On June 29, 2022 I joined a small social media site called Cohost. It was slow-moving, and its design actively discouraged chasing after metrics like followers count or the number of times a post had been shared. It didn’t take long for Cohost to take over the majority of my social media attention - and for the attention that I had to devote to social media in general to shrink pretty drastically. This is less of an indictment of social media and more of a point of praise for Cohost – I found as much joy in the time I spent on Cohost as I did on Mastodon and Twitter combined, and ultimately Cohost ended up being the only social media site I checked often enough for it to be worth pinning in my browser.
Before that I had joined Twitter first in 2008 but I mostly bounced off of it until 2011 when I started using it to actively find community; before joining Twitter, the closest to I got to social media was dial-in BBS systems. Once I moved from BBSes to the web I was more likely to be active on IRC than anywhere else. This probably explains my usage of social media in general – more IRC-like than anything else.
Cohost Brought the Weird Ones Out
Cohost’s lack of any algorithmic boosting coupled with the slower pace meant that you found out about cool stuff primarily by word of mouth – there were tags which people could and did follow, but they were not at the forefront. Discovery felt organic in the way I remember the 90’s web being. This was social media which was joyful to use.
Cohost was also extremely weird in the way you want a place catering to artistic and creative people to be. It was the sort of place where you could be reading a thought-provoking post by Fred Herbert, immediately after that you might encounter a picture in the style of the original NES Pictionary though with custom art – with people competing to find the most humorous incorrect guesses they can come up with – followed by someone managing to mangle the post format in a way to produce what became affectionately known as “CSS Crimes” - which could range from the Star Wars intro scroll in full to interactive posts which are more game than post. It was the sort of place where turning on the ability of users to ask you questions to answer publicly resulted in being asked your favorite go/baduk proverb.
favourite go proverb?
This had me thinking for a good bit. In the end, I’m going to cheat and give two - the life lesson they team up to teach is so important.
When in atari on the third line, add a second stone and sacrifice both
Even if some work will be “thrown out,” that doesn’t mean it isn’t useful and worth doing.Lose your first 50 games as quickly as possible
Setbacks are temporary, if you can grow from them then they’re worth the temporary pain.
Cohost Left ’em Wanting More
It was announced that Cohost would be ceasing operations on the 9th of September, 2024. This marked Cohost managing an extremely rare feat: a website managed to shutter before it had worn out its welcome with its userbase. Watching the weeks since the announcement has been interesting; there is an overall sense of being energized to capture the magic that Cohost managed to bring to the world and refuse to let it go. There is an enthusiasm for the magic and joy of creation which makes me hopeful for the future of the web in a way that other social media never has. I’ve seen dozens of blogs and RSS feeds started in the past few weeks, and several investigations into how the upsides of a website like Cohost (interacting with people whose work you admire, boosting work to others, etc) might be applied to a modern blog in a way that’s pleasant for all involved.
Thank you, Cohost. You were an inspiration and whatever direction the web takes, I hope it takes inspiration from you.