Josh Average

There's nothing wrong with wanting to be discovered. Yes, I'm drawing and writing and making videos and tabletop games and creating for my own enjoyment mostly, but I also would like it if I wasn't shouting into the void. I'm not doing this stuff to Amass Numbers (though the numbers feel good!), but it is nice to know people see what I'm doing. There's nothing wrong in wanting to be seen. I'm not gonna be ashamed for wanting people to see my stuff, because that's nothing to be ashamed of.

Some final thoughts about this and then I'm gonna stop talking about this, I prommy.

It's not 1-to-1, but a lot of this discussion reminds me of people complaining that raising the minimum wage would mean Mom & Pop Businesses wouldn't be able to afford to hire workers. There's an assumption there that the Mom & Pop Business needs to exist, more than the needs of workers to have a livable wage. So when you advocate for higher minimum wages, those people with those assumptions will whine about the death of Mom & Pop Businesses as being more important, so stop advocating for better things.

The assumption seems to be that The Website Should Exist, and that takes precedent over The Website Should Improve. It's good and important for The Website To Exist, but also it could die at any moment if you say The Website Should Improve too much or in a way people don't like. Therefor, do your part! Run interference on petulant, ill-informed, will-to-carry-on-sapping complaints!

It's important to note what gets defined as being "too much". The above "petulant, ill-informed, will-to-carry-on-sapping complaints" are conveniently not defined. So, very conveniently, you can claim any complaint is "petulant, ill-informed, will-to-carry-on-sapping" if you just don't like it, or don't like how it's articulated, or you don't want to see it, or you want to engage in a pile-on, or any other number of reasons. This gets carried onto other ideas that seem to be used for convenience.

Some people attempt to make claims that complaining to staff is like complaining to the cashiers at McDonalds, but that's not remotely a fair comparison. The cashier doesn't own McDonalds, so if I'm yelling at them because they're short staffed and take forever they have no control over that situation and it's just mean and rude and does nothing to help anything. That's an actual "trashed bathroom" scenario. It's a convenient comparison, but it's not an accurate or even useful comparison to what's actually happening here.

Let's a assume, for the sake of the argument, that posting on cohost is yelling at staff in this instance. Unlike a cashier, the staff are in charge of this situation top to bottom. We can go on and on about how there are Only Two Programmers, but is that not something the staff is in control over? They are the ones making these decisions, the Only Two Programmers situation isn't just the nature of the world, these were decisions that were made by the staff. Staff is in control here, they aren't the bottom rung with no control. They're in charge! This isn't even "speaking to the manager", this is talking to the owner!

I guess this leaves me with some thoughts at the end of this. First is that there seems to be a solid amount of wanting it both ways. We should be doing Labor Solidarity by watering down who the staff are and their relationship to cohost as a whole. They're "underpaid workers", with no acknowledgement of how they happened to be underpaid. We want the aesthetics of paying attention to systems, but not to acknowledge realities of the systems that exist here on this site and who put them in place. People want to see staff as "in charge" and making decisions, but people also want to make sure that asking for changes in ways they dislike are made equivalent to yelling at service workers. Staff are building this site and take ownership over the site, but also they're just underpaid workers who don't have power over their situation.

Finally, I think we come to my hottest take about this in general: if you truly believe that any site would implode and die based on complaints about accessibility, and you think it's morally imperative to stop those complaints from gaining traction, what the fuck are we even doing on the site that would implode and die over so little. If criticisms bring the house of cards down, what's the point.

If someone says "this website isn't accessible to me, and I want to bring attention to that fact", who is hurt? Even if someone ended every single post they made on cohost with that idea, similar to ending every tweet with "ICE should be abolished", what negative thing is happening there?

If someone says "sucks that the dark mode, as it exists now, is effectively useless", who is hurt? Quantify the damage to me. Explain how it makes cohost worse.

If someone says "I think it's silly to hide behind 'profitability' when adding internet time didn't seem to hit that same hurdle", who is hurt? What harm comes from that?

If someone says "it's weird to put the accessibility features on the shoulders of the users instead of the staff", who is hurt? what bathroom has been trashed in this exchange?

It's a silly angle that doesn't hold water. What is it that you actually want to say? Say that instead.

the thing that gets me about criticism of cohost is that people (seemingly not staff!) take it so personally and decide that these criticisms are the end of the world. it's either "cohost is good and great and could use some nebulous improvements, but it's still good and great and the nebulous improvements aren't even really necessary really haha" or "these good faith criticisms are an ATTACK on the staff and you should feel bad, you want them to DIE is that what you want". it feels like there is no in between.

someone says "this site, with it's current implementation of dark mode, is inaccessible to me", and then people come back with "what, you want this site to be twitter? you want just four people to DIE for your accessibility features?? have YOU ever made accessibility features, dipshit"

these criticisms of cohost are not criticisms of you, so you should take them less personally for one. for two, it's okay for someone to say that this site isn't accessible for them, as that also isn't a personal attack on you, how you use the site, your knowledge of development, or any of that.

this site is inaccessible to certain people! it's just a fact, people have been talking about it, they've have explained how it's inaccessible, this is a fact of the website as it exists right now. staff is also not providing updates about this inaccessibility, which is also a fact. people are allowed to get frustrated and critical about these facts! they are also allowed to look at the optics of things going on, like adding beat time or the eggbug plush, and feel frustrated that a highly-requested accessibility feature is seemingly taking a backseat to these things. no one criticizing cohost needs to be a developer or have first-hand experience making accessibility features to say "the site isn't accessible to me, and it doesn't seem like a priority to make it accessible to people like me".

you don't have to do free pr for cohost. you do not have to defend staff's honor. it's okay that people are pointing out the flaws in this site, and it doesn't mean this is a personal attack on you because you like this site.

edit to add “it feels like” in my opening paragraph