Adding its name to the bag of companies that absolutely does not need to do a ‘wrapped’ summary each year, but is in fact doing so, is Discord. Except this won’t be called ‘wrapped’ but instead ‘Checkpoint’: “Rolling out over the next few days, Discord Checkpoint is the first time we’re giving you a recap of the stuff YOU did on Discord throughout the year.”
The kinds of things Discord will tell you about the year gone by are how many messages you sent, how long you spent in voice chat, your most-used emoji, which server you spent the most time in, and who you talked with the most.
I know I write for PC Gamer, but can we just take a breath from attempting to gamify absolutely everything? Life does not have to be gamified to be enjoyable. Comparing stickers for how much music we’ve consumed will not solve our 21st century low dopamine levels, sorry. Okay, rant over.
I’m probably just bitter because I did not appreciate discovering I was in the top 0.001% (or something) of Hum listeners, oh, two years ago. That’s a long time to hold on to that resentment, but here we are. I have a very valid reason for listening to those albums hundreds of times, this being that Hum was my go-to familiar band to play, err, every single workday, while working. That’s not weird, I won’t hear it.
And alright, I know I’m being a little cynical here. I’ve nothing against anyone that finds a bit of fun in these features—despite all I’ve said, I’ll probably still be checking mine out. But I just can’t help but think all these wrapped/Checkpoint features are just another attempt to keep us locked into an unhealthy relationship with our apps.
They make us see them less as means to ends and more as ends in themselves, to gain those metaphorical checkmarks. But hey, there are worse things happening in the world, I suppose. I’m just another old man screaming into the wind about the modern age.
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