The fall of Cohost.

Cohost went down at approximately 07:07 EDT. We saw it in real time. We juuuuuust missed the finish line to make one last chost.

Cohost, for all of its flaws (bad decisions by a staff clearly not ready to handle the burden they were accidentally given, not to mention the racism among some folks) was important to us personally. We didn't have the account that long (since November 4th of 2022), but it helped us when we needed it the most.

It helped us realize we don't need social media (ironically enough). It helped us remember why early 2000s LJ (you know, the place this place is a clone of) saved our life. It was the first time since we joined tumblr before it became one of the "big 3" that we posted just because we wanted to.

We didn't need to be a political thunderbucket (we ended up doing that anyway to wean away from doing that on twitter, but we didn't need to). We didn't need to focus on our "personal brand(tm)." We didn't need to wear any of our internet masks (that's something we historically did, we always put different parts of ourselves in different places). We could just be ourselves.

It's ironic that exactly 2 months and a day ago we archived part of the site out of a fear of KOSA. We already had the bulk of our chosts archived, and now we got the rest.

Anyway, it was a real one. It was destined to die for several mistakes, and the staff definitely made some bad decisions. However, it helped many people remember something simple but extremely important about their relationship with the internet.

I'll end this with the chost I didn't get a chance to post because I was slightly too slow on the post button.

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The very last Chost. Goodbye everyone.

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