You joke but it really is an indictment against decentralised protocols that IRC is still so primitive that it can't even handle images.

No doubt someone will reply "that's not what it's for!"

That's an indictment against IRC. Anyone could have come up with an open protocol, IRC-killer but XML happened and we ended up with a morass of garbage.

That's an indictment against IRC, but I guess GP's point is that when it's everyone's business it often ends up being no-one's business