Managing the Discord Overwhelm (Patreon)

It seems like every other person has a Discord server and is inviting you onto it these days (and then you get there, and nothing’s happening on it! What is that, y’all!) Someone asked me how to engage with Discord without wanting to cram a pillow over your head and this is a common enough question that I thought I’d answer it for everyone because these feels, I feel them. I find Discord overwhelming too; I know people who are on thirty+ servers and I don’t know how they don’t explode from stress. I couldn’t handle it! The Jaguar brain is a delicate instrument, easily addled. Here, then, are my tips for keeping Discord from discombobulating me. Maybe they will work for you!

Choose your servers wisely. If you’re completely new to the Discord paradigm, think of each server as a clubhouse where people hang out to talk. Like a club, each Discord server has a vibe, a microculture, and an activity level. Some Discord servers are huge, busy, and impersonal; others are so quiet you wonder if anyone’s shown up. Ever. Some are heavily moderated, and some are ‘anything goes’. In the same way that you might join a few clubs and decide that they’re sapping your energy, or you don’t like the group, or they ask too much of you (or too little of everyone else), you should pick and choose which servers you participate with carefully. 

Corollary: it is totally okay to quit the ones that aren’t working for you. Don’t leave them sitting on your sidebar. It will probably make you feel weirder than just removing them. You don’t have to explain why you’re going either—you don’t owe anyone an explanation, and honestly all it’ll do is make everyone uncomfortable. If you want to go, then go!

Mute enthusiastically. Discord allows you broad silencing powers! Use them! Muting allows you to suppress notifications so you don’t see new activity unless you want to. You can mute entire servers, if you don’t want them in your face all the time… or, more selectively, you can mute channels within servers. (Think of channels as rooms within the clubhouse of the server. Most servers use channels to segregate discussion of topics or give groups a smaller space to talk.) The foremost stressor for me in managing Discord is having all the servers and channels constantly notifying me that new things are happening… muting those pings keeps me from feeling like I have to constantly check things.

Use the right portal. Discord has three clients (that I know of!): an app for your phone, a desktop app that you download that works like a normal program, and a webpage interface that keeps interaction in your browser. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I find the Discord experience very different depending on which portal I’m using. When I first started out, I exclusively used the website and it felt to me like… well, a website I could open and close, ignore as a tab, etc. It didn’t feel like it “lived” in my pocket. Segregating the emotional/mental experience was much easier when it was on the website. But it also felt more cumbersome, and a little like I was talking through a glass pane.

Because I manage a server, I wanted to keep an eye on it more frequently, so I downloaded the phone app. That turned Discord into a more text-message-like system, and on the phone it feels adjacent to the experience I have chatting with friends via text. The desktop app, which I settled on finally over the website when I’m at a computer, feels more like my memories of IRC or chatting on Mucks: there’s a separate window with lots of people hanging out, that I ‘hang out with’ as well, idly, the same way I would coworkers in an office. Those two apps have become my tools of choice: they give me the right combination of distance and immediacy. But I admit, I wouldn’t have settled on them had I not had a server I wanted to keep a closer eye on.

One (or some combination) of these feels is going to work better for you than the other. It might be that the segregation of the website tab is more mentally bearable than having it on your phone… or it might be that you prefer “bundling” the real-time feel of the interactions with similar apps on your phone, making your phone your preferred ‘this is how I talk to people instantly’ device. But invariably the advice I find on dealing with Discord and other real-time chat glosses over (or doesn’t mention at all) the varying emotional/mental impact of how you reach the chat, and for me the portal makes a huge difference in how much I can handle.

Be mindful about your participation. Every server has expectations about participation, and matching your style and energy to the server’s makes a big difference in your comfort level. Some servers don’t care if you lurk (lurking being reading without ever participating); some servers would prefer you check in now and then. Some busy servers want you to jump in at any point but won’t help you out if you do; others will swarm around new people and help them ease into the waters. Some servers will pay big dividends to people who invest time and energy in them… others are kind of a wash, so you might as well lurk. Observing a server for a while to see if its culture suits you will save you a lot of time and energy. 

Once you decide whether you want to participate, have some peace with your choice. If all you’ve got time for is showing up for book chat once a week, then do that and don’t fret about spending more time there. If you decide you’d like to participate more, then go for it, and don’t sweat not having been more active when you first arrived. If you decide the server’s not for you, then head out and don’t look back! 

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Those are my personal strategies. I know people who handle dozens of servers fine, and enjoy the experience of visiting lots of places without ever committing to them; I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum, where I like to invest a lot in one or two places, and then pass all the others over. I’d say ‘this is because I run a server’ but it’s not: I was like this even in the early days of the internet, when I was telneting (telnetting? Help?) into Mucks and Mushes. I think, really, the only reason I gravitated toward running my own place (and I always do, no matter what platform I’m on), is because it allows me to adjust the microculture to suit me.

I no longer run a Muck (obviously, those being from the dark ages of the internet, the before times when there were no pictures). But my Discord server is run on similar principles: I like it to be friendly, organized, and busy. And we are! But even granting that, I don’t keep on top of every channel on my server. Here’s my line-up:

I try not to over-channel things, because I feel like a billion channels overwhelms me. And other people possibly, but if my own server overwhelms me I’m doing it wrong. The grayed out channels are the muted ones, and only light up when someone has messaged me directly. As you can see, the only channels I get notification on are the two channels about spoilers for my work (#vault and #darkroom), and the Kherishdar-only discussion channel, #tsuni! I even have the server muted as a whole, so that when I open the app it doesn’t jump out and yell at my eyes: “LOOK LOOK THERE ARE NEW MESSAGES WHY DID YOU GO AWAY THINGS WERE HAPPENING”

Stress, y’all. I don’t need it. >.>

We are, I daresay, the friendliest place to hang out on the internet. But I would because I am biased that way. If you’re at the Discord tier and haven’t tried it, I encourage you to give it a chance for a few days, see if you like it. Here’s more info on it, have a look! 😊