So you just heard about a platform called discord… and decided to hop onto it to get a feel for a wide array of communities present on this platform. Maybe you want to make some new friends and wind down from reality.

You set up your account and before you take your next step, let me stop you right here tiger! It’s a big world there and you will be needing some help navigating that place. Here are few things to keep in mind of. This list is not exhaustive, but it highlights some key points.

Step 1: Learn the Lingo

that’s kinda sus
bussin
cappin
tweakin
AhLIE

Did all of the above words confuse you? Fret not, these are small examples of a wide variety of basic urban lingo you need to master before heading into your discord journey. I highly recommend you look into urban dictionary to keep yourself updated. This will prevent you from stopping in your tracks during a rapid texting fire session and experiencing a brain freeze to take in the copious amounts of information you are trying to desperately absorb like a sponge.

_{Edited on Imgflip}

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Step 2: What is YOUR Purpose

Let me play the devil's advocate here for a second and ask you this question: "What do you actually want?"

"I just want to make new friends and let off some steam you know". (^▽)

But is that it?...because some people LOOOᴏᴏᴏᴠᴇ a little power grab, chat takeover, creative trolling, raiding servers, setting up challenges to see how quickly they can get banned, mass tagging (I mean who doesn’t love the classic Hive account@everyone ping every 5 minutes) and finding random ways to get underneath people's skin BY TALKING IN CAPS LETTERS 💍𝓇 𝓊𝓈𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒶𝓃 𝒶𝓃𝓃❁𝓎𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒻𝓊𝓃𝓀𝓎 𝒻💍𝓃𝓉 𝒾𝓃 𝒽❀𝓅𝑒𝓈 🌺𝒻 𝑔𝒾𝓋𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓈❀𝓂𝑒❁𝓃𝑒 a 𝓈𝓉𝓇🍑𝓀𝑒. Let’s be honest we all have a ying and yang within us.

_source

I want you to become familiar with your natural tendencies and tame that inner beast which may be lurking within you before it explodes in a random server.

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Step 3: Safety in DMS

So you were just going about your day normally and suddenly you get a friend request on discord. What could go wrong????? ( ͡°( ͡° ͜ʖ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)ʖ ͡°) ͡°)

"hmm this person has a kawaii pfp of an anime girl or boy".

You can just hEaR them say sEnPai please accept my request UWU

blushes profusely (^◕.◕).

_{I changed my discord pfp and about section just to take this screenshot for this post.}

Well my soon to be fallen soldier, let me stop you right there. Generally, you are better off interacting with a new member in the server channels before accepting dms and conversing there. This will give you an understanding about this person and a better idea about who you are dealing with. Of course there is no guarantee that people won’t change their colors like a chameleon in your dms but take the initial safety precautions to at least reduce the probability of bringing trouble to your dms.

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This post was written as an entry for POB Word of the Week contest which is Discord. I purposely set up this post a specific way (emoticons, slang, short forms for words such as writing pfp instead of profile picture) because I find that it best represents the informal tone of the given word Discord.
To learn more about the rules, check this post out.

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