To be honest, who on HN actually uses IRC anymore? Going on feeenode 5 years ago, it already felt lifeless. How can something already dead commit suicide :smile:. Maybe there were some obscure side hold outs?
Are they actually active discussing things for a substantial period of time? Or just lurking afk in the background. I recall joining and then there barely being any discussion in chats, mostly just user action spam.
"user action spam" suggests to me that you had join/part messages displayed. Turn those off in your client. With those on, no wonder you couldn't see any signal through the noise. After that, just find the good channels, there's quite a few depending on what you're into.