First Gen Reflections

[der meister 3,246]

I have given this a surprising amount of thought, and I've decided that I'm going to compare my first generation experience with my perception of what the current first generation experience is like. My first player in this league was approximately 55 seasons ago. I was a longtime SHLer at that point, with - I think - a good reputation in that league. I have mentioned before how intimidating the VHL was back when I joined, both in terms of how to earn attribute points and the general reputation of the league as being elitist. As such, I joined the league using a different username than my familiar one in the SHL. This was done, at least in part, to protect myself should things go poorly.

 

Instead, I found myself warmly welcomed into this community and thoroughly enjoyed getting to know a number of members who were not in the other league. In fact, it went so well that the VHL became my primary league, and within a few seasons I had abandoned the SHL altogether. My first VHL team was the Helsinki Titans, and I found the locker room banter to be exceptional. We had a lot of friendly personalities on that team, and it was a delight to log in multiple times a day to see what was going on with this disparate group of people. Thinking back on that time, I can't help but remember just how often I was logging into the site to see what was happening in the locker room, or to do research for media spot, or any number of things.

 

Sadly, the counterpoint to that experience is what the VHL is today. For new members who join this site, they create a player, receive offers to join a VHLM team, and will almost certainly receive an invite to that team's Discord once they make a decision where to sign. While Discord as an application has some benefits and nice features, it is a third party application, collecting user data to sell to their partners, and it adds another layer separating a new member from the larger VHL community. If a new member is a non-Discord user, they will find the VHL web page a shallow husk of what it once was. Gone are the days of rapid fire the locker room conversation, replaced with the borderline xenophobic isolationism that Discord provides.

 

I suppose ultimately it's not particularly surprising that an app such as Discord has found a foothold in communities such as ours. I do find it discouraging how much it has supplanted the day-to-day interactions that used to be hosted internally. Perhaps if the VHL app had a locker room chat feature it might feel different, but there's something disconnected and impersonal about Discord that I just don't like. It honestly makes me a little sad that new members won't have the warm and welcoming experience that I had, which I can relive in the teams on-site locker room whenever I'm feeling nostalgic.