This was originally posted to my cohost page, days before it was set to read-only, and its sunsetting began. It was uploaded in two parts, mainly to avoid overshadowing the advice and perspective I gave in the latter half, with the history and background I give in the former. This also made it easier to work on while I was dealing with other important things in my life, which I certainly needed at the time.

I've reposted it here as it will be inaccessible from the start of the new year, and I feel it's worth reminding folks about what happened, in case they need another push to take the steps necessary to protect themselves from the dangers I describe below. I left the post untouched from its original upload, blemishes and all, because the mistakes I may have made in the mad scramble I went through between getting suspended from FA to when cohost would start shutting down is an essential part of the piece.

If you'd like to skip to the second part for the more practical advice, click here.

Over 8 years ago, I suddenly found myself left without any foundation online. The admin team of FurAffinity, the only site I'd been actively maintaining my presence on, neglected to address a fatal vulnerability that had been identified prior to the eventual attack, taking the site offline for weeks.

I spent that time migrating as much of my art as possible to as many sites I was permitted to post them to. I then made some artwork to commemorate completing the task, entitled "Omnipresence." I've never looked back.

Since then, I've always maintained at least 8 separate galleries at any given time, replacing them as they either went down, or kicked me off. Today, I'm revisiting that concept in an effort to share my philosophy of being present online, and encourage others to take a page out of it.

This is long, but if you've seen or felt the effects of sites clamping down on friends or your favourite artists, I believe you owe it to them to read it. Please do either way.

Part 1 of 2

On Belonging Nowhere, As a Digital Kink Artist

I've been thinking about writing this for a long time now, mixed in with my crazy little trans artist life's goings-on, so intertwined with the many folks I care about. I've had a lot on my plate, even without the need for sites I called home either dying or turning hostile towards my existence helping to spice up the pot.

I wish I could've have more time to write this, too. Cohost's planned closure simultaneously stoked and set a hard deadline on the need for putting these tangled, clamoring thoughts and feelings out on digital paper. I didn't want to miss the chance to commit them to the most appropriate canvas before it got frozen in time, in anticipation of its untimely end.

This is something I've felt in the air for a long time now, and the changes have been coming ever more rapidly as time passed. Capitalism and tech's rapid "race to the bottom" continues to increase its kill count with no signs of stopping, and we, the misfits and dreamers who've used this platform - the Internet as a whole - to thrive on for so long have always been the main victims of this creeping malaise's unstoppable march.

I'll try (but fail) not to belabor these points for too long, but I feel they're worth revisiting from a more personal perspective to emphasize the effect this has on us as individuals, as part of a community. I don't want to sound like I'm fishing for sympathy, but the fact remains that they did happen, they happened to people like me, and we shouldn't forget that. This is a trend. It will continue.

Tumblr was the first biggest loss during my career. It was and still remains the fastest growth I've ever seen in my active followers on any single platform. If you've paid attention to my exploits beyond the art I make for any amount of time, you'll know that I've struggled to build my follower counts anywhere as quickly as most of my peers, and it's been a source of stress for just as long as it's been a thing. No adult content or "female presenting nipples" allowed was a dangerous standard they set that would continue for a while.

Several of my friends chose to filter their work to remain active on the platform. Maybe I should've done the same.

I caught wind of a so-called "rogue moderator" on Patreon telling another hypno artist that the implied dubcon of their work was not acceptable on the site. Patreon's terms of service had to be reinterpreted in a form of modern sophistry in order to reach such a verdict, but their decision was ultimately what mattered. I took this as a sign, and although I'm certain that many at the time saw my response as an overreaction - effectively pulling teeth to get myself migrated off of Patreon and onto my own website - I was vindicated four years later when several artists got banned, days before their monthly payout.

The morning that I'm writing this, I saw another furry artist get banned off of the platform.

On the eve of an extremely important trip, I opened a tab I had kept with the comments I received on a recent upload to FA, so I would remember to reply to them later. I wrote my thanks to one, hit reply, and the site responded with notice of my suspension. I should have seen it coming, given that others had also been subjected to this months prior, and even though I'd made a conscious choice not to go along with the change in policy, this was still the one that hurt the most. The ruling was frankly questionable at best, and completely undermines the safety of the site as a whole. Ultimately though, their decision is all that matters.

I could continue to post my work while filtering it accordingly, but I refuse to do so within the broader spaces of the community I've contributed to for most of my life. Even if I did, I can't trust that the rule's catchment won't shift again to have me purged in spite of my compliance.

The confluence of feelings that these events - and more besides - have stoked and kept burning in me for years now have mostly become part of the background radiation of my life. This latest one, though, having come quite literally from inside my own home, has left me feeling pained and restless.

With FA's consistent mismanagement, tumblr's policy change, Twitter's loss of competent leadership, cohost's unfair and untimely demise, AI encroaching upon all of our spaces like some malicious grey goo, and FA now taking a page out of other platforms' censorious playbook, it's hard to stay motivated and feel safe online as a kink artist any more. I also think that this is a breaking point though, and we need to do something about it to avoid things getting any worse.

