People like that are often still considered "technical" by the majority of people out there. Registering your nickname is still something that is more involved than sign up for any other web based chat service in the modern era.
Not to mention that people need to know about these are options.
You might scoff and roll your eyes, because to you, it seems easy. But I have seen it first hand for many years. Various online communities (forums, subreddits) I was involved in tried to set up chat side communities through IRC. They never really took of even with heavy promotion and sometimes nifty integrations with the accounts people already had.
Then Discord entered the scene, you only had to post a discord link. Because it was just one click the discord servers would often have more people in them in the period of week than the IRC servers ever had in years.
Er, yes - it's certainly true you can't use something you're unaware of.
Noting that I'm on lots of channels with lots of people that have never registered their nickname - agreed that it's seen as a necessity by many though.
I assume you mean the discords saw much higher levels of engagement. Just looking at numbers joined isn't the best comparison, I've seen many with huge member counts but only a handful of people interacting there (not that IRC is any different in that respect).
No scoffing or eyerolling here, I'm not suggesting it's easy.
Not to mention that people need to know about these are options.
You might scoff and roll your eyes, because to you, it seems easy. But I have seen it first hand for many years. Various online communities (forums, subreddits) I was involved in tried to set up chat side communities through IRC. They never really took of even with heavy promotion and sometimes nifty integrations with the accounts people already had.
Then Discord entered the scene, you only had to post a discord link. Because it was just one click the discord servers would often have more people in them in the period of week than the IRC servers ever had in years.