Tia❗

@exclamatia

baa

she/her
twitch.tv/exclamatia

28/F trans lefty sheep thing. I stream, I edit video, I play guilty gear and struggle to wake up in the morning.
(Icon by @heytheretyler)
off air
I am at Bluesky and Twitch. Later, Cohost.

Tia❗@exclamatia12/10/2023, 12:05 AM

the illustrious IRIS JAY @irisjaycomics

videogames is one word @psilocervine12/8/2023, 7:33 PM

"finding new accounts is so hard on cohost"

it's really not! I keep seeing people say this but it really does reveal how reliant people have grown on the way that modern social media has turned into a hose that just blasts you in the face with #Hashtag #Content? like if you want to find people to follow on here, you gotta do it like you used to have to do it

specifically, you need to seek out things that interest you. if you already follow like one or two active accounts though? you're already kinda set because cohost, much like tumblr, exists in a way where sharing things others have posted. those one or two people are probably sharing stuff they've seen, that they're interested in, and you can start looking at those accounts

there's also the tag search? like if you're interested in art or music or whatever, #my art and #my music and similar are things. admittedly, this is a bit of a pain point because it's not like you're going to know this when you first show up. it actually would be pretty good if cohost had a bit of an onboarding process that could explain this? not one of those extremely obnoxious "hey loser click through these like fifty things that'll let you finally use the site" ones, but maybe like... I dunno, a little guide that new users can click into that shows up in the notifications? something easy to dismiss

but this idea that cohost is some impenetrable wall that completely inhibits discoverability is so fucking weird and maybe it's because I'm the World's Oldest Child but this is just how social media and, yeah, the whole-ass internet used to be! you used to have to actually look for things to help you curate your experience online!

more specifically, maybe more importantly, you had to be an active participant. the internet really shouldn't just be a passive experience if you want to enjoy yourself. if you want things thrown in your lap, cohost probably isn't the place for you, but that also speaks to a deeper issue with what the internet has become and what expectations it's set up. like this is starting to feel like a boomer-ass take, but maybe the way the modern internet encourages passively just consume content is... bad?

I dunno, I think I've lost the thread here

if you want to find stuff on cohost, take an active role in that

Rufia @RufiaArt12/9/2023, 8:15 AM

I would seriously argue that users passively consuming content as opposed to actively deciding what people and subjects they do and do not want to follow and participate with is a decent factor in a fair chunk of the problems with the modern internet as a whole

Nero @itsnero12/9/2023, 11:34 PM

This goes for posting as a creator as well tbh

There’s no “perfect” tag to post in to get your art or writing or whatever looked at. The people who seek out art like yours are at least going to be slightly more engaged than the usual fan because instead of being blasted in the face with RTs or whatever they’re looking.

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in reply to @psilocervine's post:

Misty @dog12/8/2023, 8:46 PM

Yeah, I feel like a lot of the internet is turning into a thing where there's a tiny group of "content creators" and everyone else just passively consumes content. cohost super isn't that! But I guess if that's what you've gotten used to from instagram, tiktok, youtube, even twitter these days...

qim @queerinmech12/9/2023, 8:30 AM

the web in the 90s was annoying too, but at least there was a support system cobbled together by the netizens

there were directories and curated lists that people shared, there were news groups and chat rooms, and even certain sorts of specialty search engines with real face to face people trying you where to look and all of it was undirected

but it operated on good faith and someone giving you a leg up

almost none of that infrastructure exists today

everything that resembles it is commercialized and and twisted by decades of advertising

so yeah, it is hard, and cohost's search is bad

there are multiple generations that never had to do this and people who were not part of the Tumblr tagging culture do not find it easy

telling people it is actually easy is not giving them the tools to succeed, if that was your goal

videogames is one word @psilocervine12/9/2023, 8:35 AM

This is stuff you had to do on Twitter until like 2015. This is not a 90s thing. This is literally something that was a major factor on all social media barring Facebook within the past decade

qim @queerinmech12/9/2023, 11:47 PM

it was an example, but yeah, i opened my first twitter account in the first year of its existence, and it was also miserable for discovery

i feel like my point that community and discovery are hard and go beyond a particular site still stands either way

@secrets12/10/2023, 3:41 AM

you were absolutely not expected to be an "active participant" to find Twitter before 2015, if any expectation existed that you would need to expend effort to receive tweets it would have gone Muskwards back when the userbase was a dozen New York reporters tapping out 140 characters at a time on the first iphones

Back in the good old days when you wanted to see posts you may have had to get up with the rooster, tie an onion to your belt, and walk uphill both ways in the snow to look the Altavista man square in the eye and shake his hand firmly but from that point on you'd be directed to Home of the Underdogs or Ganoskin or Portal of Evil or whatever where everything that existed was laid out in a clearly organized, actively curated forum structure and you could just sort of click words you liked the sound of to receive everything the community had to offer on the topic without hoping everyone had intuited to label each of their individual posts the same way or relying totally on your marginally more online buddy to be your personal content delivery service. Even in the days when the internet was just Usenet, new users would be directed to a master listing of newsgroups pretty quickly and then were off to the races, that was the "feed" of the time.

Condolences if your experience of the first four decades of the internet was putting text files on an unindexed server and then expecting people to guess the filename or receive it by word of mouth if they wanted to read it, and trying to guess URLs that might have something you'd like to read in turn, but that's dumb, also what are you doing here did the notepad server break

videogames is one word @psilocervine12/10/2023, 3:58 AM

this is such a ridiculous misinterpretation of what I've said that I'm having a hard time accepting it as being in good faith

Alard @Alard12/10/2023, 12:14 AM

Honestly I feel like it's important to note that you don't really need to follow people on Cohost. Just bookmark tags that interest you and that can be enough.

in reply to @RufiaArt's post:

@Teyaric12/9/2023, 7:43 PM

I think there's an impetus not to be a parasocially greedy fan or a creep and a chaser or a hyperfocusing dork or a hundred other "I'm being too loud about what I want to talk about" variants that all feel strange in the modern Era. The systems really have pushed us to be passive consumers, and it feel /those/ kinds of transgressive to breach the line. It's a muscle we're going to not just practice, but practice ENCOURAGING the excersize of.

Shockola!@shockola12/9/2023, 7:59 PM

Cohost's tag search is much, much more effective than whatever hot mess tumblr has going on, and for that I'm grateful. But perhaps it might be useful to bring back lists and groups? Having those on LiveJournal was always handy.

astroshark_ @astroshark311312/9/2023, 9:21 PM

It's been such a weird feeling having to actively force myself to make posts cause I'm so used to lurking. But here it doesn't feel as daunting to put myself out there which is really nice :)

Stardust Arts @StarDustNeon12/11/2023, 5:42 AM

I remember bumping into an account on Bluesky that was convinced that Cohost was “completely dead” because they never got engagement.

IDK, some of the work that I post here is hit-or-miss, but I’ve had people liking and sharing a piece I posted in early September all the way through November. I just tag my stuff like there’s no tomorrow and people find it eventually.