Indeed, Discord is chat, Discourse is forum. That said, most people use Discord because other people use it and there is much less friction to add a new "serve

Indeed, Discord is chat, Discourse is forum. That said, most people use Discord because other people use it and there is much less friction to add a new "server" (i hate how they use that term instead of something like "community" or whatever) alongside those you are already part of than making a new account to yet another site. I know i'm using Discord mainly because the people actually go there. I used IRC since the 90s but for more than a decade it has been channels with 15-20 people all of whom are AFK and idling via some proxy bot or whatever with the occasional chat now and then by a couple of people (Discord also has a lot of idlers but it has 10x more people too so that couple of people becomes 20 people). IRC not having server-side storage of discussions does not help because i can't login to a channel, ask/answer a question and leave later. I know some people like that lack of permanence but personally i find Discord much easier on actually making or even starting discussions (e.g. i might respond to a message someone left 8 hours ago which is seen by someone else right after i post it and starts a discussion - this only happens because i was able to see that 8h old message). I know IRC supposedly added optional support for this recently but i don't know anything that uses it (and even then it wont solve the "people go to Discord" problem since other services like Matrix already supported that for years and people do not go to Matrix).