i like cohost. cohost is good

sometimes though i feel like i still struggle to understand how to use it, or at least how i want to use it. I'm no code wizard. I don't write long posts (all that often). i do some drawings, but they're not big lush number-doers necessarily and i am not particularly aiming for them to be (@lunafairy). regardless, this isn't a self-deprecation post, but more wondering if the way i do use it, or want to use it, is "correct".


i had been active on twitter with no significant breaks since 2008 or 2009, until yesterday. i deactivated all 3 of my accounts, never looking back, etc. but even then, my tweeting was limited to shitposts, stream promotions, or looking at/sharing pretty pictures. i remade tumblr recently, and tumblr is pretty good at the pretty pictures and shitposts part. less so on the promotion stuff, but that's neither here or there.

ultimately my feeling about Here is that there is a ton of creative shit happening on this website and it's all sick. and also the posts tend to skew Larger than most other platforms I use. this is cool when it means someone is making a cool code toy (even when it only half-works on mobile where i do most of my browsing) or writing a big thoughtful thing that wouldn't get the same attention by the same people on other sites.

but the conundrum, then, for jami, is that: i like this post. its cool/funny/interesting. however, across the past 2 or 3 pages of my cohost timeline, 4 other people have rechosted it and ive had to scroll past it that many times or more to see other stuff i missed.

i really like the fact that cohost doesn't endlessly scroll. its a very deliberate decision and one i respect and i think is better for the brain, it gives you hard limits or offramps for your browsing to be like "oh ok thats enough for now". but admittedly it DOES really make me feel self-conscious about the stuff i share. it makes me aware of the "real estate" a single post takes up, i begin to fear "oh do people really want to see this thing Again?", or "is it really worth taking up this much of the page for people?". at least on my timeline, posts from 24 hours ago are on like, page 5. that's kind of wild! cohost historically hasn't been a website i've checked more than once a day, so if i see a bunch of cool art at once that i want to share, it gives me pause to be like "...wait but am i really looking to monopolize this much space?"

and i think a lot of times, having that thought is Good or indicative that maybe every post in your brain doesn't need to be made. but at the same time, it even makes me worry that, say, if i share 3 pieces of art in a row, that the first one i shared I'm now burying. I don't think this is necessarily a fault of the platform all of the time more than my own self-consciousness and fear of taking up space. but ultimately it does leave me wondering, to me, what is the "right" way of using this thing? especially now that I'm twitterless and will be looking at this thing more often.

it'll take time to figure out. cohost isn't a one-to-one replacement for other websites - it has its own use, its own niche, its own style. mostly, i just don't want to make anyone else's Scrolling Experience any Worse.


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in reply to @lynnedrum's post:

yeah i definitely feel that irt to sharing too... and like, for me, cohost is hard to replace the social aspects of twitter, even if twitter leads to a lot of anti-social behavior as a whole. cohost definitely reminds me of early tumblr in a way, like before there were 800 aesthetic blogs for everything u had like 10 guys and sometimes they'd all reblog the same things and you'd just have to scroll past it. it's a nice little space tho when i remember to use it