Nah, that's just kids; adults don't have time for following a Discord per every topic they're interested in.

Then again, adult life has a way of sucking nerdiness out of people, so maybe OP's right in a way.

some nerds have private slack or zulip instances

> adults don't have time for following a Discord per every topic they're interested in.

Funny, I do just that, despite having a bunch of pets and a full-time job - I follow at least 30 game-specific discords. You must be thinking of people compulsively checking notifications like a social media addict?

I feel sorry for anyone who uses Discord like that. Thankfully, you don't have to since many communities now have mini-wikis inside of the Discord to organize the FAQ/common knowledge.

lol not discord. we are in IRC.

Where? I miss IRC so badly, but don't know where to go there.

I run a small network, but this might come across as advertising. It’s been running for 20 years now.

People come and go, but its wild how the community spirit largely remains, even with significant changes in the lifestyle of the people that have been frequenting the network for a large segment of that time.

anyway, the network is:

* ircs://irc.darkscience.net:6697/darkscience

* https://darkscience.net

* https://www.darkscience.net/webirc/

Same. I'm just 'floating around' now. Good times in #startups ages ago.

Liberal chat. We're also on discord and Mastodon.

Libera chat*