From Facebook to Discord: My Snapshot of the Evolution of Social Media

The summer of 2008 was when I decided to join Facebook. It was a spur of the moment decision when I was out on a family vacation. My sister persuaded me to register with the usual reasons any family member uses Facebook, ‘for the pictures!’ or ‘for the connection to family!’. I had heard of the platform in the past but had refrained from creating an account as I myself viewed Facebook as yet another artificial construct, replacing human interaction; something I didn’t really believe in. This in itself shows my overall viewpoint on social media back then.

Through multiple resources, including social media outlets, I have become increasingly informed about such platforms. Since the day my sister persuaded me to join Facebook, user membership has increased tenfold- from about 100 million users then to over 1.5 billion today. Social media has grown to become a part of our everyday lives, used almost as a lexicon. We direct our everyday conversations through text messages or Facebook Messenger like they are regular face-to-face conversations.

This addition to our everyday vocabulary greatly represents the growth in social media apps that allow real-time communication with people everywhere. In the case of Facebook Messenger, the app is essentially an added layer of Facebook, but it still exists as its own platform. Online communication through an application on ones’ phone or a website on a computer, may have best found its niche within an application called Discord. Discord is a proprietary freeware VoIP application and digital distribution platform designed for video gaming communities. It specializes in text, image, video and audio communication between users in a chat channel. This app is something I myself became familiar with through gaming and most gamers are also familiar with the application. As reported by Julie Jargon for Wall Street Journal, “[Discord] allows users to talk to friends or strangers in real-time via voice, text or video chat. It made its debut four years ago as a way for people to communicate while playing video games. With the rise of ‘Fortnite‘ and other popular online multiplayer games, it has exploded. Discord Inc. says it now has ‘more than 250 million registered users, up from 130 million a year ago’, and that ‘850 million messages are exchanged daily.”

I contribute to the volume of those Discord messages everyday.  I currently belong to five servers that directly or indirectly involve a game called Game of Thrones: Conquest (GOTC). It can best be described as a real time strategy game based on the book by G.R.R Martin and the HBO show Game of Thrones. GOTC provides a text only mail system in-game, and nothing more. It’s insufficient for basic messaging, much less planning large scale attacks involving hundreds of players unfolding in real-time. Discord, on the other hand, gives one the ability to engage in voice chat with multiple players while attacking or defending in game, but its real strength is in how easily it connects people. Game dedicated channels make up perhaps 60% of our server. Of the multiple servers I am a part of, one is more important than the others. This server is mainly for my in-game alliance. While a lot of what happens in this server is centered around the gameplay itself (i.e.., planning and strategy for real-time attacks), many of the other servers I am on are for social reasons. These reasons include killing time and talking with people that have the same interests as me, catching up on the T.V. show itself or maybe even talking about new and exciting things to come within the game. The Discord app serves as a platform that I use for many more reasons than one. It has become very useful to myself and gamers everywhere. Because the game can be so absurdly expensive, most players function with a raging sense of love/hate about the game. What keeps them playing is the social aspect; the friends they make and the fun they have getting to know people from all over the world through an interest in this one video game. Because of GOTC’s insufficient in-game messaging design, the only way this is all possible is through the use of Discord.

Although Discord and Facebook are considered very different, there are certain functions of each that make them similar in more ways than one. In 2008 I really didn’t believe in this whole new wave of social media, but Discord had a hand in changing my perspective on these types of applications in general. I now realize that without applications such as Facebook and Discord, I wouldn’t have the real-time communication I have with my family and friends or my online gaming alliance and friends. These applications truly offer me the best of both worlds and I have come to even appreciate the ease of access they allow me. In today’s world, the usage of social media has become more and more important and I believe the online world will continue to evolve exponentially. What tomorrow holds excites me!

Sources:

Jargon, Julie. “The Dark Side of Discord, Your Teen’s Favorite Chat App.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 11 June 2019, http://www.wsj.com/articles/discord-where-teens-rule-and-parents-fear-to-tread-11560245402.