If you remember using teamspeak or ventrillo… Their is a FOSS alternative called mumble that works similarly. Its essentially the closest to what you’re asking that has both VOIP and other features. Some communities especially mmorpg clans and gaming clans still use it. Idk how popular it is in general though. Discord is supported by huge donations which is why they’ve been able to dominate, but teamspeak/mumble still exist and essentially are the same thing but less modern.

https://www.mumble.info/

IRC and Matrix are both IM systems but are alternatives to discord if that’s all the functionality you seek. Matrix is also in the fediverse.

I’m pretty sure mine is available but I still opted to use a period and birth year. That said I have/had many fake name google, yahoo, and AOL emails so I’m a mixed bag.

It’s about god dang time, especially with the FPS drops it used to have when it got busy perhaps we can see MGS4 buttery smooth now.

I grew up late to the early internet days as I am just about as old as google itself. However, even in my time I remember light saber mouse cursors, neo colored backgrounds, the stupid but adorable fairy animations all over myspace, and websites auto playing Queen songs. There was character that we put it as a community.

While I may not be the biggest fan of the flat design of the lemmy website and how clinical it all seems, the FOSS nature leads to so much customization with apps and so forth while the content y’all produce is absolutely magical. If I see an ad I know it’s cause one of you have something unique to actually show off and it’s not just bots pushing me to open my wallet. Thank you, you lovely bunch of adorable dufuses.

As a lemmygrad user it really just took a one paragraph summary of myself to get in, not too hard and was approved I think within the hour. They just want to keep out the trouble makers and I’ve done WAY MORE for low pop discord servers so no biggie.