Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: groupthink

Groups, labels, and feeling at home, part two

One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot throughout my life is how much my sense of being an outsider is me and how much is them. Them meaning society. In yesterday’s post, I wrote about how there’s a channel in the Discord to which I belong that is really good for discussing various topics. It got threateneed to be age-verified when Discord switched to that (not getting into the inane politics behind it, but just, ugh), and some people who never visited the channel thought that was just fine.

Here’s the thing. It’s the one channel I felt comfortable talking about queer things, nonmonogamy, and an array of other things that did not fit into the other channels. In fact, the channel was created (before my time) when there wasa a college student (19 or 20, I think) asking questions about sexual slang. I gather this was in one of the general channels, and some people were uncomfortable with it.

Then, one of the owners of the Discord created the channel for After Dark topics and said, “Don’t make me regret this.”

We got that lifted when the threat of intrusive age-verification became a reality, for which I am profoundly grateful. In this channel, we have talked about music, dating, lightly touched on politics, and, yes, sex. We’ve talked about nonmonogamy/polyamory (and what the difference is), whether men and women can truly be friends (and introducing nonbinary/agender people into the question), and have encouraged people to go on dates.

The last few days the channel has been super-busy. No idea why, but the messages have been flying. We’ve pondered what ‘milkshake’ means in the classic R&B song of the same name by Kelis. Boobs? Butt? Blowjobs? Je ne sais quois? I’ve always thought it was the first, but I’ve heard people say it’s the second. Never heard the third or fourth until today. Other people said it’s what she has within–pretty much the same as the fourth.

How did we get on this topic? Because it’s been stuck in my head for several days, and I shared that in the channel. I think it was tangentially related to something that was going on in the channel–though I’m not absolutely sure. My brain works in werd ways (which is the whole point of the last ten or so posts), so who knows what connection it made?

Side note: when I was  younger, I would write or talk in ways that just assumed others could see the connections I was maknig in my brain. They were so clear to me, I couldn’t understand why they weren’t as clear to other people.

We also talked about dating woes people have had and muffins. Those are not related topics, byway. Oh, and it was muffins and cupcakes. We were discussing the difference between them because someone shared a meme about them. It had something to do with what the actual difference was–was it just the frosting? And then we migrated to talking about did that mean muffins were tops and cupcakes were bottoms? Because muffin tops were a thing.


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The fleeting feeling of belonging

There’s a channel in the Discord that is my favorite channel. Why? Because it’s a place where we go to chat about love, lust, and a bunch of other things that was kept out of other channels (this happened before I joined the Discord).

We joke about it being where the filth goes to die, but it’s actually more wholesome than that most of the time. It’s about 90% love, identity, and struggles. It’s maaaaaaybe 10% filth, and even then, it’s rarely more than Rated R (in my opinion).

Side note: It fascinates me how in Kpop the showing of the stomach is considered something to scream and go gaga over. I think it’s because of how repressive the society is in general and how Kpop stars are supposed to be pure and innocent. See Victorian England for a similar vibe in which the showing of an ankle could be considered scandalous

I know I’m weird that I’m on the waaaaay other end of the spectrum in that I’m not shocked in the arts when actual genitalia is shown (not in and of itself. If it’s shown for shock value, I roll my eyes, but I’m not scandalized by it), let alone abs or tongue or whatnot. So take with a grain of salt what I’m saying about this channel.

Anyway, recently, Discord along with other SM services had warned that any +18 channels would have to go through a ridiculous and invasive verification process in order to continue being allowed into those channels. The channel I mentioned above had been made +18 at some point, and we were all concerned about it. We were talking about it in a more general channel, and some people wanted to keep it as is so the content creators the Discord belonged to would not get in trouble with Discord. These were people who did not even go into the channel.

Those of us who used it were arguing against keping it as it was because none of us wanted to do the verification process, but we didn’t want to give up the channel. People were focusing on the grot, and I finally said, “Here’s the thing. Grot is maybe 5% of the channel, and the rest of is it very wholesome. More to the point, it’s a place where queer people can gather and talk about things we don’t want to clog other channels with.” Some of those included talks about nonmonogamy, gender identity, friendship between different genders, and more. There were a few straights who chimed in now and again, but a big chunk of us were queer. In fact, that’s how I found out there were more queers in the Discord than I had realized.

It ended when one of the owners of the Discord inquired what was going on. He had forgotten he had made that channel 18+, and when reminded of how it happened, laughed and said it had been a joke. He took off the restriction after making us promise we’d all be good. We did; he did; and the channel continues to thrive.


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