I really don't get the discord phenomena, it seems like more bloatware and demands on attention and notifications - I mean - IRC is right there and you can at least control your own attention span however you want.
I didn't get it either. At first. Then I had a reason to use it.
I am a long time IRC user, and still use that to this day, but in a much less frequent capacity. IRC is a comparative ghost town when thrown up against Discord.
Part of the reason for that is accessibility. Discord does everything IRC does in terms of channels, bots, etc, but packages it in a UI that the masses can easily consume. The addition of voice without having to run Teamspeak or something alongside like we did back in the day. A stable mobile app brings it all together in a portable, easy-to-use package.
I resisted it for awhile, with my younger friends adopting it fairly quickly. Then small businesses and we apps started using it and suddenly half the things I interacted with on a daily basis had their own Discord server. So, I broke rank and tried it
What I found were a few key communities relevant to my interests that were having actual neverending conversations about this I like. Compared to IRC, where response time can be days for any type of question, and that's if someone is in the mood to be friendly instead of crufty. This is the primary reason why I stay in Discord and IRC is just sort of collecting dust in my world. The community either aged out or just became so jaded that they made it inhospitable.
Had the same experience more or less. I was on IRC during 9/11, and many other major world events, and it's key to my online experiences back in the day, but these days I haven't used it in almost a year. I moved to Slack over a decade ago, for business, introducing it to where I was working at the time, and then five years ago or so, moved to Discord for the community aspect.
These days it's almost primarily all on Discord. There are a lot of features that I don't use, but it's what Slack should have been, back when Slack was meant to replace IRC. The interface works, it's available on my phone, it has call ability, multiple servers within my account and no need to keep a bouncer running.
Your mention of being on IRC during 9/11 brings back memories. I happened to have taken a sick day and was home watching the news when the first tower fell.
I immediately got on EFNet where I knew a few people that worked for CNN and CNBC at the time. We'd usually get together and talk old broadcasting/radio tech, but not that day.
My close friends and I have a Discord server that we interact on regularly and I've actually looked at switching us over to irc, since I like open, self-hostible standards with competing servers and clients better than proprietary software, but there were a couple reasons that the switch would be unsatisfying for us.
First, with Discord if you aren't online for awhile you don't have to miss the conversations that happened while you were offline — you can just read them later. Whereas with IRC, you will absolutely have to miss everything you are not online for, which creates a much larger fear of missing out, without any benefit in not being distracted or whatever since you can (and I do) just turn off all notifications that aren't direct pings in Discord so you can just check the app whenever you feel like it. So Discord has all the benefits of not getting notifications while you're offline, with none of the downsides of literally missing out on important discussions between your friends where they might have been pouring their heart out with no one currently on the server or whatever.
Second, Discord just has a lot more features that we actually really like using. Maybe that's "bloatware" to you, but the purpose of software is to have features users use. For instance, embedded images and gifs, custom emojis, the possibility of having voice channels and sharing your screen, and stuff like that. Having custom emojis is actually a pretty great way to expand your expressivity and have really fun in jokes and losing that is actually pretty sad.
Third, like the other commenters have said, the Discord servers for stuff I care about are actually active and friendly and interesting.
Finally, although you could make an IRC interface that works like the Discord app, which happens to be my favorite layout for a chat app that I've ever used, I don't think anyone has to my knowledge.
We ended up going with an open source clone of Discord called revolt, which I developed a custom Android application for.
Side note; you can disable all notifications or be selective about the ones you receive, like most apps. The idea of being bombarded with pings is not really a thing that happens unless you are a dev and forgot to disable that on your server.
This reads like you're part of the salty thugs that killed IRC to begin with. Offer zero help because you built some mythos about being self-taught and think everyone else should suffer the same, ejaculating "RTFM!" every chance you get, your biggest gripe ultimately distilling down to whining about change, an inevitable outcome of progress that you spite for the simple reason that you liked how "the way things were" denied use to a lot of people who were not as technically proficient. That attitude is the problem, not the solution. Make no mistake.
Stay in the cave and be quiet, or step out into the light abd be helpful. Those are your choices.
We have conventions and protocols for dealing with text before - discord is some platform it will bring a whole bunch of new conventions and protocols - needlessly complicated and just a waste of human energy and time - but you know - maximize "engagement" or what have you for your KPI metrics - it's like selling water in bottles to people with easy access to drinking water.
This reads like you're part of the salty thugs that killed IRC to begin with. Offer zero help because you built some mythos about being self-taught and think everyone else should suffer the same, ejaculating "RTFM!" every chance you get, your biggest gripe ultimately distilling down to whining about change, an inevitable outcome of progress that you spite for the simple reason that you liked how "the way things were" denied use to a lot of people who were not as technically proficient. That attitude is the problem, not the solution. Make no mistake.
Stay in the cave and be quiet, or step out into the light and be helpful. Those are our choices.
They're not instant-messaging platforms. Though it's true that Discord often gets misused as a permanent knowledge-base (where a forum would be much better)
