Context is that I am a 30 year old living in a rural area in the south, so my peers are mostly the offspring of HVAC-business-owning yeoman reactionaries or the mentally traumatized wastrels of declining capitalism. It’s not a good environment tbh.
I have some irl friends, who are generally cool (by cool I mean a bunch of them are gay and/or trans people who are smart and funny) but they are also 30s range so most of them are just trying to white-knuckle their way through it right now. I feel for them, I do my best to always help and be available for them when they need someone to drive away the encroaching existential misery, but I’m a manchild pursuing the arts to secure a wealthy patron so my life is just so different from theirs and everyone is aware of it. I’ve fallen into a sort of “therapist” role among my friends, and it gets really exhausting even though I’d never hold it against them.
In the last few months I’ve noticed that I’ve been craving some more casual, friendly online interaction. I tried to thrust myself into some online communities on places like discord, and it worked a little, but it was pretty clear most of these places were full of people a decade younger than myself. Am I just gonna have to face the fact that I’m just an atomized mote of consciousness forever and just stop looking for new tribes to join entirely?
EDIT: Also, almost a different question entirely, but why does it seem like there are SO MANY gay Nazis on discord? Because I have a lot of experience being cool around LGBTQ, I have been invited into a few “secret clubs” and holy shit like 1 out of 3 times it’s full of extremely gay Nazis practicing their mental gymnastics with each other
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I mostly hang out in small Twitch chats (<150 viewers) and their Discords because I’m a
. The more twitchy and popular the game is, the younger the playerbase tends to be, while more “spreadsheet”-y games (Project Zomboid, 4X like Civ, etc) tend to skew older. The LGBTQ+ tag will dissuade outright fascists but you’ll still need to wade through the sea of liberals to find someone decent.My relationship with the LGBTQ+ tag is so funny. Like I can’t call myself queer but it often feels like the only place to find people with any emotional maturity so I’m always in those spaces.
Retro is really full of older queer people too.
The people you see on discord depends entirely on the servers you use.
Finding a game and or a project you can do with other people is a good way to meet like minded people.
You’re not wrong, but I haven’t had a lot of luck so far. Just the usual social walls, nothing out of the ordinary. A lot of communities seem either too big to not get drowned by or small and tight to the point that it’s hard to get in.
The way to get in is to post! And never stop posting!
I hope I have the posting strength for it
It’s kind of dead but there is a hexbear discord. Might be a decent place to start.
Is there really? I looked a little but the links were all dead
I’m younger than you and don’t have anything more tight knit than hexbear. I know some people do but I just have never been able to get into those spaces, and often haven’t really wanted to. my serious social interaction is focused on people I know IRL.
I hate to admit it, but when all your friends are gay communists Facebook can be pretty lit, I found most of my online hangouts through a bunch of support groups there and shitposting groups
Honestly it would kinda help if I knew I could specifically look for “gay communists.” Maybe I’m wrong to think so but it feels sorta gauche for me to schlep my straight ass into gay spaces without being invited.
If you’re interested in going that route, I’d start by following a few pages like “Friendly Comrade Ancom Mermaid” and “Catmin’s anticapitalist treehouse of solidarity”, shortly after interacting with those pages your algorithm will start suggesting the right types of groups for you, especially if those types of pages are the only thing you follow. I’d also recommend searching for some queer allyship groups (ideally run by queer people) to further tune your algo in that direction.
Good luck! I’m interested in if you find anything. I was able to secure a good pod IRL through having had a low-drama (relatively) band, but I’m the most online out of the group.
I’m active on a couple smaller vtuber discord servers. Things vary a lot from community to community, but the ones I’m in are left-leaning and pretty good on LGBTQ. Of course, that’s not helpful unless you watch vtubers.
Edit: there’s more people in their 30s than I expected, too
I’ll admit I don’t watch vtubers but I am sorta forgetting that streams might be a source of community. Something to consider I guess
I do a lot of online socializing with the covid-conscious community (people who are actively avoiding infection, staying up to date on the research, advocating for masking/air filtration). There are regular Zoom events, various Discords, Facebook groups. The community is overwhelmingly left, often queer and neurodivergent, lots of people disabled and chronically ill - so it’s a good fit for me. Possibly not a good fit for you depending on how you’re reacting to COVID.
