Actually, the modern answer is "use something other than IRC", which is partly why Discord became so popular with gamers.
The answers to changing user tastes is not to proclaim their tastes are wrong. That's the attitude displayed by a lot of IRC server operators and prolific IRC users, and it's that refusal to adapt that's driving IRC into obsolescence.
Maybe those people are ok with an ever-dwindling userbase, and if so that's great. But I'd like to see a Renaissance of IRC to the detriment of proprietary walled gardens like slack and Discord.