
Ask HN: Do You Miss IRC? - irc_nostalgia
I know IRC still exists and there&#x27;s a lot of people there, but for some reason I don&#x27;t feel like it is the same ~vibe~ as when I used to use it growing up in the 90s
======
brozaman
I was born in the 90s so I never used IRC outside work. I used it for work on
a daily basis until a couple weeks ago, and I hate it with passion. The vpn
drops and you miss messages. You are offline you miss messages, don't want to
miss messages? set up a relay (seriously?!).

Now I'm on a team which uses slack, and I miss how lightweight hexchat is, but
in terms of being able to use it my phone and having something that just works
without any additional effort it only has advantages.

~~~
atomi
Took me all of 10 minutes to set up irssi on a free google cloud vps many
years ago. It's still chugging along.

    
    
        ~ uptime
         23:22:27 up 787 days, 15:10,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
    

It's not that hard.

~~~
comex
Not that hard, if you don't care about two things:

\- Typing latency

\- Access from mobile devices

Many people don't care about those things; good for them. Unfortunately for
me, I do.

I can (and do) use a bouncer, which theoretically solves both problems: text
entry is handled by my local IRC client rather than every keystroke going
through a server, and I can run an IRC client on my phone. Unfortunately,
bouncers are a rather poor approximation of true cross-device history/state
synchronization; e.g. they don't sync unread messages. And they're generally
slow and fiddly for various silly reasons. For example, most bouncers require
you to make a separate connection for each IRC network, which is slower, and
requires configuring each client device for each network, annoying if you have
a lot of networks. Also, long backlogs can overload slow IRC clients, but
typically the alternative to long backlogs is losing history, since there's no
standard mechanism for clients to request history on demand.

There are also some IRC clients that do "true" state synchronization, like
Quassel or Weechat's relay mode, but none with a tolerable iPhone version,
last I checked.

~~~
Wingy
I use The Lounge for IRC because I use iOS, Windows, and Linux.

~~~
comex
I haven’t used The Lounge; it looks well-designed, but I try to avoid web-
based clients as they have a lot of overhead. It also doesn’t seem like The
Lounge has any solution for push notifications on iOS.

(Alas, most ‘native’ IRC clients for macOS have web views inside _anyway_ , so
avoiding web-based stuff may be a lost cause. But then I’m in no position to
complain about Slack or Discord using Electron…)

------
kevstev
Not really. Aside from the warez and books and a few tech channels, I found it
really really difficult to make any meaningful connections or even have social
conversations there. You go into one of the larger channels and its a hundred
people spewing into the channel and its very difficult to even understand what
threads are occurring or if they are just talking past each other, let alone
actually get a conversation going.

Then you go the smaller channels, and everyone is idling/afk.

Then there were the very specific channels, and any talk of anything other
than Pokeman in #pokeman will get you kicked.

The tech channels were reasonably good, but it was mostly business there too.

Occasionally you find a decent room with people talking and looking to just
kind of shoot the shit, but I found more often than not, it was someone
entirely across the globe- and while that is interesting in its own way, my
jaw was on the floor when I first chatted with someone from Singapore in the
90s (long distance was dollars a minute then), I quickly realized that we
really had almost no shared cultural context and after "so what is life like
in $yourcountry" we didn't have much to talk about.

I was op on a few tech channels on efnet back in the day, and learned some
interesting things and gave (and received) a lot of good help, but as far as
using it to just chat about the weather and meet people, I found it not very
useful- especially compared to AOL chatrooms.

