I agree with you, but I also think people find Discord convenient because it's just 1 account and free to use.
I wonder if Lemmy and the rest of the fediverse can work here, or just anything where smaller free projects don't necessarily have to pay for and maintain their own community infrastructure, and still allow users to jump around without getting too locked in.
Trans dev here, I hear that hacker spaces aren't bad places to look. I wouldn't know though, too shy to actually show up -.-