For the first time ever, a Discord server has attracted over one million members, with the platform’s official Snowsgiving 2021 hitting the milestone earlier today.
There are a number of caveats to the feat, of course. This is an official Discord thing, so they can do what they like with it, and raising the cap like this is something they’re doing for a stunt (there are giveaways in the server), not a cap they’re going to increase for everyone (though you’d imagine there’s an element of stress-testing involved in this as well, for future events/situations).
And it’s completely unworkable! As anyone who has been in a Discord of any size will tell you, once they hit a certain point they cease becoming useful places for chat and start becoming Matrix-like, waterfalls of text cascading down a screen faster than anyone can keep up with (a big reason why they’ll never be suitable replacements for forums).
For reference when I jumped in to check it out, there were almost 130,000 people online and in the server. I could flick my mouse wheel and scroll down the members list for what felt like forever, never hitting the bottom. Conversation is impossible in a situation like this, and even if you wanted to talk, the main chat’s slowmode is set so far in the distant future as to make that unworkable (I was told 30 minutes, but others are being told 6 hours), so this is a space where you’d have to get in, leave a seasonal greeting or a one-liner and then shut up/get out.
If for whatever reason you want to jump in and check it out — maybe you like snow, maybe you think you actually stand a chance of winning the stuff they’re giving away, maybe you just want to be a silent and minuscule part of Discord history — you can find the server here.
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