Discord: The Community Killer

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It’s been a little while since I’ve written on an actual topic. A lot of that has to do with me filling my free time with building a ridiculous world around my base in Minecraft Java (heavily modded), and jumping back into World of Warcraft on my original DeathKnight from … uh, whatever year Wrath of the Lich King released. And that kind of has to do with why I want to write this today. Why I want to write about how Discord, the community chat app, has, and is, killing communities not only around the web, but also within games.

I think I’ve written before about how Discord has almost completely killed usage of internet forums (which is partially why I decided to host my own forum, even if nobody feels like joining it), which is terrible for retention of data online. Especially if you’re someone who uses search engines to find answers to questions, none of the problem solving happening within Discord channels is searchable on Google, and is absolutely not permanent.

And now, that problem will be especially exasperated, as the government defunds grants related to the Internet Archive, one of many horrible moves to erase, destroy, and replace history as we know it.

But … I’m getting a little off-topic.

I wanted to write this today, because this is a problem I’ve seen grow more and more over the years. It’s related to World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, or basically any online game where players are supposed to talk with each other within those games.

But that’s not happening, is it?

I log onto World of Warcraft and encounter players in-game. Nobody speaks. I do casual dungeons with random groups. The tank bursts through everything, not even paying even a single bit of attention to the other group members around them. And, once the final boss is beaten, the group disbands, all without anyone ever speaking a word. This was a little bit of an issue ten years ago, and it’s only gotten worse.

I also have personal experience with joining guilds, places that are supposed to be communities, where, instead of any of that, you’re immediately assaulted with Discord links.

“Don’t forget to join our Discord!”

So, instead of people speaking in groups, in guild chat, or in the game at all, communication has moved to the modernized IRC and AOL Instant Messenger merger chat client.

Oh, … great.

So, instead of speaking to you and other members of a guild inside of the actual game, I have to tab out of the game and talk in your closed channels on a proprietary app that has already singlehandedly all but murdered old-net social media?

I even went on the World of Warcraft forums and responded to a thread where someone asks, “How do you meet people in-game?” and I responded, “It’s simple. I don’t.” And someone felt they needed to reply with, “Join Discord servers!”

Look. I think Discord is alright for keeping up with friends and people I know, and there are some uses of servers, like the server I use to connect my Patreon and content I make or write, but also?

Fuck Discord.

This is also a problem in Second Life, a virtual world that is literally described as a 3D chat application, where, now, almost everyone is exclusively speaking in Discord channels instead of in Second Life!

How does this kill communities?

Instead of walking around within games and virtual worlds, and meeting people naturally, everyone’s ignoring each other until the off-chance they speak in Discord.

Do I have to detail how this is terrible for the health of communities?

Who wants to play a game filled with millions of people that is now essentially singleplayer until you join the app that’s harvesting all of your data?

But, I understand I’m mostly blowing hot air here. Me posting this won’t stop this from happening, and it’ll probably only get worse and worse. That’s the way of the world nowadays, anyway.

It’s only a matter of time before our actual society mirrors some dystopian depiction of what society might be like if all the wrong things happen and nobody says or does anything.

And I’ve been wondering: Am I just being old, yelling at clouds while new things take over?

20 years ago, old people were yelling about how smartphones wouldn’t improve anything, or in the 90s, about how the internet was a passing fad. But, I think both of these things improved society, even if, 20 years later, both smartphones and the internet are being turned into projections of evil via oligarchs and corporations. And, that’s why I don’t really think this is about just “being old,” and more, I think it’s just about people accepting shit, and consuming shit, because they don’t know any better.