Recently, in the same 24 hours, I discovered that two orgs of which I’m a member use, or are going to use, Discord.

One of them is net based, and I discovered that all the secret fun chat takes place on Discord instead of on the Mastodon instance (server) that they run.

The other org is local/political. Currently they use Google Groups for member chat and communication. Maybe not the best, but at least it can be accessed and operated my e-mail, if desired. They are moving because of the “appealing free features” of Discord that will “make the community better.”

I decide that I better get on Discord.

I try to create a Discord account and get trapped in an endless loop of verifying and reverifying my e-mail and phone number. I have repeatedly reentered my password, done slider bars, responded to text codes and e-mails, and mostly solved repeated CAPTCHA’s for small grainy images that I can barely see of squirrels in trees, chickens on beaches, and pieces of chocolate cake. REALLY!

Finally my account, that was never really created, gets quarantined (frozen) and I have to navigate help files and fill out an appeal form that really doesn’t make sense. No response time is promised only saying that it can take awhile due to heavy load. What the quarantine does is lock up the e-mail and phone number that I used making it difficult to try to create a different account.

I’ve determined that the issue must be that I tried to create an account while using a VPN. Website “security” du jour apparently means never giving the user any reason for a denial. Instead of saying VPN, or whatever, you get stupid language from major banks and things that say, “Oops! We hit a SNAG. Try again later.”

Going forward, I have decided that if Discord is required for something, I’ll do without. The only exception would be if my paycheck depended on it, but that hasn’t happened.

Another thing about Discord, every verification screen has cute bouncy icons on it. That’s a real piss off to a hopeful user trying to gain access. The brief moment that I was able to log on, the whole screen was ablaze with those things. Gross.