I've tried to get into IRC but the public servers have so many dead channels. On the one channel I did find active someone called me a racial slur because I use Windows.

I wish there were more people using these alternative, somewhat decentralized services that weren't just tech people. Whenever I see some cool new fediverse technology or alternative protocl (e.g gemini), 99% of the conversation is just people talking about the technology itself. I originally joined facebook because I had friends on there, not so we could talk about the tech behind facebook