another exodus from twitter, another group of artists migrating to bluesky, another day of watching all of them be like damn this place is so nice but it's really missing [feature cohost has had since forever] and just screaming into the heavens
i'm almost positive that people come here and see no numbers on posts and think it means every post is a potential failure because it's not "doing numbers" and it makes me sad how much this shit has just broken people. i wish i could sit every person down and explain why that's such a meaningless way of measuring 'success' but also that it's like, actually a lot worse on BS because yeah you see numbers there but getting like 10 RTs on a site that has way more users than here is actually kind of abysmal! your posts relatively actually do a lot worse there because people are not there for that content. they never were, they never will be. the twitter micro-blogging experience is not condusive to art it is condusive to virality and low-quality posting.
sigh
I made a comment on how BS n Threadz kept getting these no context hype trains for furries/literally any content, but then promptly lose 75% of their users in a week cause it's just more of the same. Hell I know one of the people making this claim and I know for a fact she's already off those sites
Meanwhile people genuinely detoxing over here while getting the actual meaningful interactions they crave, but because it's not got some arbitrary rpg stats below it, it isn't "viable"
I think these people in general REALLY need to explore what viable actually means
Is viable getting people to click your kofi? Is it getting actual people critically interacting with your work? Is it being able to be honest and yourself?
Or is it getting folks you don't know, don't like and certainly don't care about just bumping up some stats on your posts?
Either way the answer is cohost ¯\ _ (ツ) _/¯
i made a whole thread on twitter to try and convince others to give cohost a shot! and i pointed out the stark difference in how much interaction i got on my art on both platforms
i've been on twitter for 5 - 6 years now. it took me 5 years to build up a following of about 500, and with that i'd get maybe 20 likes and a comment on an art piece, or a retweet if i was very lucky!
one tweet went viral, and those numbers jumped overnight. a chance event, and while i'm grateful for it, this should not be the only way to get your name out there. it just isn't sustainable
when i joined cohost, and started posting art to what i thought would at first be an audience of 0, i was instead pleasantly surprised to find that folks still managed to see my art and interact with it! what had essentially taken me 5 years to cultivate on twitter was just there on cohost! there's no pesky algorithm to fight, wahoo!
and here's the real deal-breaker for me: i get all of my first-time commissioners and kofi subscriptions from cohost
since i started freelancing full-time at the beginning of the year, i haven't gotten any new traffic out of twitter, as far as i can tell. that, to me, speaks volumes about the sort of platform i wanna be on. what's the point of being on a platform, even one where "everyone is going", if no one there is really seeing you??
i don't want another twitter, i want a better experience. cohost has been excellent in that department!
Im starting to get antsy seeing staff and others trying to engage in this onesided rivalry. its just kind of hard to look at honestly. I genuinely like Cohost, I plan to use it as my primary going forward and its because its small.
What @Tux is saying is basically correct. Cohost is smaller but has more interactions because its more of an artists site. Artists like genuine replies and stuff that cannot occur on a site with hard character limits.
As a digital artist i have struggled with how disposable art feels. People think of art as a waste of time or a joke. People devote weeks of time to something consumed in the blink of an eye. So i try to inreract more genuinely with art i see, so that others dont feel that way. But thats not really numbers.
The only reason Numbers feel so important is because Doing numbers is the only reliable way to make the reckless selfish dream of being a working artist feel possible. Good art =>More followers=> more comm$ = more followers=> ect.
BUT
EvenBig Artists who drop lovingly rendered baroque portraits of Anime girl armpits and get 1million likes only barely make a living wage.
Sites like Twitter and Bluesky that emphasize virality are a monkey's paw for artists. More followers might equal more comms but it devalues art and that will make artists miserable=> bad art=> less comms=> less art
iunno but other artists, but for me, Numbers fill me with fear. Numbers become an informal valuation of art, whether you want to accept it or not.
If you want to justify the time you need to put into art in a world that is getting more and more expensive, you need to get those numbers up or you're a loser wasting money! time=money.
These numbers games that people have to play ultimately further devalue art. If not doing numbers feels like failure, and that failure has material consequences [less attention less money], the logic would follow, art is a less valuable use of your time objectively.
[Your dad was right, digital arts degree was a terrible investment]
Obviously thats not corrects but its the Logic its the Mindset of our time. Grind or be Ground. Either you take this whole Online Art shit by tje horns and begin hustlin hard, following all the trends, no matter how silly or embarrasing, drawing even when you dont want to. Putting up with assholes just becuase you dont want to alienate people, following the convention circuit like a merchant caravan follows seasonal festavals. Turning your escape into another apparatus of the same system that told you art was worthless.
The reward is still humiliating, barely a living wage, maybe enough to afford a room in your richer friends' apartment if you're lucky.
honesty... i dont thinknremoving numbers will solve these greater issues. But having a site that atleast tries to make a dashboard that doesnt instantly give artists psychic damage by posting all those NuMbErS is kind of helpful, but its not conducive to the needs of the broader Hustler community, which many artists have been forced into compliance with.
The broader Hustlers grinders and clout chasers, people have allowed the capitalist logic to infect them so completely that they don't pause at the danger of NFTs and AI art.
I believe quite genujnely that these people are the death of art and humity but so long as CoHost isnt popular they wont step foot in here.
Becoming a popular twitter alternative will mean appealing to that crowd at the expense of artists comfort and long term success.
I want to be able to truly belive my work is valuable because I like it. It is hard but I think Cohost helps