GR makes friends forever

To me, there are very clear differences between the forum and the WhatsApp message and I'm happy using both.

I'm not sure about Discord to be honest. I know a guy who used it once, and BAM, 5 years later he was hit by car, so I'd advise caution.

strawberry floating hell Final Discordnation? Sorry if that’s slightly out of order

I reckon they all equally have a role to play though, as I’ve mentioned earlier, the forum has the benefit of lots of threads, so you can actively pick and choose where to spend your time, it might sound daft but definitely feels less pressurised to read every comment, partly as you don’t open your phone up and see “200 messages” unread on WhatsApp

Discord is probably a bit of a middle ground between the forums and WhatsApp, still capable of private messaging, engaging in various threads on the server, but unlike on the forum I don’t believe you can multi-quote people in a single message, so you’d have the scenario where (like WhatsApp) you’d have a lot of message notifications that may have no interest to you.

WhatsApp is very much off the cuff, which is enjoyable but at the same time you see “200 messages” and I’m thinking that I can’t be bothered to read many of them as by the time I’ve read them the conversation will have moved on drastically again

So yeah, pros and cons to them all.

If anything I would argue that the reason WhatsApp feels personal than anything else isn’t really a result of the medium itself, but rather the fact that it’s mandatory to share PII to participate. Of course people who’re happy to give their mobile number out to a group they aren’t in control of are open to share details of their life!

But being unwilling to share PII and being willing to talk about the details of your life aren’t mutually exclusive. If I’m thinking to myself “ok, you want a non-public place people can be more open with eachother and get to know eachother as friends”, ignoring all of the extra features and functionality that Discord offers to facilitate group discussion, the *only* thing WhatsApp offers over Discord, the ONLY ONE THING is “it excludes people that don’t want to share their number”.

Edit: And read receipts I guess. THE ONLY TWO THINGS

I "Jinxed" Tomous on the WhatsApp chat.
Can't do that on the forum, innit.

I love being able to look at old forum threads on big game / console launches and seeing the hype build (and often die).

Also threads of shame / confession stories etc. only a forum can bring that beauty.

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:Also threads of shame / confession stories etc. only a forum can bring that beauty.

That anonymous confessions thread was incredible, if slightly sad reading at times.

Honestly, I did not know it was possible to create non-public group chats on Discord. Thought it was centred around servers, and you're either on a server or you aren't. Sorry if you'd have felt more inclined to be part of this had we used that, jiggles.

What I did not anticipate with this WhatsApp was the number of photos/videos that would be shared, including an alarming number of selfies. My Google photos is set up backup WhatsApp media, so now when I open my Google photos app, it's full of selfies of unfamiliar faces, food I haven't eaten, and loads of cats.

Oops. Be even more awkward when its summer and we're all topless.

Zilnad wrote:

DarkRula wrote:

Tsunade wrote:

Dual wrote:

Knoyleo wrote:

Oblomov Boblomov wrote:Getting serious FOMO from this.

Jump in, brother, West mids crew represent.

Woop woop!

West Mids! Yeah! West Mids! Yeah!

I'm an East Mids boy. Does that make us enemies? I hope we can still be friends.

I've just moved down here from the North East after living in Japan for 7 years. Living in the East Midlands and working in the West. I know literally no-one here bar my wife. To be honest, I didn't even know this country had a middle.

Still, after living in Japan for so long, it shouldn't take me time to adjust as I'm used to living abroad. Moving to a strange land, where you can't understand the locals, full of weird customs, food that sometimes looks inedible and with a culture that can seem archaic and even backwards at times, I'm sure I'll get used to the Midlands eventually.

Knoyleo wrote:What I did not anticipate with this WhatsApp was the number of photos/videos that would be shared, including an alarming number of selfies. My Google photos is set up backup WhatsApp media, so now when I open my Google photos app, it's full of selfies of unfamiliar faces, food I haven't eaten, and loads of cats.

