I wasn't planning on doing a last post. I had planned to be done. But something struck me today after attending my local cohost meetup.
This is a story about My Chemical Romance.
The band really struggled after releasing the genre-breaking Black Parade album. They did not enjoy their tour to support that album and there was talk internally of the band breaking up after that.
They released a live album recorded on their last tour stop, called The Black Parade is Dead. At the very end of the very last track (Famous Last Words), Gerard Way announces with a mixture of anguish and relief, "The Black Parade... is dead!"
They did a thing. It then became time to do other things. It was probably really awesome sometimes, not so great other times. But the band stayed together.
We have all been on tour for the last two years, with Eggbug and @staff as our frontman. We've had our fair share of missteps, our highs and our lows. We've had memes achieve orbit and had to do some pretty serious introspection about our little website. Now it's time to go do other things.
This band can stay together, if you want it to. It'll take a little work, but cohost doesn't have to be the end. It's just the start of something new. A transition to another phase.
I think a lot of us are familiar with transitions by now.
This is a bittersweet moment. It sucks that it couldn't end on our own terms, but now we are closer. Now we are together, and there is incredible, incredible joy to be found in that, if we are willing to look for it.
To borrow a cliche, the real website was the friendships we made along the way. I'm standing at the brink now, pile of new Discord servers in hand, ready to transition to a life without social media. I can do this. We all can, if we want, with love in our hearts. I'm ready to move on to better things.
Cohost... is dead!