I’m pleased to introduce a new place online to talk about classic quality shoes – the Shoegazing Discord. A chat server aimed at complementing forums and Facebook groups with a space for quicker talks and shoe discussions.
For those who don’t know, Discord is a free service for text chat (and voice chat when this is wanted), which is huge within the gaming community, but also nowadays is used for just groups of friends or for communities around various topics (it’s sort of like a modern version of IRC channels, for those familiar with these). There’s already a great one for workwear boots, Stitchdown Premium, which I’m part of and if you like boots I definitely think it’s worth the small fee to join that, and a huge one for sneakerheads, called just Sneakers. So, I thought, of course we dress shoe people should have one as well, right? Hence, here you’ll find the Shoegazing Discord server. It’s very simple to use, you sign up for an account and can then choose to use it in your browser, or in apps available for all types of smartphones as well as for Apple and PC computers. You can have notifications popping up for everything if you wish, or have nothing show up anywhere unless when you decide to head into the Discord server. The ease of use and possibility to personalise it so it works as you wish is the best part with this.
A look at how the Shoegazing Discord server looks like in the browser edition, where you have the channels for various topics to the left, and in this case a post summarising the various channels in the feed window.
As mentioned, the Shoegazing Discord is really not intended to takeover over forums like StyleForum or Goodyear welt on Reddit (even if the latter has its focus on workwear boots), or from the various shoe groups on Facebook, but to be complementary to these. Discord is a chat service, so it’s more of a place to talk and ask things quicker, have real time discussions, and so on. Things are saved and you can search in the various channels, which can be good if you’re after something specific, but in general things just keep on happening and you check in occasionally and join a discussion if you find it interesting, and don’t really go back far on old things. The hope is that this will be a place that gathers shoe interested people as well as people from the shoe industry, shoemakers, cobblers and so on. A place to share and find knowledge, and a place to find friends who like the same thing as you – great shoes. As always it likely will take some time before the server is filled up with people (when writing this, it consists of only me…) and there’s good discussions going in all channels, so those of you who are early to the party, have some patience and be part of building it up to something good (should there not be a need for this type of place, time will tell, and that’ll be fine, but I hope and think there is). And please, do spread the word and invite shoe folks to the Shoegazing Discord!
