People seem to mistake calls for professionalism from the devs as like...some weird innate desire for bureaucracy and PR speak. That's not what it is. What you want to see is an indication that they're on top of things, because if they aren't, the site won't survive. If you aren't aware of whether or not you've posted a financial report, when doing so was a term for your funding, that's a bad sign. When you forget to renew your domain, that's a bad sign. And when your reaction to these bad signs is "haha, oops, oh well!" it shows you aren't even taking those bad signs seriously, which is the worst sign. People aren't asking for the devs to work in a suit and tie, they're adding the devs for acknowledgement that they are taking their business seriously, because the site can't live if they don't, and it's obvious after a history of skipping financial reports and patch notes, ignoring questions, letting their support forum get overrun by spambots for weeks because they literally weren't looking at it (which makes reporting things to it useless), forgetting to cancel artist alley ads (giving some users free weeks of ads which takes real estate away from the people who WERE paying)...they arent taking their business seriously.
When people are calling for professionalism, they aren't demanding Cohost act like a straight laced fortune 500 company, they just want a basic acknowledgement that any of this shit means anything to them. It's not wrong for users to want the transparency that the company explicitly promised them, it's not wrong for advertisers paying ASSC to want the ads they paid for to not be crowded out by unpaid ads, it's not wrong for people who are told to put bug reports and suggestions in the support forum to expect someone to actually look at them and not have them drowned out by Viagra ads. People are worried about whether the site is going to make it, because they've set up shop here and we've already had two "the site runs out of money in two weeks" posts and aren't far from current funding running out. Responding to those worries with "haha oh well I forgot, you find this relatable right?" makes things worse. They want to feel like you've got a grip on things and even if you don't have a grip on things, you can't just tell everyone you don't and expect them to be happy about that. People acting like these replies are people asking to speak to the manager or wanting ASSC to have formal email signatures or whatever white collar bullshit are just trying to sweep what's actually happening under the rug.
And just to add to this, people wanting things from the devs or being blunt with them has absolutely no bearing on what will happen to the site. I guarantee people will, when the site eventually does end, blame naysayers or people not supporting the devs enough. It's irrelevant. Good vibes did nothing for them. People being excited and positive about artist alley, as the devs also were, didn't translate to sales for the advertisers, which then didn't translate to ad sales. Saying "wow so cool great job!" didn't actually mean anyone buying anything. It's always, always money. And the fact of the matter is, Cohost's problem and what will eventually kill them is what has been there since they launched and were brimming with good vibes, and that's their insurmountable payroll. The only way for them to make it is for them to have all cut their salaries down a long time ago. They didn't. There's no way at this point for them to make that up. It really doesn't matter if people demand timely financial reports or say "hey I understand no pressure it's okay", neither reaction changes their financial situation. The only thing that affects their situation is greatly increasing revenue (which they seem to have hit a wall on, their recent inflated expenses ate everything artist alley was going to give them since launch was its peak), or reducing salaries. Blaming this on people being too demanding or rude or whatever implies that if people had been nicer, somehow Cohost's money problems would have just vanished, and that makes zero sense. It's not some kind of "we could have had nice things if y'all had behaved better" thing, because we still wouldn't have had the nice things, because they can't afford to operate and never could.
