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IRC - I Recall Correctly. Yup. I’m sure that’s what it was. No relation to ICQ.
IRC was and still is just fine. Not as flashy as some of the newer stuff it had everything you could ask for in text-based chat.
where are some good servers?
Networks. Being on one server in an IRC network is more-or-less the same as being on any other server in that network.
A list of networks:
Twitch, at least did, have a IRC version of their chat. So you could stream the video with like mpv and have irssi to avoid the browser, and basically have the full experience
It’s not just text anymore.
I use TheLounge as a client. It’s web based and can show previews of images and videos. So my friends and I can upload images and videos to the server and watch them in the channel.
Convos also does this.
where are some good servers?
I’d really like to suggest servers or networks but I host my own private server with TheLounge for my friends. We ran away from Undernet around 2010 and just stayed on our own server since.
Yep I run my own ‘The Lounge’ instance now instead of using xchat or mirc or something, it gives me persistance and availability on my mobile devices.
Well no, it doesn’t keep a history of chats for once. You don’t have a record of conversations if your client wasn’t running at that time. There’s a few other limitations that I’m not familiar with, that prompted many people and orgs to switch to things like rocket chat or matrix
That’s why IRC bouncers exist, and then you have some IRC servers getting pissy about running one unless they like you or you’re special (staff)
This sent me down a rabbit hole. Pretty cool! Do people still use IRC?
Brilliant, thank you
Yes, every day.
Yes
Apparently the answer is yes as people in this thread are saying. That’s pretty cool.
Why did IRC even fail. It had it all.
I think when you entered a channel you didn’t get any of its history.
Hosting a chat room meant you had to self host or trust someone else’s server.
There is no concept of groups. So you had to create several channels with some kind of naming scheme.
History is not saved by default. Most used a 3rd party server to host a history log, which is more work.
There is no audio, video, screen sharing.
You can’t reply to a chat with an emoji. You can’t edit your previous chats.
You can’t reply to a specific chat unless you get specific like copying the original chat.
Don’t get me wrong. I hated that discord owns most of the communication online.
I wish there was a simple and easy to use open source tool that did all of that in a single package.
I don’t mind self-hosting but if I have to self-host several interacting services that I need to update manually, it becomes a pain.
Hosting matrix really isn’t too bad, you basically just jam everything in a docker-compose and you’re pretty much good to go
And then enable federation on your homeserver and end up with CSAM materializing and caching everywhere.
I’ll have to look into matrix. Thank you
Has it failed? Or have you failed at being loyal?
Hahaha!
IRC is still around. I have no data but would guess more people use it now than in the “heyday” (mainly just because there are a lot more people online)
Possibly. I’ve heard some niche communities use it, but I also heard that there is a strong transition to matrix.
Heyday was wild though.
Dalnet fucked up
It has usability problems (can’t even fucking write a newline
, no voice chat, file uploads only with third party links, no screen sharing, no end to end encryption). As a zoomer, I’m not surprised it didn’t catch on with younger generations compared to easy messengers.
It’s still kinda cool tho.
Not to mention that you don’t get messages from when you were offline and that by default no login system exists without a bot to handle that stuff.
Correct me where I’m wrong, I’d be happy if irc is actually amazing.
You’re right that it does lack the luxuries that makes discord better, especially video clip and picture sharing in channels.
There were ways to set up something called an IRC bouncer, which acted like a middle layer or puppet between you and IRC network allowing that to receive messages and the like while you were physically offline.
And for everything else you’d just send the files directly to whoever you wanted to share it with. Cumbersome, not to mention the pain port forwarding used to be.
Regarding screen sharing, back when IRC was king, the bandwidth wasn’t even really there for that. I guess one would use a VNC server/client or some other remote desktop application if that was needed.Yes. I understand that the limitations were less relevant when it was at its high, but it’s 2025 and those features are now common place and essentials, at least something like directly embedding images and using new
Lines.
of course gen x is overlooked again
gen x fucking made it before the housing crash and pandemic, they can sit over there with the boomers
some did
most did not
And we prefer it that way.
