My eyes and head are rebelling, so I guess I don't have much time left tonight.
I was about 13 when my brother built me a new computer and my mom upgraded the Internet to something functional, so that was the first time I had a chance to interact with heavier sites outside of the computer room at school. The first thing I did was head to YouTube. I had no idea where to start, so I typed something about Sonic into the search field, because of course. I found Sonic sprite animations and thus my fate was sealed.
I was stunned by these animations made with Microsoft Paint, Window's Movie Maker, and game sprites distributed from The Spriter's Resource. You better believe I got in on all that! Loved the trend of making goofy slice-of-life sitcoms with Sonic, Shadow, and Silver living together. I started doing fights too and it was so fun. People started moving to Macromedia Flash and was excited to learn and improve my animations.
This was the also the era where YouTube had actual community, so I was talking and having fun with other artists and sonic nerds. Making sonas and stuff. It took me an oddly long time to learn what a furry was.
But there was a problem that cropped up over time. For one reason or another I got more and more self conscious about what I was making. I got more ambitious and better at what I was doing, but I couldn't stick with and finish anything. I don't remember this time very clearly, certainly not on a whim late at night, but I there was probably a mixture of things. Getting bullied at school. Seeing more bullying online. YouTube itself changing as its spirit steadily decayed under Google. That bit really didn't help. Thinking back, I probably felt more and more pressure to provide something worthy to an audience, opposed to sharing cool stuff with friends and like minded people.
It's probably obvious where I'm heading now.
The net widely continued to worsen, and I'm still a mess. But. Cohost did a lot for me. It means a lot to me. I haven't had a home like this on the net in a long time. Thank you, staff. Thanks everyone. I love you, and I hope to make lots of fun stuff for you all.
