lapisnev

Don't squeeze me, I fart

Things that make you go 🤌. Weird computer stuff. Artist and general creative type. Occasionally funny. Gentoo on main. I play rhythm games!

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So, last week my phone number got banned from Telegram for no reason. That's not directly what this post is about, just context that's going to come up a lot. I switched to Discord because I already had an account I wasn't using, some of my friends from Telegram checked in on me in Discord DMs, yadda yadda.

I can't completely rule out that I just haven't seen enough of Discord, but the two userbases are dramatically different.

Obligatory disclaimer that anyone can have a different experience on any platform and YMMV.


shut up shut up shut up I don't want to go back

I don't miss Telegram. Actually I hated it. I felt burnt out all the time. Everyone wanted to message me because I'm popular and smart and funny or whatever the hell, and I never had the leftover mental energy to pick just a few people I actually want to get to know better and develop a meaningful relationship. I felt like I was getting sucked back in as if by gravity, even when I recognized I needed a break. For a month or three I was getting one or two guys at a time slipping into my DMs, falling in love with me after just one conversation, flirting with me for a week, and then disappearing. I don't know how I was attracting so much attention. Where did they come from? Where did they go?

Even if I get the account back or make another I am not ever letting it become my main again.

"well you're out now. what's wrong?"

One of the first things I noticed after my number got banned is that I was compulsively picking up my phone and tapping Telegram without consciously realizing it. God forbid I should be bored for one single millisecond or have a single conscious thought, I would find myself staring at the login screen of my banned account and have to stop and analyze what just happened. I removed the icon from my phone's launcher and that at least short circuited my brain sooner. I would instead stare blankly at the empty space. After a second or three my consciousness would take over from the canceled reflex and decide to put the phone down.

I... really shouldn't be surprised about that. I already went through this almost identically with Twitter. I had the exact same goddamned reaction to the empty space where Twidere used to live on my home screen, and the only practical difference is that I was making a conscious choice to leave. God forbid I should have nothing to scroll through mindlessly for more than a few seconds. And before that, I had a dozen mobile games that I would play round robin all day. All of them had an "energy" mechanic you needed to play a level, and at least one of them would let me play right now at any moment, so I could just tap a different game and never be bored.

"so how's Discord..?"

The second thing I noticed is that, despite getting several dozen Discord friend requests and DMs from people that wanted to check in on me and find out what happened, it... got quiet. I was invited to a few servers and they're quiet. Exactly one person from Telegram that came to check on me is still DMing me to just chat. (The rest are lamenting my account and pressuring me to contact support more aggressively.) There are actually moments that nothing is happening and there is nothing I can do without leaving the Discord client to receive instant gratification. That means that, if I don't want to be bored, I have to get off the computer and do something. Holy crap, can you imagine?

"neat! that's good! I'm happy for--"

The third thing I noticed follows from the other two. I'm WAAAAAY TOO INTENSE for Discord servers. I am the #1 poster. I have the most posts and the longest posts and I will ramble about computers and demand attention by presence alone. The only time anyone ever posts more than me is when somebody told an innuendo in #general and the whole server is popping off. It takes an army of horny sluts to out-post me.

You're not going to believe me but this was actually a normal amount of posting on Telegram. When a Telegram group is popping off I literally cannot type fast enough to keep up. I will reply to something that was resolved 50 messages ago and the topic has changed three times and escalated into a flame war and spilled out into vagueposting in a dozen groups and someone has been banned from an entire federation sharing a ban list. I've seen server raids on Discord that look polite and cordial in comparison. Something is always on fire, someone always wants to talk to you, there's always somewhere you can talk about what's on your mind right this minute, and your intensity will be reciprocated.

I finally caught myself doing this and I realized I look insane. I'm competing with no one to talk the most.

I forgot how to slow down, take my time, and be happily bored.


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in reply to @lapisnev's post:

It doesn't literally map 1:1, but this is VERY close to a lot of my own experiences. There's a handful of cozy little TG channels I'm in, then there's a few that... yea. You find some 4chan-stanning puriteen dominating half the conversation one second, look away because of something like work, and then look back and wonder why the fuck your unreads are literally in the thousands. o_o

I'd been considering posting something to that extent here too, in that I've been scaling WAY back over the past few months and realizing I havn't really lost any friends in the process (which is a relief. With twitter I lost a good handful). What I HAVE lost is, well... content. The drip-feed of skinner-box stimuation.

happy to see you've responded to the whole thing by taking a step back and considering everything, and hope it leads to more healthy living. ive never used telegram to join active groups so i'm pretty shocked about how they can be in practice, but i'm still very familiar with the feeling of losing an app as a former twitter regular and it can be rooough

Maybe I will finally regain enough executive function to start making art again. That's been on my mind lately, I really want to do it but I haven't been able to consciously choose to do something for years, unless it's my new obsession, and even then I would run out of enthusiasm in about three days and go right back to compulsively talking on Telegram all day.

Honest to goodness this is one of those bizarre cases where losing an app had almost no drawbacks and almost all benefits.

A particularly nasty thing about telegram is the sheer focus on "look at this thing that just happened". Encourages a particularly nasty thing where you either read stuff right now, or it gets "forever" lost. So if you have any sort of FOMO…

To make this all quieter you have to go out of your way to mute things, set things up to be less noisy. The default is… a giant pipeline of everything straight into your notifications. And even if those are off, you still have a constantly shifting, twisting and "X is typing…" tapestry as the main part of the client. Silence is not an option in this UI because it means being hidden from most people’s view.

Random people professing love interest is… probably more of a culture problem, but yeah that’s, uh, certainly a thing. Probably related to how TG is somewhat popular for furries… and especially for typefucking of various kind.

Personally, experience with discord is mixed. Some places are quiet, or just dead quiet. Some go on with speeds beyond any tg channel I’ve ever seen, and that happening on one "server" in multiple channels. Though 1:1 comparison by numbers is certainly different. Probably cuz Discord makes it easier to just shove some "server" off to side.

Also hi, sorry I’ve not said hi to you elsewhere. Just kinda thought I’m not too relevant to bug you with that… and you’re around on here so not entirely cut off.

The wider landscape of mobile things highlighted here is… something I try to glance the hell away from. But even then I am still probably pretty deep into the "social media procrastination loop" stuff… looping between TG, here, Bluesky, and YT.

I really need to watch less random YouTube stuff…