I think it's fair to say that, as a Generation X-er, I've seen pretty much all of the digital age as most people know it. At an early age, I was fascinated by the BBC Micro (the 'home' computer that most British kids of my age first encountered) and was lucky enough to have parents that recognised the value of computer literacy, buying me a Commodore 64 for one birthday. At 14 I was lying about my age on MUDs and running up appalling phone bills with my cherished 2400 baud modem. And during the COVID pandemic, I discovered what I still believe to be the best platform for online communities of all kinds: Discord.
Although the company has done a pretty good job of unnerving its userbase in recent months, as a platform it's difficult to fault, except maybe that its premium paid-for tier Nitro is a little on the expensive side. I've resided and moderated on large servers, and built and managed my own small servers, and from all angles I see it as a great tool for creating communities and providing opportunities for them to interact. Although originally conceived for gamers, Discord has proved to be well-suited to facilitating creative collaboration too, and when I was thinking about interesting ways to develop myself as a writer, and my nascent debut novel, I naturally assumed there could be a role in that for a Discord server of some sort.
Writing communities, such as the one I enjoy on Bluesky, are for me a critical element of being an aspiring author, providing motivation and encouragement and an environment for posting your work and gauging the public reaction. It seemed obvious that Discord's fluid user experience could only enhance that, albeit operating on a significantly smaller scale in most cases, and I was inclined to experiment, so I created my own server, cringingly named MalinTown (I had no ideas for names, and have always possessed a dreadful affection for puns - in this case, it's a reference to Billy Joel's song Allentown). But I'm convinced that the best servers develop organically, and those that are centered around one person often leave a bad taste in my mouth - especially if that person is me! - so I'm actively seeking to rebrand.
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