Josh Average

This site was good for some, bad for others. Some people found their people here, other people got run off the site for linking to official feature request pages too often. If I'm being a bit more cynical, cohost feels a lot like the dril drunk driving tweet. If I'm feeling more charitable, cohost had a lot of cool people here that I'm happy to follow and signup on new sites with and I don't know that I'd have that opportunity without Cohost.

I have good memories of my time here, I have bad memories of my time here, and I have funny memories of my time here.

I'll remember one Cathode Ray Dude reposting my post about the weird message boards I used to be on where you'd organize with other users to post on their forums. Coming back onto the site and seeing one of my favorite YouTubers in my notifications, with tons of funny pictures and posts and comments. Probably the only time I ever "did numbers" on here, and really I just helped Cathode Ray Dude "do numbers".

I'll remember seeing my posts referenced in comments derisively. Some people would reference them outright, like someone basically quoting my "Moralizing Annoyance" post to someone else. Someone tried to honestly say that I was genuinely upset that I was the only one in the WWE 2K23 tag, when I very clearly was joking about that stuff while being serious about how cohost handled discussions of the "white tech" culture here.

I'll remember how baffling it was to see someone act like reading "cohost could be more diverse if there were more people talking about sports or reality tv in the same effort posting styles that white tech culture topics get" meant that they, personally, were being told they weren't "marketable" enough.

I hope that I see more things come out of cohost's ashes. I'm excited to see what gets created, and what ideas people take from here into new places. Hell, I'm already seeing people talk about the Following page on Bluesky and how good that post viewing option is!

Just remember, if you are making something from this moment, from these ashes, to compare your project fairly. While there was some sentiment of "i'd love to see you do better" from some members of staff, please keep in mind that staff had a wealthy friend willing to piss away 100s of thousands of dollars a year for a few years. It's a team that is trying to convince people a May 2024 Stripe update killed eggbux when the policy existed months before that update at least. Whatever you make, whatever you create, be sure to keep in mind the resources they had and what they delivered with those resources and compare that to your own resources and project output.

I hope you all find cool new places to post. I've been signing up for a lot more places now, and following a lot more people off of here, so I hope to see you all again soon. My stuff is pinned, y'all will know where to find me.

See ya later.

"go give it a shot and find out" is so funny when, like... the only reason this site exists is because staff had a wealthy friend fund the whole thing.

"Maybe you could have had a wealthy friend willing to burn money on a project without a plan towards sustainability, let alone profit, but you didn't so shut up about criticizing us."

Just... no real sense of how incredibly privileged they were to piss away someone else's money for years as their full time jobs. What I wouldn't give to make 100k a year to just work on whatever the fuck I wanted.

Someone in one of the comments of my post linked to some thoughts on the end of cohost from staff's own colin and this one part really baffles me:

the worst decision we made was to get into social media. originally, we were planning to ship a subscription management site, like patreon, but another group of people got into that space with a more radical take on it, and we didn’t want to be the Big Bad Corporation coming in and stomping on their feet. initially we talked with them a little bit about joining forces, but we couldn’t make the money/organizational side of that work for various reasons, and since we had more resources than them at the time, we decided to go build a social media site and then loop back to subscriptions later (which never happened.)

This is... wild. Obviously the "cohost wasn't originally planned to be a social media site" thing is kinda well-known, but the framing of this is so strange to me.

So, y'all saw a Patreon-alternative start up with some radical ideas that you seemingly agree with on some ideological level, but just... wanted in on it? Seems strange to be like "we're making a different Patreon-like, wanna team up" and feel like you're owed some spot at the head of the table. Additionally, you didn't wanna step on their toes ("we didn’t want to be the Big Bad Corporation coming in and stomping on their feet"), but you still wanted to "loop back" later and step on their toes at some later date? When the writing was on the wall by the May 2024 "Stripe Totally Pulled The Rug Out From Under Us, We Prommy" update, why didn't you approach this Patreon-alternative as a user instead of a head of the table? It seems like ASSC would likely be able to use the service!)

This is just so fucking weird to me. Why plan to circle back later and stomp on this "more radical" service? Why not use them for funding when you knew you were never going to get eggbux off the ground? Weird! Strange!