i am genuinely very saddened that cohost is going down. i always meant to spend more time and voice more thoughts here, but i was too shy. twitter and tumblr feel too hostile, too focused on advertising and enemy-making. not many people i know are active on mastodon or bsky, and they also feel more "granular" to navigate, more overwhelming and "rabbit-hole-ish". i don't really know anyone here personally either, but cohost was always a site that i appreciated the culture of and wanted to dig into more. it felt like a site that could be home, if i decided to get really into social media as a personal user again. the art i was exposed to here was so avant-garde, intellectually stimulating, and inventive in a way that i don't see as much on twitter or tumblr.

i always got so much support and interaction on my art from you all. i might be one of the most visible indigenous people on cohost, which is a weird feeling, but i'm so grateful for the platform i had here and for everyone's appreciation of my art while we've all been here.

i don't know what's going to replace cohost as a place where i feel i can be myself, if i ever decide to share more of "myself" with public social media again. maybe an individual blog with RSS compatibility, maybe a personal mastodon or other fedi thing. is there a place that people are gravitating toward in specific? let me know where you're all going esp if we're mutuals or we've talked before!

thanks for being neat, cohost. i hope i can find another place online with a culture like this someday, and be confident enough in myself to actually take advantage of it while it thrives. i will reblog this or make another post with where i intend to be the most, like.. invested. in the meantime my current links are all in my bio and pinned post and such

For me, Cohost has been one of the only bright spots in a very dark year. I might have been scrambling to pick up the pieces of my life after two back-to-back mental breakdowns shattered it into itty-bitty pieces, but at least I could get a moment of relief from the relentless misery of it all by Posting. A few likes or a nice comment meant a lot to me: they felt like little reminders that I was capable of doing something right. I'll always be thankful to this community for the warm welcome it gave me. Site's management may have been laughably haphazard and moderation non-existent, but somehow it attracted some extremely cool people.

I guess this is the kick in the pants that I needed to set up accounts on more populous social media sites. I'll come back sometime before October 2nd and make a pinned post.

leave it to capitalism to remove the third space even online

I've never had a better time posting my photos and sharing my fuzzbutts with my internet friends. Cohost was the only place I regularly posted my photography and always had the nicest most honest and welcome interactions I've had.

If you'd like to follow me I'm going to try starting a Tumblr, it'll be the same content, cats and photos.

Thanks everyone here who made this place as special as it was. Lots of love to you all.