Author: Kafai Lee

Kafai Lee

Prof. Penner 

ENG 1121

Word Count: 1155

 

Having friends is the reason why I go to school everyday because without them, I don’t think anybody would go to school. Everyone hates anything related to school because of how much work it takes or mainly the fact that everyone has to wake up early for it. If I were to ask anyone in this world, their response would be that they got bullied or hated doing the excruciating work. Not only that but the horrible teachers that we suffer with how bad their way of teaching is and the strict deadlines. The only good thing that comes out of school are friends and maybe a degree, everything else is just torture. Starting school was a nightmare because there was nobody you knew and that made it awkward and scary. That first experience is the worst because you have to talk to people you do not know. 

Being in a friend group is important because that’s who the people you associate with. That shows where you belong on the status of the school. There is always a hierarchy and wherever you are determines how you will survive school. Having access to a popular group let’s you have connections to parties. Some people have a gift and they fit in like a puzzle piece but there are others that are just socially awkward and shy to even approach someone. Friends are the reason many enjoy school because it is a place where everyone suffers together. And nothing feels better than knowing you and your best friend failed a test together. The main reason why I go to school is because of the friends that joke around during class but mostly because it is the law.

One of the discourse communities that I am in would be the gaming one that I would game all day and night on the weekends and after class. My group doesn’t consist of many people but we like it like that. Fewer people make it better to game with because of the inside jokes we talk about and the memes we send each other. The whole point of the community is gaming together and making fun of each other. We would spend hours just playing the same game numerous amounts of time until we get better at the game. The goal of games would be to be the best or just enjoy and laugh with the friends you play it. We spent our childhood playing games together just to escape reality because all of us are lazy so we don’t get much work done.

Communication is important when playing games that require teamwork, so we use a program called Discord which allows us to talk to each other and share memes and videos. On Discord, we usually would ping each other on the messages when we aren’t busy with work or ignoring responsibilities and hop into the game. All you could hear would be yelling and laughing from the call because of the topics we talk about and the jokes we make. It would consist of late nights gaming and playing music in the background while tabbing out of the game for homework when we died in the game. 

The games we play range from a bunch we decided to try out that are free and some games that are paid. There aren’t a lot of good games out these days which affect our variety and choices we get to choose from. The categories that we play are shooters, role-playing games, massive multiplayer battle arenas, and many more. Starting off, there are two games we usually always play which are Rainbow Six Siege and League of Legends. We do not play any other games because those are the types of games that could be rinsed and repeated thousands of times. Truthfully, it does get boring playing the same old game numerous amounts of times so we switch. As a group, we always decide what game to play and agree to buy it if all of us like it. That’s where the problem usually occurs because there is that one person who never likes the game so we never end up buying it or playing it. Sometimes we would look at a game and buy it but end up wasting money because the game wasn’t as good as we thought it was.

When we invite each other to a game, we always have an excuse where we have essays and large amounts of homework. Ironically after that, we immediately say we are going online to play. If the homework is due tomorrow, everyone in the group would tell you to do it tomorrow as a joke. Sadly, the reality is that we actually do that sometimes because we usually do finish the work by the due date. There are times where it would be late and everyone is about to sleep, there would be that one person that would say that sleep is for the weak. That would be the trigger for us to play more because we aren’t the type of people that would let each other down, especially during our funeral. 

When people usually join our group, it rarely happens but when you do, there are requirements that we do not speak of. If you would want to stay, then you must be good at playing the game we play and have fun by messing around with each other. We usually argue and bully each other as a joke in game by shooting each other or just pushing each other off. We would trap each other or set up traps and wait for each other to activate them. My group is the type of people who would always joke with each other and have a silent fight on whose better or laughing at each other when we mess up when playing the game. You would have to be a person to take a joke and tell jokes because nobody in the group likes someone that is too sensitive or triggered on a specific topic. 

Meeting mutual friends of mine in school helped me make new friends online because of their friends. That is how I ended up meeting a lot of the people in the group today. Before all of that, we haven’t even met each other up before but we do know we could. All of us would slowly get to know each other online but we have never met in person. Most of us would stay indoors but once in a while we did go outside and eat together and hangout. All of us would travel around New York and try something we haven’t done such as food or places we have never gone to. My discourse community has variety because we do not only do one thing so we do not get bored of doing the same thing constantly.