It's been a kinda long day...
Gonna get high for once, eat burritos and dream about them

It's not a secret that I hate Discord, but I've been trying out alternatives to it for some time with mixed success.
Firstly, I don't think that the federated alternatives are ever going to be that successful. For the same reasons why it is so hard to get people on Masto, but it's so easy to get people to switch to Bluesky. This is like a whole mentality thing for a lot of reasons, but yeah... I don't think it's happening.
Secondly, there are also issues in general with Server based Instant messaging vs just direct messaging. But everyone is so very used to the Discord paradigm at the moment, that I don't think just ditching them all together is going to be a solution either.
So what are the best alternatives I've found?
Well, I have two,
Guilded and Revolt
I don't really want this to be a deep dive, but I do quickly want to list the pros and cons I've found of each so far.
It's just something I do mostly out of habit at this point as I watched everything be unattainably expensive through the flash memory crisis and then the pandemic of the last half-decade.
Things are interesting at the moment though. Because there was a huge boom in parts purchasing as everyone needed work-from-home setups or at least PC upgrades through covid, every manufacturer over-produced stock. This is especially true of GPUs as Nvidia and AMD tried to cash in on the concurrent NFT/Crypto boom at the same time.
But both of these things crashed because of course they did. There is a finite number of people who had to get a new setup for work-from-home and as the years have rolled by most businesses are back to work in person. What this means for the tech landscape though is the major companies are timid about new releases as they have far too much old inventory and their old inventory is still too good compared to the new offerings. As such (especially here in Australia) retailers are heavily discounting "last-gen" in order to try and clear shelves so they can hopefully reap some sales of "current-gen" towards the end of their lifetime.
This bursting bubble is pretty advantageous for folks who held out through the whole pandemic on an upgrade and are okay with slightly older hardware. I know this lul won't last forever though. So my passive activity of routinely checking hardware prices is quickly becoming a shopping list as I try to figure out how to finance an upgrade for my current system that is really starting to feel its age.
Hmmm
Well as the arcade tends to tailor things towards its guests...
The most likely first "game over" for you would be: A bustier patron, just finishing an intense DDR session, bending over to catch her breath, notices a small green spec on the carpet (you). Leaning forward to investigate she loses her footing and stumbles forward, your sky filled with breast. Before that chest comes crashing down over your diminished form. The camera then follows around a close-up of her chest until you click respawn. No sign of your little self, just a half-cup size extra on her chest.
On your subsequent runs through, the DDR lady will always be there, adding one extra "threat" you'd need to avoid. Each time you fail to get away from her, that chest size increasing and the longer you have to wait on the boob camera screen before you can respawn.