Vecderg

For the unfamiliar, the short version is that Ethan Nestor and Mark Fishbach, better known for the Crank Gameplays (which has since rebranded) and Markiplier channels on YouTube respectively, got together and started a project to make one video every day for a year on a new YouTube channel, and then delete it all at the end. The point was not the videos per se, but to have made something, to leave an impact on the world.

They opened strong. The first video was cooking with sex toys. (Yes, really.) This was a year of some of the finest entertainment on YouTube, and... I fell off the bandwagon at some point. I kept up for a month or three, then next thing I knew I was behind by six. Ultimately I didn't watch very many of the videos.

I missed the livestream on the final day because I worked overnight that night, and I was so deeply depressed by my job and the state of things in my life at the time that I didn't think I had any choice but to sleep through the whole thing and go to work like nothing happened. I could have slept earlier, or slept less, to just catch part of it. I could have asked for the night off. I still regret not trying, I've heard it was legendary. (I missed a funeral in a nearly identical way too.)

Yes, you can still download the videos and livestream VOD from archive dot org. I actually have a copy of the videos that I downloaded myself from the YouTube channel while it was still there. But I've never watched it. It's not the same to watch it after the fact, it wouldn't feel the same, you're not there in the moment and you can't interact with the community that formed around it. It's just some cool videos. You had to be there to really Get It, and you have to have known you were missing it while it was happening for it to hurt that you did.

I think Cohost is going to be this way for a lot of us. Or at least I myself feel the same way. Knowing the end is coming ahead of time sure changes the dynamic.

If you're reading this post in an archive years from now, you can't really know how it felt to be here, to have actually lived through it and made an impact on this place. Many of us might be around to tell stories, but there's something irreplaceable about experiencing it for yourself. I don't know what the future holds, but if there's another tiny social website full of queers in your time, take a chance on it! I'm sure they love to see fan art of their mascot. Oh, you're not an artist? Fuck you, doodle on the back of a napkin, they'll love you for trying.

At least this time around, in my Two Years, for once I can say I didn't miss a chance. I left my mark! And I gain a little more experience with processing the end of a good thing, from a more positive angle now.

#unus annus #the end of cohost #basically the same

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in reply to @lapisnev's post:

colette @fickleheart9/29/2024, 6:16 AM

Rereading old chosts is sure gonna be different from rechosting them in the moment... not to mention the wonderful goofy lil animals I befriended on here :eggbug-heart-sob: gonna have to learn how to talk to people directly some day

Lapis the Nevrean @lapisnev9/29/2024, 6:21 AM

No pressure but feel free to practice on me if you want to learn how to approach people, you have my contacts! I have a similar problem actually, I almost never message others first XD

Tempest @sutempest9/29/2024, 4:08 PM

I was not there for Unus Annus at all. Hearing about it after the fact left a bit of a hole in my mind, somehow, despite having no attachment to the people who produced it.

I think, subconsciously, I am at least at peace with cohost ending soon because I've done more than I could have ever imagined thanks to it. I feel as though it changed me a little bit, for the better.

You had to be there. Because if you were there and you hadn't experienced anything like it, it would have probably changed you a little bit too, like me, like many here.

Lapis the Nevrean @lapisnev9/29/2024, 5:38 PM

The story that I keep hearing over and over again is "Cohost fixed what Twitter broke in my brain", and that was also my own experience. I think that for all the words that have been written about that, there's not really going to be a sane way to explain it to someone years from now.

Tempest @sutempest9/29/2024, 7:50 PM

It's funny because while I definitely think it's an incredibly valid and understandable point of view... it was never my reason for coming here. I never came here because of Twitter specifically - just happened to come in while others were fleeing Twitter.

I just hated - still hate - social media in general for how unhealthy it's been and how it turns people mean, hostile, and addicted to the meanness and hostility. "Addicted to the Take™" if you will. Cohost was explained to me as 'social media but without all of that' and the fact it was at least mostly true and my experience has been life-changing is positively insane.

A better way IS possible, and I am placing all of my bets on whoever will rise to succeed to cohost. Whether it's the League or something else.

Pyxaron @Pyxaron9/29/2024, 9:25 PM

... so i didn't imagine that thing!

I just remember one night on break seeing a whole bunch of weird post on social medias about "memento mori" and something like that , i didn't dare to search about it while at work, figured i could find out WTF later, as usual.

Then by the time i remembered that weird thing a few days later, there was no mention of it anywhere.

𝘈𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘴. 𝘔𝘢𝘹𝘪𝘮𝘶𝘴 @aMaxphous10/1/2024, 10:51 AM

I'm in pretty much the same position in regards to Unus Annus, (without your insightful connection between it and Cohost) and these experiences have really left me with more drive and motivation to engage and interact with people more. To actually join the party rather than silently watching from the sidelines. (And maybe participate instead of taking hundreds of pictures that no-one is ever going to look at)

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