The Discord that makes asexual dating a little easier - The Verge

A few pounds of cheese, a tiny flag that can mean so much in a moment, and a range of Discord apps helped one woman learn how to navigate the online dating space as an asexual person.

I checked my direct messages for the first time in a few weeks and a mix of excitement and dread washed over me: I had a message from someone new. He introduced himself and wanted to meet up in person at a local bar; we’d connected through a dating server, so I assumed his intentions were romantic. The problem was, I’m asexual — a person who doesn’t experience sexual attraction. And I was terrified that we had very different expectations about how that evening was going to go.

I had begun to suspect I was asexual in the spring of 2020. I was hungry for meaningful interaction with the asexual community, but since everyone was living inside a hermetically sealed bubble at the time, I settled for a Google search. First I found the Asexual Visibility and Education Network, which mentioned a smattering of subreddits, where I heard about a dating / friendship app that has since gone dark (but not before being overrun by sugar daddy bots) as well as The Asexuality and Aromantic Spectrum Discord. Of course. There’s a Discord for everything, I thought.

But then I learned there’s also a large and active Discord server for dating. (There’s a Discord for everything.) It’s called Ace Date Space — “ace” being the diminutive of “asexual” — or just “ADS.” I stumbled upon it during a bleak evening of scouring the internet for dating advice. (“You’ll just have to learn to love being single!” the message boards bleated cheerily.) And so, I made a new Discord account — I wasn’t out yet and didn’t want this server linked with my main account — and, somewhat apprehensively, followed the link.

At first, I was overwhelmed. After verifying I was over 18, half a dozen text channels appeared in the left-hand side of the screen: “#announcements”; “#roles”; “#introductions”; “#events”; “#lounge”; and “#parlor.” All of them were listed in bold white font, indicating unread messages. A brief introductory message suggested I start in #roles to assign some identifiers to myself based on my age (21–23), what I was looking for (looking for romance), where I was located (USA, Northeast), and my interests and hobbies (animal lover, tech-savvy, scholar). Each time I picked a role from this last category, a special-interest channel popped up in the left-hand sidebar with hundreds more new messages for me to read.

I could also choose my sexuality from a number of asexual-spectrum identities. I joined over 1,000 ADS members in choosing “asexual” for myself, and — after a few more channels popped up in the sidebar — any initial trepidation gave way to euphoria. In a culture so focused on sex, I had finally found people like me, for whom sex was secondary, not a factor at all, or even actively avoided. There were so many of us, each unique and all so in defiance of popular media stereotypes of asexuals as robotic, drab, or naïve. Our flag may be grayscale, but we are anything but.

https://www.theverge.com/23290691/discord-dating-asexuality-ace-acceptance


Post ID: 629b7e49-58fe-433b-91f0-ead32939a7d9
Rating: 5
Created: 1 year ago
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