------
bdd
I miss the kind strangers who genuinely cared about helping others without
being abrasive jerks. I learned a lot on IRC; made many new friends. This was
back in 1994–98 when I was growing up in Turkey. The scene was rather small
yet still full of kind enthusiasts. Sure there was some passingly “oh you’re a
n00b” messing but it wasn’t toxic. EFNet and DalNet were a bit more different.
Maybe less kind but still full of helpful people. If you weren’t grossly
stepping out of boundaries of netiquette, you’d get treated with reciprocal
dignity.

~~~
pmoriarty
Honestly, I used to see a lot more abrasive jerks on the IRC of old.

Lots of RTFM and refusing to answer direct technical questions because _" why
would you want to do that?"_

Some channels, like #politics on efnet were true cesspools.

In contrast, my later experience with FreeNode has been consistently helpful
on virtually every channel I've been to, except for #paludis, which really was
full of jerks. I've seen trolls maybe once every year or two on FreeNode and
they've been swiftly dealt with, rarely to be seen again.

I guess your mileage will vary depending on which channels and networks you
visit, though.

------
sidek
I miss IRC deeply. We had an internet with an amazing, people-run, free, chat
network.

And we replaced it with corporate things like facebook messenger/discord where
you're the product.

~~~
Seirdy
If you're looking for rooms with high activity, I put together a list of the
top 30 busiest IRC channels I'm in by sorting my logs by size (descending)
[0].

The command that generated the list:

    
    
      grep -v -c '(\-\->.*has joined|<--.*has left).*#' $WEECHAT_HOME/logs/irc.*.[#]*.weechatlog \
       | tr ':' ' ' \
       | sort -n -k 2 -r \
       | sed -e 's#.*irc\.##' -e 's#\.weechatlog##' \
       | grep -v "#channel-i'd-rather-not-show" \
       | sed 30q \
       | curl -F 'clbin=<-' https://clbin.com
    

[0]: [https://clbin.com/9fcdI](https://clbin.com/9fcdI)

Archived paste: [https://archive.li/4OMf3](https://archive.li/4OMf3) and
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200215033709/https://clbin.com...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200215033709/https://clbin.com/9fcdI)

~~~
Seirdy
Addendum: kichimi on rizon.\\#rice has just reached out in response to this
comment:

    
    
      2020-02-15 06:55:32 kichimi that post
      2020-02-15 06:55:35 kichimi was made by you
      2020-02-15 06:55:40 kichimi and i wanted to say hi
      2020-02-15 06:55:45 Seirdy hai
      2020-02-15 06:55:51 kichimi because i love seeing rizon repped
      2020-02-15 06:56:00 kichimi but you didnt put a disclaimer in your post saying rizon was the most toxic network on the internet

~~~
TheReverend403
> but you didnt put a disclaimer in your post saying rizon was the most toxic
> network on the internet

We're not all assholes. Just most of us.

------
taway555
I do, but more so the era in which I heavily used it. I started a local IRC
channel for my high school. Word spread and eventually we had 100-200 people
on it every single night, which was a non trivial % population of the entire
school. Not just nerds... everyone from all groups was on it. People are
school were asking the more tech friendly folks: "How do I get mIRC on my
computer??"

There were so many people on it that there was a legit problem identifying who
was who (i.e. nicknames != real names). I eventually made a page linking IRC
nicknames to profiles.

Looking back on it now, if I had had more vision, in a parallel universe, I
would have replicated this experience to other areas schools in the region..
then state, then country then....?

Oh well :)

------
INTPenis
I've been on IRC daily for over 22 years.

I know exactly what you mean. I've gone from one tight knit community to
another. In the between time I've either taken short breaks or been hanging
out on freenode.

Right now I'm lucky enough to be in a tight clique of people with a private
server.

Some of them have been on IRC for as long as it has existed. Most of us also
meet IRL regularly.

If you find like minded people IRL you can start up IRC again.

Edit: Speaking of freenode. Just a few years ago I remember having a lot of
fun in the wolf game channels with random strangers. It felt like the 90s
again.

~~~
eric234223
This is what exactly i am looking for. To chat with passionate people who can
not be approached easily. The entry bar is a bit high(setting up IRC to run it
24/7). Can you post the irc channels you are in.

------
hlandau
This experience still exists, but you have to find smaller channels where
people come to know one another as regulars. The smaller networks and channels
still exist and they have a good community vibe.

Of course, it's hard to find out about these channels. IME it takes time to
find the small channels (or the small networks, there are many networks tiny
enough for nobody to know about unless they've been invited). Try starting
with a large channel and eventually you'll find out about smaller and smaller
channels. Some larger projects on Freenode are also big enough to have
-offtopic channels, which can easily become their own communities.

Keep in mind that a 24/7 connection is basically essential, get a bouncer or
use something like IRCCloud.

