Honestly I think way too many people do this while only exacerbating their loneliness and it’s awful.
No lie: I see myself basically only using Discord for announcements or game night events, or some stripped down way to only use it for DMs by end of year.
I’ve loved Discord for 11 years now. I love the server I built and for a very long time it felt like “home” online. I built it up first just with friends, then open for the channel. I’ve gotten new information, rabbit holes to go down, testing methodologies, etc. through it; I’ve been able to borrow cool things from people through it, sell copious amounts of gear to fund my NAS build, and fostered a (mostly?) helpful community with the tech help channels.
I say “I” here, but really this is much more the result of the collaboration with Will and with the help of Hunter and Greg as mods, KuJoe as mods and IT extraordinaire.
Without the Discord server I don’t think I would have been a part of many things that I have, connected with people from so many walks of life, I don’t think I would have connected with Will (who fostered much of the community, help me build relationships, and started up Backing Track among other ventures together) or the other mods, I think a lot would not have happened.
(Including not meeting you - multiple times now - and keeping up reminders about the Arcade expo, haha)
But all that being said… I am not the same person I was in 2015 when I joined Discord. In 2015, I was just finishing up college, grinding to make the “YouTube dream” a reality, still living with my parents, etc. I’ve changed a ton since then, as have my priorities.
In some ways I kind of regret making a public, open server. Opening the floodgates has both filled my social cup, but also over-filled it and over–taxed it plenty of times. While nowhere near as bad as my time spent on, say Twitter, it’s definitely led to a striking increase in the number of unpleasant interactions and influences on my moods day-to-day, too. It’s also very hard to keep a community vibe “chill” with so many people. Things improved once we stopped stupidly chasing retention numbers for Discord’s bullshit Partner Program, but even then we’ve had a really hard time balancing keeping the vibe good without just kicking so many regulars out. We’ve gotten more aggressive about culling people in recent years, but we’ve still seen plenty of people just nope out at certain points.
And at the end of the day when someone like you bounces, I tend to take a real hard look at my own habits with the tool and what it adds or doesn’t add to my life. The irony is that I’ve NEVER liked IM and synchronous-based tools for communication except for specific DM scenarios that merit that kind of communication style. It’s stressful to keep up with, and only provokes reactionary discussion from everyone.
The kind of situation that caused you to bounce is the exact kind of shit I don’t need clogging up my mind space. There’s a topic, a news breaking, a video, and everyone just kinda reacts and talks over each other. It can feel like you’re being dogpiled on (as you said) when really everyone’s just trying to get their thing out there. There’s no room or time for more thought or evaluation - and even when someone (often myself) tries to have a more thorough conversation, big chunks of text on a subject in what is effectively an IM chat room still feels dogpile-y because that much communication through a tiny pipe is just overwhelming.
A lot of good things have come from the Discord server. A lot of the day-to-day has been fine. But a lot hasn’t - including the behavior I often have in other people’s servers due to these very things.
But you know what I look back on the most fondly? My server when it was smaller. My group chats or DMs with buds, direct communication. And the Discord Game Nights or other community events, GOTY video projects, group-gifting Derek the gaming PC, getting hooked up with diapers when I had a kid and then turning around and doing that for someone else - never anything in the day-to-day weeds.
Discord can still be used for that without all the extra nonsense. It just requires more intentional engagement. I’m saying all this not to mansplain to you - who is already taking a break from it - but to myself. I’ve been building to this for a while, but this thread kinda made me decide: I’ve removed Discord from my phone’s home screen and uninstalled from my work PC and gaming PC.
I didn’t want to uninstall it - I just wanted to remove it from startup, but it appears as of a couple Mac OS versions ago that’s not even possible! (: What utter nonsense. So I will only access it (intentionally) via the web browser now.
@Agizmo - If you ever want to just chat, I’d love to keep a DM line open to you through whatever (Signal, Matrix, Discord, texting, whatever floats your boat) but no worries if not. I love that you’re still here on the forums and I’m hoping this year keeps bringing better tech hygiene for all of us!