We've gained many. Chatting in a discord is similar to this.

Well, yes, but I also see their point (even if I'm not sure I agree with it): by being forced to meet IRL, you're also forced to make real contact and seem more likely to form strong relations, and it is off-the-record by default so you can share more things

Of course, the (massive) counterpoint is that you get to talk to way fewer people, particularly if they're more than half an hour traveling away. Quantity versus quality, but by having a lot of quantity through more diverse online interactions, you can find the conversations that have a lot of quality for you (overlapping fields of work, hobbies, or just a personality match).

Which is better? Probably something in the middle, where you hang out in chat rooms but are also conscious of the advantages of arranging to meet up. I do find it inspirational (too strong a word, but you get the idea) to hear of other times or cultures where things are done differently

And IRC was even better at it.

I don't think so. I know everybody loves to say that IRC is better than [insert commercial chat application] but in this particular use case discord is superior to irc imo because of the voice/video chat features and greater convenience.

It's the structure/topology.

Discord has a million deserted "servers" with redundant general channels. Peak IRC had a dozen or so large networks that often bundled a lot of e.g. adjacent FOSS projects. The chances of running into someone interesting a la the article anecdote was just higher.

Discord is a massive net negative for chatting on the internet because of this flaw imho.

This wasn't my experience with IRC. Our channel only ever had thirty people tops before being swallowed by discord. It's got the same discovery/accessibility issues that the Windows vs Linux issue has. Want Windows/Discord? Google Windows/Discord, first result, done. Want Linux/IRC? Weeeell, first you're going to have to find a distro/client. There's no singular trusted expert and everyone disagrees on what's best, so you better pick one and pray it was the right choice. Oh, you'll also have to configure it a bit, or a lot if you chose the wrong one.

> This wasn't my experience with IRC.

The thing is, my experience is different, but of course similarly anecdotal. I essentially got my entire professional network and career on IRC, and that includes contacts all over the modern tech stack and adjacent interests, being on just two IRC "servers". And I could connect many other people in the same way.

On Discord, there seem to be just more barriers against this. Getting someone into a new place doesn't just require hopping into a new channel with a single /join command, but an entire new "server" with a new crowd. There's more inhibition against that.

IRC’s biggest fault is no history. Everything else is secondary.

Yeah, bouncers exist, but it should have been baked into the spec at some point.

I think we've lost some and gained other.

People may say that Discord and similar will compensate, greatly, as the number of interactions can grow a lot. On the other hand, I don't think the experience is comparable to fully focusing on the person you're eating in person with.

Discord is a poor replacement. I think it allows a lot of broad connections without depth which sounds good on the surface but unfortunately real insights require a bit of digging but the conversation has already moved ahead in the chatroom. That's why old school forums were actually a better kind of a discussion board but discord being free and not requiring technical setup won.

> People may say that Discord and similar will compensate, greatly, as the number of interactions can grow a lot.

Are Discord discussions indexed by any public search engines? What about communities that are invite-only (without much actual reason to be so)? What about community admins who decide to take their whole thing down, communities that break site-wide rules and get removed by site admins, etc? Does Discord Inc. make any commitments towards publishing discussions that have archival/historical value?

How much knowledge is already irrecoverably stuck in Slack's bit bucket, as people flocked away to the next walled-garden chat app?

I mean it's not like technical discussions over lunch at a Mexican restaurant we're indexable either.

With the rise of AIs-hoovering-up-everything-reachable-on-the-public-web I'm not sure I want every conversation indexed either.

NEVER FORGET WHAT THEY HAVE TAKEN FROM US. WE WERE ONCE A CULTURE. NOW WE ARE LOST, FOREVER. WHITHER OUR SENSE OF BEAUTY. (etc., etc., insert architecture pics to taste)

C'mon dude. The opportunity for people to talk to one another about this stuff is unimaginably better than it was back then. Like, here we are, right now, me telling you you're full of shit. What are the chances of us being able to do that in 1999?

(I'm sorry to be mean, but I remember 1999 very well and it was much harder to get good information about things, and discuss things with others interested in the same topics, than it is today. And it was already markedly better then than it was even 5 years prior to that!)

Do you want to have lunch at Tia's in Mesquite, Texas?

I do. There isn't a Tia's there anymore but there's one an hour north, still in the DFW area.

My gfs mother lives in Dallas. Let's connect next time I visit!

Oh come off it, we were saying horrible shit to one another on Slashdot in '99.

The fact that it was hard to get information meant the ones which did break out were infinitely better. The ones you could discuss things were very into the things you were discussing.

I was a game dev in the mid-90s.

I had plenty of online conversations on Usenet, IRC and email with guys like Abrash and Jez San etc. It was a much smaller community back then and there was no gatekeeping -- everyone's contact info was out there and inbox zero was still achievable.

I get what you're saying. There are a lot of tinier discords and chat rooms where people post technical points and other people chime in. There are even websites with these small places.

The challenge of course is finding your way there. They're not exactly discoverable, and unlike with a job, it's usually through some pretty odd connections that you end up there.

Don't people still have lunch?

They do. Over their desks, while working or in a video call.

That's probably very country specific, because I've not seen that happen and would also never do it myself.

We get a 1 hour lunch break required by law and yet people still do this willingly.

I often would rather go home from work an hour earlier than sit and eat lunch for an hour. It's as simple as that, really.

Actually no, it's not "as simple as that" when everyone except you doesn't take lunch hour and schedules meetings at noon. We have a right to the lunch hour.

Then decline those meetings. Doesn't mean that other people should have to waste an hour of their day that they could better spend at home in the evening.