Navigating Forums

I spend a solid amount of time on social media — regulated time, meaning not before breakfast or after dinner, and generally not on the weekend. For all the time I do put in, I find myself referencing things from what I’d call the “Twitter mode” (e.g., Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky) more often than I do what I’d call “forum mode.” That doesn’t reflect my activity, more a sense that the former is more public and the latter more private. I thought I’d collect some thoughts about forums (e.g., those on Discourse, Slack, Discord). I’m on too many of each to list in detail, but if you think there’s one I might appreciate knowing about, do lemme know. Thanks.

Discourse is like if the BBS I remember from the proto-Internet mid-1980s had upgraded along the way to a vaguely graphic interface — but not gone so far that it couldn’t wind the clock back to pure text, should it ever want to. Which is to say, Discourse is my favorite online mode; it’s the platform on which I feel most at home. Discourse (mothership: discourse.org) provides simple tools to simplify your engagement. You can opt to just not follow individual threads, and then that little alert number disappears. You can even opt to full-on mute a discussion, which means it doesn’t just go quiet; it disappears from your view entirely — henceforth you’ll have no idea if people are arguing about a topic you have no (or too much) interest in. A signifier of Discourse’s casual tone is that you may very well be on Discourse already and not even know it. It’s a platform, yes, but it’s routinely accessed from another URL entirely. I spend a lot of times at llllllll.co. The VCV Rack forum is on Discourse, as is the Elektronauts board.

Slack is like if social media became an office job — with the ugliest carpet ever. It’s best to set your hours (mothership: slack.com). Don’t participate in everything, just what’s essential and what you feel strongly connected to. Leave channels with ease, or at least turn off notifications. And foremost: feel comfortable changing notifications to just @ mentions, so you only get alerted when someone pings you that you may be missing out.

Discord is like if Slack was a factory job — on the floor of a Las Vegas casino. It is essential, at least for me, to do everything I can to tone it down. My favorite option is to click on a folder and hit “Mark as Read,” which just clears everything out. I assure you, in most Discourses, that won’t last long (mothership: discord.com). For some time, I had folders of all the various Discords I’m in carefully sorted by category. They were very organized, but something felt off. What helped, I figured out, was creating an additional folder of just the main Discords I want to pay attention to. In other words, “places where I actually want to hang out” is an entirely valid typology classification.