I still remember the first time I logged into an IRC channel. The screen was pitch black, the font looked like something from a '90s hacker movie, and nothing made sense. There were no avatars, no reactions, no threaded replies. Just nicknames, messages, and the occasional bot spewing weather reports or uptime stats. And yet, it felt alive.
Fast forward a couple of decades, and the modern workplace runs on Slack. It's colorful, intuitive, and designed to make collaboration smoother. Slack took everything IRC offered, wrapped it in a shiny interface, and made it fit for companies. It won. But in winning, we lost something.
This is not just a nostalgia trip. It's a look at how a simple, chaotic, beautiful tool like IRC was consumed by the modern communication machine and what that change tells us about how we talk online.
IRC: The Original Chat Protocol
For the unfamiliar, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was created in 1988. Think of it as the command-line version of modern messaging apps. You joined a network, picked a nickname, and entered channels. That's it.
No profiles. No images. No gifs. Just raw, unfiltered conversation. If you wanted to add flair, you used ASCII art or wrote your own bot scripts. Custom clients like mIRC or HexChat gave you options to personalize, but it was still fundamentally text and code.
It was not sleek. It was not polished. But it worked, and it built communities in a way that felt deeply organic.
Slack's Rise to Power
Slack launched in 2013, and by 2015, it was everywhere. Developers adopted it first, then startups, and eventually, the corporate world followed. Its promise was simple: cut down on email. In reality, it became the central nervous system of teams.
Slack took cues from IRC, but it added modern touches. You could see who was typing. You could thread replies. You could add reactions to messages. The UI was friendly, the bots were smarter, and it integrated with everything from Google Drive to Jira.
It was IRC with a marketing budget and a product team. And it spread like wildfire.
What Slack Got Right
To be fair, Slack improved on a lot of IRC's pain points. Onboarding is simple. Searching through message history actually works. You do not need to remember obscure commands or maintain your own server. You can share files, hop on a huddle, and tag teammates without ever touching a manual.
Slack made real-time chat usable for people who would never have touched IRC in the first place. That is a win.
What Got Left Behind
But there is a tradeoff. In making chat user-friendly, something fundamental was lost.
IRC was decentralized. No single company owned the protocol. Anyone could spin up a server. Slack is closed. Your data lives on their servers, locked behind a paywall if you want to keep more than 90 days of history.
IRC allowed anonymity. You could be anyone. Slack ties you to your email, your company, your identity. Everything you say is traceable and permanent.
IRC was minimal. It was distraction-free. Slack tries to be fun with emojis and GIFs, but it also adds noise. Notifications. Statuses. Integrations. It is not always clear if you are supposed to reply, react, or just silently read and move on.
Most of all, IRC had a culture. A weird, nerdy, highly specific culture. There were channel operators, elaborate bot networks, and unwritten rules. You learned by lurking. It was like entering a new city where you had to figure out the customs before speaking. That kind of learning curve does not exist on Slack, and maybe that is a good thing for productivity, but it's also what made IRC feel special.
The Corporatization of Chat
Slack started out feeling fresh. Now, for many, it is another workplace tool. It blurs the line between work and life. Messages arrive at all hours. "Always on" becomes the norm. Unlike IRC, which you logged into deliberately, Slack is omnipresent. It is on your phone, your laptop, your smartwatch.
It demands attention.
IRC, by contrast, respected your absence. You could disappear, return hours later, and no one expected an instant reply. It was slow in a way that now feels oddly luxurious.
Will the Old Ways Come Back?
Probably not. At least not in the mainstream. But there are signs of life. Tools like Matrix and Element aim to bring back decentralized chat. Discord, which started for gamers, now serves communities much like IRC once did. Even Telegram channels echo the broadcast-style vibe of old IRC rooms.
There is a growing push toward minimal, privacy-first tools. The values of IRC still resonate. It just takes effort to find them.
In Conclusion
Slack ate IRC. It offered a better experience for most people and changed how teams communicate. But in doing so, it buried a culture that many of us still miss.
Not because it was better in every way, but because it was ours. Messy, open, and deeply human.