eggbug (do anything)
I loaded up Cohost this morning to catch up the final posts of users on the website, and found people saying where everyone could find them, and goodbye in their own way. The ones that got me the most were the people saying goodnight to Cohost, or its mascot, Eggbug.
(post via Internet Janitor)
I had been on Cohost since the November 2022 Twitter exodus. One of the first things that struck me wasn't having to curate my own feed -- I'm an elder Millennial, I've been on the internet since 1996 -- but that because there was no algorithm, there where times when I caught up with the end of my dashboard. And I found I could just close the site and go do something else. It was freeing. I felt good about it. Over the next year and a half I found a lot of people who were interesting, who posted interesting things, and were doing so because they loved what they were posting.
Cohost's biggest success was its no numbers philosophy. The only numbers on posts were how many times people had commented. And comments were encouraged, the preferred way of people responding to a post. There were no reblog numbers, no like numbers. In fact, no one had visible follower counts, not even the users themselves. I don't know how many people followed me, and I have no intention of counting. What this did was level the field. There were a few big name (for certain niches of the internet) users, and for the most part they just posted, and interactions tended to be earnest and sincere. There was a joke that went something along the lines of where else are you going to see people posting enthusiastically about a video game system five people own (it was the Casio Loopy, and it's neat!).
Back at the beginning of August I logged off of Tumblr and uninstalling it from my phone. It was, up until this, my preferred social media. But it was becoming all too much, and walking away for a while was the right thing to do. After a few days, I found myself not missing it. I could post my art without worrying that the millionaire owners of Wordpress and by extension Tumblr selling my art to Midjourney. I could post my art that wasn't fandom related and people would be interested! I got more traction on my zines from Cohost than anywhere else. People were just interested in what everyone else was making, or doing, or thinking about.
It wasn't without issues; once again POCs were chased off of a platform for daring to speak about white people's emotional support racism, for one. Finances were not great, either. But I loved the site. Because of how it its underlying philosophy, no numbers, forcing you to curate your own online experience, encouraging you not to post for clout or your brand, but because you were part of a community, I learned the the internet can be a space we enjoy being in. We can have a community and not just a place to shout at each other. People called it social media detoxing. It sure felt like it.
This is a rambling mess, but for the second time in two years a community I love has been shut down because it wasn't profitable. Cohost could have made money, but the devs didn't want to sell our data, and would rather let the site go under than do so, and like honestly? I appreciate that. My intention, for a while at least, is to talk about the cool things I've found via Cohost. There's a lot to share.
Before I go, I want to share what Austin Walker said on his last Cohost post:
it's good to make things, even though making things is incredibly hard. it's even better to make things that you really, really believe in. making things will not save us. but the alternative is creative annihilation. and many people are rooting it to arrive.
I saw a lot of people saying that they were done with social media. They didn't want to go back into the noise and the branding and the clout chasing and the anger. But a lot of us are building our own websites. People are finding out about RSS, or remembering how to use it all over again. I've counted no less that two different attempts at starting a forum. The friends of Eggbug are still out there, trying. We're trying.
Because there's this ending:
via
But I liked this one better:
-kosmo