i prefer the irc's for general internet stuff.
all the forums i visit besides this one are tied to a specific subject and are also local (or at least have a local subforum)... this is the only general forum and the only anonymous forum i visit. before this it was genmay (and there was a large multi-year gap in between me quitting that forum and me starting to post on this forum)... and i only ended up there because of the [h].
Im really shocked that IRC is still at all popular.