17-Sept-24: On The Ending of Things

I've been thinking about things... ending. I wanted to say the 'end of things', but no, 'things ending.' A distinction specifically on the act, on how things end. In that, in this modern age, it's kind of expected that things don't, and that's kind of bad? Maybe really so?

With the upcoming end of Cohost, I can't help but think about the number of things that just haven't ended. Twitter's still around but it's an absolute husk of what it nominally used to be. Facebook, from accounts, is just filled with AI-gen and bots. The number of game companies that just keep the name, but all the original staff have quit or been laid off, services sold to venture capital and slowly enshittified to uselessness...

None of these things are dead, but they're not really alive either. They're kind of just a shambling undead, largely carried by the sheer weight of the service they previously provided.

Cohost dying, at least, let people move on, let people carry on the philosophy elsewhere, let them start their own blogs, gave hope for a better internet, to let people comment and curate and talk and interact again. There's sadness and I know I cried quite a bit myself, but, there's still some hope.

But. Twitter's still around.

Is that actually any better, though? You can stay in touch with the people you've found, but everything else decays around you. You keep your reach, but are you still reaching the same people? How many of those thousands of followers actually still care, interact? Having to hesitate on any attempt at showing sincerity?

I keep thinking about Blaseball. I still miss it. The Discord servers around it are still up, the people are still around, but things can only get smaller, quieter.

I keep thinking about all the friends I've met, artists I follow that just disappear without a trace.

Like, obviously it couldn't last! Things have to end that's just how things are! But we got sold a dream, a vision of a limitless, permanent internet and it's not true and it sucks and you have to rebuild and hold on to your connections as hard as you can and just.

I think I regret not using Cohost as much as I could have. I only had about a dozen posts on it, my number of comments can be counted on a hand. Despite everything, I think I was still scared to post, to talk, to be.

Think I'm still scared. To even just upload this blog post, since I barely used Cohost and it feels kinda posing and I never really used any other social media so why do I even care so much and I hate that it took the death to actually reach out and talk to people and.

.

There was a post I saw, I think on Bluesky. About not being able to sell your comic in a one-sentence pitch. I thought what a pitch for my VNs would be, and ended up with something along the lines of "Lesbians try to find joy in the in-betweens." The little moments of life, those days where nothing really happens, trying to surpass that insurmountable anxiety over the future.

I think I need to start trying to do that myself.

Will I find that? In Posting?

I don't know. But seeing how hard I regret not trying before... I think I owe it to try now.