Oh look discourse I feel comfortable participating in b/c I've been through it all.
IRC died because IRCv3 was a toxic cesspool of conflicting egos.
Discord/etc isn't usable because it is proprietary. The things I talk about with people could be seriously dangerous if kept in a proprietary system.
Matrix is a laughable protocol with terrible ideas on "security" and "usability", and their main client is a bloody web app.
Going forward, my primary form of comms over IP will be Masto and XMPP.