~~~
rimunroe
I met my partner in one such channel about five years ago. We’re getting
married this October. A lot of the guest list for our wedding is made of folks
we met on IRC.

~~~
paraiuspau
Congrats! I lost my virginity to a woman I met on IRC. Sounds less romantic
than your story, but I loved her very much. I mourn those days, 1998-2000 on
dalnet.

------
Kim_Bruning
Nope.

I'm still using it for my day to day. ;-)

Though I'm no longer on the traditional large help channels on freenode (or
dalnet before it ) to be fair.

------
dankememe
I don't, because I'm still using it! Me and a few internet friends have a cozy
little community, and usually hang out there daily. IRC isn't really dead at
all as far as I'm concerned, just not as popular anymore. It's the same as
with people who complain that there's no good music anymore, it's there, they
just haven't found it.

Anyways, check us out if you want, more people is always a plus:
[https://irc.orderofthetilde.net/](https://irc.orderofthetilde.net/)

~~~
HoppyHaus
Hey, that's my server! Weird seeing it mentioned by someone that isn't me

~~~
dankememe
you should definitely check out the server if you haven't

------
cjbprime
I don't miss IRC much -- I actually miss the paragraphs-level chat systems
with lightweight categories, like MIT Zephyr and Gale. They really encouraged
deeper thought, in the way that an HN comment is often deeper than an IRC one,
just by virtue of having more time to collect your thoughts and then getting
to attach them to the right place. It's surprising that nothing like those
systems lasted.

I also miss ytalk, which shared each character you typed as you typed it. I
used ytalk with my spouse a lot while we were dating.

~~~
wikibob
[https://zulipchat.com/](https://zulipchat.com/)

MIT Zephyr inspired. Bought by Dropbox then divested.

~~~
cjbprime
I've used it! It is great but not very popular.

------
WnZ39p0Dgydaz1
You can find very similar communities on Discord today. You may argue that
Discord is a totally different vibe, full of kids, spam, memes, and rude
people. And you would right, but that's pretty much what most IRC channels,
especially those related to gaming, were in the early days as well. You have
to go around and look hard to find channels that are different, but they
exist.

So, maybe the reason that you don't feel it's the same vibe is not only
because technology has changed, but also because you have changed. I also have
fond memories of my IRC time in the 90s, but I believe I'm looking at them
with rose-colored glasses and not everything was as amazing as I remember it
to be.

------
VonChair
I miss the feeling you had using it and the fun bots people made in some
channels. I do not miss the difficulty of getting less technical users onto it
and it's lack of portability with out some work. New tools these days make the
portability aspect easy and barrier to entry low for less technical users
which expands the user base of a lot of platforms today.

~~~
blablabla123
On the other hand, even if the barrier is a bit higher, nice things will
eventually be used by everyone even if it evolves some research and learning -
or seeking help from others. The most difficult thing about IRC is probably
picking a unique user name or even registering one. But yeah, especially non-
tech channels had a fun vibe, something I completely miss from Slack or
Facebook.

------
vardump
IRC in 1991, until maybe 1999... I don't think anything like that will ever
come back. There were some vandals with their scripts, but mostly it was way
more civilized than you ever see these days. Had a lot of enjoyable
conversations, lots of fun.

Haven't used IRC for almost 20 years now.

~~~
fartcannon
It's still there. You can start again.

------
LinuxBender
I miss the culture that came with small distributed IRC networks. I miss the
technical people that chose to use the networks. Those people moved to where
they could reach more of their friends and family members.

I do not miss patching the IRC servers and upgrading / rewriting
configurations (Unreal IRCD 2.x 3.x 4.x and now 5.x) and Anope services.
Certainly not when we went from thousands, to hundreds, to dozens of users.
Too much work for too few people making use of it.

------
philipov
Twitch.tv uses the IRC protocol for its chat system, and I find a lot of the
same community feeling in those channels where I hang out regularly.

