@strypey I'm afraid your argument that "IRC is fragmented" doesn't really hold. First of all, IRC clients tend to be friendly for multi-server and multi-channel use. No weird stuff.

Slack however is extremely fragmented. Despite being a single company running a single service, they don't even have Single Sign On (remember, IRC has no sign on at all, problem solved).

So the UX of the IRC protocol is far superior to Slack's UX. Whether any specific client is better or worse than others is up to the individual to decide. But with IRC, you can create your own (or use !fs and just pre-configure/rebrand etc.). With Slack, everyone are forced to use some specific client ordained by the superior Slacksters of Capitalism.