Been deep in thoughts today about how I've always been the 'wrong type of queer' for most communities I've found, and how Cohost has been something of an exception, and wondering how I can replicate that kind of feeling IRL.
Growing up, I'd never really had the chance to be in queer spaces; I lived in a tiny little tourist-trap town in England, and while most of my friends were very queer, none of us had the words or freedom to understand that, and so it never really got explored at all.
10-ish years ago, when I was in my mid-20s, I went to uni, and I was unbelievably excited to join every society ever. At the time, I was very definitely a bisexual man who never turned any questions of gender and asexuality/aromanticism inwards, even as all of his friends were coming out around him, and who got weirdly jealous whenever someone came out online because "damn I wish I could do that". Still took me another few years to realise, sigh.
Anyways, most of those societies were not quite what I'd hoped they'd be. The Anime Soc was super reserved, and I wanted societies to be a place to talk to people, not just a free movie night. The Games Soc was a capital-G Gamers society. Rock Soc... was the only actual good one, honestly. Ended up sticking around with them for a few years after graduating too.
The LGBTQ+ Society, though, was one of the ones I was most excited to join, and probably the one I was most disappointed about. I remember going along to a couple of their meets and just saying and doing nothing the whole time, not for lack of trying but that sort of shit just doesn't come naturally to me and they sure as hell didn't want to make it easier - they were loud and overly talkative, and not interested in including others in their in-jokes or conversations.
A few years ago, after I'd come out as trans and was toying around with names and identity, I joined a trans Discord server that I'd found through Twitter. (Finding things through Twitter was probably my first mistake, in hindsight.) I was in something of a manic phase at the time, which meant I had no qualms just running in, helping them organise a stream event, chatting over cam to a bunch of trans people I'd never spoken to before, and so on. That was all pretty good - this was what it was like to be part of a queer community, finally - and that meant I could access parts of their community where I could talk freely about my own journey and relate that to others who could relate their own experiences to mine; probably unsurprisingly, this fairly large trans server had some systems in place to stop people joining and immediately being able to see everything people shared, in order to protect the members there.
Unfortunately, those systems had one major flaw for me: they weren't persistent. A month or two after joining, that manic phase ended and I crashed hard. I lurked more, didn't really comment on anything or join calls for a bit, just occasionally reacted to things or echoed feelings that I related to. That, apparently, wasn't enough for me to keep access to the rest of the server, and I was back to being able to barely talk to anyone or see anything until I became 'one of the talkative ones' again.
Cohost - or, at least, the bubble of Cohost I've found myself in - feels a lot like what I've always wanted from a queer community. Somewhere I can talk about things like this when I need to, and somewhere where I can read and share other queer experiences that resonate with me, but where there isn't an obligation to do so. Somewhere where, if I stop posting for a month or two and just like posts, people won't take my actions (or lack thereof) as something sinister, or cold, or as though I'm trying to hide my queerness (or as though that's their problem somehow, even if I were). Somewhere where I can be comfortably myself as long as that doesn't infringe on others, which is what I'd always figured was the whole point of a queer community to begin with.
I fully accept that I'm in a weird spot for things like this: I want a community that's talkative enough to feel welcoming, but doesn't demand being talkative. Most groups I've seen - queer or otherwise - tend to fall on one extreme or the other. But now I'm at the point where I'm starting to go out more (tl;dr for those who don't know: I'm agoraphobic, didn't leave the house for about 5 years, until a year ago. Still bad at it, but better!) and I'm wanting to find queer friends and community and places where I can be myself near here, and... and I can't. The only things local to me are "come meet a bunch of strangers in a cafe and have normal conversations!" and I can't do normal conversation well.
If I could meet even a handful of other queer people nearby, that'd be great - I'd go along in a group, and worst case, I spend the time talking to the people I know - but how do you meet people without going to stuff like this to begin with. I always hear people talking about meeting people through dating sites but hahaha like fuck does that work for me, I overshare to hell because at some point I'll hit a manic phase and just start typing incessantly (...like this, I guess) and then it never gets deleted. Between my Discord server and Cohost, I've thrived these last few years in queer communities that feel like the sort of bubbles I always wanted; places where I can be talkative when I have something to offer, but can mostly sit back and listen otherwise. I just wish I knew what even the first step was, let alone any of the ones beyond that, to replicating that in-person.

