A trend? People never capitalized anything on IRC in the early 90s. The only time I saw it was on forums and other longer forms of text. And then eventually everyone else joined the Internet and more formal writing became the norm. Not wanting to pointlessly capitalize letters is neither here nor there. It doesn't mean anything.
That's fair enough but it is actually a style which some people choose for their blog. I'd also note that this post isn't on IRC; perhaps they're eschewing capitalization for some reason other than to communicate in a more natural cadence.
2) the author did not capitalize "I" when referring to themselves like OP did