Devclub

The Burn Box is a casual chat channel in the DevTalk Discord server where the entire contents of the channel are deleted daily. The channel typically makes up somewhere between 40% and 70% of DevTalk's total message activity daily, and frequently has the highest number of unique members chatting in it. It is often used for both off topic and on topic conversations, and is well suited for conversations that don't need to remain in the permanent history of the community.

History

The original purpose of the burn box was to give space to heavier topics and prevent more negative attitudes and ideations from finding a permanent residence in the community. It was intended to be a place for DevTalk members to vent their frustrations about their personal or professional life, knowing that it would not be accessible later. The concept of such a channel was inspired by "vent" sections in forums, taking the idea a step further and permanently removing the messages from the community's history.

Each night, Plum deletes the message content of the burn box a few messages at a time, and users of the channel can witness this happening live. In the early days of the channel, they would continue to speak through the deletion process, trying to compete with Plum in order to 'prevent it from burning' as a game. This interaction inspired a burn box minigame where the intention was to 'fight' Plum and prevent her from completely burning the burn box.