Discord has a million deserted "servers" with redundant general channels. Peak IRC had a dozen or so large networks that often bundled a lot of e.g. adjacent FOSS projects. The chances of running into someone interesting a la the article anecdote was just higher.
Discord is a massive net negative for chatting on the internet because of this flaw imho.
Yeah, bouncers exist, but it should have been baked into the spec at some point.
