Cohost

This post was originally written for cohost.org on its final day of posting.

In 2016 I took an "intro to web design" class, and what it really was under the hood was a class on the net.art movement. I was there out of mild curiosity (and a need to fill an elective), but this course swept me right off my feet.

Our projects were less "build a website" and more "paint with HTML, CSS (and a liiiiittle JS)". It was really exciting to play around with a tool that behaved nothing like the charcoals and paints I was used to at the time. "What do you mean you can't just put a circle here, or draw a line any which way!?" It was so exciting and frustrating, but in a way that got me excited about discovering results.

A lot of the net.art stuff we looked at was eye-opening. It was incredible to me that people had been using websites as canvases to such an extent so far back in time. It felt "old" but also like... a really interesting potential fork in time that got abandoned in the pursuit of capital. The level of expression I was exposed to really changed the way I thought about how the internet worked, or how it could work. I was starting to realize just how much the websites I was using in my day-to-day had become vessels for "products," and I was the product.

Years later, I saw @aurahack post about this new site called Cohost which was just opening up to registrations beyond family and friends of the devs. I made an account and started lurking. The moment I got the ability to post, I lost myself in my code editor. I could use HTML and CSS as a form of expression, and in a social way! I remember losing so many hours to designing my introduction post and realizing how funny and wonderful it was that my posting interface now looked like this:

From that point on, I learned so much about basic HTML expression and deeply built out my understanding of information hierarchy. It wasn't some frustrating experience to open up documentation to learn a new trick- it was fun! The web in and of itself was fun!

As time went on, and as I got more comfortable using Cohost and making things, I started to feel a chill when using other social media. It was the feeling of being watched, where I didn't have control over who or what was watching me in the same way I did here. I'm fine with being seen, and a lot of the time I really want to be seen- that's why I'm here! There's something perturbing about knowing the systems we buy into are consuming us so wholly though. I didn't feel like this place was consuming me. I felt like I was a part of a system that appreciated me as much as I appreciated it. I made friends, I learned so much, and my relationship to computers was permanently altered in the process. Losing this place has redefined my entire approach to how I use the internet.

The last couple of weeks have been a bit rough. In the rush to get a website running, batten down other social media, and set up an RSS reader to keep track of all the people that I feel like I'm losing, I've found myself with a nervous attachment to things online. My screen usage has shot up and my mood has deteriorated. I've lost a lot of sleep. Is it because of how I'm using bluesky and mastodon? Am I being re-exposed to a more toxic way of being online?

It's not good. Losing Cohost has taught me a lot about how I want to be online. I don't want to be consumed. I want to put myself out there in a way that feels right, like I have agency and dignity. I suppose my blog kind of allows for that, but I can't help but feel the void where access to community will have been.

I don't have a good way to end this. I'm just trying to lay out some very general feelings about things, and to explore how I've changed as a product of this place.

I'm going to miss you all.