Discord

[Nott]

Admittedly I'm writing this after uh...a really awful discord experience but also my experiences with the platform have been horrible all around. People before have already detailed how awful it is when it comes to storing information. I would love it for Game Devs to Stop Using Discord as their main information repository and/or place they post news because I don't want to join your discord! I write meta and it's horrid just horrid when I realize that the info I need is buried in a DISCORD SERVER, and I'd love it if people just made wikis or faqs or Literally Anything Else Other Than Discord to Index Information.

(Okay maybe not literally anything else because trying to find things through Youtube Videos, Reddit Threads, and Twitter isn't pleasant either but Discord is probably my most hated place to find information about something.)

On what it's Actually Supposed To Be Used For well....I don't use it much. In all honestly I message most of my friends over Tumblr which isn't Ideal and it's not a Great Messaging system but I'm on it the most so that's where I tend to talk to people. I started to use it more because a few other friends used discord more often. Plus I like talking and a lot of casual fandom discussion is on discord, so I tried talking in them more and...well...

I'll admit three things about me that influence my opinions for transparency's sake: 1. I'm easily sealioned and goaded into a response. I'm distinctly susceptible to this kind of harassment in the sense that I assume everyone is being sincere and wants to have a genuine discussion. I'm very passionate and stubborn when I care about something, and don't understand the concept of backing down from an argument cause to Me it's only a matter of time 'till they understand what I'm saying. This is why I'm not on twitter. 2. I can't keep up with fast paced conversation. If something is going too fast I'll start to feel disconnected and/or anxious. and 3. I'm not great at speaking in scenarios that involve more than 2 people and I'm quick to lose steam when a situation involves more than 3 people.

Suffice to say, Discord is a bit of a hell for me. Though I don't think it's just because of my traits- for one I was telling a friend of mine about the time like- three people jumped me in a discord server for daring to have an opinion different from them, and they just immediately went "That's really mean" and I didn't even process that cause that's just- a norm in discord servers. Even outside of me I've seen arguments have people join in and bully someone in it, and no one really bats an eye because that's expected of the culture.

Big discords are more likely to fall prey to this, but even small ones can be volatile, especially if there is a Dominant Opinion. You tend to get eaten alive in discord servers if your opinion in any way grates against what is considered popular in that community. This sort of reaction is usually attributed to teenagers, but college aged people have fought with me for no reason other than "I said something about their fav that they didn't like" which is rather unpleasant.

I think it's a bit of a problem with how Discord itself is set up though. You can only make so many channels and threads within a discord, and if it's big enough what tends to happen is there's 4 people having 3 different conversations in the same channel and with widely differing opinions on the same thing and widely different temperaments in a fast paced environment that priorities Responding At This Very Moment. It's not...great for discussion and what tends to happen is that I feel bullied out of communities I would like to interact with because I didn't read the room, or because I pissed off the wrong person for something that is in retrospect, very petty like an opinion on a character.

Plus that sort of environment just makes me a worse person, since it always puts me on edge. I'm not above it and it's really bothersome to think about afterwards.

[Monoki]

Discord is....alright. It's decent for keeping in contact with people I know in social media spaces. I find myself collecting servers more than really interacting with them however. This creates a huge cacophony of notifications I can't keep track of and in turn it makes me use it less. I've also felt that my creative stuff gets glossed over easily in art channels.

I've been hankering to do text-based RPing again. used to do it a lot on forums back when I was a teenager. But it seems Discord is the place most are choosing to do it these days. Seems like it would be hard to keep track of.

[warlock]

I will fully admit to being an early adopter and frequent user of Discord, pretty much since it started. It was far better than Skype when it first started, and all of my friends switched over to it pretty much immediately.

That being the case, I think it's probably one of the worst tools for actually communicating with people that you don't already know. Large discords are a cacophony most of the time, with multiple regulars having interwoven conversations that totally block out any new users from joining in. As someone on both the outside and inside of this, it's just hell.

Smaller servers are definitely nice, but I can't help but feel like Discord manages to have the worst of both worlds when it comes to chatting systems. IRC and other public chat options of yore generally only kept track of public chatrooms when you were actively in them, so if you disconnected you just didn't get any information during your absence. This can definitely be seen as a con, but I think it actually frees up a chatroom to be more transient in terms of discussion. It's bad for historical record-keeping, but why are you having conversations that need to be archived on a chat program? That's what forums are for!

Discord incentivizes people to aggregate conversations AND information onto one platform, with both ideas working against one another. Every tool - chat apps, forums, e-mails - should be used for one thing, having everything nested into one Everything App makes it nearly impossible to escape if the platform begins crumbling, like Discord seems to perpetually be on the brink of.

[NoxidKin]

I use Discord to connect with people who share my hobbies.  Not that it always works, but I'm on a few servers for Game Dev and art and such, and a few servers for games that I like.  I've tried just hangout servers but I haven't enjoyed them as much, I prefer to have something in common with people to begin with.  Same reason I'm here on MelonLand really. <3

[Daryl Sun]

I primarily use Discord to chat with my boyfriend. I've tried getting him into Matrix, but Matrix has its own usability issues, at least for us.

I used to be a server collector, but I got too many pings from various servers, so I decided to limit the number of servers that I've joined to those for webcrafting communities where I'm fairly active or for games that my boyfriend and I both enjoy. I check the former regularly, because I like the discussions in them, while I only check the announcements channel for the latter regarding game updates.