bIRC

I spent so many hours in IRC in the late 90s and early 2000s. I have seen the netsplits, the drama, the communities that formed. And it was such a fun time. I have seen the IRC client wars, people flaming mIRC users, irssi becoming popular and in a screen session making bouncers feel less relevant to be able to stay up to date with channel activities. One of my most fun memories has to be on a New Years Eve when someone I talked to for years (but had never met in person) randomly pinged me if I got a fax machine. He had missed the window to sign up for his university course and needed someone to fax it so the timestamp is in the old year. I am still not sure if I should have replaced his math course with some linguistics 101 like Latin. But we got it done, he get in his math course and passed. So when I see a new IRC client being developed in 2026 I just smile and remember the good old times. Even better, it is a native Mac application, not some web app that slurps up 2GB memory when…