The tone of that blog post is a bit unhinged. Taking a break to talk about cancel culture, and the definitely-real hundreds of complaints Lee has received about it...
as well as the "tens of thousands of messages of love and support we have received". So at least 20,000 people took the time to write a message of support for an irc network that has 60k members, by their own count
It could have just been one spambot, they don't say from how many users the messages came.
we've received tens of thousands of messages of support. thanks, gary!