Obra Dinn vibes intensify.

Parksey wrote:

Zilnad wrote:

DarkRula wrote:

Tsunade wrote:

Dual wrote:

Knoyleo wrote:

Oblomov Boblomov wrote:Getting serious FOMO from this.

Jump in, brother, West mids crew represent.

Woop woop!

West Mids! Yeah! West Mids! Yeah!

I'm an East Mids boy. Does that make us enemies? I hope we can still be friends.

I've just moved down here from the North East after living in Japan for 7 years. Living in the East Midlands and working in the West. I know literally no-one here bar my wife. To be honest, I didn't even know this country had a middle.

Still, after living in Japan for so long, it shouldn't take me time to adjust as I'm used to living abroad. Moving to a strange land, where you can't understand the locals, full of weird customs, food that sometimes looks inedible and with a culture that can seem archaic and even backwards at times, I'm sure I'll get used to the Midlands eventually.

We're an odd bunch, not far enough North to be considered northern and absolutely not southern.

Parksey wrote:I've just moved down here from the North East after living in Japan for 7 years. Living in the East Midlands and working in the West. I know literally no-one here bar my wife. To be honest, I didn't even know this country had a middle.

Still, after living in Japan for so long, it shouldn't take me time to adjust as I'm used to living abroad. Moving to a strange land, where you can't understand the locals, full of weird customs, food that sometimes looks inedible and with a culture that can seem archaic and even backwards at times, I'm sure I'll get used to the Midlands eventually.

Welcome back to the UK and welcome to the Midlands. We're not all weirdos, I can promise that.

Herdanos wrote:Sorry jiggles but I disagree with you on both points (that running Discord and WhatsApp simultaneously is redundant; or that everyone moving to Discord and the forum here dying would be OK). The forum has a permanence that neither WhatsApp nor Discord can replace; and, we wouldn't want them to.

For one thing, the forum is public. That's great - its visibility allows us to attract new members. Sure, we do that more slowly than we used to, but we still do it.

The forum allows splintered discussion that is preserved in perpetuity. That's great too! Ideal for a public forum.

But that public nature definitely leads to some people sharing less personal info than they might otherwise. WhatsApp gets round that. And, hey - if your purpose is to participate in a forum, there's no obligation (no need, even!) to share personal info. But the purpose of this endeavour has been quite overt from the outset: to potentially transform those forum relationships into something more akin to IRL friendships. (Discord is public too, though to less of an extent.

Through WhatsApp I've learnt more about some people in a few days than I have in over a decade through the forum - real names, faces, places, jobs, families. I've spoken 1 on 1 with some people more than ever, and more quickly and easily than PMs allow. That's helpful for... making friends! Discord can't do that; and the reality is, the forum doesn't promote that.

But the forum is host to discussions, conversations games, etc etc, dating back decades, from over a thousand genuine registered members, and hundreds of meaningful contributory participants. WhatsApp or Discord can't replace that sense of community.

But WhatsApp can (maybe) help individuals within that community become friends. Some people have already discovered that they live closer than they think!

Again, though, I didn't expect this to be as big as it is. I think that speaks volumes as to how difficult it can be, as adults, to form meaningful friendships in a modern, post Covid, increasingly online world, where people "our age" (a broad spectrum) move around the country a lot. I do think it'll get quieter as the days pass; someone's already left, others have muted the chat. But I'd like to think it'll serve a meaningful purpose, and one that isn't to the detriment of the forum as a whole. If anything, by making stronger connections, we'll feel more determined to keep this place running!

I think the bolded bit is what's important here. The idea - at least as far as I can tell - was never to have a massive, overarching network of people in a monumental Whatsapp chat. It was to connect a group of people who are interested in making new friends, chatting a little bit and seeing what comes out of it.

