As Twitter continues to set itself on fire and droves of people are looking for a respite in the chaos of the modern web, signing up for new sites feels like a chore. Its exhausting being an artist online these days as major companies keep shooting themselves in the foot in a multitude of ways (that I’m not going to get into in this post) that ultimately just harm the user experience. Yet, despite all of this, cohost stays cozy.
There’s an unspoken joy that I’ve started to feel as cohost grows. With no metrics, numbers, reblogs, likes, faves, plurks, and glibglobs to distract from The Stuff You’re Looking At, its setting in that exploring cohost feels like clicking around some random website you stumbled upon by happy accident. Oh they have an About Me page? Let’s click. There’s a link to the web ring they’re a part of, do they have a directory? Click here for a random joke? I sure will! A gallery? I didn’t know this person did photography. Oh they make gifs too!
This form of web exploration, unhindered by algorithmic hellscapes, has been lost to time though I imagine it’ll resurface. The internet is becoming fractured and people are losing their patience with social media at large, but I digress.
When I go to someone’s page, I’m excited to read their bio, see if they did any cool customization to it, added cute icons or gifs, being surprised by a silly or beautiful header. I’m excited to see what they make, what they find funny, what they like to share, maybe even browse their pinned tags, see what cool CSS things they tried in their chosts.
When I browse my pinned tags I am sent down a joyous click-hole of “ooh this art is really cool” to “wow their writing is good” to “this person is on here too?! Sick!” and that joy of exploring comes back to me that felt unique to Web 1.
Cohost is not a website that gives things to you without input from you. I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful that a place finally exists that makes me excited and happy to explore. Cohost feels like an internet playground sometimes, finding beautiful and moving art one minute and then getting absolutely silly with css crimes another. Its fun here, cohost is cozy, and eggbug is SO shaped.
If anyone is listening PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make plans to build something like this again, I like websites made to be explored rather than just consumed.
