Indeed. I'm the seemingly rare creature who was able and willing to jump through all the IRC hoops but can still understand the people who maybe can't but certainly won't.

I dunno, I get people on IRC all the time using web clients, there aren't many hoops to jump through to get on it. You don't even have to register either.

Yeah, sure if you just want to send and receive text synchronously from a public channel, each feature past that point and you have to break open your computing history book and learn some arcane incantations.