feeling Quite strange about the news today. i understand that many people's work depends on having a Presence online, and that the flood of links to other places is necessary in an effort to preserve that and let people know where you'll be rather than falling off the face of the earth. people's income depends on it, i Truly get it. but the idea of someone like Me going back to masto, tumblr, or twitter just feels like a concession to falling back into the relationship i had with social media as a result of years of Posting
i still have my main twitter which i kept as a way to view the occasional thread that someone would send me (bc you HAVE to be logged in to bascially see anything now), and any brief peek i took back into my timeline left me feeling like that Dr. Manhattan watchmen panel. i simply do not have the energy or attention to care about the petty squabbles, main characters, monoculture discourse, or engagement baiting Posts anymore, and my time with cohost made that behavior extremely easy to recognize and avoid, especially when ppl would carry over those habits onto Cohost. over the past 4 years, i tried going back to forums, i tried hanging out in public discords, and i looked at various Twitter-adjacent sites (bsky and masto mainly) but they just don't hit. i feel like i can't Unsee social media as i do now
as i've started to understand myself as a passive communicator and a lifelong lurker (for the most part), having discord as basically the only social media i'll have left after this feels... less than ideal. i don't tend to start conversations. my friends have often Goofed on my behalf about how bad i am replying to messages. also, this doesn't really solve the problem of how cohost worked to gather people whose art and thoughts i respect and enjoy (who wouldn't all get along in one big discord server). like... am i going to DM each artist i like individually every so often "hey have you put out anything lately?" lol
all this to say, cohost really solidified in me that i love Art, to see it created and to make it myself, but i do not have a need or desire to be Discovered and Known For It like i thought i wanted in the past. it feels like there is not a place to Just Be Fucking Chill and have a curated feed of stuff that isn't Also a competition for numbers and attention (other than coho) for 90% of the users. and that sucks!!!
oh well, i guess i will make a funny little web 1.0 site and the freaks i know can add me to an RSS feed or something. i have been trying to embrace the ephemerality of things (and life in general) lately, and i suppose this is just another reminder. also me discord is @ciswoman
