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Comment by anewpersonality | Hacker News Reader

The new friend catchers are all on Discord.

Really. I'm finding Discord has a really high surface tension. By that I mean that I bounce off servers because so often nothing interesting is happening and I can't see anything to drag me back

Similar to any other medium, Discord Servers for nieche interests where there is an incentive to go back (semi regular events / activities) are better than anything else mentioned above.

What makes discord better medium

- Ability to have single / threaded chats

- Multiple channels (#general #help #more-nieche)

- Instant transition between voice and text channels

- Able to screencast (watch content together, explain understand better)

- Stimulating being together, not necessarily talking (music channels, work together channels)

Pretty hard to find friends on discord, join a server that's too popular and it's like a twitch stream. Join one too small and no one talks or quickly runs out of topics.

The best ones might be activity centred discord channels, like translating mangas. But, at that point, discord isn't the friend catcher anyway.

I know what you mean, many discords fall into either category. But there are discords that are in the sweet middle ground. Also requires time investment on your part though because you won't make friends by just lurking and never interacting.

How do you find this subset of discords? I mean most of the ones I hear about are from creators promoting their servers and by definition they’re too busy and chaotic. Any pointers?

Most sub-reddits also have a discord of their own, also do many of your favourite products and services and sometimes these are nice places beyond the marketing shills.

One of my favourite servers which I later joined as mod is Tools for thought [0] (15k+ members) which is a space for discussing new tools, productivity, workflow, help with tools and similar stuff.

https://forthought.tools/

Yeah those aren't great. There are discords that are specific to topics, like your favourite hobby. Then you need to find one that doesn't have too many, but also not too few people. They will be filtered by hobby I guess.

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