[jonreem]

Join a discord server for a relatively niche interest that you have and not only will you meet many others with similarly deep interest in a water cooler format but you will be able to work on your hobby much more effectively with a close community of like minded people. Discord is a place that still has conversations and communities, not broadcasts and celebrities.

[louhike]

Yes, I consider Discord to be the best place to meet people. When I start a multiplayer game, I always try to find a channel where people meet to find others to play. People usually talk about others subjects at the same time and you will speak with the same persons, so it's easier to have friendly relationships.

[newsbinator]

How would you find these communities?

This is particularly hard if you're not interested in gaming (beyond the N64 level).

[Jemmeh]

Just google "yourInterest discord reddit" and someone is usually talking about it. I'm in a keto diet discord & joined a programming channel recently.

I see N64 discord servers. I don't know if they're busy, but I see 'em.

[kuschku]

Or go with good old IRC.

In my experience on Discord you only find absolutely toxic communities, which is not very surprising, considering it's the casual equivalent of IRC.

[jonreem]

Try joining smaller communities. Being in a server with 10-20 regulars is very different from being in one with 200, forget 2000.

[gsich]

What's 'toxic'?

[CosmicShadow]

Toxic usually means full of assholes. People will get super mad at you and swear at you and say very bad things in general if you make one little mistake or don't know something. If you are a noob, prepared to get treated like shit and told you should die violently in real life.

Much like you'd hear about a toxic environment at home or in a poisonous mine, it's a very dangerous and bad place to be.

In some games, where the only way to have fun is if everyone knows all the rules and has skill and is playing seriously, one person who falls out of that spectrum can ruin it for the other(s) and thus people start to get angry very quickly and don't hold it inside. Games like League of Legends is 5v5 and highly skilled. One poor player can result in a 20-30 minute game with a guaranteed loss and no fun along the way, so it becomes very easy for people to spit vitriol at them. You get punished for leaving as well, so you are locked in for a certain amount of time, held prisoner if you will, by someone who doesn't meet your standards and whose weaknesses you can't overcome yourself no matter how good you are. Yes, this sounds like a horrible system and an easy recipe for disaster. On the flip side, if both teams are good, it can be very rewarding.

One thing I like about Heroes of the Storm, which is very similar to League, is that they solved a number of issues that results in less toxicity. It's still there, but it's taken much longer to grow and is still at such a lower level then what I remember League being years ago. I even got an email from Blizzard saying they banned someone I reported, so that makes me feel like at least something happens when I report bad behaviour. Since the game was designed to allow for comebacks and a single player's contributions can't hurt you as hard as in League, a strong team can still have a chance with one weak player. You still have assholes though and you still have rough games.

[gsich]

Ok, so normal gaming experience in those kind of games. Take Dota, which wastes the time (40+ mins, compared to the 20-30) of 4 players if one is an idiot. Of course you'll get flamed for it.

[kuschku]

Sure, but it leads to a community that gets very quickly very angry at tiny things (because of the expectation that the person will ruin their day), and as a result those who don’t want to deal with that leave the community.

Left is a group of people that react very angry very quickly, even out of the game.

[gsich]

I don't think that the majority of those players get angry outside the game.

[JetSpiegel]

Just the new thought-terminating cliché for "things I disagree with".

[c0nducktr]

No, it's more an alternative term for "being an asshole", or maybe a "shit stirrer".

I've got friends who say things I disagree with, they're not assholes. They're nice people with different views. Some people say things I agree with, but at the end of the day, they're still assholes, even though we share some opinions.

Any group large enough is going to have some assholes.

If you get called toxic a lot, it's not just because people disagree with what you say, it's probably how you're saying it.

Further, maybe you're not an asshole in every group, maybe your (and I'm using the word "your" here in a general term, I'm not talking about anyone specifically) personality just doesn't jive with the rest of the group, making you the asshole when you just have a personality which doesn't fit with the group which makes you toxic.

Take for example a subreddit like /r/aww which is just idk, cute photos. Someone who comes to that community and points out flaws, or seems to need to point out problems with the posts, content of posts, etc, well maybe they're toxic to that community, since it's just one of feelgood-ness. It's not that they're a bad person, or have bad opinions, they're just not behaving in a way which seems appropriate for the group.

[salvar]

So there's no such thing as toxic behaviour in your mind?

[diffeomorphism]

How could you possibly get that impression from what was written?

The claim was the complete opposite that almost any objectionable behavior is labelled as "toxic".

It is hence about as undescriptive as "liberal" is in American politics. That term many years ago had a well-defined narrow meaning but is now far removed from that (or like "literally" often meaning "figuratively" in common use ).

[salvar]

I got the impression when OP immediately dismissed anything called "toxic" as a "thought-terminating cliché".

[gsich]

Thought so too.