~~~
x2f10
It looks like you can utilize an IRC client for Twitch chat:
[https://twitchtv.desk.com/customer/en/portal/articles/130278...](https://twitchtv.desk.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1302780-twitch-
irc)

------
magicalhippo
I still use it daily after nearly 30 years, though the main channel I'm on has
dwindled from hundreds active during its prime to just a handful.

While I miss the people that has moved on over time, I must say Discord feels
like a fine replacement for me in terms of functionality. I use Discord for a
few technically oriented things and those places give me the same vibe IRC did
back in the day.

------
EnderMB
I miss some channels, but not necessarily IRC as a whole.

I still believe that #csharp on freenode is the main reason why I pursued .NET
as a career choice. As far as channels go, they were by far the most helpful
when starting out, and they never made me feel like an idiot for not knowing
something. Most importantly, the channel was alive. There are so many channels
out there with hundreds of users online and zero conversation.

The other day I tried to join a Rails IRC channel to ask about Action Mailbox,
and when I saw the quiet channel I decided to ask a question and lurk. In 24
hours, the only messages sent were from people looking for help, and then
leaving.

What I miss above anything else is helpful people. It's what drew me to IRC,
it's what initially drew me to Stack Overflow, and I'd wager that it's what
drew many people to HN. IMO, the medium itself isn't anywhere near as
important as the people.

------
MockObject
It's just not the same feeling, patiently waiting around on my work Slack for
a network split, so I can grab ops on a channel.

------
br_hue
I miss the anonymity, the freedom you had to join a random channel and talk to
whoever without being afraid of that being linked to your real persona. In
today's internet I tend to watch everything I comment or do, because it can
later come back to hunt me.

------
neilalexander
I can't say I miss IRC particularly. It does have a nice simplicity to it but
the fact that connections are stateful and fragile is a real downer - I don't
love that closing my laptop and wandering off somewhere onto a new network
causes me to disappear from the network entirely.

Bouncers like ZNC rely on having somewhere reliable to host one and are
additional maintenance overheads. Leaving irssi or weechat open in a
screen/tmux session on a remote host leads to a terrible mobile experience.

I now just find it easier to interact with IRC users using Matrix bridges that
other people maintain instead.

~~~
blablabla123
But why do you need a bouncer? You can just register the user name and then go
online again?

~~~
neilalexander
Of course, but in that time I've missed what is happening in the channels I
was joined to.

------
h2odragon
twitter took that "vibe" and Eternal September-ed the idea for many people.
IRC was already suffering from "if you're not from the right network you're
nobody" and fragmentation of user experience with services etc; which didn't
help either.

When I reminisce about IRC im usually thinking about the few channels I
actually used, which were in my case smaller groups of geek tangentially
spawned from a larger channel (everybody met on #slashdot but had other
channels for real discussion). That kind of small group text chat is doable on
discord now.

------
TheOperator
The community? Sure.

The chat standard? Not in the least.

------
znpy
I still use it. I self host thelounge, a cool web based client with bouncer
features.

Quite honestly, I don't chat everyday, but there's a cool subscene that keeps
it alive.

------
_sbrk
I still use it, every single day. Works well and now has SSL encryption to the
server, which cuts down on snooping. However, true end-to-end requires client
support.

------
koala_man
>I don't feel like it is the same ~vibe~ as when I used to use it growing up
in the 90s

What _does_ have the same vibe now as when you used it growing up in the 90s?

