Whether it’s Discord, Telegram or Guilded, these days, many of our most recent and most popular chat messengers that have these communities built-in seem to suffer from some pretty idiotic things happening.
In just the past year alone, I’d been bugged to absolute death to resurrect my old Discord which, let’s be clear, I never wanted. Ever.
For the sake of this conversation, I’ll kinda focus on Discord but I’ve had similar experiences on other channels.
Let’s start with how I got onto Discord in the first place. I was playing in a sim in Second Life. They had a Discord server and one player on the sim simply kept sending me links to it, despite repeated objections. I didn’t want, nor did I need to join a separate messenger when there were IMs, community chats, etc right there in the SL group surrounding the sim itself. Finally, I joined just to shut that player up.
I’m going to grant that it might have a few advantages. Second Life was known for eating IMs, messages, etc. Sometimes, even entire posts would get eaten. You’d type out a great emote, hit enter and…well…where did it go? Who knows?
Naturally, over time, the direction of the sim was…well even I don’t know that because everyone seemingly vacated save for me and a few other players who were hardly ever on at the same time. Everyone was in the Discord and it had taken a hard left turn. The administration (not all of them but key members) had double-secret probations (that’s not an exaggeration) and any story or sim ideas pitched would get rejected by sycophants who would then begin rapidly posting to bury what you just typed. If you posted it again, you got reported for spamming. Long story short, that sim, the server and I parted ways, taking a couple of my friends with me.
This isn’t the first time such a thing has occurred but it did open up the machinations of the key admins and laid it bare. When it comes to servers like this, chat rooms, entire chat sites, or even just messenger programs, I’ve been pretty nomadic.
Let’s face it, sometimes it’s great when you can find others of like mind that you like getting together with and talking about those things that you just dig, right? Whether it’s comic books, TTRPGs, Video Games, or even if it’s hunting and fishing, there’s a server out there for it…maybe.
I ended up leaving Discord due to their policy regarding off-site behavior. I left with the intention to never return. By comparison, Guilded really didn’t have such a Draconian policy and, remember, all it takes is for something to be reported, you don’t necessarily have to prove it or you can just spin some proof and, if you’re of the wrong political persuasion, your entire account can be nuked pretty easily. This has been an even that has been reoccurring through many different platforms and I objected to it then and even now, I still object to it.
I haven’t been banned from Discord and I regret finally giving in and resurrecting that stupid thing but resurrect it I did and I joined a few different servers based on interest.
In the past year alone, I’ve left three servers. One of them on Guilded where I was a member for a long time but certain elements in there made it clear it was no longer a place where I was welcome. I left. I’d say it was no big deal but I did have friends in there and some of them, well they stopped being so friendly after I left. Some friendships straight up ended altogether. Sucks, to be certain.
The other two were on Discord. One of them was the Shadowdark server where someone straight up violated the “no politics” rule (To Kelsey’s credit, none of this was her fault at all) when I posted a link to Shadow Cha’alt. Oh politics were brought into it alright but not by me. Keep in mind, I posted it and bounced to go play. That was it. I hadn’t even had the opportunity to go through it. I had a game that day and I was off to do it. Coming back…yikes. After some back and forth, I decided I was out. Seems there are some that can’t just keep scrolling.
Yesterday, I posted this and I hope you’ll go donate or spread the word to several servers. I’ll let you go to that link and come back.
One of the places I posted this was in ’s Discord server. To be fair, this is what I actually posted and I’ll embed it here for you…
I put it there because, yes, I am on the board of directors for this organization. I’m an ordained minister with a doctorate in Divinity and have explained my reasons for posting such things elsewhere other than here.
As you can see, nothing about this is secret information. It’s stuff you can easily look up. Jon Del Arroz has described himself as a Christian Nationalist and when it comes to the content he produces that I consume, I couldn’t care less about that. I’m enjoying Overmind, The Cosmic Warrior, The Immortal Edge and many of his other works. I don’t focus on that which divides, I focus on that which we have in common. Like any sane, rational, mature adult would. Your religion is your business, I’m not looking for converts. I only ask the same in return and that’s how I roll. Naturally, the crowd that gets attracted there, are other Christian Nationalists but I don’t have to take part in those discussions, I can just keep scrolling …and I did. I should add here, and be fair, none of what I’m about to describe is Jon’s fault at all. I don’t know if he even saw the exchange. I don’t know how he felt about it. I’m not interested. I’m just going back to the material. So this is not calling him out in any way.
