Ex-academic, current tech monkey by day & speedrunner by night


bluesky
leggystarscream.bsky.social
discord
@leggystarscream

TarotCard2
@TarotCard2

Mostly because I see a ton of y'all running linux, then there is me, running windows 10/11 for everything. This site seems to cater to a lot of people that actually know what they are doing on a computer. My expertise in that field extends no farther than understanding the experimental flags on Chrome.


jaycat
@jaycat

The only things I've coded were a Neopets page and a "how many days have you been alive" calculator in Visual Basic that I made for my high school senior project. Beyond that, every attempt I've made to learn coding has been fruitless. Despite this, the online communities I have gravitated towards are ones dominated by coders. The queer programming sphere has a lot of interests that intersect with mine! I enjoy reading the posts and comments and jokes, even though I don't understand a lot of the stuff about Linux and mathematical theorems and strings of code.

It took me a while to realize that even though I don't understand those things, no one worth listening to is going to judge me for that. What matters is that the other things being discussed, which includes deep dives about queerness and living on the internet and photography and cats, those subjects appeal to me and speak to me. And I can contribute in my own ways, because this is not a community of just coders. This is a community of weirdos, of strange people finding other strange people to be strange with. We lift each other up with our art and writing and comedy. We all look at someone's fuckery with a .jpeg of eggbug and go YES! EGGBUG! and it brings us joy as a group.

You don't have to be a programmer to belong in this space that is predominantly defined by weirdness. You just have to be a bit strange, and everyone's at least a bit strange.


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in reply to @TarotCard2's post:

Just as much hard work goes into writing an essay or collecting a hundred puns or curating your best photos as it does learning how to write CSS so you can make text fly around the screen. You don't have to have tech skills to post real good, you just gotta truly give a shit about something and let your passion speak for itself.

We like Linux, but just as with our math and programming skills, it's all locked behind a wall of trauma and burnout.

Nothing wrong with using Windows. Cohost is a pretty techy platform but, like, tbh the posts we enjoy the most are those that teach us something new about life, and the little ones that make us smile.

Trust me, there are plenty of us whose "power user" status only extends about as far as "knows how to navigate a file browser and can follow a tutorial about which toggles to activate in a program's 'advanced settings' section"! Source: I use Windows 10, and the most technically advanced computer thing I've done in recent memory is, like... install a series of Blender plugins to let me import and export certain types of mesh, all of which had tutorials for each step (so I didn't even have to particularly understand what I was doing, just follow directions and navigate Windows Explorer).

I think there's definitely a widespread (and fairly understandable!) tendency to assume that the stereotypical Cohost user ("furry trans/NB communist programmer/coder") is also the majority type of Cohost user, and thus who the site is "for", but as far as I can tell, most people on here diverge from that archetype in one or more ways.

Segmentation is real. I've felt the experience of feeling pressure and worry. As much as we are inclusive, segmented communities do implicitly gatekeep. There is preference for certain personalities or people, circles do happen, and it's kinda weird to chalk it down as just being silly.

It's both infuriating and alienating to want to settle someplace, only to find that even some unapologetically unique communities don't ""want"" you. YMMV ofc.

Don't worry about this at all! Cohost just has a large amount of programmers and tech enthusiasts whose special interest is making computers do strange magic.

I have never used anything besides Windows and DOS. It's just what I know, and I can do the things I want to do with just that. I mostly just know enough 'computer stuff' that I can run an internet search to find out anything else I need to know.

i'll say as someone who spent 8 years running desktop linux: there's a reason i've spent the last 11 years using windows and macOS instead, lol.

i occasionally get the UI customization urge when i see their screenshots, but ultimately you're not really missing out on that much, imo.

that's kinda interesting because my experience is basically the opposite - i always miss linux whenever i have to use something else. installing and updating things is so much more complicated and my windows get piled up everywhere

although i've only used linux within the last 11 years, idk how things were before that

well i can definitely say that my insistence on using arch linux for a large portion of my desktop linux era was certainly part of it. there were multiple updates that involved things like "manually edit grub.conf or your system won't boot", which is a level of shenanigans so user hostile i can barely comprehend how anyone is ok with that lol.

before that i used openSUSE, weirdly enough. back then you couldn't even play mp3s out of the box, and it was hard to figure out how to get a proper media player going. i'm sure things have gotten better, though it sounds like drivers can still be a bit of a mess. not that they are seamless on windows, but if any platform has official drivers, it will be windows in my experience.

not to say that windows and macOS haven't gotten more user hostile in recent memory, though. their insistence on shoving cloud subscriptions down your throat and connecting everything to the internet is truly disgusting, and feels like the kind of thing a decent economic system would prevent as a conflict of interest.

i'm sure something like Ubuntu or Linux Mint would be a lot less screwing around and a lot more productivity than my overall linux experiences. but i spent a lot of my linux years on extremely underpowered hardware, so i went for niche setups in order to squeeze more juice out of them.

I know nothing about programming and computers (and yet I am studying computer science. Please send help), so I give like to chost that I can understand, that make me laugh, that make me think, that make me feel something, etc. So I'd say you are actually a good choster.

Knowledge is always relative. Time I spent on linux is time you spent on experimental flags and windows. I cannot help with most technical windows problems and still dont know what 99% of experimental flags do even tho ive had a chromebook for 2023-2016= 7 years.

Just post what you like, and I guarantee there will be people who think you are too technical for them

Something that helps me keep this in my mind is Maia Arson Crimew's tweet "Your idols are your peers." Just participate in life and share what you love and the experts will find you.