idk about black hat stuff but I owe a huge amount of gratitude to the freenode (now irc.libera.chat) community that helped me learn C++ 12 years ago and to the #linux / #debian / #arch-linux channels to which I go for help even to this day.

I feel like people dichotomize too much... I would never don a black hat, but the world is much grayer than some make it out to be.

I simply wish to explore friend :-)

I understand, but afaik libera.chat does not even offer grey hat channels, it's mostly above board but certainly alive and well

The line between gray and black is so fuzzy it's best to keep such things offline, thanks for the lead on purely technical discussions :3

IRC is still a thing. There's a certain kind of IRC user who will never allow themselves to use Discord or Slack...