Goodbye, Cohost
Alright, I'm a little sick, and I have something of a headache, and I'm emotional for more reasons than just Cohost, but here goes.
I've been writing on the internet for most of the time that I've been alive. I've done it on blogs, I've done it on social media. I've done it for money and I've done it for free. I've done it on Tumblr and on more than one defunct media vertical and in interactive fiction.
Cohost was the first place where it felt like, consistently, someone was always reading. Something about the site's design and user culture created a magical space where people approached things with openness and curiosity and willingness to give their time and attention.
This felt like a place where you could write about anything and people would care. I've talked about the Put your Helmet On stories as something that I think could only have happened on Cohost. I never would have written those for any other venue. Because it only makes sense to write them if you truly have faith that someone is reading. If you really believe that you have not an audience but a readership of people who are willing to go with you for three paragraphs about chess adjournments or pacojet machines.
This place made me want to write like I hadn't wanted to write in many years. It cut through all the jadedness and burnout and disillusionment that had accrued to me over more than a decade of streaming words out onto the wires.
I don't know if I can, but I'll try to hold on to that feeling.
I don't know what, exactly, made this place the way that it was. I think the lack of numbers was part of it. I think, subtly, it encouraged everyone to default to seeing everyone else's posts as a good-faith attempt at reaching out to the world.
But also: Cohost was built on the radical assumption that users would curate their own feeds; that they'd actively work to seek out things that interested them. It was a website where you could run out of posts to read. It didn't even have pull-to-reload or an infinite scroll, for chrissakes.
This design wasn't for everyone. It made a very particular demand of its users: that they bring just a little curiosity and openness to it. To some, this demand was an unforgivable slight.
But, you know. 'Everyone' is not a club I pay dues to. And the people for whom this website was for – the ones who did have this curiosity – you were the best readers I could have hoped for.