usernames serve none of their stated purposes
According to https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/12620128861463-New-Usernames-Display-Names, the old system was bad because "you have to remember a set of 4-digit numbers and account for case sensitivity to connect with your friends". This is untrue. Also according to this link, the new system would "make it easier for you to identify and add your friends while preserving your ability to use your preferred name across Discord". Both of these are untrue too.
You do not need to memorize your 4 numbers to friend request people. I make friend requests all the time and I didn't memorize mine. There's a simple button for this, if you are already in a server with someone. If you are not in a server with them, and they can't come to their computer, and they don't know their 4 numbers, then that's the only situation where it will take longer to friend people. But this is a rare scenario. It is very rare to want to friend request someone you aren't in a discord server with. And in this scenario, the people will still have to memorize whatever misspellings or numbers or random stuff they were forced to put in their normal name, since bots will probably automatically claim like any 3 common word/name combinations.
The new system does not make it easier to identify your friends. This system prevents users from using their normal username, because it's probably already taken, so they need to make a brand new one or heavily obfuscate their name, so you may not initially recognize them or you might think they are an impostor. It will be harder than before to identify them.
The new system does not let you use your preferred username across Discord. I don't even need to say anything, you already know this is absolutely untrue.
Usernames like UnicornLover462 or x_GodHunter_x seem lame. All the numbers and extra stuff around the name signal that you are not original or creative. It is not very cool to have these. Nobody wants them. But discriminators don't seem lame, because everyone has them equally. So it allowed people share the same name by adding numbers, without feeling bad or feeling like they don't have exactly the name they wanted. It was a great solution. In the new system, people will feel like "all the good names are taken", because putting numbers at the end of your name is not really the same. And people cannot use an altered version of their preferred name without looking silly and dumb. Most people will probably be heavily urged to search for a new name.
Even though people can still use a display name, when creating an account or choosing a username, they will still want their username to be good and to match them. They will not just think like "a username 4837296201238.4 is fine, since I have a display name". I am fine with the display name change, used in addition to username+discriminator, although i guess at that point each account has 3 different names: username, display name, and server nickname. It's kind of unnecessarily complex and I don't see the need for it.
People with rare names are also more at risk than before. Someone named "Flame#0256" or a new joiner wanting the name "Flame" wouldn't have sought after the "Flame#0001" account, but will seek after the "flame" account. Nobody probably even cared about "Flame#0001" before, but they will probably see "flame" as a valuable name. So rare names are more valuable and more numerous now. The scamming will definitely increase. The owner of "flame" probably wasn't even trying to get involved in the rare names world. They just wanted to have their usual name. "Flame#0001" probably knew what they were getting into, but "flame" may not even expect or be prepared for it. Some of my friends are turning off dms to protect themselves from scammers or a flood of beggers seeking their rare-ish names, and I don't think discord would want people to fearfully avoid using features of the platform.
Also, if someone like Markiplier doesn't use discord, then the account named "markiplier" will be like 100 times more successful at scamming people. "Markiplier#0001" or "Markiplier#0252" would have been more questionable because not all famous people seek out the #0001 version of their names.
I don't like most of the latest changes to discord, like moving the favorite-gif star to a different corner for no reason, or making multiple images in a single message get incorrectly cropped and squished so they are unreadable without clicking, or changing fonts and pretending it's so much better when it's just an annoying intrusion rearranging my stuff without asking (except I like the I/l distinction), or adding the sparkly super emoji stuff that is obviously just greedy corporation nitro-bait stuff, or discord's default stickers which have disgusting corporate personality. Super reactions have disgusting corporate personality too. I don't really like seeing or experiencing it, I would rather turn off super reactions and stickers, but I can't. I wish discord would add desirable features like favoriting images/videos and having a menu of favorites, or the ability to add/remove favorites in mobile instead of just sending them. It would be cool if they like heavily prioritized functionality and efficiency, but instead they are making garbage.
If discord didn't basically trap me and prevent me from leaving, i would switch to a higher quality platform. But everyone i know is here, so I can't leave. Social media companies keep making terrible changes because of annoying monopoly reasons. It would be nice if everyone switched to like matrix.org stuff like something open sourced and not owned by anybody, so corporations don't ruin stuff and people can like make forked versions branching off with changes that they want. But everyone else has to switch before anyone will want to switch, so we are all stuck here. None of the official groups for my favorite games or content creators make matrix servers, they only make discord servers, so I am trapped.
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