Yeah, telling people I am going to cohost and I think, 'to do what exactly?' To practice markdown? 2022 has been a lot of me looking at social media and saying, I just want to be a little weirdo here. But i also need this thing to let people know I exist and my work exists. Trying to not let my single self be all things to all people, because I'm not a single self. no one is. This year. Woof. Wishing us all the best in this new environment.

My impression of Cohost after a few months here is that it's taken off as much as it has mostly because it established a Posting Culture very quickly, and the broad framework is something like

• It's good to share your thoughts on whatever interests you with other people, if you want. Some of the first posts I saw that got me to stick around were long form writing on stuff that was just obviously written because the author wanted to talk about it--an ancient computer or a shader node tree or a weird incident three folks remember from the early days of indie game dev or a pokemon. If it's for any audience at all, it's for people who can find things interesting purely because someone else has an interesting perspective on it and cares about it deeply or just thinks it's cool.

• There tends to be an assumption of good faith in casual interactions. I think having comments helps with this, because you aren't doing anything to impact a post or a user's visibility by responding to them directly on a topic--it's just talking.

• I have never gotten the sense that we're supposed to Cultivate An Audience at all, so being an established choster is mostly just responding to other folks' work/thoughts/shitposts and sharing your own. I saw someone note a while back that following blogs feels less like a commitment because right now there's no expectation that a mutual is your ally or someone you're endorsing. So unfollowing isn't a big deal.

• I've seen a lot of interesting thoughts about what it means to be on a site where we can kind of decide what "success" looks like beyond financial sustainability for the creators and their goals for Cohost. It's not trying to kill any other service and really the only people who can decide it's dead or not are the people using it; there were posters active when a few hundred users were on the site and if there were a few hundred again, and that could be maintained moneywise, it would be a site that many people use for posting stuff rather than a dead platform. Because what's here has value and is worth keeping for its own sake, not because it's Content that drives Engagement.

My hope is that, if nothing else, this is a place where folks can hang out and chill for a while and just do whatever they want. There are probably people here just to be around others and talk about things that make them feel better while this bullshit goes down, and if they don't stay it's still good to have that right now.

Cohost feels promising, which is a start. Twitter was/is a mess but I'll miss the randomness of information, the collective reactions delighting in some ridiculous event (we've had so many in the UK lately that shitposting through it has been the only coping strategy for me), and finding creators' work. Won't miss the trolls and bigots, though

Twitter has become a place where angry people shout at angry people, who then shout louder to try to be heard above the din. My hopes for Cohost is that it can be a quieter, more reflective place, where interesting people can talk about interesting things, learning from each other and making a human connection through common interests.