Honest question: Why are forums being abandoned for Discord?

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LingEarth
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Honest question: Why are forums being abandoned for Discord?

Post by LingEarth (?) » Mon Oct 11, 2021 2:47 pm

I'm talking about forums in general, not just TRS. It's no secret that forums are dying and being replaced by other platforms, especially Discord in recent years. It's a trend that I really fucking hate.

I have a hard time carrying on conversations in real life. Internet forums made it easier for me to connect with other people, by allowing me to think about what I'm saying and take time to type it all out. With Discord, it's right back to the pressure of having to respond right away.

On a forum, I can write out a long post like this. On Discord, it's expected that all messages will be short sentences like you'd say in a real conversation.*

On a forum, I can reply to a post from several days ago if I didn't see it or didn't have time before. On Discord, doing that would feel really weird.

The Discord server I frequent the most is one with just a few friends from a now-defunct forum, who I was already fairly comfortable with before Discord was a thing. With them, I'm sometimes able to deal with live chatting. I also have one friend from there that I talk with over Discord sometimes. But getting into any new communities via that kind of live chat format is just literally impossible for me.

It just feels to me like live-chat sites like Discord are worse than forums in every way, and without even the few advantages that face-to-face communication has, like being able to read the other person's facial expressions. I honestly don't understand why so many people apparently like it so much better that they all decided to leave forums behind and go there instead.

Signed, An Extremely Introverted Introvert Who Needed To Vent


* I am on one Discord server where writing out longer, detailed messages is the norm. That one started from the comment section of a blog where the regulars were all used to having in-depth discussions. Unsurprisingly, this is the server I frequent the second-most often.

SlateSlabrock
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Re: Honest question: Why are forums being abandoned for Discord?

Post by SlateSlabrock (?) » Tue Oct 12, 2021 7:24 pm

Forums started dying when social media started taking off. SomethingAwful's heyday was back when even running a forum was really costly, and as soon as Twitter and Tumblr and the rest appeared on the scene, a lot of creative people jumped ship for those sites.

I agree that forums fill a different niche than messaging services, and it'd be great if they could stick around. Especially when you're joining a big community, easing into their culture can be difficult. That said, I think the thing Discord does well from a forums perspective is allowing communities to have their own individual space for their interests. If you want to chat about, say, ponies on Twitter, you're having that conversation in full view of the whole world. If you want to connect with friends on Facebook, you're publicly acting for all your friends and family to see. Having a fence around the backyard is nice.

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