The year 2020 just had begun and everything started to turn upside down. Suddently there was plenty of spare time to dawdle. Almost every day I searched for more information and lore about "DadFeels" in the world wide web and began to solve the puzzles I found in the Dad videos. It was one of those puzzles, that opened the door to a fan-community, dedicated to find out all the lore, that is hidden as puzzles in the videos. I think it also was that puzzle, that started a little "challenge" within the fan community.
Dad's Own Discord (DOD)
It was the end of Act II of the series, when I noticed that people were talking about a "Discord server". Also "Dad" more often told his fans to join his server. So I downloaded Discord on my desktop and phone and discovered a whole new universe.
It took me about a week to find my way on that instant messaging platform. I knew IRC and Skype and online chat rooms but nothing like Discord - that includes just all of it - chats, calls, videocalls, private messaging. And there is "servers", some are public, open for everyone to join. Most of them are gaming servers for all kinds of games, where people can stream / watch streams, talk about the games, things like that. Some servers are private. You can't find them with the search function and only can join them, when you get invited.
DOD was / is an open server (it is now re-named to Nathan Station!), free for everyone to join. The community there welcomed me cordially and we quickly connected by solving the puzzles together. Because the most of us were so excited and dedicated to find out everything about the story that unfolded in front of us, Dad decided to start a little challenge. The fastest puzzle solvers became one group, the ones, that were fooling around, but still solving the puzzles, were another group. Out of that group another one formed. Finally it was five groups competing against each other, trying to find everything that was hidden in the videos, that were released every monday at a specific time, and solve the puzzles as fast as possible.
YOU CAN JOIN THE NATHAN STATION HERE: https://discord.gg/nathanstation
It not only is a lot of fun to solve the puzzles, it is amazing to work with a team of people from around the world. I am so grateful for this experience. When the "challenge" finally ended, one "special" group was formed. A group of people, that were really dedicated to solve all puzzles and find out all the (extra) lore, that was told with all the hidden stuff.
Joining more
Soon I joined other servers. For example "Foilcord", the server of "TinFoilTom", a friend of Nathan Barnatt / Dad. And Altoidyoda's "Yodiscord", another friend of Nathan and designer of a lot of Dad merchandise. On those servers there is almost the same community around. So the topics are kind of overlapping sometimes.
It took me over a year to finally get invited into a private server and see, what a completely different community talking about absolutely different stuff is like. It's different. Every new server is a new world. There are fun ones, creepy ones, boring ones, there are friendly and helpful people, trolls, agressive people. It's thrilling in every way. And I really love it. At the moment - November 2022 - I am more or less active in over 20 servers.
Monster Monster
I even made my own server, called it "Monster Monster", created four text channels and one voice channel and then abandoned it, after my friend "The Masque", owner of the YouTube channel "Connect The Dots", left Discord, and me behind on my own on my server. I wasn't active there anyways and we got a lot of other ways to communicate.
Also there are no plans to revive my own server anytime soon. There is no need for it at the moment. I just don't have anything to share and there is nothing I am working on, that would make the server a perfect place to connect. But I will keep it. Just in case.
I absolutely love Discord. I still discover new communities - gaming, art (pixel art, painting, composing), creepypasta fans, YouTubers - and that's just a fraction of communities and topics there to find. It really is a whole new universe.