Discourse on Discourse

A couple of recent Indie RPG Newsletters mention that discourse surrounding a piece of media (a manifesto blog post and a video review) was taking place on Discord servers. This is a bit of a change from the way discourse has been taking place, and reflects the current moment. I think it's fair to say that a very big chunk of TTRPG discourse used to be on Twitter, although this changed when the majority of the scene jumped ship when the site became openly fascist. A diaspora occurred within the hobby due to political events and many moved to other platforms, Bluesky, Mastodon, Discord and others that I'm less familiar with. Other platforms like the ones at the center of the discourse mentioned by the Indie TTRPG Newsletter -- blogs and YouTube -- have stayed strong through it. Blogs especially are at the heart of the discourse, and this is evident during this recent diaspora. This migration of platforms has been common in the hobby space, for example the big one when G+ was shuttered. These platform migrations present material changes and affect the social and economic reality of the hobby.

My own personal migration was to several different platforms. I find myself overall less engaged with the blow by blow of current discourse. In retrospect I am really aware of the effect of Twitter's algorithm, which promoted engagement by boosting the most controversial and emotion inducing content to the top. I was certainly more invested (addicted) to knowing all the drama that was being curated by Twitter's algorithm, and I don't think it really even did anything to increase my enjoyment or at least satisfaction of TTRPGs in my personal life. 

So now we are in a place where instead of having a centralized hub for all TTRPG discourse, we have moved to several decentralized, more siloed platforms. What does this mean for the hobby? 

I think that in time, the more fragmented nature will lead to conversations where basic assumptions drift further and further apart. A single centralized conversation causes homogenization of ideas and attitudes. With people following suit with influencers in order to gain acceptance and exposure. I predict styles of play will diverge, and each will develop in ways that are less interested in being a games with wide appeal, and more interested in being a finely tuned game for a small subset of people.

The other prediction I have is that isolated groups will develop stronger group identities, which means identification with each other and also the creation of outgroups, made up of people who are seen as antithetical to the ingroup's principles. This was touched on by the Gestaltist in the blog post Empathy, Tribalism, and Boys Fighting In Oklahoma, but ingroup/outgroup thinking is related to factionalization. Factions will run in conflict with each other, with less and less common ground to stand on. Discourse between factions will involve less conversation between them, and more straw man/boogie man creation to define outgroups in accordance with the ingroups identity.

Is there something to be done about this, or even any truth to my predictions? I don't know maybe a good approach would be a federated alliance of platforms like what is being attempted by the fediverse. Most of all, I am as always, interested in the new growth and directions that the TTRPG hobby space will take.