4 ms·

I feel similarly but for different reasons. It effectively killed forums, and the context-switch-heavy UX design enables more people to do drive-by, low-quality

I feel similarly but for different reasons. It effectively killed forums, and the context-switch-heavy UX design enables more people to do drive-by, low-quality posting, rather than more deliberate and thought out discourse. Gaming culture has been severely downgraded as a result.

hombre_fatal 6y ago
Though forums were of course dying before Discord came around, probably mainly because mainstream users aren't going to register for a bunch of different forums. So a centralized forum like Reddit had the advantage of people not needing to be enough of an <interest> fanatic to join <Interest>Forum.com but enough to want to poke around on r/<interest> from time to time. So r/<interest> is going to have an advantage over the forum. And people also like interactivity and group chats. Group chats weren't a thing when I built my slowly dying forum, but they are now. And now I'm in like 5 group chats. And Discord is just an extension of that desire for interactivity that isn't just f5ing a forum. There's more to life and human interaction than writing paragraphs to each other on a forum. Something isn't lost just because people find other casual ways to interact online. And I don't think Discord is as competitive with forums as you think. My forum has a Discord. Yeah, people hang out on it, and now it's an essential part of the community. A lot of our casual conversations and friend-making is just shooting the shit which forums are awful at. But now I see my users engaging each other on more and more personal levels and getting to know each other. But as someone who spent a summer of my youth arguing on forums that Xbox > PS2, I don't see gaming culture as something that's gotten worse. I think it's much better now because it went mainstream. When I was growing up, being a "gamer" still had that loser virgin stereotype. Now I see my friend's 13yo son in Discord voice chats when I'm hanging out at their place and you hear a healthy assortment of even women gamers. Seems so so much better than when I was 13yo. Also, 20 years ago my friend and I were voice chatting by strapping our house phone to our head with headbands. There are always things that change for the worse in these kinds of shifts, but it's also important to understand the upsides.
- Nuzzerino 6y ago
  >And people also like interactivity and group chats. Group chats weren't a thing when I built my slowly dying forum, but they are now. And now I'm in like 5 group chats. And Discord is just an extension of that desire for interactivity that isn't just f5ing a forum. There's more to life and human interaction than writing paragraphs to each other on a forum. Something isn't lost just because people find other casual ways to interact online. You're cherry-picking a specific use-case of a forum and constructing a straw man out of it. Forums are (at least more than Discord) a very good tool for discussing strategies, making counter-arguments, posting guides, or organizing information. > But as someone who spent a summer of my youth arguing on forums that Xbox > PS2, I don't see gaming culture as something that's gotten worse. Except that wasn't what gaming culture was at the time for everyone. Because the attention economy is now concentrated on unthreaded discord chats, you have more drive-by commenters, messages taken out of context, lack of deliberate information, and more hoops to go through to get good information organized. Pinned messages aren't obvious to everyone and the UX for those limits the utility gained from it. Therefore it becomes much harder to disseminate good information to your community, guild, or whatever. People just aren't going to see it as much. That becomes baked into the culture, and the notion of sharing or teaching becomes seen as a thing for "boomers" or "autists" (actual words I've seen people use on the subject). This system might be an upgrade if you're getting drunk or doing drugs with the homies on a Friday night, but if you take gaming and teamwork seriously, it's a massive downgrade. > Also, 20 years ago my friend and I were voice chatting by strapping our house phone to our head with headbands. Ouch, depending on the model those have been known to emit 5000 times the RF radiation that a cellular phone typically emits. http://www.emfrf.com/how-green-is-your-cordless-phone-report/ http://www.emfrf.com/how-green-is-your-cordless-phone-report...

hombre_fatal 6y ago

Though forums were of course dying before Discord came around, probably mainly because mainstream users aren't going to register for a bunch of different forums. So a centralized forum like Reddit had the advantage of people not needing to be enough of an <interest> fanatic to join <Interest>Forum.com but enough to want to poke around on r/<interest> from time to time. So r/<interest> is going to have an advantage over the forum. And people also like interactivity and group chats. Group chats weren't a thing when I built my slowly dying forum, but they are now. And now I'm in like 5 group chats. And Discord is just an extension of that desire for interactivity that isn't just f5ing a forum. There's more to life and human interaction than writing paragraphs to each other on a forum. Something isn't lost just because people find other casual ways to interact online. And I don't think Discord is as competitive with forums as you think. My forum has a Discord. Yeah, people hang out on it, and now it's an essential part of the community. A lot of our casual conversations and friend-making is just shooting the shit which forums are awful at. But now I see my users engaging each other on more and more personal levels and getting to know each other. But as someone who spent a summer of my youth arguing on forums that Xbox > PS2, I don't see gaming culture as something that's gotten worse. I think it's much better now because it went mainstream. When I was growing up, being a "gamer" still had that loser virgin stereotype. Now I see my friend's 13yo son in Discord voice chats when I'm hanging out at their place and you hear a healthy assortment of even women gamers. Seems so so much better than when I was 13yo. Also, 20 years ago my friend and I were voice chatting by strapping our house phone to our head with headbands. There are always things that change for the worse in these kinds of shifts, but it's also important to understand the upsides.

Nuzzerino 6y ago
>And people also like interactivity and group chats. Group chats weren't a thing when I built my slowly dying forum, but they are now. And now I'm in like 5 group chats. And Discord is just an extension of that desire for interactivity that isn't just f5ing a forum. There's more to life and human interaction than writing paragraphs to each other on a forum. Something isn't lost just because people find other casual ways to interact online. You're cherry-picking a specific use-case of a forum and constructing a straw man out of it. Forums are (at least more than Discord) a very good tool for discussing strategies, making counter-arguments, posting guides, or organizing information. > But as someone who spent a summer of my youth arguing on forums that Xbox > PS2, I don't see gaming culture as something that's gotten worse. Except that wasn't what gaming culture was at the time for everyone. Because the attention economy is now concentrated on unthreaded discord chats, you have more drive-by commenters, messages taken out of context, lack of deliberate information, and more hoops to go through to get good information organized. Pinned messages aren't obvious to everyone and the UX for those limits the utility gained from it. Therefore it becomes much harder to disseminate good information to your community, guild, or whatever. People just aren't going to see it as much. That becomes baked into the culture, and the notion of sharing or teaching becomes seen as a thing for "boomers" or "autists" (actual words I've seen people use on the subject). This system might be an upgrade if you're getting drunk or doing drugs with the homies on a Friday night, but if you take gaming and teamwork seriously, it's a massive downgrade. > Also, 20 years ago my friend and I were voice chatting by strapping our house phone to our head with headbands. Ouch, depending on the model those have been known to emit 5000 times the RF radiation that a cellular phone typically emits. http://www.emfrf.com/how-green-is-your-cordless-phone-report/ http://www.emfrf.com/how-green-is-your-cordless-phone-report...