[lkramer]

I think it's inertia and age. I joined a few IRC channels when I was a teenager for topics I were interested (Tolkien and old Disney films) and poked around in a lot of other communities, but never really stuck with any in particular. Back then obviously I was looking for friends and chatting to random people. Eventually a small group moved from the Tolkien IRC channel I was on and created a small community of our own which over the years have dwindled to a handful of people, but some of us still stick around (and couldn't imagine going anywhere else). The only other IRC channel I'm on was built around a small message board for a group of highschool friends. The message board is still somewhat active, but the IRC channel is down to 2 members :) I'm now past 40. My social circles stays fairly static. I have tried joining new communities on Discord (and IRC) and generally failed. I don't think it's specifically IRC (although I much prefer its simplicity to Slack and Discord).