Agreed, it's not that hard to use. But it's worse than other free solutions in some important ways, so whether people can use it matters less than whether they'll bother to.

As far as I can tell it'll continue to exist for communities that are on it, or maybe for new ones that are deliberately trying to select for the kind of person who's willing to deal with IRC's limitations. Those are both perfectly valid cases, not everything needs to be aimed at mass market adoption.

But beyond those groups, there are lots of nicer services that most people would prefer to use for one reason or another. And even if the self-hosted and/or free software leaning groups, Matrix looks more promising looking forward.