------
stevehawk
I don't miss IRC, since I still use it, but I miss certain channels. I swear
every linux related channel I go into is full of a bunch of a-holes. 20 years
ago I got a lot of help (and I hope provided a lot of assistance myself) in
#linux and others, but now it feels like I'm offending a channel when asking
for help.

~~~
ionwake
yeah I joined the bitcoin channel and asked something and I started getting
really hostile treatment, I received the explanation that alot of new bad
characters had joined recently and were causing trouble. i dont know but yes
the positive vibe has gone a bit.

------
zzo38computer
I still use IRC (and NNTP, which I actually only started using it recently).
Unfortunately, many people don't use it, but some people do. Please continue
to use IRC and NNTP and plain text and so on, which are better than Discord.

------
calvinmorrison
I miss having it as a resource though I use it every day. You used to be able
to find kernel devs and contributors on #kernelnewbies, now I ask an actual
question that isn't a simple Google and I get flatline response.

I do still use it for some communities, our LUG, a few Foss projects and the
catv people

Netsplits still suck, nickserv constantly forgets me, but overall it works.

And yes, irssi is still the worst and only irc client I use

Most bounce problems can be fixed with a screen session on your VPS you
already use to host stuff.

Upsides include great logging, idle chitchat and a chance to real time
communicate ideas and hash ideas out when a ML doesn't work

------
betamaxthetape
I was born at the tail-end of the 90s, so never experienced the original 90s
IRC "vibe".

However, I'm part of ArchiveTeam, and we use IRC pretty much exclusively for
all our projects. Sure, we have a wiki for permanent notes, but all of the
discussion, decisions, etc.. happen over on IRC.

Right now quite a few of the channels used by ArchiveTeam are migrating away
from EFNet to hackint, due to connection issues with EFNet. Although migration
to a different communication platform was brought up, it was almost
immediately discounted.

------
jasoneckert
Like USENET, I miss the coolness factor I remember surrounding IRC back in the
1990s and early 2000s. But as a communications tool, I don't miss it given the
alternatives today.

------
pogitalonx
I miss when I typed /list and my computer would crash. ;)

------
Fizzadar
Hugely. Years back we used it at work before switching to Slack. Wish we could
switch back I am sick of stupid GIFs, pointless reactions and the rest of
Slacks bullshit (terrible client, buggy "editor", etc).

One good thing? I've discovered Ripcord [1], which is an alternative slack
client that has great IRC like vibes :)

[1] [https://cancel.fm/ripcord/](https://cancel.fm/ripcord/)

------
RyJones
So much so, I was prompted to recreate[0] the #distributed meetmap and add a
new link[1].

[0] [https://github.com/ryjones/meetmap](https://github.com/ryjones/meetmap)

[1]
[https://github.com/ryjones/meetmap/commit/a0148759c2b6b06757...](https://github.com/ryjones/meetmap/commit/a0148759c2b6b06757749f3374e0112e8349737d)

------
jchw
Yes, totally. Nowadays IRC is mostly a thing I use very passively to stay in
various open source project channels. Back in the day it was a place where
other folks who were internet savvy would convene to discuss just about
anything. I was in lots of tightly knit small channels and met plenty of
friends I still have.

I didn’t use IRC until the mid 2000s, but in my opinion until around ~2012 it
was still quite active for many communities.

------
skywhopper
No. I was the right age and I’m totally of the right mindset but IRC never
clicked with me. I went through phases of using it but it has always been more
hassle than it’s worth.

I do think Slack and Discord are overengineered for most teams’ needs. They
are attempting to justify their existence and solve all the problems. I’d be
happy with a simple text chat I could use from my terminal. But IRC is nothing
like “simple”.

------
eswat
A bit. A gaming channel that I've been hanging around in since 2003 made the
bittersweet move of migrating to Discord as more and more people stopped using
IRC.

Given that a lot of InfoSec teams I'm in also use Discord I didn't mind the
shift. But my paranoia makes me think that maybe our new home may have a
higher chance of imploding due to factors out of our control than when we just
stuck on GameSurge.

------
superkuh
How can I miss it? I'm still on IRC all day every day. There are amazing
little communities out there. You can use netsplit.de to find some of them.
And of course there are the larger communities that sort of exist like all the
people on Freenode that crossover on many channels.

IRC is very much alive and well. It's just that it didn't grow as fast as all
the commercial web.

------
NickBusey
For everyone saying it's hard to set up a relay, if you use something like The
Lounge, deployed by something like HomelabOS, it's pretty much a one-liner to
deploy it, then you have a fantastic mobile and web interface accessible from
anywhere. I've been using this setup for a while and it's been great.

------
daneel_w
It's certainly not the same as it was in 1999 when I begun using IRC, but I
don't entirely miss anything. I realize that most of the "feeling" is just me
being nostalgic. I'm happy with what IRC is and offers today, and I use still
use it daily, ever since 1999.

------
drivingmenuts
Not particularly, but I’m also not enamored of Slack, either. IRC had easy
discoverability that was free for the joining, whereas Slack has a better look
and feel and no entire afternoons of channel greetings with nothing
accomplished.

Neither one is a strong improvement over the other.

------
neom
Shout out to 90s/early 2000s Quakenet and the nights of odd but entertaining
wallops.

------
muzani
We still have IRC channels with 300 people on a slow hour and over a thousand
when busy. I don't think it's gone. As much as I hate discord, it still does
it better, but IRC is by far the best place to meet strangers.

------
iSnow
Sure do. Back then, there weren't a ton of networks, so it was easy to find
great channels. I gained my social net via IRC.

Today, it seems most of the user interaction has migrated to a ton of
commercial social networks.

------
inthreedee
If you miss the vibe of a small community of mostly intelligent, supportive
beings, you might find some of that in the tildeverse.

It's a "loose association of like-minded tilde communities", which exist on
shared *nix systems, usually glued together with an IRC network. As an
example, tilde.team is "a shared system that provides an inclusive, non-
commercial space for teaching, learning, practicing and enjoying the social
medium of unix."

Some tildes have specific focuses like gopher or writing science fiction. I've
found the community to be mostly positive and accepting and it definitely has
some of that ~Olde Internet~ vibe for me. I sometimes worry about the
community growing too large and losing some of that, so maybe I should be
keeping my mouth shut? Then again, share the love right? It is that certain
day, after all. <3

Here's a list of the member tildes:
[https://tildeverse.org/members/](https://tildeverse.org/members/)

------
mosmi
IRC was super important for me - I started using it in 1999, and it was a way
for me to talk to other queer folks. I'm still friends with a lot of the
people I spoke to back then to this day!

------
cameronfraser
Yeah I do. I feel like the communities were a lot more engaging than most
discord communities I come across. All the places I used to go are ghost towns
now.

------
hprotagonist
no; i’m logged in right now!

