Please keep IRC IRC!

Can’t we even have chat software that’s just chat software these days?
https://thelounge.chat/

Modern features Push notifications, link previews, file uploads, and more bring IRC to the 21st century.

Translation: Make Everything Discord Again (MEDA).

Always connected Remain connected to IRC servers while you are offline. Forget about bouncers. Resume where you left off on any device.

Question: why do we need to participate in the forced always-online bullcrap?

Responsive interface The client works smoothly on every desktop, smartphone and tablet.

Text-only is as responsive as it gets, no CSS necessary.

Free and open-source The Lounge is open source and licensed under the MIT license.

OK, fair enough.

Cross platform It doesn’t matter what OS you use. The Lounge just works wherever Node.js runs.

Aka, only works on already super bloated OSs and/or ultra bloated browsers with at least 2 PB of RAM (for long term use, though perhaps the processor might already be worn out by the time Node.js finally gets too bloated to run on 1 PB of RAM anyway).

Multi-user support Supports multiple user accounts. Share your server with your friends!

Meanwhile, normal IRC doesn’t even have any user accounts, so no need to share anything.
Just let IRC be IRC, if you really need to have bloatware chat soyware, there’s already Discord, Matrix, Rocket.chat, Slack, Skype, and 100s more Discord-wanabee “alternatives”.
IRC, XMPP, Mumble, and Tox are really the only good chat protocols left that don’t attempt to lure Discord sheep in (apart from individual clients like Dino and since recently Gajim), which are all too happy to remain vendor-locked into Discord no matter how hard you try.