How an App for Gamers Went Mainstream

Over the past few months, seemingly all the pet- and animal-themed Instagram accounts I follow have begun interspersing their videos with pleas. “Join our bird-themed Discord community!” one posted. Another urged me to connect with a group of like-minded reptile lovers on Discord. A commenter touted a dog-lover Discord server.

Discord is a real-time chat platform that was founded four years ago as a way to make it easier for gamers to communicate. But over the past year, it has outgrown its origin story and become the default place where influencers, YouTubers, Instagram meme accounts, and anyone with an audience can connect with their community.

After signing up for Discord, users join different servers. Each server functions as its own community, and it’s very easy to toggle between them. Once you’re within a server, you can hop between a long list of hashtag-marked channels on the left-hand side of the screen. Some