EFNet - NicheInterests/mistfunk GitHub Wiki
The history of the [IRC] is long and convoluted, but one can concisely state that it was on the EFNet (Eris-free) network of IRC servers on which the underground PC artscene conducted its business, begging for free art and artpack submissions on #ans and #ansi, running and playing rounds of The Blender compo in #blender, hobnobbing with computer musicians in #trax and Giltweasel's circle of poets in #poetry. Mist Classic folks would hang out in #mist and those of us on the West Coast would mostly chat with sceners in Hawaii and Australia because when it was prime time here, it was bedtime on the East Coast and Very Late Indeed over in Europe.
The culture of the EFNet was a little rough (only genteel relative to the Eris-inclusive A-net network that it initially split from) and it wasn't hard to stumble across channels that existed for cybercrime reasons, usually piracy-related. Crowkeeper felt strongly at the time that we needed to migrate from the EFNet to the DALnet, which would reserve nicknames and channels for users, but we opted to not remove ourselves from where the action was happening in that way.
Remnants of '90s artscene activity are still felt on the EFNet: #ans is synchronized (at least in one direction) via a [bot] [bridge] with the Sixteen Colors Discord, we still run Blender compos on the EFNet IRC, and it is also the home of historic and ongoing mIRCart activity.