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.
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.
New Media: Storytelling in Literature, Films, and Games 
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