Discord breaks up communities

I'm gonna quick preface this by saying that I'm aware that something really immediate and catastrophic should probably happen in order to justify a massive post like this, but this has been bothering me for pretty much as long as Discord has gained traction in the Doom community and it's gradually creating an unbreathable smog here and I'm not waiting for someone else to break the ice for me so I'm just going to do it myself.

I can't find any useful resources that explain what I'm about to talk about. My searches only turn up videos of seedy discord servers, parenting tips about keeping children safe on the internet, and soapboxes about how it tracks users and sells your personal data to china, (which is a big problem in itself but not as personal of a problem that I'm getting at) I've talked to gamers in my real life who have had massive splits in, once, giant, ancient gaming/nerdhobby communities and it often involves coercive and deceptive actions facilitated by groups using the discord platform (actions that would normally take deliberate extra steps in other spaces).

In the past unspecifiable unit of time, I've sensed a lot of hostility on this forum that I both do and don't understand. People become very active and have a lot to say around anything involving a conflict on the forum, but when there's casual non-confrontational discussion around anything else, they're nowhere to be seen.

For me, it's really jarring to see people on this forum who post very little about who they are, what they do, or what they even like about this place at all, but still harbor a personality that seems oddly domineering. They seem to have an awful lot to say about how this forum and its project is supposed to be run, and an intense amount of apprehension for people that are already here. Yet this forum is mostly quiet about anything concerning them, so there's nothing prompting how short their patience is for dealing with other members here whenever they have something to say. It's a kind of reaction I'd expect if you were trapped in an elevator with them for many hours, they havent showered, and you missed lunchtime. I don't know what is making people so angry. Why watch the people on this forum if you don't even like the people in this community? There's clearly nothing in this for you...?

I know this is happening because it has already happened before. There's a ton of people checking this forum. Positive/neutral posts get ignored. Sarcastic posts are abundant. Negative posts are scathing, rich with substance, and come in avalanches. The forum experiences long periods of palpable silence, (often conflated with disinterest.) But the subjects of people's posts seem to suggest recurring and incessant attention whoring in a place where it's known to be difficult to post anything you care about and get a thoughtful response at all. If someone addresses the elephant in a room, suddenly a crowd of people show up to shut the person up for all the commotion they allegedly created all by themselves. (e.g. see the posts that will eventually follow in this thread.)



This way of picking on members and bullying them out of the community happened a lot on doomworld and it's largely the reason why doomer boards became my second home. The tone policing is harsh and people get lambasted for having the gall to speak at all about anything that isn't congratulatory of the current state of things. People who felt the need to speak unfiltered about the trajectory of the community or the state of the world were relentlessly harassed and beaten into submission for not playing the forum game right. The forum game being that everyone disregards the warning signs like plummeting forum metrics and people vanishing, and we collectively pretend that the forum is booming and friendly to everyone. Nevermind that the abusive means in which players strictly enforce this game sucked all the joy out of this outlet for doom fans that don't have a place to be their authentic self in the monotony of their every day life. Eccentric personalities be damned.

I'm absolutely sure that discord has to do with it because these feelings always arise before the time I find out this platform is getting traction.

- feeling very alone in my own community
- feeling very confused about people's reactions to things
- feeling a need to be very cautious and tactful about what I talk about because of said reactions
- feeling like my messages aren't even being read
- reading posts that feel like responses to things I didn't actually write

People on discord congregate and use it as a group chat to spectate on forums and add in a lot of speculative content about everything that goes unsaid on it without meaningfully participating in the conversations that are actually here. It is its own community among the doomer boards community; keepers of information about what's really happening with doomer boards. And whatever drama manifests there somehow spills onto my forum in unpredictable ways. Using only the speech I can read on this forum, it never makes sense why people are so jaded. But whenever I call it out, a coordination of people will post at me here on the forum about how I must be the one that's losing my mind.

I've been told "I don't know what you're talking about" so many times that I had to check to be sure. I regretfully created a fake account to check on joe-ilya's "Doomer Boards Discord" that he created. I search for my name in the channel to see and... well excuse me while I prepare to act surprised... eleven pages worth of reading material from about a dozen or more people talking about me. Froth with specific complaints, scathing opinions, namecalling, psychological evaluations etc. All of which I would never have known because they are never mentioned on this forum.

It really sucks. I'm really hurt. It's so hard to see any thin ray of hope through the crushing weight of the way people talk about me when I'm not around. I'm absolutely done with people that act like they're cool with me only in places where I can see it. Only cool with me when I'm doing something useful for them. They'll use me for my resources, the community I nurture, my time, my compliments, my project, my brand, but they'll never miss an opportunity to talk shit about me when it gives them clout amongst their peers.

It sucks being the subject of people's common-enemy-bond among 10 or more people. But it sucks even more to know its from people that cheerlead the DBPs and/or actively participate in it's development. There's no fucking way you'd like to be treated this way. It's horrible, but you guys do it, and laugh together about it. The shit I read that was said about me is just awful. It makes me sick to my stomach. It makes me doubt every friendship I've ever had. It's not even the first time but it hurts every time. It happens over and over and over again in the Doom community, and it's always when I'm trying to do something good. I don't know why.

Spare me your comments about how this is all a conspiratorial, paranoid delusion I've made up. I've heard it all before. I don't need to know your thoughts on this. I already know. I read enough to know that as long as I doubt the reality, talking shit on discord can remain fun. Just passively embrace the declining morale of this forum to improve your own image until it's unanimous, then lie to my face about how I've manifested this myself with every breath I've taken to resist it. As long as everyone's doing it, the only problems you have are the people like me objecting to it.

I'm sick of watching people on my forum being treated like liquid garbage over and over again. The people that get targeted often have never once been mean to anyone here, said anything rude or bombastic, but they get ripped a new one by multiple people and I've repeatedly had to be the only one to say something about it, and I can't get any help from the people that are here. I don't like being the only one who cares about this. I don't want this in my community anymore. I'm sick of being spoken to like the reason you guys write horrible shit to each other is always my fault when I feel like the only one calling it out when I see it.

I'm sick of people acting like I need this community. Like, without external support theres no way I would be able to make good content on my own. Or that I have some insatiable power fantasy to populate this forum with bodies regardless of whether them being here is a fun experience or not. I only make the Doomer Boards Project to give doomers boards members something they wouldn't need to otherize and exclude each other with. I honestly don't care if DBP stays mediocre quality forever. I don't care if people question the dip in DBP participation as a result of this post. It doesn't matter to me at all. It never mattered to me. It never will matter to me. The project is supposed to be something constructive and give us reasons to enjoy each other's company. So far it's done much better at doing that than not having a DBP. But while people form teams and secret clubs on discord to talk about people who they consider to be antagonizers, people on the forum get treated like shit and I can't do enough to stop it.

I'm just so fucking tired of carrying the weight on my own, man. I make maps and textures and write testing feedback to power through the pain but it's just getting unbearable anymore.