Internet Relay Chat, or IRC (Q73 on Wikidata), is the name of an Internet protocol
made in August 1988 by Jarkko «WiZ» Oikarinen during his time at the
University of Oulu in Finland when he wanted to make a program that
could be used for real-time Internet chat and messaging. Unlike, say,
Discord or Skype, IRC is fully free to view its source code and make
your own chat rooms, rooms that are hosted on your own server, meaning
that there is no organization, big or small, that can tell you what you
can and cannot post.
This also means, again, like Discord or Skype, which have or will at some point in time go offline, IRC is a protocol, so it can last as long as computers can last.
The history of IRC is actually long and impressive, covering much of the early Internet.
There are limitations to IRC, much like there are limitations to anything. Some are that to see a message (at least in the vanilla, unmodified version), you actually have to be online and connected to the server, even if someone direct messages you, once you leave, any messages won't come through for you.
If you think of it like real life, an IRC server is like a building with rooms that you can enter and chat in, so once you leave, you no longer get any messages, much like being in a real life party. Something regular IRC uses defatly go to a lot.
IRC is also text only; this is great if you want to view it on an older, slower computer, but to upload and send images, videos, or any files, you're going to have to use a third-party website for that.
IRC can also seem confusing to new users as there are a few commands
that you need to remember, although this is only hard for new people as
they've not done it before. Commands like /join #channel,
/me waves, /nick Cass are
easy to pick up on.
There are, of course, benefits to using IRC, as mentioned above, it can be ran on almost any computer with a keyboard and screen (the thicker the better), unlike Discord, WhatsApp, or others, you can use what is called a client, so think of this as a program that you can use to connect to an IRC server. There are countless clients that one can use, HexChat, Quassel, Halloy, Konversation are all a few examples. With these, you can do a lot with the vanilla client compared to closed-source programs. Change the colors in your screen, change date formats, change font. There was even an IRC client by Microsoft that allows you to make comics with what people post.
Despite it being way after the golden age of IRC, to say it's dead would simply not be true. tilde.chat, for example, is popular for people on the Fediverse and small web, libera.chat is probably the most active server with lots of channels (and is actually used by Wikipedia and sister projects).
Another benefit of IRC is that setting up something like a bot) is actually quite easy.
IRC doesn't always hold your hand and the way it does things is a little different from modern apps, but it's definitely worth chatting on there.
Possibly! IRC itself is good for a number of reasons, as seen above, although there are a number of outdated features, or lack there of, that this protocol has that someone used to more modern forms of online communication might struggle with.
These things include...
No native image, video, or file uploader. If you want to share a file with someone, you're going to have to find a host (Google Drive, OneDrive, etc) that will let you do this.
No way of voice calling. There are workarounds like VoIRC, but this is kind of hacky.
People have to be online for you to message them. On some channels, there are bits that will send a message to a user next time they post in said channel, but this is not the case for every channel ever.
No user profiles. Not a thing, the most you can
do is run a /whois <user> that will say what their
full username is, plus IP address and what channels you're both
in.
Not being able to edit messages. You can't edit a message, or even delete it. Once it's sent, it's sent.
These limits can seem shocking and even confusing as to why someone would want to actually use IRC, but the thing is, IRC is good because it's just you and the other person, no distractions, just raw text.
IRC was cited on The Jargon File, and as the MDKwiki has mirrored that project, here is what the files wrote:
IRC: /I·R·C/, n.
[Internet Relay Chat] A worldwide «party line» network that allows one to converse with others in real time. IRC is structured as a network of Internet servers, each of which accepts connections from client programs, one per user. The IRC community and the Usenet and MUD communities overlap to some extent, including both hackers and regular folks who have discovered the wonders of computer networks. Some Usenet jargon has been adopted on IRC, as have some conventions such as emoticons. There is also a vigorous native jargon, represented in this lexicon by entries marked ‘[IRC]'. See also talk mode.
This page was last edited on 2026-09-09 03:47:20.
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