Yeah, it's a lot like IRC with modern features (inline file, gifs, emoticons, blah blah). Except there's built in scroll history and you can search, so those are a lot better than IRC was without a bunch of extra tools.

And, while you run your own discord "server" that you can invite and ban and whatever from, it's all centralized on one company's infrastructure. It's pretty good really but just like IRC it's 95% hanging out 5% anything useful. And worse if you let just anyone in.