There's like a million options for text only chats. The reason discord is popular is that it has voice and video calls, screen sharing, and text chat. Most people don't want to need 3 or 4 different programs with 3 or 4 different accounts to use those features.
That is the appeal of discord, and there are very few options that offer a similar, seamless experience. It is (moving towards was) the "right tool for the job" for all of those features, all in a single tool.
You can stream video and voice over IRC?
That's like half the reason people use discord.
There's like a million options for text only chats. The reason discord is popular is that it has voice and video calls, screen sharing, and text chat. Most people don't want to need 3 or 4 different programs with 3 or 4 different accounts to use those features.
That is the appeal of discord, and there are very few options that offer a similar, seamless experience. It is (moving towards was) the "right tool for the job" for all of those features, all in a single tool.