I did also take part in some discussions here and there where common ground was plenty. Not often but I did.
Now, you figure posting the link to a Go Fund Me to a fundraiser for a Scout Camp ravaged by Hurricane Helene would be an okay thing.
The Boy Scouts of America is, in fact, a Christian Organization.
Granted, BSA is skating repairs on this camp because they don’t consider it an “official camp” whatever that means and bad form on their part.
To fund a place like this that teaches young boys in North Carolina skills, values and some discipline would be a good thing right?
Let no good deed go unpunished here, friends.
The barrier to it all…was it came from our Grove of Odin Substack.
The accusations ranged from it was a fundraiser for the Grove (It’s Not, let’s get that out of the way) to, I’m not kidding, Substack Has Gone Woke.
…fuck’s sake…
Now, I should point out there’s a section on religious debate. I only went in there to clear the little white dot that shows unread messages. I never read anything in there. Never took part. I’m not there for that. It never came up in there, instead it cluttered up the feed with something I saw that made me go “time to go…”
After another very unpleasant exchange, I left that server as well.
Some other things that need to be said to clear the air, my nephew attends that Scout Camp. My sister and I are both pagans (she has a different deity/system to which she ascribes) but her son is taking part in that camp and their activities. I don’t know how large Christianity factors in but obviously, neither of us care. My nephew truly enjoys his time there with friends and that was the point. A lot of damage was caused and now they need a lot more than just $5k for repairs, go have a look at that link up above. As we’ve put aside our theological differences in order to have something nice for my nephew as he matters to me in this entire thing, we were hoping, and extremely disappointed when this was the end result.
Christian Nationalism is a right-leaning worldview and I have no doubt there are some in that movement who would like to just take me out on site.
As Lancelot put it in the movie Excalibur, “Your rage has unbalanced you. You would fight to the death a man who is not your enemy for a stretch of road you could easily ride around.”
At the same time, I’d like to give most the benefit of the doubt that that’s probably an extreme minority within the group. This extreme minority is every bit like those they claim to despise and anyone not completely on board with them…labelled an enemy right then and there. Sound familiar? I attribute this type of extreme mentality to those who have had sandpaper swiped across their necks for the past eight years. Now even the most legitimate uses of sandpaper are suspect to them and anyone who buys it must be the enemy.
No, y’all, some of us just need to smooth out some lumber for construction and painting…that’s it. It really is as simple as that.
This is the biggest issue with chat/”community” platforms a single point of contention becomes the reason for making an enemy, needlessly becoming antagonistic.
During my short stay in the Discord Server, Holy Legion (I know…I know…shut up) I never posted well, anything that I post every day like Rune of The Week or Tarot Card of The Day. I knew that wouldn’t fly and I suspect Jon probably wouldn’t have appreciated it even if I do it because, well I enjoy that. Like anything, if I post something you don’t care for, just keep scrolling to something you do. It’s like changing the channel. It’s super-easy. I still had some fairly decent conversations and posted some workarounds for companies that had genuflected to the completely maladjusted. None of that mattered. I’ve never once tried to sell the type of paganism I’m into in that server. To me, it wasn’t the place for it. Unlike most, my religion, my hobbies, my work…that doesn’t define me, it’s just stuff I do and I’m not minimizing it. It’s big stuff to me but it doesn’t mean it has to be to you. I’m very much live and let live…until you step on my toes and, for that, yes I will absolutely shove you off of them.
You do you, I’ll do me and there’ll be times where we agree to disagree. Works for me.
The funny thing is that I showed the same link to other Christians I happen to be friends with, they’re spreading the word about the camp desperately needing funds. They didn’t seem to get hung up that it came from our Grove of Odin Substack.
Now I don’t want to join any more servers when it comes to “communities” around some hobby or interest. I’ll stick with what I currently have. Fact is, people are just petty enough that I expect to pull up Discord only to find I’ve been banned at some point because I refuse to let lies stand and I refuse to allow bullies to dictate terms.
I also have time that is mine and in that time, if I think that someone’s just being a dick, I’ll cut them out and shut the door. Unless I am being paid to deal with someone else’s hangups and neuroses, I simply won’t. You can call that whatever you like but it won’t change.
Between the landmines I step on and Discord’s own policies, I wouldn’t put it past them and we know how petty and vindictive people can be.
The Ravens Nest 
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