Centralized administration for hosting art clearly doesn't work long-term, especially when operating within a capitalist society. We need to start reclaiming some form of control through shared acts of community however we can, and I think we should do so by rekindling the older ways of the Internet.

To that end, I have an idea. It's a fairly simple and perhaps somewhat ambitious one, and it'll take time and combined effort, both of which I have little of and even less control over, but I believe it will help, even if in some small way.

I didn't want to risk it getting buried under what might come across as one artist's impotent rage in the form of a long-winded rant, so that'll come in a second part as soon as I can make the time to work that out too.

Please share this around. Either way, stay tuned, and thank you for reading.

Part 2 of 2

Embracing Online Nomadism, and Making it Ours

Okay, so the current ways aren't working for us any longer. What now?

We set ourselves up to be present online more safely. Reclaim our spaces in small but significant ways, while protecting ourselves from policy overreach.

If you'll allow a rabbit in her late 30s to reminisce for a while; back in the day, people made websites. Websites made of pages, rather than databases, which worked more like separate little curiosity shoppes, alcoves and holes in the wall. These were meant for individuals, or smaller groups, to show and share their wares and trinkets - not like the massive town centres we frequent and share nowadays, meant for people to congregate within and yell over one another for attention.

As the latter thrived, grew, and gradually took over, the former became harder to maintain. Now those little establishments have long since been shuttered, and mostly gone forgotten.

While the advent of Web 2.0 did bring improvements for site-making across the board, the massive, centrally maintained content sharing platforms that resulted from it have dominated the web and left little room for much else. I believe that site-making platforms like GeoCities and Angelfire losing popularity has left us far too dependent on more shared, social spaces. These now hold and retain all the power in deciding whether we get to exist on the Internet or, as is often the case, not.

Granted, even if these older platforms had remained as prominent, they most likely would still have similarly restrictive and repressive policies as those that many of us are struggling under today. I'm not naïve, I won't pretend like it would be some kind of utopia online if Twitter or Facebook had never come to power.

However, I think there's a lot to be said about and learned from those older ways. We don't need to do things exactly the same way, but the reliance we've built upon other people allowing us to be present online - in places where everybody else usually is, too - was always going to be risky deal. Now, and for a long while already, many of us are paying dearly for it.

How can that help us today?

As I explained in Part 1, I've had a lot of experience with this sort of thing. If I may be self-serving for a moment here, I've spent a lot of my time and effort over the years yelling about these problems, effectively from the sidelines. It's never felt to me like I reached enough ears to make a difference, so I want to compile my idea of how we should move forward from here. Putting it all into one place will hopefully make it more easily be found and shared around.

I will warn that parts of this plan can and will sound daunting, and that's okay; much like moving out from your parents' house, you must learn skills you need to be more independent online. You also don't need to do everything to the letter; this is just my advice; take and leave whichever parts you feel will work for you.

To sum up my principles of existing online, they go something like this. I'll elaborate more on each of them further below.

1st: "Know Your Standing"

Learn about the sites you're on, their policies and attitudes towards who you are, and the things you're about.

2nd: "Hedge Your Bets"

Spread yourself across the Internet as much as you can comfortably manage, to minimize the harm of losing any one platform.

3rd: "Have a Hub of Things"

Centralize your presence online by making a page linking to your other places on the Internet. Link that page everywhere.

4th: "Own Your Own Thing"

Set up your own place, separate to other centrally managed ones, where people can find you and what you want to share.

New 5th: "Connect Yours with Others'"

Build a network of places by exchanging mutual links to each other, so folks can navigate our distributed communities.

First Principle: "Know Your Standing"

This is, as far as I'm concerned, the bare minimum requirement for being online, and might come across as a tad redundant. If what you're about doesn't sit right with the "normies" in some way, you need to keep tabs on if and how you can work with or around the rules of a platform you want to use.

While I'd prefer not to use "othering" as the basis of any rules or principles, there's no denying that society at large threw the first stone long ago. I actually won't belabor the point but if you're reading this, you're likely an outsider, and there's always going to be someone with you on every space online who would prefer that you weren't there.

Doing your research into the sites you use, their reputation with moderating content, their content policies, the vibe towards what you want to do there, is all essential. Don't leave it up to luck, unless you know what you're risking. Your time and energy are precious, and focusing it on the places you can thrive within will pay dividends in the long run.

It's important to note that this is an ongoing task since, as we know very well by now, this can change overnight. Keep yourself informed and up to date on goings on as best you can. Social media can help with this, but if that's not your jam, checking in on your peers from time to time through journal posts and the like is invaluable too.

Second Principle: "Hedge Your Bets"

Nowadays, you owe it to yourself to maintain some level of redundancy online if you keep a presence online, especially if you're a creative type sharing your things here. The best time to get yourself set up on more than one place was yesterday. The second best time is now.

