So I recently left cohost after a year or so of being on the site. I really liked the site at first--a social media site run by a not-for-profit organization seemed like a great idea. But I think it just grew too much too quickly, totally overwhelming its staff of four people.

Here's the thing: I keep trying to type out my issues with cohost and I just get totally fed up with even trying to articulate my feelings about it. Even though this is my Zone(let) where I should be free to post about things like "rules about NSFW art featuring characters that can be seen to be underage," I still feel like someone is going to come up from behind and call me a pedo or w/e because I'm even discussing the matter at all. That's how fucked up this entire situation has got me.

Anyway, here's the gist of it: cohost was like "hey, we don't currently have any rules against posting lolisho, but don't do it while we decide on the rules." Then, like, a year passes?? and they eventually come out with this truly bizarre decision where they say "okay, you can't post lolisho art, but writing is okay, also cub is okay for some reason." People blew up at them over it, so--within minutes!--they backpedaled and banned cub as well.

Let me be clear: I have no problem with them banning lolisho on principle. I think they should have done it at the beginning and been up-front about it, so it didn't come as a bait-and-switch to people who joined the site and who may have had an interest in posting that stuff, but I get it. (Personally, I just want a social media site that replicates the rules of Archive of Our Own, where content of any conceivable kind is allowed, but with a robust tagging/warning/blacklisting system that allows people to curate their own experience thoroughly. That's just me.) But the wishy-washiness, the behavior of the commenters who call others "pedophiles" for even questioning the merits of a ban on that material, and the staff's willingness to immediately fold to those people made me really nervous.

In the interest of full disclosure: I do have some ships where characters are underage or borderline, but I don't really generate lots of content for pairings like that, and I don't post them in places where they're easily found. I warn and tag for it, and I compartmentalize heavily. I know the subject matter is extreme, but I don't see it as any different than, say, guro, or non-con or incest (which I also write, warn and tag for). I consider that as having done my due diligence, and I wouldn't ask for more than that from anybody else.

There's a lot more to be discussed here about, like, the benefits of that material to CSA survivors, the validity of it as fantasy even if you're not a CSA survivor, and so on, but I don't have the emotional energy to really dig into it...

I dunno, man. Is it so much to ask that people just leave each other alone unless they're doing something that actually, literally causes harm to real people?