Opinion, Point vs. Counterpoint

PCPCPCPCPCPCP: Discord Master Race

Other sides of this Point-Counterpoint:

Discord: it’s the choice of gamers everywhere. Everything has a discord these days: and by everything I mean Animorphs, the Hello Internet podcast, and my FYDP team. What more could you possibly want from a social network? That’s pretty much all of civilization right there. In addition to the exclusive invite-only discords, there are also public discords, just in case two people who have nothing in common but a love of Fortnite want to chat. Some discords have animated icons that move when your mouse hovers over them, that’s a nice little touch of whimsy.

Discord divides all text, voice and video communication into separate channels, which is great if you have a team that needs to split up into subteams that shouldn’t be spamming each other. For videoconferencing, all you need to do is enter a voice channel and enable your camera. It has all the baseline features: screen sharing, invite links, muting yourself. Of course, Discord is practically a social network unto itself with friend requests and everything, so archaic rituals like sending invite links via email aren’t strictly necessary.

Discord can run in the browser. Discord can’t do video conferencing in the browser. Also, there’s a limit of 9 video/screen shares in a channel, which sounds like one less than 10, but 8.5 more than the number of people whose video I can pay attention to in a video conference. In addition to the browser there’s also Windows, macOS, Linux and mobile support. That’s right Linux, everyone’s favorite operating system, is supported!

There are all sorts of wonderful features, like the custom keyboard bindings that I never use, the desktop notifications that I never read, the in-game overlay that I never enable (because I am strictly business all the time, obviously), the integrations with YouTube, Reddit, Steam and Spotify that seem like overkill, and the HypeSquad that I’m never going to join, ever.

Discord is on dark mode by default, at least on Windows. There is a light mode option available though, maybe I should try AAAH BY THE HEAVENS ABOVE IT’S BLINDING OH THE SETTINGS SIDEBAR, IT’S BEYOND COMPREHENSION, IT’S BEAUTIFUL AND MAJESTIC AND TERRIFYING ALL AT ONCE I CAN’T HOLD ON MUCH LONG- ahh that’s better.

Have I mentioned that Discord’s cute, friendly logo? It’s a Space Invader inside a speech bubble! Imagine if a tiny little invader flew out of your mouth when you talked? Oh wait that’s just the coronav–

Anyway, moving on, it’s a Space Invader logo! Because Space Invaders was a game! And Discord is a for gamers! I’m sure all 499,999 members of the Minecraft Discord understand the reference. If you ever feel stressed trying to decide whether to join the r/MarvelStudios discord or the r/Marvel discord, just take a deep breath and look at the Discord icon at the edge of your screen. Just look at it. Awww. I almost want to pet it with my mouse cursor and feed it JPEGs of dog food. Who’s a good boy? Yes you are, Discord logo, yes you are…

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