Conversation

IRC fans talking about "emoji reactions" remind me of evangelical Christians who say atheists "just want to sin."

IRC Evangelist: IRC has literally all capabilities of other "modern" messaging systems, except emoji reactions. Literately the only reasons anyone would ever choose any other message system over IRC is for the emoji.

Me: If somemany sends me a message when I'm offline, I want to be able to read it when I get back online. That's a significant feature IRC lacks that other messaging systems (including SMS, XMPP, Matrix, email, ActivityPub, and all proprietary messaging systems) have.

IRC Evangelist: Oh, you said the "M"-word? You use that trash? You must have chosen Matrix for the emoji reactions!

Me: No, I didn't. I use Matrix to chat with people in other time zones, and I want to be able to read messages they send when I'm offline. It's all about chat history, not emoji.

IRC Evangelist: You're lying! Nobody cares about viewing "history" in an instant messager: that's what public forums are for! You must have chosen Matrix for the emoji reactions.

Me: No, I do not want all my messages to be on public forums. I talk with my parents using SMS, including some personal info that I don't want to be scrapable on a forum. But I do want to be able to read a message they sent me when I'm in a zone without reception.

IRC Evangelist: Well why don't you use IRC to talk to your parents instead? It's not like you need emoji reactions?

Me: Because IRC lacks chat histo--

IRC Evangelist: OH NO! My evil employer is forcing me to use Discord for work! Why not IRC? It's not like anyone needs emoji reactions for work! And emoji reactions are literally the only capability Discord has that IRC doesn't.

IRC Evangelist's Evil Employer: Um, if an employee is out sick we want them to be able to read messages that were sent while they were out. Also, maybe sometimes you'll need to look at a message from last week, which IRC makes difficult.

IRC Evangelist: But I can work without Emoji! All that other stuff you said is totally irrelevant!

Signal user: We use signal for end-to-end encryption.

IRC Evangelist: No you don't: you must have chosen Signal for emoji reactions. You can set up OTR+TLS for IRC encryption. Clearly security can't be the reason you chose signal.

Signal user: Um, I don't think OTR is as secure as Signal. Also setting it up is not as beginner friendly.

IRC Evangelist: Beginner friendly? That's just a euphemism for emoji reactions! I knew you really just chose Signal for the emoji!

Me: Hey, look what I found. It's a draft specification for adding chat history to IRC. This is great! If it gets completed and widely adopted, then I'll be able to move some of my existing group chats to IRC.

IRC Evangelist: Nooooooooo! You must not add any new features to IRC: you'll ruin it with emoji reactions.


#IRC #SMS #XMPP #Matrix #Email #Discord #Signal #Emoji #ChatHistory #IRCv3