Originally posted by Rambly
i tend to like using discord -- there's something that feels... intimate about discord, like you're actually talking to the people involved. with forums and social media it feels like there's one thing or another getting between you and the other person -- i guess like, time in the case of forums, and, like, anonymization in the case of social media, but with discord that's not the case.
i think they all have their own distinct feelings, though. discord can feel pretty overstimulating, and forums kind of give you a break from the constant noise. i guess i'd say discord kinda has the same energy as being in a room full of people, a relatively closed space, all talking to them or hanging out with them. forums kind of feel like... public spaces? they feel larger. kind of like to a nice downtown area or a public park. everything kind of remains kind of static unless someone changes it, and they feel really cozy and familiar as a result, i think. but they can still feel lively in their own way because you still get the evidence of things changing and growing slowly.
Those are several of the reasons I don't like using Discord; my personal space bubble is a little too wide for it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not antisocial, but I just don't feel comfortable with the room full of people vibe you're describing. It's too close, and also too fast paced for me, I just can't keep up with it and it overwhelms me. I'm just not an especially intimate person really, I like having a bit of space between myself and the outside world. I can't tell you why, but Discord just feels a little too constricting to me, a little too exclusive, and way too fast paced. I don't like exclusivity. I can see why it would be very cool to someone else, but that person really isn't me. I really did try to like it, though.
So I prefer forums. The public feeling of it is nice, and I can maintain a bit of a shell between myself and the forum while still being able to interact with it. There's no pressure to react in seconds to a conversation lest another take its place, no need to join yet another forum you're never gonna look at again just to download a game or something, and it's usually a lot easier to search for past conversations. Plus, you don't really see people spamming the link to their forums everywhere they go, at least not anymore. Maybe it was a thing back in the early 2000s, but...
I used to use Twitter, but it got to the point where every post I saw was either electoral politics that I don't really have any interest (or stake, in the case of European politics) in or just memes that weren't funny and everything there was just designed to be disposable, so I just stopped using it after my 6,666th post. Nowadays I only ever see it when someone specifically links a post, and I'm happier for it. I still want to keep an online journal, and I kinda set up my neocities page for it, but I'm just an incredibly lazy person and don't want to manually fill in all the HTML just to say something like 'today was terrible, wish I had some more HRT, I should probably give that email a proper reply. Bye now!' every single post.
Twitter was mostly just an online journal for me, but it wasn't a particularly decent one, so I ended up moving over to Mastodon. It functions just fine and 500 characters is way better than 280, but the instance I picked while seemingly decent at the time eventually degraded to the point half the people there are robots reposting the same few prepackaged lines or ridiculous memes over and over. It somehow still is less annoying than Twitter, which is an accomplishment.
This post might be incomprehensible nonsense, it is way, way later than I should be up (2:48 am), and I really need to be sleeping, since for some reason I wake up at about 8:30 no matter when I go to bed. Sorry if it is.
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