~~~
ionwake
me 2 ;;ticker

------
yazboo
The things I miss about that time have more to do with growing up (versus
being grown) than anything to do with internet relay chat.

------
Xelbair
I still use IRC, it has the same vibe for me because i use it for niche
communities.

------
dana321
I don't miss going into a channel and the bot immediately bans you !

------
antisthenes
No, but I miss the community of people that I used IRC to chat with.

------
megavolcano
IRC is still the greatest to ever exist and is still around.

------
liveoneggs
there are 36 people in #hackernews on freenode right now

------
natas
been using it for 25 years, next question?

------
rntksi
Yes, I do miss IRC - generally speaking.

------
RickJWagner
Not at all. I use it daily, at work.

------
p0d
I think it's called Slack now.

------
TylerE
Not at all. It’s a dinosaur protocol that requires layers of hacks to provide
an even halfway-useable experience.

------
yowlingcat
100%. I really miss it.

------
fsajkdnjk
miss? no, not really. but slack ain't it either.

------
zeendo
Yes

------
thrwaway69
I avoid those public groups now. Completely biased view, other than the tech
channels - I found a lot of pedos on IRC. Same for open source alternatives to
IRC like matrix where you had literal channel for sharing CP, a trans
community with minors dating adults and sharing ehh questionable pics.

That was a quick delete. I am not motivated to try another FOSS chat for a
while, at least the public instance.

For IRC, add a limiting interface, no feedback, bots, hassle with setting up
your client because most default web ones suck and bouncer. It's not really
worth it for me.

I forgot another thing, weird religious people, lot of people talking in the
dark without anyone replying for hours and cryptonites...

