Why I use Discord and why it has become so popular
Hello everyone!
To get into the meat of this article, I use Discord because it is a great place to communicate and get to know new people. I have a ton of new friends because of Discord and I talk to people who have the same interests as me. I also help people learn how to code and it is everything I’ve been looking for in a social media platform. I cannot recommend Discord enough.
I’ll get into more reasons later but first I want to explain what Discord is for those who have never heard of it. Then I’ll go into why you should use Discord and I’ll end with why I use Discord.
Let’s get into it!
What is Discord?
For those of you that are unaware of what Discord is, it is a communication platform that streamers, YouTubers, gamers, and community owners have. You can think of it as a mix of Facebook pages and Facebook Messenger. Each “page” or Discord Server is made up of “groups” or channels where you can talk about a certain topic.
Note: I’m going to be explaining what Discord is using the Windows desktop application. It looks the same on macOS as well as the web interface and while it can and may look different on tablets or phones, everything is located in the same place.
Let’s use my server r/Coding Help as an example. I’ll post a screenshot below.
As you can see we are currently on the #welcome channel which contains information about the Server or Community, our rules, and quick information. This is something that most, if not all, Discord Servers have.
On the far left sidebar (shown here), you can see all of the Discord Servers I have joined. They are always shown here for quick access between the servers and they are always shown as little bubbles.
As you can see to the left, I have 2 folders with servers inside of them. All you need to do to create a folder is click and drag one of the icons on top of another one and then you can recolor the folder and rename it.
If you hover over any of those icons it shows the server name. You can also see what server you are on with the white line. The servers with the white dots are servers with unread messages in them. Some are pretty active so you may not ever be able to read everything, which is fine. You can always right-click and select “mark as read”.
My folders consist of Support Servers (first folder) and advertising servers (second folder) where I can advertise my current projects like my Discord Servers, articles, and more.
The last two buttons are as follows: the plus icon lets you create a Discord server while the navigation icon lets you find servers through Discord only lets servers with 10,000 or more members advertise there and huge Discord Servers like that can be overwhelming for a new user which is why I recommend Googling “blank discord servers”, replacing blank with the topic you’d like to join, and finding smaller servers to join at first.
Moving through the software, the next sidebar on the left shows the channels of each server, which you can think of like a Facebook group.
You can see the picture here: https://imgur.com/tO55APl
I couldn’t include it in this article because it was too big to be shown via mobile devices.
As you can see at the top of this one, you can see the name. There are some servers with pictures behind their name as shown below. To get that you need 15 boosts. I’ll explain what Discord Boosts are in another article.
Moving on, underneath the name you can see the categories. In my server, you see Mods, Information, Beginners, Main, r/CodingHelp Bot, Languages, Off-Topic, and Voice Channels. Each server’s categories are different depending on who owns the server and what topics the server is about.
In each of those categories are the channels or the Facebook groups. You can read all of the channels I have in the picture listed above. At the very bottom of that picture, you can see your username and pin which are both used to identify you on Discord. Mine is cute.as.ducks#5567 so if you want to find me in there, you type that in. You can see your online status, your icon, and the status of your microphone, headphones, and change all of Discord’s settings right there.
The biggest section in the center is where you read all of the information and can chat with your friends. You can also send gifts, attach emojis, and everything that normal messaging apps have.
On the far right side, you can see all of the users and bots in a Discord server. You can have different roles a user has and give each role a different color. That is a topic for another article though.
Getting back on topic, that is how you use Discord. As you can see, it is pretty easy to learn and mimics a lot of the different social media groups out there.
Why should you use Discord?
You should use Discord because it is a great place to meet people with like-minded people with who you could end up becoming friends with. I have met a lot of people online who I’m now friends with on Discord.
It is also a fantastic place to learn how to code. There are millions of different Discord Servers out there that you can find and you can build your own Server and create your own bots for it using JavaScript or Python or C++. It is a fantastic place for learning, chilling out, and just reading what is going on in the world. If you google “blank discord server” while replacing the word blank for whatever topic you’d like, you are guaranteed to find a Discord Server on that topic. That is the fastest and easiest way to find new Discord servers.
Honestly, why shouldn’t you use a Discord Server? There is no downside. It is completely free to use and you don’t have to include any of your personal information (besides your email) so why not?
Why I use Discord?
I went over this a bit earlier though I would like to have as much detail here as possible. I own a few communities on Reddit and those communities also have Discord Servers that I use as a combination as some people would rather get instant help or responses via Discord rather than waiting for a response on Reddit. As humans, we want instant gratification and Discord serves that purpose for whatever topic.
I have met so many cool people on Discord and I have enjoyed my time there more than any other Social Media platform. I rarely use Twitter or Facebook anymore unless it has to do with other people contacting me or promoting these articles. I am always on Discord though. I have it on all of my devices and I absolutely love it.
Do you use Discord? Why or Why not? I’d love to hear in the comments down below!
