This was mirrored from cohost after being posted as my final piece there before it went into “read-only” mode.

This is my last long-form post on cohost and I figure I’d give you my thoughts before I go.

I’ve been on some form of social media for better or for worse since December 2000. To put into context where I was at in life back then, I was 16-years old and was still in secondary school. I was not an adult but found myself amongst many people who were often twice my age. These were people who themselves before then didn’t have Internet access in the same form I did at my age, and yet here we all were congregating together.

This of course was the Something Awful forums and while not social media explicitly (really “ur-social media”), it had all of the functions of social media baked within.

At the same time, I also joined LiveJournal, which is why I found cohost rather liberating. While the stories I could talk about from the Something Awful forums could be relatable to someone on cohost, because of its primitive nature, they would not compare to what I saw on LJ. However, both shaped the Western Internet good and bad and it’s why I have always had hesitation to comment on the affairs of this website.

However, since this website is about to cease to be anything but a time capsule in just a few weeks, that hesitation is no longer there as the audience is beginning to disperse.

One of the things that made cohost interesting is that it was rather insular. This is not a negative, but things didn’t escape the confines of this website often. Memes such as Ryan Reynolds’ becoming carbon and “Love Honk” did escape this website, but CSS crimes while cool did not spread around because they simply could not.

Somehow search indexes loved cohost URLs and it led to the local transit agency becoming aware of my posts, but they didn’t drive people to come here and participate.

Something Awful for example had a lot of content leak out to the point where it was basically freebooted for someone else’s profit. All your base are belong to us is a perfect example as after a forum member made a song to commemorate the meme, someone lifted it to create a video and it then spread like wildfire.

This wasn’t a bad thing for the forums ultimately as it led to more people joining the place, but the song’s creator, JRR never really saw a cent for it and sadly passed away in 2011 without people outside of the forums noticing.

LiveJournal was a different beast. It is more of an analogue to cohost than SA and often when describing this website to people, I tell them it’s like what Tumblr and LiveJournal birthing a child would be.

However, LJ never really had memes like AYBABTU, but it did however birth a toxic culture that fortunately never saw the light of day on this website. I won’t elaborate on what this culture evolved into, but much of the ills of the Western Internet can be focused on one particular account that went out of its way to document all of the misgivings individuals users engaged in.

These sites have aged in weird ways and ended up as neighbourhoods I could not navigate anymore.

And that is why I am sad to see cohost go the way it did. Its demise was never surprising as launching a social media website in the year 2022 is risky, but it still saddens me as it was my home on the Internet. I was one of the original test users with a two-digit user ID and was excited to see this go somewhere especially in light of my departing Twitter.

cohost was never perfect and was never destined to be–it didn’t need to be. I have long-practiced the philosophy of not letting perfect get in the way of good or as I put it, looking for satisfaction. I could go on and on about the flaws of this website, but it’s not important to me as this website actually tried a new approach to things.

I think that for many of you, you will never understand this mindset I hold. It’s easy to lash out at the site’s creators for doing things in a way you think is wrong, for not having the right policies, for not adopting the right features, and so on, but it’s another to go and look at them pragmatically–I can point out so many shortcomings I witnessed on part of the ASSC here, but I will not because it’s not pragmatic.

They tried. They put the work in. They listened. They worked what they could. They taxed themselves. Even in shutting down this place, they told us what is up. They told us how much it cost to run this place. Many of you were right, but did you ever try yourself? How did you come to that conclusion?

I’ve run a startup myself and I never once vented out what I thought was wrong.

Some of the worst behaviour I ever saw on the Internet has been on this website and yet somehow I still wanted these individuals around because I wanted them to see them succeed because their success was cohost’s success.

This website drove four people to burn out–Tumblr somehow has 2,500 employees I will point out here. Workload and user behaviour definitely played its part in their role in how this website succumbed, but I don’t see it as a failure because they pointed out a huge problem with the Internet: capitalism reigns supreme.

We don’t have good online communities anymore that are accessible. cohost does have accessibility issues I must point out, but its barrier to entry is significantly lower considering it was never really riddled with algorithms such as what is seen on Facebook. The capitalism machine has turned that social media website into a place where some countries cannot share news, people in their 60s respond to AI-generated posts and say it is truth, and selling a video card on the website often requires you to know where the closest CCTV camera is pointed at.

cohost never devolved into a place to post shrimp Jesus and I’d argue it hasn’t devolved at all. It pointed out the problems with running a service on the Internet. In a better timeline, this website would have thrived and many would clamour to have the coolest user names, the coolest CSS crimes, and the best love honk remixes.

cohost was a success because it did cool shit™ and it did shit no other website has ever done.

When this website ceases to permit new posts and is then confined to the Internet Archives, it should be looked at fondly. I want this post to be in the IA and I want people to hate what I have to say. I’ve been on the Internet long enough to not feel bothered by what I am posting here and the responses that it delivers.

When you find your new home on the Internet, remember this: don’t let perfect get in the way of good.

Make whatever your new home is your home. Learn to cultivate what you see and filter out what you do not want. Do not expect others to make their home on the Internet inviting to you, but you should also make good neighbours with those whose gardens have similar flowers as you.

You may not always like everything about your neighbours, but they’ll be there for you when you need your garden appropriately watered while you are not there.