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0 pointsJakeTheAndroid5y ago0 comments

I find plenty of these types of communities through Discord, and I think that is part of the equation that's left out here. I don't really like discord much, but the reason I get when I do is to go check in on those friends. Usually these communities are just people that I've met playing games.

I don't know that these would qualify as counter-culture or subculture, but they are free of marketing and advertising, and people are there because we have shared interests. The conversations are organic and not curated for us and we are isolated from anyone else we don't want to be part of that group.

So, my gut tells me that the younger generations are using Discord like people used IRC.

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smolder5y ago

They do use discord like we used IRC, but discord is centralized under one company. So, they will eventually do what companies do and try to find that sweet spot of "how much abuse can our users take" versus "how much money can we extract from our market position" as with all such free services. Discord is a trap, both in the latent monetization sense mentioned, and the sense that all your communications there are gobbled up with little to no privacy guarantee.

malwarebytess5y ago

Discord is not equivalent. Discord is blatantly in with the current culture, including the prohibitive elements. They remove channels left and right, and monetize every bit that they can. Not a problem I've had on IRC, even on big ones like Rizon.

YinglingLight5y ago

Old farts still had irl friends. The amount of teens who have no tangible friendships outside of Discord is sobering.

narag5y ago

My son has a group of friends at the Uni, some of them in his same school, some of them in nearby schools, some of them are in the neighbourhood... half of them are from high school, the other half are from Minecraft discord groups.

They have a weekly meeting in a Uni cafeteria and use indistinctly Discord or Instagram as chat. Instagram has replaced WhatsApp as the regular phone chat.

All of them have wider net-only groups of acquitances.

phatfish5y ago

Teens/young adults surely have far more opportunities to make real life friends than working age adults. They are at least required to attend school.

I would say that this is more the lifestyle of adults after being out of education for a few years. They are the group that can ignore all real life interaction if they want, Covid has increased the likelihood of this.

SyzygistSix5y ago

But unlike IRC, Discord is about personal identity, which is no longer counter-cultural.

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