Crisis, Despair, Isolation, and Skype

In 2013, the absolute worst thing to happen to a young Christopher Conway occurred: he had to go to sixth grade. Now, this would not have been as big of a deal as middle-school age novels made it out to be, except for the fact that I had to leave the system that I went to elementary school in. I went to a small private elementary school (around 100 kids in K-5) named Thackston my entire elementary career, and with this, I was around the exact same group of kids every single day for the entirety of my remembered life until I was 11. Therefore, I was absolutely distraught regarding the idea of going to school without my core friend group of my boys Campbell, Whit, and Jackson (+ a few others we picked up along the way). Pictured here

These are the homies since day 1, and I love these guys more than almost anyone in the world. So we can all clearly see my issue.

However, this is where gaming comes into play. See at the time, we were all obsessed with what every single child in the early 2010s was: Minecraft. This was absolutely great (and if you read my second blog in two weeks I will explain our favorite thing to do), but we came across a simple problem. We had no idea how to communicate with each other while we played. Beforehand, it was more of a play-at-home and then talk-about-it-at-school kind of arrangement, but now we did not have that option. You wanna know what we decided? We tried to group call on a super old landline that looked like this:

How do you think that went?

The answer is terribly for all those playing along at home, and I reached the lowest of the low in my story. I thought we were all going to grow apart and I was never going to see these guys again. That is when the hero of this story enters: my mother. I was particularly bummed one sunny tuesday evening and explained my phone-woes, and she said three words I will never forget: Try Skyping them.

“HUH?” is what my peabrain said. Outwardly though, I said “Mom, what is Skype” That is when I learned about the sweet sweet programs whose purpose was solely to make calls online. Now this was before Microsoft acquired Skype, so it was still a good program, and we were absolutely LIVING. We played Minecraft every day after school, and it was one of my favorite times ever in my life because it was so innocent and pure.

As I have grown up, the group of guys I play with have moved to Discord instead and onto more recent games like League of Legends and Fortnite. However, through the years I have come to realize that it was never really the game that mattered. We had downloaded hundreds of games trying to find ones that we enjoyed and wanted to keep playing, and every single time, I was so focused on the game without realizing I was missing the most important point. I was playing with my best friends in the world at a time where I had literally nothing else to worry about. If that doesn’t leave you with any smidge of nostalgia, maybe this classic sound will:

See yall in a couple weeks

-Chris

How an Online Friend Group Made Me Extroverted

It was March 2020. I was a junior in high school and had just been told that school was cancelled for the foreseeable future. For weeks, I wasted away in my childhood bedroom, binging Modern Family and getting eye strain from spending every waking hour on my phone, laptop, or TV. Like everyone else, I was astounded by the fact that there was truly nothing to do besides lie in hiding until the whole thing blew over. So I kept watching YouTube videos, kept doomscrolling on Instagram and Twitter, and kept staying up until unfortunate hours of the night. My days were desperately lacking in real human connection, but how could that be fixed when everyone was stuck in their houses?

The answer, at least for me, was to turn to people online. I joined a large Discord server that I found at the end of a YouTube video, not knowing what to expect. As someone who hadn’t been allowed to play multiplayer games growing up, I had no idea what online “etiquette” was or how to make people like me. The learning curve, as I quickly found out, was steep. There were many times where I’d enter a voice chat to play Among Us or Fall Guys and be too shy to talk, or not understand references to other “popular” people on the server. Even worse were the occasional toxic users that would make sexist remarks or just generally be bullies. But I stuck with it (because again, I had nothing else to do) and slowly built up a small group of friends through shared interests and sending each other memes. They were from all over the place: Britain, Australia, and Canada to name a few, not to mention many states across the U.S.

Playing “Fashion Famous” on Roblox with some friends. We were definitely more interested in gaming as a social activity, rather than a competitive event.

Soon enough, I was on the server every day for hours, chatting, streaming movies, and playing games like Brawlhalla and Fistful of Frags. I even watched one of my friends play through the entirety of Red Dead Redemption II. Slowly, I became one of the “popular” people myself. As someone who went unnoticed throughout high school, this was a huge change, and it made me feel amazing. People actually wanted to talk to me, play games with me, ask me questions? I had never considered that my presence could be something positive to a lot of people, as sad as that sounds. Suddenly, I was the one who was reaching out to new members, cracking jokes in voice chat, and coming up with ideas on how to get even more people to join. It was truly the first time I had ever felt extroverted, and I loved it.

Though I have way less time to sit around and chat online now, I’ve kept the same group of online friends throughout the past three years. We’re all at different colleges (or unis, as my British friends say), but we play games together often and have even talked about meeting up this summer. I truly believe that the confidence I gained from my online friends has turned me into a much more capable and social person, and I highly doubt I’d be as successful in college without their impact. So although my friends at Vandy can rightfully make fun of me for being a Discord mod, I’ll always appreciate the online personalities who shaped who I am today.