Lance's Discord Subculture Essay

Discord Subculture

           There lies many types of cultures around the world. Many of them have different to similar types of government. On the internet though, the subculture is different to the physical world. It is a chaotic, digital world where people from across the physical world can interact. On that subject, there are also sub-subcultures within the internet. Chat rooms exist for people to interact directly with other people with similar interests. It does not have to be interests though, some chat rooms exist for major universities, or for gaming platforms to talk about certain strategies on a game’s mechanics. There is one of many chat rooms that has been recently popular with many young teens to adults, Discord. Discord is an application used on computers and smartphones where users can make their own servers to talk to friends or complete strangers. Some servers can be a toxic landscape or a place where people can be civilized to each other. One particular Discord server I personally use is one that is unofficially made for CSUN students. I joined this server October of 2018 and it has the most welcoming atmosphere in comparison to other college-like servers. Its subculture is a mix from the Internet’s subculture and the culture of CSUN’s as well. Different majors and different types of people join for multiple reasons, but one reason that people join is just to be a part of a community based in your back pocket.

           The subculture within the CSUN Discord server is particular to other colleges and universities. Mainly, it is a lot more active than other servers that are official to a certain college. Even though the server is not directly connected to CSUN, most of the people on the server are from CSUN. AVC has a Discord server related to online gaming, but it only has around fifty members with only around fifteen being active. CSUN, on the other hand, has over eight-hundred members, though, only around a hundred are online at once and approximately twenty people will talk in a day. Even after that, there are still rules to be followed within the server. Within the CSUN Discord, the university’s rules are followed, Discord’s server policy, and personal rules who were dictated by the server owner’s rules are somewhat enforced. Rules are only enforced if a number of users deem one or more persons to be harassing or being too aggressive to another member.

For as many members there are on the server, there are three moderators and one head administrator. These four are all students from CSUN. These four are in charge of what happens on the server and they rule over all of the other students. There are five different types of students. ‘Admins and Mods’ rule over the server, ‘Special’ are members that help contribute and are deemed special, ‘Masters, Senior, Junior, Sophomore, and Freshman’ indicate which year a certain person is, ‘Resident’ are members who reside in the CSUN housing buildings, and ‘Verified’ are members who have met either Admin or Mod in real life (there is a hidden chat for these ‘verified’ people). The people who are most trusted to meet up with each other are people from the Verified channel, since they have met an admin/mod before and they do not come off as somewhat of a creep.

There is a small, but noticeable hierarchical pyramid. It is between the Admin/Mods and the other members in the CSUN Discord server. Even though they are both students, one mess up from one member can affect a large amount of people. This happens on occasion, but it usually happens when a particular person becomes too political on the server. Politics is one problem the server faces. Even though these students are starting to develop their own sense of politics, previous events caused the major rule to never utter politics in the CSUN Discord. Politics itself is a controversial topic since people have gotten toxic against each other, and since the server serves as a medium to text and talk to each other as a safe space, most political talk is banned. The closest channel that is used for similar, but not political discussions, is the debate channel. This channel is used for normal debating, whether it be a discussion on certain sport teams or how much time should a person cook an egg. Anything can be debated in that channel.

Within the server, there are a large group of STEM majors, majors that include mostly the engineering department. This group is notoriously known to make fun of other majors in a light manner. There are also accounting, health, business, social, and arts majors, just to name a few. These other majors make up almost half of the population on the CSUN Discord. Most of them are inactive, also called lurkers, since they do not participate in server discussions. Online people can also be lurkers since one person can be in multiple Discord servers, and may just appear online, even though they are not “online” on the CUSN server.

The main language on the server is English, but there are channels within the server that are for other languages. There are only six channels related to language: Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, Spanish, Korean, and Tagalog. The most active of these channels is the Korean channel, since it is also used by people who are into Korean Pop, or KPop. The second most active is the Tagalog channel, since there are a good number of Filipinos in the CSUN Discord. Another language spoken is not much of a language, but a shortened version of English. For example: ‘wya’ means ‘where you at’ and ‘tfti’ means ‘thanks for the invite.’ This and a mixture of emojis and replacement words are used to communicate to other students, but anyone can still correct English to convey the messages they want to each other. Replacement words would be like: ‘wack’ meaning ‘terrible or horrible’ and ‘slaps’ meaning ‘a song that is particularly catchy.’ These word combinations may seem out of the ordinary for university students, but since most people use a phone to communicate, it makes it easier to text to each other.

The last thing that also defines the CSUN Discord and other Discord servers are the names. Little to no one uses their given name on the internet and Discord is no exception. People just create names to give themselves character or a nickname they would want to have instead of their own name. When meeting these people in real life, it is not weird to call them by their Discord name instead of their given names. Knowing someone by their Discord name is like having another personality besides your physical self, which makes the CSUN Discord a good place to be a subculture, since there are different ways to call each other. A person can change their name on Discord whenever they want, but it will not change their character on the CSUN server, if people already know them.

The CSUN Discord server is an interesting subculture that I have and still participate in. It is a place where I can be more vocal and interact with people like minded or just fun to hang out with. I may have differences with the members of the community, but being a part of the CSUN server is like being in a large extended family. We may quarrel and fight, but in the end, we can still talk to each other as friends and as a big family. There are a lot of inside jokes and Internet jokes people from the Verified channel share with each other, but even with those people who are outside of the Verified channel, outsiders are still welcome and feel like they are part of the growing family that is the CSUN Discord server. A reason why the server is not directly connected as a club for CSUN is that there even more regulations to what we can have within the server, so as an unofficial server to CSUN, it is still important that we keep an open mind when accepting new members, who to accept, and who to kick out, since it could harm CSUN’s reputation slightly. So, while being responsible young adults to adults, being a part of the CSUN Discord server is a fun community I would like to stay in for now and many years to come.