I’m really curious where else everyone here hangs out on the internet besides Lemmy.

I myself am frequently on discord with my wife and friends playing games. I’ve also found myself in and around smaller blogs spaces like Kev Quirk and related people. Reddit used to be a place for me to hang out but I never found a community that I felt connected to. I don’t know if YouTube would be considered a place to hang out, but I frequently spend way more time there than I should. IRC used to be a great place for me.

So, where are your favorite places?

  • I have ignored Discord for years until recently. It just seems like IRC with a lot of flashiness and emojis. Is there more to this experience? I don’t intend to be disparaging, but I looked for some specific topic servers and just found the quality of discussion to be low and the experience to be chaotic.

    I’m willing to be told I’m doing it wrong though - is there a “here’s the right way to get into discord” approach I’m missing?

    • TeaHands@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Discord shines when you use it with a tight-knit group. A RL friend group, a gaming clan, etc.

      But there are a ton of these big public servers that are essentially just spam, because that’s what happens when you collect a load of random people in one place who have one minor interest in common at best, and then try and get them to hang out socially.

      It’s a group chat app, not a forum. And being thrown into a group chat with 100 strangers is kind of the worst.

      • zzzz@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Discord shines when you use it with a tight-knit group. A RL friend group, a gaming clan, etc.

        I have barely ever used Discord. What does it offer that you couldn’t find in, say, a Signal Group?

        • amitten@normalcity.lifeOP
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          1 year ago

          Discord is built for gaming. Discord allows you to stream a game directly to a channel with one click. Discord allows for fine control over users in the server and what they are allowed to do. Signal doesn’t really have these features, and I’m guessing it’s becsuse the purpose is slightly different.

          The closest privacy focused alternative to discord that I know of is Matrix. I’m thinking of moving my discord server where my friends and I play together over to Matrix. We will lose some features but gain some privacy.

          I think there are discord clones that work very much like discord, but I’m not aware of their privacy focus. Revolt comes to mind : https://revolt.chat

      • be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        It’s a group chat app, not a forum. And being thrown into a group chat with 100 strangers is kind of the worst.

        I do appreciate that nuance but IRC (as of last I checked - admittedly it’s been about a decade since I was habitually connected to IRC) is not really like that despite fitting essentially the same description.

        Discord shines when you use it with a tight-knit group. A RL friend group, a gaming clan, etc.

        That makes sense, I can see that.

    • amitten@normalcity.lifeOP
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      1 year ago

      I personally think the best way to use discord is to create a server and invite people to it as you meet them online. For me, it’s gaming that connects me with people. My wife and I meet people that we like and want to play with more, and so we invite them. This usually results in getting invited to other small community servers.

    • Admetus@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Yeah seems so, it’s pretty ok though. It tracks what is new and your mentions so it’s vaguely like a messaging app instead of IRC.

    • Veraxus@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      There are a lot of game development communities there. It’s basically a cheap, more public alternative to Slack.

    • Doug Holland@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I can’t even get past the user interface at Discord. Rarely have I felt so uninvited to participate, even as the site aggressively invites me to participate.