Umm, while I'm throwing ideas out there: I might make a small-ish¹ discord server with a focus of sharing art and creativity/oc things because there's a whooole bunch of artists here I liked seeing updates from every few days and I know not everyone is going to be on the same platforms anymore.

So this is an open call to anyone who has interacted with my art, or I've interacted with your art, and you would be interested in something like that to keep in touch with other artists ² you've seen around on cohost.

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1. small-ish in that we don't have to be mutuals, or even have directly spoken, but I'd like to keep it loosely contained to people who have seen/interacted with each other's posts on cohost on a regular basis. Because large discord communities quickly get overwhelming and hard to communicate in.

2. Doesn't have to be visual art either. It can be writing or music or photography or game dev. Just a general-purpose creative community. Thinking about people like me who just kind of do creative stuff as a fun hobby rather than a job so there'd be no pressure to, like, network or sell services or anything like that.

Never even ended up postin' enough to finish my introduction post, but I'm glad I was recommended CoHost and found a lot of really interestin' and cool people through it, even if I was mostly a resident lurker. I'm gonna be tryin' out Pillowfort as an alternative, where I'll hopefully lurk a li'l less. Eventually.

I'm gonna be sad to see CoHost go, it was a nice space to be able to see creatives and find people talkin' about the things I'm interested in, even small things here and there like findin' TTRPGs I'd never find otherwise, seein' people improve and grow at their hobbies, and discoverin' a trove on streamers who I now watch regularly.

Hopin' that if I don't end up joinin' the same websites those people move to or are active on already, I'll eventually see 'em again anyway at some point.

I'm feeling gutted right now. Cohost is just, nice.

The rest of the post-Gamergate internet has had me in a defensive crouch, with few exceptions. Everywhere else I go, I feel like I'm walking down a street with a hornet's nest in every tree, and talking to people who are like "lol, lmao" as they kick it, or point and laugh as someone else bumps into it by accident.

Twitter is a site that destroyed my mental health, that became a place I couldn't even type the word 'cis.' Bluesky is Earth-2 Twitter and will inevitably have the same problems. Tumblr has heavy levels of Fandom to the point I feel it loves things more than people, which as any Pratchett fan knows is the cardinal sin of our time. Mastodon is fine, right up until a moderator's ex-girlfriend's girlfriend's ex-girlfriend posts a bad opinion and within twelve hours everyone is defederating from everyone else, including people who had nothing to do with it.

I didn't feel any of that here. I called my time on this site, the Cohost Exhale; being able to stretch a little and relax. ¹

I admire what ASSC set out to do, and for a time, did. They really did try to create a space where your data was not sold and you were more than a target market, a place for posting first and foremost. A place to be, as the Internet used to be. And it was so, nice.

And it didn't work out, and damned if that ain't a sad indictment of the internet in 2024.

I'll really, really miss this place.

But I'm gonna try to smile because it happened. Nothing lasts forever, but I'll always have fond memories of Cohost. And I did so much healing on this site that I'll cherish the good it did me.

Anyways! Other places to find me.

https://charlottearielfinn.com/ - my blog!

https://arielfinn.social/@Charlotte - Mastodon!

https://bsky.app/profile/bycharlottefinn.bsky.social - Bluesky!

https://charlottefinn.tumblr.com/ - Tumblr!

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1. _{(I know this wasn't everyone's experience, and I'm sorry for those that didn't find a home here.)}

NO NUMBERS

NO NUMBERS

Without numbers there's no engagement chasing, and it turns out, that fuels a lot of the worst examples of poster's brain!