[coldpie]

Yup. We use it for chat internally at work, with a gateway to our internal Matrix server, which about half of our folks use. It's also used for most programming communities. I work on Wine, where we use IRC, and have gotten help from systemd, KDE, Gnome/mutter, etc channels. It's very much alive in techy circles. I kind of prefer this, it keeps the low-content GIF/emoticon posters segregated out of the areas I do real work. Kind of like how HN being plaintext-only keeps discussion relevant and high quality.

I also have a small group of online-only friends (there are literally four of us) who I have been chatting with on IRC every single day for more than 10 years.

IRC isn't perfect. It isn't even good. Its major failing is its lack of offline persistence, and I don't see that being solved within the protocol. But I refuse to switch to proprietary communications platforms, so it's still the best. Matrix seems like the best option for a modern chat experience, but non-web-browser support isn't there yet.