This is an interesting angle, actually. For me, IRC is the most fun out of the big three (free software chat protocols) of IRC, XMPP, Matrix. The variety of bots and their commands (I never see bots on XMPP or Matrix, kinda odd), being able to post shell command output into my chat window easily (e.g. `/exec -o figlet meme`), the culture around stuff like slapping people with a fish, pasting popular ascii stuff like the shrugging guy or the denko face. I don't really have anything like that stuff on the other platforms. They seem a bit sterile by comparison now that I think about it. I wonder how much is technical and how much is cultural. It's probably way easier to write an IRC bot than bots for the others.