so I really like a lot about cohost. I like the people running the site and think they're making interesting decisions. I also like the sort of emergent "spirit" of the site, a sort of self-awareness and playfulness...and there are a lot of lgbt people etc. I also have some mutuals from twitter here, and they're (you're!) all people I like a lot

fediverse is much more "twitter"-like in a way that I'm not sure if I like or not, especially after using cohost. being able to like responses, for example, is sort of double-edged, becasue then I feel a pressure to just like everything. which is fine! but also kind of exhausting?! but it also reaffirms that people are reading things...on cohost it's sort of hard to get any feedback, which is part of the design, but can also make it feel kind of lonely, mixed with the other stuff. cohost seems much more "write for yourself and maybe close friends"

I guess that fediverse provides a lot more rails to the user experience that cohost doesn't have. if you find a nice little instance, you automatically have community in a way that I haven't found on cohost...cohost seems to encourage you to search tags, and I've been doing that, but when someone post about anime, is the expectation that I should be creeping up on their posts? I mean, it's totally find and people have been nice and I've found some cool people, but on fediverse it's crystal clear that the people on your local instance are meant to be "your people." it bootstraps a community for you

of course, it's not a competition! this is just a reflection of how the two communities feel different. I found a fediverse instance that seemed to vibe with me (which took time! that's why I hadn't joined in teh first place!) and it was like "bam" now I have all of these people engaging with my posts, there's all of this sort of twitter-esque social energy. a lot of conversation, a lot of likes, etc. on cohost it's much more restrained for the time being, I guess it feels a lot more like, well, livejournal did. sort of blogging, maybe some people will engage...I do like the general vibe, but it will definitely take more time I think for cohost to sort of become whatever it will become. I'm ok with that!