🌐 Cohost Sunset
I was pretty late to the Cohost party, only signing up last April as an overlap in my interest in the Decker community and some of the creative crossover I found there. I enjoyed the vibe and general silliness of the Decker people I was following, but my activity and personal contribution fell off pretty quickly1 as I got distracted by life and old habits.
This is one of those times I wish I had a daily journal I could look back through and see how my interests and priorities shifted over time. My microblog is the next closest thing and confirms that Cohost was top of mind to me only until mid April. My browser history reveals that I had completely stopped checking in by May 1st. I'm not sure where my attention switched to after that, but I regret not visiting more regularly. I hope I'll continue to see many of these folks through the Decker and Bear Blog communities.
Anyway a couple reaction quotes from people I admired on Cohost:
Cohost is the first social media site I've participated in, and it looks like it will be the last for a very long time.
This site has been a major gathering place for artists and tinkerers interested in Decker, and its little sister WigglyPaint. I hope that some of you will join us in the Decker Community Forum on Itch.io. I'd love to see your WIPs and projects posted there, and I hope to see some familiar faces in the next Decker game jam this December (announcement pending). For those who are spreading out into the social media void, please consider telling your new friends about Decker, too. It's cold in the vast spaces between the stars.
i have a creative motto since college: "make what you want to see in the world." it's been on my itch.io page since i made it all those years ago lol. i make the things that i do because i want to see them exist and be realized. it doesn't matter if someone's done it before or better than what my current skills allow, i will make what i want to make. there's a similar adage from people complacent with the current environment of media: "If you don't like it, make it yourself!" and then the same people go to piss themselves when someone, yknow, actually does it.
the staff of cohost actually went and did it and people still pissed themselves over it, but they're not who cohost was for. staff dreamed of a different kind of internet and they made it real. more than real, they made a space that people thrived in.
It also did for Decker unfortunately, I still have grand plans to use that retro web multimedia platform to do fun stuff in the future.↩