Sometimes I feel like I underestimate the internet. When Sega announced it was creating an official Discord server where Sonic the Hedgehog fans could gather to talk about the blue blur and all his pals, I went looking to see if the company had put anything in the server rules that could keep people from posting art of the OCs that was sexual in nature, like you’d find if you search the wrong term on a social media platform. And it turns out that while yes, Sega does have a rule about keeping things family friendly, that hasn’t stopped people from posting wilder shit than, I dunno, ranking Sonic characters’ feet or whatever.

At a glance, the Sonic server looks pretty normal. It has channels for series announcements, dedicated spaces to talk about both the games and the live-action films, and a place for folks to find groups to play Sonic Racing: Crossworlds together. It also, refreshingly, has a rule against AI-generated content of any kind. The cut-and-dried rules about family-friendly content are enough to get most hijinks Thanos-snapped out of the server immediately, but that isn’t stopping the notoriously Very Online community of Sonic fans from saying out-of-pocket shit on the first day. A lot of it is being scrubbed by a diligent mod team, but those who have been in the server are saving it all for posterity.

The server now has Slowmode enabled, which requires users to wait two minutes before posting a new message, which is keeping the chat moving at a reasonable pace to read and probably to moderate as well, but I do wonder if the trouble of trying to keep one of video games’ most notoriously shit-stirring communities reined in will be worth it in the long run.

Source link