I may not be the common case, but I didn’t join IRC looking for a community. I primarily used it (and still do today) for help and collaboration — open source

I may not be the common case, but I didn’t join IRC looking for a community. I primarily used it (and still do today) for help and collaboration — open source work and ##javascript /##math questions, usually. By being in the channels frequently enough you begin to figure out the community. Many channels also have off-topic variants for, well, off-topic discussion. Those will tend to be more like communities and not have hundreds or thousands of users. In terms of why IRC specifically, I enjoy the simplicity of the protocol and the open-source nature of it’s ecosystem