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The Plugged In Show, Episode 180: What Parents Need to Know About Discord and Twitch. Plus: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

LISTEN TO THE PLUGGED IN SHOW, EPISODE 180

Sometimes, parents might want to quit the social media safari. Every time we get used to one platform, two new ones spring out of the jungle. And when it seems like our kids often know more about these new social media critters than we do, it can leave us feeling a little overwhelmed.

Welp, Plugged In is here to bring you up to speed on a couple of social media(ish) outlets that have been in the news lately: Discord and Twitch. Both are significantly different than, say, Facebook or Instagram. And while both cater especially to gamers, there’s a lot more to them than that.

How much more? Well, you have to listen to find out.

And while we’re on the subject of “more,” there’s more Marvel to talk about, too—specifically Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Adam Holz and I discuss the latest adventures of Peter Quill, Rocket Raccoon et al., and I assure you it makes for a Groot—er, great—discussion.

And once we finish talking amongst ourselves, we are ready and able to listen—to you! Experience with Discord and Twitch? Tell us about it. As always, you can let us know your thoughts on Facebook and Instagram. You can send us an email at [email protected]. But we have a new way you can talk—and literally talk—to us now. Just go to The Plugged In Show’s new landing page and look for the sideways black tab on the far right—sidling right next to your scrollbar.

But wait, there’s more: On Monday afternoons at 3 p.m. (Mountain Time), we’ve launched The Plugged In Show Aftercast. Each week, we’re going to be live on Instagram to talk about the previous week’s show, the one coming up, as well as the big movies at the box office the previous weekend. We’d love for you to join that conversation too.

Finally, you can now find our show notes and information on everything we talked about by visiting thepluggedinshow.com and clicking on the episode.

And as thanks for checking us out, for a gift of any amount we’ll give you a copy of Parenting Generation Screen by our very own Jonathan McKee.

paul-asay
Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

One Response

  1. -I thought this was a really good segment. I realize that a lot of the subjects I want to bring up in my comment are very adult, but these need to be said:

    – I’m glad you mentioned the bikini streamers, but on top of that, Twitch and other platforms have had controversies over safeguarding their streamers and users against hate speech, be it racism, sexism, homophobia, or what have you. I’m glad you guys are very open-minded toward the purpose of Twitch, since even though at its core, it’s “watching people do things” (that I might not have the skills or the equipment to do myself), a lot of the appeal comes from a healthy community, which in turn is helped by a streamer having a strong moderation team.

    One thing I did want to mention is that since Twitch is now owned by Amazon, parents might want to talk about ethical consumption with their children (“is it ethical to give money to Amazon in light of how their employees are too often treated”, for instance).

    – As for Discord, it reminds me a lot of the early days of AOL Instant Messenger (and I use it for analogous purposes), with all the same positives and concerns, largely stemming from what kind of community you’re involved in.

    – For more information on age limits and why they are the way they are, see the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

    – To put this bluntly, since you did mention pornography (and parts of Twitch, as you mentioned, have started catering in a PG-13 way toward “an implication of” this interest without embracing an OnlyFans-like permissiveness toward adult content), it’s worth noting that some young people are seeking this content out because they’re not getting healthy, age-appropriate education from their parents, their churches (my youth group growing up went into none of the mechanics except for diseases, focusing near-exclusively on what not to do), or in some cases even their public schools. Some adult websites have started providing educational content (I can’t vouch for the safety or accreditation of this content) to fill a niche that in some cases isn’t being adequately or properly addressed elsewhere, and that, as well as any number of controversies about how women are being treated in the church, should remind us of what we as a church need to be doing better in addressing in a Godly manner. That said, since you did mention this subject matter, you might want to put a “heads-up” notice on this page even though this isn’t a primary or elongated subject of this podcast installment.

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    I came back from a Thursday-night screening of Guardians 3 last night. I liked the movie overall, strongly enjoyed the 4DX motion simulation, and welcomed the script’s lack of overt innuendo when compared to the second film, which I otherwise believe to be a sharply superior film (part 3’s emphasis on past-tense character development was welcome but felt like it had next to nothing to do with the present plot).

    The level of violence in this movie will absolutely put some families and even some childless adult viewers off, particularly with the menacing and blatantly abusive way that cutesy animals (and, in some subtle but contextually disturbing scenes, children) are treated throughout the film. As you mentioned, some battle scenes are very graphic for a PG-13 rating, with one person’s depiction evoking Two-Face’s facial mutilation in The Dark Knight. The step-up in violence almost reminded me of The Matrix Revolutions’ level of body detail in harsher comparison to that film’s two predecessors.

    And for all of that, I didn’t welcome the context in which it was used; without delving too strongly into spoilers, so many of Guardians 3’s would-be “emotional moments” are bait-and-switches that a lot of the overall plot felt inconsequential as a result. If this film wanted to be the ‘Mass Effect 3’ of the Marvel universe, that game’s story only had one trick, but with a few egregious exceptions that sometimes delved into parody, it generally committed to it instead of resorting to a long series of ‘gotchas.’ This, in my mind, only made Guardians 3’s level of violence feel pointless, since so little of it actually made any difference.