That's a rosy view of IRC but not a very accurate description of why people don't use it. In reality, people's UX standards improved and they weren't going to

That's a rosy view of IRC but not a very accurate description of why people don't use it. In reality, people's UX standards improved and they weren't going to stick around with a crappy solution like IRC once chat rooms of the late 90s could even figure out how to show you old messages when you logged in. Something as simple as getting a notification while offline or reading what was said while you had your laptop lid closed are now things expected since over two decades ago. And they're things IRC is still missing unless you're a power user who gets to fix it only for yourself. IRC never evolved and never cared about UX. And it lost to efforts that did. That people on HN including you will use phrases like "shiny" and "bells and whistles" to refer to features like a chat that can show you messages you missed while the tram went through a tunnel for 30 seconds is sanctimony that killed IRC. It's like listening to an engineer struggle to come up with a single non-cynical reason why someone might like a GUI over a CLI. And then when GUIs take off and users finally get more options and stop using the engineer's CLI app, the engineer curses and shakes his fist at VC funding and proprietary tech and blames the users for falling for bells and whistles and being out of touch with the ideal form of software. (That's actually a far more accurate representation of IRC worship than I intended.)