That’s usually the case, sure, but you realize in this instance they don’t mean boomer as actual boomer, but as anyone and everyone over 30?
That’s a shit use of the term
Oh, this was referring to “internet boomer” as a legally distinct class from the general term “boomer”.
I think for most teens everyone older than 30 is the same age – old.
Ok boomer. /s
yes, that was my (likely poorly executed) joke
This video about the history of IRC has been shared a bunch in the past few days: https://youtu.be/6UbKenFipjo
Worth a watch if you’re into this kinda thing.
I’m subscribed and watched it the other day. What a trip down memory lane. I wasn’t quite old enough to witness it all (DALnet was already established when I joined), but IRC brings back lots of fond memories.
What exactly makes discord more like irc?
IRC was basically a persistent online text chat. You could have a community and because everyone accessed the internet via computers, people would leave their IRC client open and just have this chat server with different rooms running in the background.
You could jump in and see what was happening. Today, discord serves the same function, but instead of having a client always connected, it uses an app that can push notifications to the user.
The other big difference was that IRC was open, so you had many clients that could connect to servers, and they were available for many different platforms. Hell for a while I had an irc Client on my T-Mobile sidekick that used the old 2g pager network for data.
Discord added a lot of quality of life features like easy attachments , images etc , but that comes at the cost of a closed network run by 1 company.
That’s not what I meant, and probably also not what the OP meant. Something is suddenly different for discord to feel like irc, but it’s not articulated.
Besides, irc is anything but persistent. If you disconnect, your chats are gone, unless you logged the chat. If you reconnect, you don’t catch up on what was said when you were offline, unless you use a bouncer like znc with history (which is also limited to the last x number of lines). John Doe sure as heck doesn’t even know what a bouncer is.
my guess is they mean the caliber of user / conversation, not the features of the platforms themselves
Yeah, obviously, maybe they mean its a bunch of idle users saying nothing nowadays because there’s so many “servers” now.
I met my wife on IRC.
I also met your wife on IRC. Nice person, good choice. I’d say neither of you are the reacher in your relationship. Well done.
This sounds like a compliment, but I sincerely am not 100% sure.
Therefore, I choose to interpret as one. Thank you!
It was meant as one. :) Just trying to turn around some harass-y and insulting comments I’ve seen around and tried to make it somewhat funny.
Then I shall reiterate, thank you! I am rather fond of her.
Slack is just an IRC skin - change my mind
Easy - IRC worked way better and was way less miserable
/me slaps kboy101222 around a bit with a large trout.Did you ever play sa:mp or is the trout slapping more common than I thought?
It was a default user command in the IRC client mIRC, that’s why it’s such an iconic phrase. Old school coders, including the ones that became game developers back in the GTA San Andreas days likely came up through the demo scene or similar, because there weren’t really “game dev” educations, so they all sat on IRC at one point.
Oh that makes sense.
I played sa:mp on a RP server and there was this one guy who always did
/me slaps x with a large trout
He also was Norwegian and I think trout is pretty big there (or I know salmon is at least) so I thought he’d come up with himself lol. This was nearly 20 years ago.
Nerds in the USA and the UK used to almost unanimously be Monty Python fans. I’m fairly certain it is a reference to the Fish Slapping Dance.
I’ve hosted IRC servers on a windows XP laptop that were more resilient and reliable than slack lmao
If you know how xerygraphy works, which is what the most popular fax machines used before laser printers, that statement is actually not far off. Heat drums were the first piece to fail in them.
I downloaded my first 3 songs from IRC with MIRC. Took all night to download but man was I happy the next morning.
cherish it. the internet is gonna get progressively worse.
It’s like ICQ
I remember playing Uplink some years ago and buying the in-game IRC client for fun. MOTD said the server is long dead and I wasted that run’s money.
Anyone from 28 and above will be easly called a boomer by 14 years old 😂 as a xenial here I used to feel weird maybe slightly offended…but I decided to enjoy it and keep my self entertained by dumb online fuedes and the alleged generational online wars that comes with…so yeah Long live the IRC
