{If you want to find me elsewhere, I'm occasionally on Bluesky; Discord handle might be shared on request. I did make a Pillowfort account years ago, with regards to site with closer structure to cohost, but I never anything/anyone to actually use it, no idea if I'll turn to it}
I'm still not entirely sure on how to face the shutdown of cohost, just as I ended up not entirely sure when it came to find my footing here. And yet, something about this website compelled me to bare my heart. The first draft of this "coast" (?) was over 1000 words, and got as personal as I was willing to when it came to the big issues surrounding this shutdown.
However, I have been called "cagey" before (which is true), and good chunk of the draft focused on my displeasure for just dumping rambles that lose aim out in the open (which is what it became), so I shelved it.
I do still want to "coast" the key points, before my attention span gets in jeopardy again:
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Cohost's combination of posting style variety a la Tumblr + wider freedom in code formatting + planned slow growth made it the most suitable social media for me. I dearly wish I had used it more, but with the way my brain works, among other factors, it didn't come to be. I'm just not ready for public posting I'd be content with [yet / ever ?]
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While there were plenty of good regulars here—be they friends from elsewhere or people I didn't know—I never found anyone else with the same niche interests that I'm the deepest into, or from related pre-existing communities that made the jump here.
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Today I feel its hard for anything else to compete with Discord & its servers of varying degrees of privacy. There's been a number of unwelcome/unnecessary changes after the influx of ex-Facebook→Meta employees, but the particular flexibility of its design + group curation made it the perfect middle ground of communication for me.
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Despite the above, no platform out there makes discovery of new people/spaces better than a tenebrous gamble. That, more than anything, makes me think there's no place to go from here. To me, its as much about finding a platform I could envision a place for myself in a happy future, as one with people who are interesting/I'm friends with.
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Since at least August 2019, I've significantly soured on the prospect of online socialization. Modern social media feeds off peoples' spite and despair, and its all too easy for some to let themselves be consumed by it. I'm not sure what it'll take to undo this damage, or if there will ever be any attempts.
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Turns out that, when you're extremely anti-social and galapagosized + in the boonies, figuring out how/where to start from the opposite direction feels impossible.
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But I feel I should put that personality to some use here. I did not contribute much to making this site stand out (99% of my effort in online writing went to a wiki instead), so I'll try to post long-form stuff made for elsewhere while possible. I always love endeavors that strive to be something relatively individual, and better to liven the place up in these final days than just wallow in a dirge over what-could-have-beens.1
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I should make a Neocities site, its theoretically a lot of what I pine for, but I'd have to learn web design first. Despite absorbing various forms of visual storytelling far more over (shamefully) purely textual ones, I've never had a good grasp on visual design. Once again, something I've long wanted to develop (both on that front and in illustration), but finding the time is as always a massive struggle.
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None of my "coasts" got any engagement, but either way, I'd like to thank everyone who took a chance and followed me, friend or unknown. I hope my somewhat coherent thoughts on stories I'd gone through last year were at least interesting to read. I didn't put as much behind developing analytical writing skills as I did my historiographical ones, but it was all subjects I'd love to give another try someday. Tactics Ogre, Vagrant Story and PPPPPP are all well worth your time.
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Also better to publish a few things I'd put some effort into somewhere that will be archived instead of languishing in private for only a few eyes to see.