretty nice. Even if I do wind up posting into the void, at this point I've kind of determined that I want to write what I'm writing, even if no one really reads it. Just having a place for it will be enough. Dreamwidth has some perks atop that! When I finally do get over my security concerns and make an account or two, I apologize in advance for the sudden follows.

Mastodon is without a doubt an acquired taste. There's a lot of reason people hate it, and I respect that. I've had it pretty good over there just because the instance is friendly, and the admin nukes assholes on sight. I'm not sure if it's something for you - and it is totally understandable if it's not - but if it is, I'm pretty sure you'd get an invite without hesitation (The instance is invite only, currently, but I'm pretty certain you know the admin well enough to get in the door immediately)!

Also, that IS a very nice feature of BlueSky. Hrm. The lack of locked accounts and the general moderation strategy have been off putting to me, but I fear inertia may carry me there. Plus, I won't lie, pretty sure all the best porn is going to wind up there (Priorities!)