There's no sugarcoating it; you can't afford to put all your stock into and rely on any one place. You put yourself entirely at the mercy of those running it, which can ruin you sometime down the line. The day that your work might get policed, or worse, banned entirely off of the one site you're on, it will be too late to do anything about it.

As an artist, with a tool like PostyBirb being actively and regularly maintained, there is little to stop you from crossposting to various sites any longer. You don't have to be as crazy about it by posting to 8 or more places at once, but a couple of backups in places which will let you post there can, and will prove invaluable.

As a sideline to this, but still worth mentioning; please, please set up some form of offsite backups for original copies of your work. Under NO circumstances should you rely on someone else's website to safely store your only copy of anything you have ever created, because they can and most likely will delete it if they see fit.

Third Principle: "Have a Hub of Things"

Putting things in their appropriate places is a good start, but being in multiple places at once can get a little confusing or difficult for folks to keep track of. You should ideally have a single place you can point people to, so they can pick whatever it is that fits what they're seeking from you; following you on your socials, finding where to commission you, or simply to be on a platform you both use.

There are many ways to go about this, but with Linktree and Carrd now being a thing, it's easier than ever. If you're doing your thing in more than one place for whatever reason, there's no reason not to have one set up.

Then, link it fucking everywhere - I mean it! I've seen so many folks who have a redirect page set up and then don't have it front and center of their every profile. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by making your hub your homepage, so just. Do it.

Fourth Principle: "Own Your Own Thing"

This is where the big guns come in - making your own space. A website.

Unfortunately, this part proved the hardest for me to write, simply because it is such a daunting thing to ask of folks and there being so many variables to it.

Already having my own website and a background in computer science to help with its maintenance means that I'm rather biased on this subject, but I can still fully appreciate that it can seem like an impossible prospect for most folks. Even I feel a little out of my depth managing my site sometimes, but that's because of the way I chose to set it up.

There are far easier and accessible ways to do this, and a little bit of help is never too far away when you really need it. Tutorials for just about anything exist online, and setting up something basic like a WordPress site is more accessible than ever. There are also plenty of technically minded folks out there who could lend a hand if you reach out to them; while I often have my hands full with all of my things, I've always done what I can to offer advice and help when I'm asked for it.

Since explaining the technical parts of this is far too broad and beyond the scope of this post, I'll instead emphasize the fact that - assuming your hosting provider allows the things you're wanting to share on it - once you're set up and ready to go, you are now your own moderator. I cannot overstate how good this sense of freedom really is.

It does come at the cost of the feeling of connectedness that a centralized platform provides, but having somewhere that you can always go back to - barring any major complications - no matter what policy changes those shared sites decide to enact, is invaluable in this day and age.

Which also brings me neatly to my final point, and a brand new principle.

New Fifth Principle: "Connect Yours with Others'"

One of the things people did when they still made and maintained their own sites was join them together in what were known as Webrings. These were made up of interconnected sites that shared a common theme, so that those interested in one site could more easily find more like them too. They were also apparently connected in a circular fashion, but I feel like this part of the structure isn't an essential feature for our present needs.

This is the "Big Idea" some of you may have seen me teasing in places. I feel like it is the next logical step for bolstering our hopefully increasingly and deliberately nomadic, disparate presences online. We are stronger as a community, and since finding any one place to be together in will continue to be a problem, then we should choose to be nowhere other than everywhere - and make it work for us.

What I propose is that folks with their own niche online, from a little links page to a fully-fledged crowdfunding site, should connect with one another in more meaningful ways.

Exchange links with your friends and peers, set up a section or page on your redirector or website to keep them in, and bolster each other’s disparate presence online. It's a small thing, but I believe it's a great way for us to start reclaiming our agency on the Internet again, together.

I've always tried my best to lead by example and, to this end, my friend Gemma and I have already done this with our two websites! We both have a page dedicated to our online friends now, where our visitors can go to find more of what they seek out from us, or things we might like. My crosslinks page is here, while hers is here, though you'll need to register an account to see it.

If you have a landing page or fully-blown website and would like to connect with me, please let me know! You can reach me through any of my socials via https://the.choco.one/#follow or via email if you prefer, at chocosune.artwork [] gmail. I can't promise that I'll accept every request, but please don't let that stop you either way. Encourage your friends to do the same, and connect with one another too.

So, there you have it. I was admittedly very hesitant to post this second part because it seemed like it may come across as entirely obvious or far too broad-strokes to be of any real use to anybody. However, after the wonderful feedback I got from posting the first one, I realized that a lot of what I now take for granted needs to be said out loud and shared around in order to encourage more folks to get on board.

I genuinely believe that this trend of spaces tightening and growing ever more restrictive to folks like us will only continue, and we aren't likely to find the "perfect website" for us to all agree to move to any time soon.

So, why not make our own, on our own terms?

Thank you once again for reading and I genuinely hope this helps, even if in some small way. If you think you know someone who might benefit from this, please consider sharing it with them.

I hope to see you all on the flip side.