Discord got big in online gaming because they offered a VOIP and text chat browser cliemt. Just copy or type the short link and you’re in in a minute. They also did free hosting which was huge.

Compared to Teamspeak or Ventrilo, literally just eliminating the steps of downloading a client, installing it, and typing in an IP address caused them to explode overnight. Also you could “host” without changing router settings (most kids/students have to ask their parents or jump through hoops for this).

Technically there was stuff like Skype but that never had the convenient team speak style chat rooms to drop in and out of freely.

Within months of suddenly getting popular, discord had a huge userbase that everybody was using already, and that momentum got us to the point where in some aspects its even replacing the role of wiki’s and forums even though its terrible at it.

And they killed most of their Jewish population! Wait…

Missed opportunity for vtubers

See, this is an interesting question. Are they?

They certainly succeed in giving off that vibe. They seemingly have seen a lot of economic growth while Russia stagnated. I would probably guess that they are, indeed, more competent.

But, they’re an even bigger unknown than Russia. They’re notoriously opaque and at least sometimes cook the books when showing the outside world their economy growth, or stuff like their rate of fatalities during COVID.

They seem to have a much bigger GDP and a much more loyal citizenship than Russia. We think their technology is better than Russia’s, but not as good as ours.

But, we won’t really know if they are a paper tiger until we see them in a real conflict. They could, with the advantage of proximity, be unassailable by the west if they invade Taiwan. Or we might see themselves completely blunder trying to stop a rebellion in a small country. I don’t think anybody guessed Ukraine would hold up like they have, even with western supply lines.