For me in particular, it's nice to have a football chat that's geared towards English football(particularly the Championship!), for example, because I don't really have anyone to talk to about that where I am. Especially knowing that I'm chatting with like-minded folks, who I've had some form of communication with for a long time. To that end, Whatsapp is an easy choice of messaging service because just about everybody has it, chats can be set up pretty easily and without much commitment from anyone.

The issue we've had is that the idea has been much more popular than intended, so we're now trying to balance the original concept with the numbers Dan has managed to sign up. It's a nice problem to have, and I think it shows the togetherness we've kind of curated over 15-20 years. I think decamping to a popular Discord server *would* begin to undermine the forum over time, as different threads and topics would begin to override their forum equivalents, but a catch-all Whatsapp group, or a couple of groups, doesn't necessarily have that danger.

And as Dan has kind of said, these things are always extremely frantic for the first week or so. A few people will decide it's not for them and drop out over time, as someone did earlier on. We are inclusive, but it's not a format that everyone will enjoy, and we won't all get on with each other in the Whatsapp format either - it's not an indictment of anyone, just the nature of the beast. When it settles down a bit, I think it'll run a lot more smoothly.

And it would be nice to springboard off this to have some kind of summer meet up, too. If everyone gets on well enough, a thread can be set up here and we can go from there!

Herdanos wrote:Honestly, I did not know it was possible to create non-public group chats on Discord. Thought it was centred around servers, and you're either on a server or you aren't. Sorry if you'd have felt more inclined to be part of this had we used that, jiggles.

It has a fully mature permissions and access system. You can have a server that’s entirely invite-only, a server that’s open to the public, a server with channels that are only open to certain members, or certain member roles, or any combination of anything. You can have as many different roles as you want, each with as many members as you want, and assign access to any one channel to as many individuals or roles as you want. You can even assign functionality to any roles you want, let certain roles read, certain roles write, let certain roles post links or images, even let certain roles manage who is assigned to roles, on any and all voice or text channels you want.

For example, I have a close-knit server with some folks I’ve met through GR that I’d now call genuine friends. The server is invite only because it’s ours and ours alone, but sometimes we want to play with along with others outside the group, so we created a “Guest House” that all invited members have instant access to, where there’s one voice and one text channel. The rest of the channels on the server (where all the personal, not-for-public chat is) are only visible to us, in the role we created that only we are assigned. We could make the server open to the public now and we’d still have the privacy we currently have, we just don’t want to have to potentially moderate the actions of complete strangers that stumble across the Guest House.

If I’m being perfectly honest, yeah, I’d have engaged with this if it wasn’t on WhatsApp, but don’t sweat it. You’ve plenty of engagement already by the sounds of things and it’s not a big deal to me. I just wish the GRcade discord was busier than it is and this could have been a shot in the arm for it.

Parksey wrote:

Zilnad wrote:

DarkRula wrote:

Tsunade wrote:

Dual wrote:

Knoyleo wrote:

Oblomov Boblomov wrote:Getting serious FOMO from this.

Jump in, brother, West mids crew represent.

Woop woop!

West Mids! Yeah! West Mids! Yeah!

I'm an East Mids boy. Does that make us enemies? I hope we can still be friends.

I've just moved down here from the North East after living in Japan for 7 years. Living in the East Midlands and working in the West. I know literally no-one here bar my wife. To be honest, I didn't even know this country had a middle.

Still, after living in Japan for so long, it shouldn't take me time to adjust as I'm used to living abroad. Moving to a strange land, where you can't understand the locals, full of weird customs, food that sometimes looks inedible and with a culture that can seem archaic and even backwards at times, I'm sure I'll get used to the Midlands eventually.

Hit me up, we can play some board games.

No reason a Discord and the WhatsApp can't co-exist.

You're all so naive. Dan told me his plans before adding me to the main group. He promised me a position of authority in what he describes as his New Order.

Oblomov Boblomov wrote:You're all so naive. Dan told me his plans before adding me to the main group. He promised me a position of authority in what he describes as his New Order.

What happened to your curls?