When I joined the SCA (fadó, fadó) I tried to resist joining Facebook. I found loads of information about the SCA online on SCA websites, and so much really useful stuff on Stefan’s Florilegium and a wonderful selection of SCA blogs all over the Known World. There were emails to let me know about events in a general overview way. It just didn’t help one become part of the living breathing SCA, connected to people. I found that if I really wanted to keep up with things I kind of needed to be where people were talking, most importantly where they were talking locally, and then in slightly increasing circles out to whatever my comfort level was working to on any given occasion. All was fine, it was a lovely set of communities with lots to say and plenty of enthusiastic sharing, I could see what people were doing and working towards and engage in planning for new events and activities. As an Arts and Sciences person the reason I adore the SCA probably most of all is that it gives me a real, solid reason to engage and make things with real purpose, and to share what I learn with people who are interested and not just looking at me funny wondering why I would do such insane things.
Over the last several years Facebook has become a very different place with various and layered changes in the algorithm. I know all the reasons why, just by the by, I know I am paying for the platform use with my attention – I am the product, I get that – but I did join it to keep in touch and share with my SCA friends and while I still see traces of the old enthusiastic space, it just tends to get covered over with layers and layers of ads and pushed content and reels, and, occasionally, waves of algorithmically engineered weird vibes. I have mostly taught it to show me ads and reels and videos I’m somewhat interested in, but it becomes more about those than my friends, and I’m self aware to know I can’t spend x hours every evening chasing scraps of videos, however entertaining they sometimes are. I resist participating at all from time to time – I am not particularly a fan of Facebook as an organisation and the decisions it has been making – but I still maintain a presence as it’s still a way to keep in touch with interest groups and people. It does seem more empty and disengaged that it used to.
I like blogging, but sometimes it’s just like hanging a poster on a wave; it’s cool to keep the record and my observations and notes but it’s not a conversation. I love Tumblr, but again, I don’t personally find it great for proper interaction. I’ve not really remembered to pay attention to Instagram, I’m frankly afraid of my brain on TicToc – it is my own personal problem with the way my brain works, but I find the short form is problematically too easy to just keep refreshing. BUT I know that they are wonderful spaces to be inviting, shiny, to spark interest and traffic. It seems like a very necessary place to pitch a flag in.
I love websites being the lynchpin, the gospel, central repository of information, that everyone refers to in more dynamic social media locations, particularly with a feed that can be filtered to provide the necessary local views on globally approved things (Drachenwald’s calendar, OP, website philosophy, the amazing web team and the phenomenal work over the last couple of years there, all of that great stuff) It’s a solid foundation for community building, the right and correct information in the right place – but can’t by its nature do the building.
I am a Discord user, and I love it, but I am extremely aware that it has problems too. I work in IT so I can have it sit on my desktop all my working day and keep on top of the conversations in my smaller servers (usually at least), even if I can’t engage all the time. It is a very different experience for people who dip in and out on a phone every few days, especially on a busy server with lots of conversation, it gets daunting and likely unusable quickly. I myself don’t find it as useful for a large group with too many components – different internal groups, interests, areas and so on – it seems like it’s too little butter over way too much bread. For me the real pleasure of Discord is in a small, kind of localised interest community space. It’s the knowing that people in your little conversational window on the world chose to be in there with you and you can talk about a related something reasonably sure you’re not boring everyone to death. When learning about new things it’s helpful, I feel, to be in a small group of people who will natter with you about stuff, or oooh over your photo, or make suggestions to help you out with something. It’s in the direction of a more localised version of community space that was actually quite nice on Facebook back in the day. Dedicated, available, not requiring a constant page refresh and fending off another round of reels in the process.
So I like small dedicated discord servers, and I’ve created two for SCA folk (nominally in Ireland but not restricted to) interested in natural and medieval dyeing with a shared authorship website for research projects, and another for foragers. I really like how they work, but I know they can’t work for everyone. For one thing they’re more closed than Facebook, it’s much harder to stumble upon them. It’s not considered good practice to paste a general discord invite on the web, for example. It’s not useful to appear exclusionary.
I’m not even sure why I started this particular train of thought, it’s just been on my mind. It feels like we’re circling around wondering how to work in gaps. I wonder is it we just need to figure out the best places to stick in our flags and then how to weave in around them to join them all up to make sure we keep an even flow of information between them all? I am not trying to fix or propose anything, this is absolutely an exercise in thinking out loud and wanting to keep a note of it for future me.
Time traveling Órlaith 