>There's a bunch of padding and avatars around each message. I know some people consider those things features, but I personally hate them.

They have compact mode that eliminates that stuff. I don't see avatars. I just see colored user names.

There are image embeds but I tend to see that as a positive, especially with some bot capabilities. For instance here is what the chat looks like in the server for one of the roguelikes I play, TOME4. https://i.imgur.com/WHFD7OA.png

You can see no avatars and it's just a bot-generated image that is relevant to the chat.