personal account. no fun allowed

 

professional: @videodante

star wars fanblog: @ct-0451

 

last.fm listening


personal website
dante.cool/

i don't know how to say this in a nice way but you need to purge the brain worms that tell you that just because the text field accepts longer posts, that short posts are somehow socially unacceptable or need to be couched in some distanced visual metaphor


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in reply to @dante's post:

I mean, I'm not going to. But I think it's an odd thing to want when the site already provides the functionality you're looking for?

But to be clear, yes, I do think it is that deep, because I think everything is that deep. There is a preexisting construct built into site functionality to enable shorter posts if users desire it.

A cheet is a subconstruct that visually distances the post from the existing container. The concept reinforces the (imo, incorrect) belief that the existing container is inadequate to contain shorter posts, and thus (again, imo, incorrectly) reinforces the belief that the site itself is lacking functionality, when it... isn't. No functionality was missing.

I think anyone can/should post in the way that they want, but the phrasing that you yourself used when outlining the project makes me think this is at least partially an ideological goal of the project:

Short text posts look sparse and out of place. The lack of character limits can be daunting for users just wishing to jot down a few short sentences.

to put it bluntly, I do not believe the first sentence is true, and I think the second sentence is a misconception.

i made the cheet format after personally witnessing multiple people i know and/or follow be turned off of this website for the reasons i outlined. it's a tool to help those who feel more comfortable using it. i'm not setting out to "fix" cohost, but help people who are used to Twitter ease into the experience of Cohost.

i do personally think a single line of text - in the title or otherwise - looks a bit sparse on a desktop monitor display, and did tailor the styling according to my own preference. cohost is not the only website where i think that's the case, mind: i think tumblr posts can look a bit Meh when they're a single line of text on a laptop/desktop screen. (i don't think the same when they're on a mobile phone screen though so i think i just have a Desired Width For Reading Things lol)

i spend an equal amount of time on tumblr as i do on twitter so i'm used to short posts both on a platform that does encourage it and a platform that is indifferent to post length. other people aren't as used to that!

i don't believe that Cohost is "lacking functionality" in any regard (although integrating links into cheets does overcome some fringe issues one might encounter with Title Posting, and the more recent addition of pseudo-hashtags is, i concede, 'added functionality'). Cheeter was not, and is not, an attempt to add any missing functionality. i made it very clear on the webpage and in the rationale posted on cohost & in the README that this is supposed to be a semantic distinction. my intention was that one would see a cheet and go "oh, there's a person making a short, throwaway text post. i know immediately that all of this post's content and context is contained within this green bubble".

i think any inadequacy implied to exist in regular, non-cheet short posts is you reading something i have not written and do not believe. i'm entirely indifferent on the matter. i personally don't even particularly feel the need to wrap my own short posts in a cheet format - i've only done so in some of my posts because i worked on the project and am proud of what i achieved (i suck at scripting and enjoyed the process of working on it & being able to exercise my skills LOL)

I don't feel any way about this specific thing (abs no offense to those who made it or use it, I don't mind and it's within the functionality!), but the state of the site as like a css applications sampler wiki is more and more annoying to me. It's made me realize I want a strongly styled site where what is varying is the text or multimedia contents, not the literal appearance and styling of everything.