Some of you have heard of Metcalfe’s law. It states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2). That is going to be relevant here on Slope, now that I’ve set up a Discord channel for paying members. The intent, I told them, was to do this as an experiment.
In spite of the title of this post, the intent isn’t actually to bust the community in two at all. The fact is, however, that the nature of the comments section is almost identical to what I experienced back in 1982 when I first got online. Don’t get me wrong; I’m proud of our bespoke little forum. But ever since the success of ticker.art, I’ve received nudges from a few people to maybe consider something a little more modern than from the Reagan era.
As I said, this is the domain of paying members (not just Gold and Platinum, but Bronze and Silver as well). I am normally loathe to let anyone escape the Slope of Hope domicile, so this is a freakish exception: Discord is very much a separate site, utterly disintegrated from anything within the world of Slope. The only thing that ties it together is a self-selected community.
I have gently integrated, if you want to use such a grand term, this experience into the site by means of this prominent link in Slope’s blog section………
………as well as this gentle reminder of the existence of Discord near the comment entry box, even though, let’s be crystal clear, the Slope comments system and the Discord Slope community have as much in common with each other as Rebekah Neumann and my idealized version of a perfect mate.
Frankly, the thing that terrifies me most about the Slope Discord channel is my lack of attention to it. Most of you know that I’m pretty much a strange in the Slope comments section. It’s no different in Discord. In fact, I have to hold myself back from Discord, since I already found it terribly addictive. In my brief time there, I have actual voice conversations with a couple of Slopers, and I shared a bunch of images and thoughts. It’s remarkably easy to grab and tar baby and not be able to let go.
But………..it’s an experiment. Let’s see what comes of it! It’ll be fascinating to watch.
