Is Discord the New Online Meeting Place?
Thursday, April 28, 2022
With the probable demise of Twitter, it will join other social networks that have already met their demise (MySpace, Facebook, Instagram) with me, I am not that worried.
Micro.blog will remain my generalised blogging location, allowing me to post whatever I like (and optionally cross-post to Twitter if I feel I must).
What I’ve also found more recently is that Discord has become an unexpected surprise hit for focused communities. I only participate in four, and I wouldn’t want it to grow much beyond this, but they have each delivered an excellent place for virtual gathering, without anybody portraying negative behaviours, trying to sell NFTs, or undertake any other annoying actions that one sees elsewhere online.
My Discord communities are:
- Hemispheric Views (the podcast I host with Martin Feld and Jason Burk) has built a great community of listeners - if you listen to our show, please join our Discord.
- NBL Pocket Podcast is the other podcast I host together with Joe Corr, where we break down the Australian National Basketball League. A whole bunch of hardcore hoopers are joining this relatively young server that I set up on a whim. Even better, is now the management of the server has been shared across a couple of users - community supporting community.
- Neatnik - the developer of omg.lol has a Discord instance for users of his service.
- Lumon Industries is a Discord server for fans of the AppleTV+ show, Severance. A whole bunch of amazing fan conversations, theories, and art and craft exists in here.
These Discord servers have a bonhomie that I don’t see on other social networks. They are private and fun. They embody the good spirits of the internet. I love them.