it also means, in my opinion, that there is a degree of "learning" the new space required in order to truly take advantage of its benefits. for me, personally, i don't really join new spaces with the intent of reproducing the way i used other spaces (why can't i use x like how i use y? etc.); new spaces are new spaces for a reason. to this regard, i want to talk about something that i just recently started actually tapping into and have been having a pretty good time with -- the tagging system, and bookmarking tags.
i've seen a lot of "i don't like non-algorithmic browsing because i can't find anyone" re: cohost, which is of course a valid concern -- especially as many of us are very used to algorithms walking us through discovery and not having to do it ourselves -- but i haven't seen many of those same people doing stuff like taking advantage of handy features like tag bookmarking, which although isn't perfect and doesn't do everything for you, is an incredible feature for finding what you want to see -- as long as you and the other folks are actually tagging your posts!
as an example; last night, instead of just scrolling my home feed and flipping pages, i wanted to see some of the other stuff people were posting about. so, i took a look at the tags for animation, guitar, and experimental music -- three topics i care about a ton -- and found LOTS of people i had never met or seen before posting their work or chatting about the topic in question. in the process, i also ended up splintering off into some other tags due to some interesting posts having other tags that were also relevant to me, and so i ended up also browsing a bunch of other tags, then bookmarking those tags to take a look at what's going on in those feeds. i dropped some likes, dropped some comments, dropped some shares, dropped a couple follows, and had a super chill time. not once in those moments did i really think "there are some discoverability issues here". it made things a lot more lively, AND i feel like i got a good mix of chilling/casual chatting and legitimately useful/interesting information. and i think this is the most important part -- it's not just browsing the tags, it's also about engaging with the content within.
i wrote a post a few days ago about engaging with artists' work more often using comments as well as likes and shares, and i think that this can apply to just about any kind of person in any kind of topic. what makes using something like cohost (or tumblr or whathaveyou) different is that each tag and topic is a space within a space all its own. entering a tag is entering a feed that is SPECIFICALLY catered to your interests, with its own people and communities that you might not even see in other tags, on other peoples' feeds, or in "The Cohost Global Public Feed" tags (which is certainly an Interesting approach that people have created to "solve the discoverability problem", although i personally don't think this actually addresses any alleged "problem" and just attempts to reproduce other social networks).
through the music tag, i found a few musicians posting their work, i found people posting songs they liked, i found music reviews, all that good stuff; and many of those posts were also part of other tags that were more specific. if i specifically wanted just music reviews from fellow community members, there are tags that i can look at for those things. no Anthony Fantano necessary! and this is something i likely would not have found by just following my friends and their friends, or by sifting through a disorganized "global public feed", scrolling for minutes at a time looking for something that gives me serotonin. now, not every tag is super-ultra active and engaging -- but neither is every topic and thread on a forum. and who knows -- you might even like the slower tags more than the populated ones!
if you're coming here just to simply be on here and have content broadcasted to you without any "effort" on your part other than following your friends who came in from (likely) the same place you came from, with a totally different post format and etiquette, you might be feeling like this site is "inactive", "not tailored to your social media habits", or even "boring". but if you use these new spaces as an opportunity to grow and cultivate something potentially a bit more specific to your interests, you might find more people, communities, and conversations that you might want to engage with and browse; and by participating in these different chunks of the community through the tags and tag bookmarks, you might suddenly find yourself having a much more engaging time than if you were simply just letting an algorithm spit semi-random content in your face that might be relevant to you; you can cut out the "might" entirely and find the things you ARE looking for, and you might even find something new with a bit of curiosity.
and, of course, obviously -- participate in spaces by using the tags!
(and if you don't want to use tags, well, that's fine! but in that case, you should probably understand why people who don't follow you aren't seeing your posts! the great thing about tags is that you get to personally choose how visible your posts are and to what communities.)
