dreams of a pluralistic world, or: why discord and twitter are the last good social media

this is a post continuing on some themes i guess i've touched in previous writings, particularly my rant about the algorithm's role in the death of twitter, but also in various tweets (across twitter, the fediverse, bluesky) and other places. i'm not sure why, despite my artistic pretentions, social media is the new thing i keep wanting to write about, but i'll follow where the wind takes me.

a man comes to a powerful magician, and asks her: please, oh woman of magic, create for me a beautiful object, that i can hold in my hands.

the magician thinks for a moment, and leaves. a while later, she returns, holding a small little sphere. on it are dotted little lights, and dark little hills and valleys, and oceans. as the minutes pass, the colours of the dawn reveal themselves, and the greens and yellows and browns of whole landscapes can be seen. a whole little world, held in one's hands.

the man is already very satisfied, and he is about to thank her, but the magician shows him something even more beautiful still: if one leans in closer, and brings this little world up to the eye, one can also see the people. they go about their little lives, they talk, they play, they fall in love. they sing and dance for you to see. and the man is overjoyed.

but then he notices something that changes him, and he asks the magician: why, when i asked for something beautiful, are there so many ugly parts to this world? why does it have death, and sadness, and sexuality? why is there war? why do the people not love eachother, and love me? why can i read the writings, and not like what they say?

and the magician cannot help him, for she does not see how such an object could not be beautiful.

maybe that's a strange attempt at a parable, but this expresses something of my feelings about the world. so often, when someone tries to explain why some social media service is bad, the justification is that it has those people. that if everyone there simply was like us, that it would be a better place. and, well, as much as i can understand the impulse, i can't embrace it. even if i am in fact the best kind of person, i still don't want to be the only kind of person i'll ever meet.

what i'm saying is: i love living in a pluralistic, pluricentric world. i love living in a world that has a diverse variety of people and forms and things. i love this even though it hurts me, i love this even though it is imperfect, i love this even though it is also so much of what i hate about the world. they say that variety is the spice of life. well, then a life without variety is bland.

and i think i can't really convey this fully, because it really is an all-encompassing mindset. it is not just a belief that some kind of shape of thing needs variety. it is a belief that all things at all times must have variety, be they happy or sad.

to put it another way, it is the belief that nothing is worthy. that no single belief system is totally correct. that no ideology or dream or culture or practice or people is so perfect that it deserves to be able to eradicate all the others. yes, not even mine.

i think that the beauty of the world is that it lets a hundred flowers bloom, and a thousand schools of thought contend. yes, i know that mao zedong was perhaps not sincere when he quoted that.

why do i think this? i don't know, but, perhaps it's because my life has been so enriched by variety that i have come to believe that variety might be the purpose of life itself. i think the elimination of variety of experience is a sort of flattening of the self. the soul is not such a simple creature. we are diamonds with myriad facets, not theoretically perfect spheres. when the light shines through us from different angles, it refracts in a dazzling array of different patterns. i think that might be what makes us human.

and more than anything, i believe in the wonder that is art. there are so many kinds of it, and they all touch the heart in so many different ways. art allows us to relate to ourselves and to others in ways that are truly fantastical, to experience things we otherwise never could. every artistic work is special, even if it is not always easy to see why and how.

so, then, finally: why am i fond of the website that is “discord”, and the website that was (and to a smaller extent still is) “twitter”? well, first of all, i must say that they are not the only sites i am fond of, and i do not wish for them to be the only sites that exist. but i am, for better or worse, a primarily anglosphere internet user in the year 2024, and this is a world dominated by large social media platforms run by american tech companies. and they are not, and must not, be the only websites to exist, and i would very much like them to be less dominant, and i do my own part to push back against it, but it is the world that we live in, and i must make my peace with and try to live in it.

and these sites both have things that are special about them, and that thing is: they both avoid this “flattening of the self” in their own ways. they both, to their incredible credit, recognise somehow the value in a diverse world. they do not seek to force every user into a particular Correct shape of being, into a single consistent identity, into a maximally Advertiser Friendly blandness.

at this point i think i've written enough about why i loved twitter; you should probably just read my previous post. it let me dance on so many stages at the same time, be all the people i could be at once, bare the multitudes within me to the multitudes without. it let me maintain as many identities for myself as i needed, within one account or across several accounts, not just one sanitised version for a single audience. it let me be not just in one circle, but in so many circles, all the circles that intersect to form “me”. but one thing twitter has always lacked is that twitter is, at the end of the day, still a single social space. a very wide one, one where you can chat in your group of friends and never notice the millions of other groups in the same room as you, but still a single space.

discord is special because it is not one space. discord is a million little spaces, totally separate. discord is, well, barely even a website. it is more of a service, a tool. a place that allows you to create a place, and to be in many different places.

and if twitter is radical because it let people be themselves in a shared space, than discord is radical because it lets groups of people be themselves in their own spaces, and the spaces belong to their users, not to the service. discord lets its users form their own realities, to create their own worlds, to shape their social environments according to their own needs. and this should not be radical, but in a world of knows-better-than-you companies like facebook, reddit, wikia and (regrettably) signal, it is. discord doesn't seem to think it owns its communities.

it is somehow even more radical than the fediverse, also, because discord acknowledges that people can exist in many spaces simultaneously, and that not every space should be shaped like a twitter clone. and i know that the fediverse could be this, but i am saying that it isn't in my experience.

and yes, because discord gives its users the powers to shape their own realities, many of those users create realities you wouldn't like, that might even appall you, or worry you, or upset you. and sure, that may be true, but… that's the whole point. the point of life is for people to be able to do their own little things together that others won't understand. they aren't hurting you. that's what i believe.

i think i'm probably losing you at this point, but: i'm just glad there's still things out there that feel so uncynical to me. there are online spaces that are actually accessible that allow us to make our homes there. i hope something of this comes through.

thanks for reading.