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hi. irc kind of gives off a similar social culture i felt from browsing gopher, with there being less pretension and ... due to the simplicity(ish, when you get over the initial learning, thus it's complicated to most normalcattle) and age of the protocol, with no ulterior motives unlike the hellscape of modern tech, usually being used by middle aged men and/or hackers.

i haven't been in much irc channels myself, only lurking the cat-v one and hearing of a collapse irc. i've only lurked a MUSH chatroom in recent times which sort of maintains a similar culture but more oriented to RP, even if elements from modern culture are in place such as AI or discord image links being sent in chat. it's not completely a time capsule but it's more of a refreshment, not entirely parroting the mainstream social culture, and i feel i see irc in the same way.
i'd like to know if anybody else has had much experience with it to give their insights for people who haven't had much (specifically where irc channels are found).

Only have experience with Arch Linux IRC chatrooms. What a waste of time. If you want to know what's wrong with your computer, and don't know where to start, and are willing to put in time and research, you're better off surfing the Web most of the time to get up to speed with what knowledge the industry is willing to part with. I think pretentiousness is integral to humans, you're better off having credentials before you show in person, otherwise you get bombarded with low effort messages from peeps still working on theirs. Chats aren't very good medium for people without pre-established relationships.

Anon E. Moose wrote: Sat Aug 15, 2026 7:34 am Only have experience with Arch Linux IRC chatrooms. What a waste of time. If you want to know what's wrong with your computer, and don't know where to start, and are willing to put in time and research, you're better off surfing the Web most of the time to get up to speed with what knowledge the industry is willing to part with. I think pretentiousness is integral to humans, you're better off having credentials before you show in person, otherwise you get bombarded with low effort messages from peeps still working on theirs. Chats aren't very good medium for people without pre-established relationships.

Indeed, public forums are more useful for computing help than IRC chats, because the answers remain there in perpetuity and help other people who search for them, where as IRC is ephemeral/impermanent by default, unless someone operates a public logging site.

personally, i think that while irc looks kinda cool it's not the best for sure. XMPP is more secure than IRC.

MiRw3b wrote: Wed Aug 19, 2026 2:16 pm personally, i think that while irc looks kinda cool it's not the best for sure. XMPP is more secure than IRC.

Xmpp leaks metadata heavily even with restrictive settings. On top of that all the privacy plugins (like routing via tor or via i2p) are both buggy and often leak connections. Irc because it's simpler is much easier to secure

I haven't used IRC in years. Every chat I had ever been on had zero activity.

Theundercoverman_ wrote: Sun Aug 30, 2026 6:49 pm I haven't used IRC in years. Every chat I had ever been on had zero activity.

IRC doesn't have MAM like XMPP does, so everything appears very dead. Also there are some chats that are actually totally dead.
You probably didn't join any of the larger ones.

I would also suggest using a bouncer, like biboumi which you can hook up to XMPP for example (you can even use disco to search the rooms). With a bouncer you can actually see history.
Can't tell you how many times I've seen someone pop in, say "hi?" in an IRC, then a few minutes later disconnect.
I always think, "what a dumb ass", lol.

MiRw3b wrote: Wed Aug 19, 2026 2:16 pm personally, i think that while irc looks kinda cool it's not the best for sure. XMPP is more secure than IRC.

How? in what world is XMPP more secure than IRC? XMPP is the epitome of software complexity and over engineering. That guy Ley just posted the bug in prosody that could crash any server, and it was the most trivial shit ever just sitting there. Monkey developers maybe. My 850 loc IRC daemon that we use with IP whitelisting, decentralized over yggdrasil, hosted on our own computers, doesnt have any such bugs, and i know it for a fact. and its more decentralized of a setup than XMPP could ever provide with it's psuedodecentralized nature and global cockblock lists from jonas. Could you explain exactly how something like Ejabberd or Prosody is inherently more secure? Unless you meant the protocol itself, which is a whole different discussion that i likely wont entertain, because you've clearly never read the IRC or XMPP protocol specifications, and are just parroting crap you heard from whatever XMPP chat you throw slopfests in.

voice chat is better than text chat, but
no protocol is the best protocol.