an introduction, and some thoughts on the cohost shutdown

13 Sep, 2024

hello! it's blogging time.

now that cohost is shutting down, i'm setting up a new home for whatever long-form (or even medium-form) writing i do. i've found over time that the microblogging formats of most social media don't really work for me, and i like having ownership / control of my writing. so here we are.

i'm spending some time migrating some of my favorite posts over from cohost to here; you can view them in the #cohost tag if you so wish.

i'm planning to write more about my overall Feelings around the cohost shutdown soon; there's a lot of things i'd do differently if we were to do it again, but i'm proud of what we accomplished regardless.

one thing that i've been contending with in the wake of the shutdown announcement is the outpouring of love for cohost that i've gotten from so many people, some friends, some people whose posts i was familiar with, some complete strangers.

the big problem with working on the site is i got too close to it. i knew all the flaws, and every single one of them felt like a personal failure. using the site was hard because i knew it could be better, but i wasn't able to make it happen for one reason or another. it became difficult for me to actually use the site casually because no matter what it felt like work.

i grew to, in some ways, resent the site. it was difficult to disentangle those feelings from the reality, which is that we had made something that thousands of people loved, that would be missed.

XOXO marked a mindset shift for me. at that time, i knew the end was coming, even if i didn't know exactly how close it was. i went into it feeling that a shutdown would be a failure, that i would be a failure for letting it happen, etc etc you get it. standard self-loathing shit.

talking to users at XOXO, other Community Professionals, and Andy Baio¹ helped shift my mindset. a shutdown wasn't a failure. we had made an impact, we had tried, and we had managed to make it work for a shockingly long time given our resources. i still don't feel good about a shutdown, but i feel a hell of a lot better than i would have a month ago.

the thing i'm most looking forward to is being out of the spotlight. i'm looking forward to not being a notable figure. i'm looking forward to occasionally writing, talking about what i'm enjoying or finding interesting lately, and just generally living my life. i wish we could have kept cohost going, but i welcome the rest.

thanks for reading, thanks for being here, and thanks for having used cohost.

#personal