Pidgin 2.x (latest stable branch) is unfortunately over a decade behind at this point. The developers are working on a big rewrite (3.x) but it's nowhere near complete or ready for use yet.

In short, I wouldn't recommend Pidgin for someone who wants a modern messaging app.

Pretty certain pidgin relies on gtk2 which is pretty dead. Most of the supported protocols are also dead, or woefully outdated like XMPP and IRC.

They've been working on a version 3 for years but no idea if that will ever happen.

You must be joking