Discord hasn't always been the titan of online communication it is today. before Discord there was Teamspeak, before Teamspeak, there was Skype, and before Skype, there were IRC chat rooms.
Discord isn't innately terrible, but i don't like it for several reasons. Discord does not support end-to-end encryption, even for direct messaging.
unfortunately, this limitation is not uncommon, but it remains a critical privacy concern on many platforms that is not to be overlooked.
in addition to this, discord, like many other platforms, has started rolling out age identity verification to use their platform.
providing alternatives which respects the privacy of people who were adversely affected by such rollouts is important to me, and shows platforms which invade the privacy of their users that it has consequences.
that's fine! you don't have to. email is an amazingly universal form of communication. everyone has an email. while email isn't end-to-end encrypted, meaning the government is most certainly spying on our communications, at least there wont be a photo of our id linking us to our ideas, opinions, politics, and sense of humor. if you and your recipient(me!) use a good email provider like Proton, then we can cut eavesdroppers out of the equation.
with that said — email me! i maintain an inbox zero, so don't worry about your message getting lost in a sea of promotions and verification codes. and give Fluxer a try, it's faster, open source, e2e encrypts direct messages, and isn't riddled with ads.