Monument’s community focus is an integral part of its operation.
The type of people you surround yourself with will determine your overall mindset and your likelihood of succeeding in anything you undertake. Making the right type of friends is crucial to living a good life. Monument is a space that regroups people with a positive mindset who share a baseline commitment to personal growth and constantly improving upon their past.
For the time being, Monument offers seven different ways to connect with other Members.
Through our Forum
Through Members’ Chat
Through our Discord
Through our Subreddit
Through program-related events or activities
Through online activities or events
Through in-person social events or activities
1. Through our Forum
Our Forum is the first thing you see on the site if you’re logged in. This is where people will typically respond to Blog Posts, interact in the Community section, keep up-to-date with community announcements, and signal their intention to participate in one of our programs. Posting or commenting on the Forum is the quickest and easier way to engage with the community. Members have the option to “follow” particular members to receive notifications of their posts or comments.
2. Through Members’ Chat
Members’ chat is the quickest and easiest way to keep in touch and talk with members who are online. Members can keep an open chat dialog with individual members or can start their own group chats with multiple members. Don’t be surprised if you receive a ‘check-in’ message from a Community Leader every now and then to see how you’re doing.
3. Through our Discord
Discord is a service that offers free private servers where participants can connect through text or voice channels. Text channels allow people to exchange text messages, images, and short videos, and voice channels allow people to talk live with a group in a designated voice-chat lobby through their computer’s microphone, and through their webcam if they want to. A given server can have any number of text or voice channels. You can use Discord in a browser but most people opt to download the desktop app. Discord is the app we use for live discussions between members, and also video hangouts. Read more about these below.
4. Through our Subreddit
Reddit is one of the most visited sites on the Internet. Our [Subreddit] is intended to make it easier to stay in touch with other members and keep up-to-date with any events. This is also where members can connect in a more informal online setting, and where you’ll find personal shares and external content that is peripheral to our own. The Subreddit is reserved only for members - simply request access by messaging the mods and you’ll be approved. For Community purposes, and so that members can know who they’re interacting with, we ask that members agree to have their first name and the first letter of their last name appear as “flair” next to their Reddit username. A “flair” is a tag that appears directly next to your username whenever you post or comment on certain Subreddits.
5. Through program-related events or activities
Our “active” programs necessarily involve interacting with other members. The Peer Support and Accountability program, for example, calls for regular contact with one or more members of our community. Future programs will also involve in-person interaction with other members.
6. Through online events or activities
Members get to interact with each other through a variety of online events and activities. Once we have enough members, we’ll be hosting regular multiplayer game nights, focused discussions, chess matches and tournaments, political discussion evenings, casual video hangouts, and more. See below to learn more about our focused discussion groups and other online events.
7. Through in-person social events or activities
When conditions permit it, Monument will be organizing in-person social and recreational events in cities with enough members. Interest for these types of informal events will be assessed on an ongoing basis by Community Leaders and organized when enough members are available to attend. These can take mostly any form: daytime/nighttime, indoors/outdoors, drinking/sober, active/relaxed, etc.
ONLINE EVENTS
Discussion Groups
Discussion groups are intended to be informal hangouts focused on specific topics, preferably centered around questions or points of contention that arise out of engagement with our regular content. Discussion groups can be prompted by any individual member - all you need to do is make a Discussion Group Request in either the Forum (Community Section), the Subreddit, or Discord itself. If there is enough interest for a proposed discussion group, community leaders will organize it at a time that suits the most number of members.
Mini Chess Tournaments
Members are invited to make an account on chess.com to join our mini chess tournaments. The format will typically be live and over Discord - two players play while the game is screencast to the other players who can watch and talk with other members over video chat. Larger tournaments will also take place for interested members, with games played on their own time.
Multiplayer Games
Members will be invited to use our Discord channels to play online games together over voice chat. We will prioritize games that: are affordable (or free); are easy to learn; and don’t require a high performance PC. Some examples of popular online games that meet these criteria are: the Jackbox Party Packs, Among Us, Fall Guys, etc. Members may also opt to play more classic games such poker or other cards games playable online. Members may want to get together with others to MMO, MOBA, FPS, or RPG games, but these will usually be left to members to organize themselves as not everyone in the Community will have a PC that can play these types of games.
Politics Night and Casual Hangouts
Members are invited to use the appropriate channels on our Subreddit and Discord to leave links to political content they find interesting and compelling. This content will then be viewed (screenshared), discussed, and debated during our Politics Nights over Discord. Members are also welcome to use our Discord voice channels at any time to voice chat with members who are online, but keep in mind that the channels used for this purpose are public.