This is kind of a weird way to go out, I guess. I have seen some farewell messages throughout the past week and half and I think they all made me realize how little I used this site outside of nomnomnami community.
I mostly contribute that to several things.
- Almost all of the people I would of loved to followed here either tried cohost once and never again or never used it at all. This was a big discouraging factor for me.
- Out of the 3 people I did follow who don't fall into the above, one ended up leaving and the other went inactive. Based on my first sentence, it should be obvious who the last one is.
- A part of this I feel was also just how cohost was managed in general, though I was mostly unaware of what was going on outside of whatever appeared on cohost corner.
- I feel like a lack of an algorithm or a way to see posts other than in order with tags or by profile discouraged me from branching beyond the nami community sooner (I followed the #nomnomnami and #CameOutofNowhereJam tags prior to the closure announcement, but that's it). Tag synonyms and related tags might of mitigated this issue a bit, but they came a little too late. You kind of need to build your feed yourself, which without much of a starting point for me since most of the people I wanted to follow don't use cohost, wasn't something I felt I wanted to do.
- I did receive the some mildly meaningful engagement on cohost, but it was very inconsistent. To be fair, this is not a cohost only issue though. This happens everywhere I'm at on the internet.
And I feel that with all of those factors, I've realized that either 1) I never gave this place the proper chance because there wasn't anything there for me already or 2) it just wasn't for me. I probably could of created a great feed for myself had I decided to branch out or even just copy my tumblr's tags over to here, but that never came to my mind until after the announcement. I feel the same way with Mastodon where the people I want to follow just don't use it which leads to me not really using it much either despite there probably being things and people there that I would like.
There was nothing wrong with just seeing @nomnomnami on my following feed and #nomnomnami in my tags feed, but I partially regret not taking more advantage of the platform regardless of whether or not the people I wanted to follow are here or not.
With the cohost shutdown upon us though, I have noticed an uptick in people going to create websites. Some on neocities. Some on nekoweb. Some elsewhere.
I always considered my website to be supplementary to my main content ever since I've started it. It wasn't meant to be the center of it, just a bonus for people. It's why I talk a lot about my own little creations there which I never tend to do outside of it. I think it's only starting to skew towards it since I've realized there's more personal enjoyment out of writing there than writing in a social media text box.
There's kind of the crave for engagement that doesn't really exist there. I mean, Neocities has numbers (likes, site views, updates, follows) but they aren't usually the first thing you see and are non-existent on the individual websites. Even if cohost had no numbers, they still sent you notifications and posts have comments on by default which leads to the need still existing despite that not being the point of the platform.
Perhaps that's just how I view social media. Shouting into a void with mixed response. I guess my website is like that too, admittedly, but something about it makes it... different. Like, there's a reward for finishing a post there than posting something in a place like this. Or maybe I'm explaining poorly idk.
Another reason I started the site was because I found the idea of a personal website to be fun! It wasn't necessarily because I had a big grudge against social media (I actually avoided directly mentioning it when writing my first post years ago), but that aspect was noticeably lacking. I also could just do whatever I want on there without imposed limits or expectations, either self or otherwise.
I've written more on my website from April 1st 2023 (the first post after I created my cohost account) to now (or rather the 9th of this month) than I ever did on cohost. Perhaps it's because of what I said. Perhaps it really is just my preference.
I'm not saying you should also go and create a website, I'm just reflecting how I feel in the best way I can. Not everything is going to work out for you and asking people to start learning html and css (and maybe javascript) to get the next best thing to no numbers platform isn't the best idea (or I may just be underestimating cohost users).
Honestly, if there's anything to learn from this entire thing is that you should just find something that works for you, whether that be a website or not.
Hopefully my words made sense to those not familiar with me. Generally, whenever I write something complex like this, it ends up being off putting, but I did revise a few bits here over a week.