I thought it died years ago.
What are the good servers these days? Is mIRC still the best client? Has mIRC been continuously updated this whole time? Is it vastly different than what I probably remember?
What’s up? Gimme a guide as if I was a zoomer who just heard about it. 🤣
I’m from IRC way back, I mean way back. Like 1994. I haven’t been on it except to get ebooks for maybe 15 years. I recently went around to all the places I used to go. There’s nobody there. It still exists, and there’s definitely some communities, but there’s a lot of ‘register with nickserv before you can join the channels where people hang out’ kind of shit that I’m not really into. But if you want to try and find some, head to this website:
https://netsplit.de/networks/top100.php
Click on any network (they’re listed by popularity which is ranked by total number of users). A search box will come up, just click the search button. You’ll get a list of channels with the number of people on the channel. Try to join if you dare. What little communication I saw between “users” was a whole lot of Nazi shit that honestly could have been GPT bots for all I could tell. The only real conversation I had was with an admin on IRC4Fun, but that was one of the registration required ones. He had a recommendation for some kind of new client, but I’m a Linux/irssi guy and I probably will be until I die.
TL;DR: People who say IRC never went away are… not quite correct. It still exists, but it’s barely a shadow of what it was in the heyday. And the heyday was wild. The most fun I’ve ever had. Kinda makes me sad, but them’s the breaks.
Edit: it’s GREAT for ebooks though