I've been through a cycle that consistently repeats, and it hasn't quite stopped yet.
- Join a public Discord server to talk about a specific topic and maybe make some buddies.
- Start to feel integrated over the next two or three weeks.
- Watch your mood go down the drain as you struggle to find conversation in that server.
- Leave quietly because being in that server is more damaging to your mental health than the conversations you do have there.
Now, the posts I'll source are largely anecdotal, but what matters right now is that I'm feeling this way in the first place, and that others I've found online have felt this way. I want to figure out why being in a public Discord server can be more stressful than helpful, and see how these conclusions can help me and potentially you.
The first contributor to a lack of belonging is the fact that public Discords have existed without you and they will continue to exist without you. In other words, cliques have already formed and you're not in them. For the sake of this discussion, assume that these servers have perfectly fine people in them. They're not out to bully people and they're (generally) very nice. I really want to emphasize this: you can feel isolated in a server with nice people, and this is where these reddit posts I've pulled from come into play. Both of these posters talk about how they feel like they don't really belong there; like the people there already do so much more with each other. I myself feel incredibly weird when people post screenshots of themselves with numerous DMs when I'm lucky to even get one a day, and I'll get advice like "you just need to give to the conversation more," but even then, it's difficult to have a strong presence. Public Discords seem to be a survival of the fittest situation.
The second thing I'd say goes into this sense of isolation is, well, mentality. I'd say it's the mindset of trying to make friends online in the first place. It's incredibly easy to make acquaintances online, but not friends, and this blog post actually goes into it (though you should read it after this one, since it's a bit tangential and scathing). You can talk about whatever meaningless (or meaningful) thing you'd like so long as there's someone there to talk about it, and it's also easy to get into deeper conversations about things like politics, but there's a really big problem here, and it goes into the last reason I'd say why being online can be so isolating.
Who you see online is not who they'll be in real life. You can talk to someone for years and know next to nothing about who they actually are (as I have, actually). Why? It's obvious when you think about it: you're sitting behind a screen getting to think about every word, you're not gonna get punched in the face for it (no, bans don't count), you're not unconsciously sending your body language over the internet, and you're not actively there. People will tout being able to be themselves over the internet, which is true! But it's really only a small part of themselves. How you behave in person is also part of who you are.
Now, I'm not saying that it's impossible to make friends online. I'm actually in a private friend group online where I feel like I do belong to the point where I've shared my face with a few of them, but I recognize that I'm incredibly lucky to be in this situation. The only reason I'm here is because of a massive string of coincidences a la butterfly effect after joining a public server. It's just not realistic to expect to make friends in this manner.
So what's the takeaway from this? One is to fix your expectations. Use public Discords as a way to talk about a specific topic, but don't expect to make any meaningful relationships from them because people's lives don't revolve around someone random they met online (note to self, by the way). Which is admittedly easier said than done, considering I'm still falling victim to this, but knowing how to get out of it is still a good step. The other, which is hard depending on where you live, is to go outside and make friends in person. It's incredible just how easy it is to communicate when you're face to face (body language and attire for example), and it's a lot easier to trust people when they've seen and supported you at your worst. But that takes initiative and trial and error and that's hard, and this whole spiel that I've written out is only something that I've started to realize recently.
An interesting article that you might want to read is this one about Generation Z's isolation by Ballard Brief from Brigham Young University because what I'm seeing from this article is that there are a lot of people who are lonely and don't know how to reach out, or they're just too afraid of being rejected to reach out. So instead of going online and talking to strangers who'll never know you half as well as even your teachers (or old teachers, depending on who you are), take the plunge and try to talk to people who you share interests with (like at a club or a library) in person. It's better than not trying at all.