Goodbye, Cohost
This was originally written for Cohost.org
I’ve not… really… spent a lot of energy thinking of a “my time on Cohost” retrospective post like some folks have done (which have all been a pleasure to read!) because I’m not sure I really can. I think it’s easy to pick apart the stuff that’s individually made Cohost such a wonderful place to exist on, and certainly added to the greater whole of the thing, but trying to sum up everything into A Post feels impossible. How do you sum up years of emotion and attachment in a way that’s, like, understandable to others outside your specific lived experience on a website built to let the individual tailor it to their desires.
I tried tackling some of it in my last blog post in a more pointed manner. I’ve been spending a lot more time sorta doomer-thinking about it all. About how I’ve spent the last 6-7 years of my life being much more aware of the world built around me and how its structures are formed. There’s no “Oh, there’s a new app” for me anymore, it’s “Ah, there’s a new app. Who makes this, where is the money coming from” and the answer is never good. I think of losing what we’re losing and re-focusing on sites that are engagement black boxes get depressed. I can try, I can fight the flow of traffic a bit, I can build a niche. I can try! But will it work? Will I know if it did?
Our neighborhood, like all neighborhoods in Vancouver, is going through a blitz of demolitions and rezoning as the Mayor Sim purges all historical and livable property from the city. The city requires such efforts to post billboards on the affected property so that citizens can be alerted and have a period of input to the project in question. I’ve started submitting to those and making my voice heard in the capacity that I can to ensure that, no, our city does not need a 18-floor condo tower in a school zone. I fill out the forms, I leave my comments, but that’s all I get out of it. Will my comments be heard? Or taken seriously. I don’t know. I just have to say what I have to say and trust the process, one that from the outside seems to be more corrupt and immutable with every passing week.
It’s mirroring my experience with social media too much. I just have to post and pray that it gets seen. Every platform feels like this now and, by and large, folks have just come to accept it. “Welp, this is how it is now,” applied ad nauseum to every other thing that worsens and makes life generally worse for everyone involved. You don’t have to give Disney money every month, actually. You don’t have to subscribe to Spotify. You don’t have to use Ubereats and you certainly don’t need to rent Lime e-scooters. But people do. You gotta pick your battles, etc. I think we’ve spent too many years saying shit like “let people enjoy things” and have bulldozed the path to ignorance ourselves. There actually are some things you should stop enjoying because it makes you a shallower closed-minded person.
I’m not gonna say that Cohost curated an experience that was like The School of Athens but it at least felt like everyone was here because no one had given up on the idea that the internet could be your gateway to new things. The attention you received was worth reciprocating on no merit other than valuing the person who wrote it and the culture that created was one where nobody needed to share but wanted to and the experience shined for it. My posts felt valued. If it was possible for a website, I want to believe that it can be possible for something like participating in shaping the city I live in.
That’s the optimist belief I need to have, I guess, so I don’t go crazy. A better internet and a better world are possible. It will never be to the extent that I want it to be but an effort was made and it’s now on me and all of us here to carry that forward. In the end, that’s all I can be thankful to Cohost for. It wasn’t the posts, the jokes, the friends, though I cherish all of that. It’s creating a spark in me that feels purposeful and that I should carry forward not just in my online experiences but outside of them, too.