Everybody had ICQ. You probably are too young to remember, but ICQ was as commonly used as Instagram today.

ICQ was incredibly popular amongst “normies”, at least in Brazil. Much more so than amongst nerds who were mostly still on IRC.

Discord is incredibly noisy and information-dense and while maybe not for "normies", it’s definitely not just IT guys using it. Though I wonder how many people actually like to use it.

every single 'normie' i've seen use Discord can barely figure it out, they chase red badges across the UI all day and really have no clue about the paradigm at all.

They're there of course because some 'normie' thing of theres inevitably requires the sign-up of a discord for bonus game skins or some other such stupid shit, but the fact remains that they're clueless.

much like the average Outlook user, they're there because they were dragged into it by another element in their life (their job) and they really have no background or clue on how to use the piece of software, they just know they need to pretend and cite experience on the CV for a job.

Is there any proof that normies would not be on board with it? Discord is information dense and huge among normies.

I’m surprised how popular Discord is for as “IT guy” and information dense the UI is tbh.