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From my off-beat teenage-girl side of the internet and world, becoming part of the app Discord is the last thing I would expect from myself. The free voice, video, and text chat app has quite a reputation. A certain kind of person comes to mind when the name is mentioned. Most commonly a white, straight, male who also uses Redditt, wears Asics sneakers, and is possibly part of an extremist group. However, having unexpectedly joined a gaming discord server, I feel as though I have a new perspective on the app.
When I mentioned my recent interest in Discord to my friend’s responses ranged from lukewarm to scathing:
“It seems like a lot of guys on there are misogynists and homophobes,” said Marley Reedy
“I don’t think I’ve ever been there but what you are doing sounds like an interesting ethnography,” Said Olivia Wilde
It seems as though people from the outside either do not understand Discord or see associating as a major red flag. The app and the gaming community, who make up a majority of users, have been associated with extremist groups and movements. Discord gets groped into the Redditt and Qanon conspiracy subculture, which have been major players in the organization of events like the Capital Insurrection, and of course, “Gamergate”, a phenomenon that started in 2014 when feminist activists and journalists were harassed online.
A combination of fear towards the gaming community and server-based apps appears to be the culprit.
To preface how I even got here in the first place, a few weeks ago I was telling a writer-friend of mine that I was seeking people to talk about art-house movies with. He told me he is part of a Discord group of gaming and movie fans, and that they regularly chat about films.
What I witnessed was pleasantly surprising. The Discord server I am in is really just people who want to talk about movies. And, I am able to discuss movies that I would normally never be able to find people who have seen them.
The home page of the Discord website describes its platform as a place, “where you can belong to a school club, a gaming group, or a worldwide art community. Where just you and a handful of friends can spend time together. A place that makes it easy to talk every day and hang out more often.”
This description sounds quite nice, wholesome even. I get that discord’s design is not made exclusively for gamers, however, their most loyal users are gamers, and they, therefore, cater to them. On my particular server, I was also impressed by how civically engaged the members were granted, they are connecting online, and they are utilizing technology as a way of communicating better than I have been for most of my life.
I step back and have a silly little thought: Is Discord where letterboxed-obsessed girls and self-proclaimed incells shake hands? We have some similarities, we both like Taxi Driver. Though I enjoyed Cybill Shepherd’s outfits, and they felt drawn to De Niro’s depiction of male loneliness and vulnerability, which some may say they misinterpreted, we uhhhh… we somehow both ended up here.
Journalism 2.0 