How much of that needs to relate to the memory usage though? Embedded media doesn't need to be loaded besides what's visible in the current channel and perhaps a bit of scrollback, perhaps some text and scrollback for other frequently viewed channels. Livestreams also shouldn't be taking memory unless you're watching, same with voice. Avatars and emotes would certainly take memory, but certainly not hundreds of megabytes of it.

EDIT: ignore me, I thought this was about WeChat, the Chinese messaging app, not weechat, the IRC client :(

> rich embedded media like images and videos

Yes

> live stream games to your friends on it

no (there's WeChat livestream (idk what it's called in English), but it's not discord style stream-your-desktop)

> talk with people

yes

> have profile avatars

yes

> use emotes

yes

> build bots that stream music to you

yes

> Even something completely simple such as snip a portion of your screen and paste it in the chatbox so others can see it immediately, without having to mess around with dodgy image upload sites

yes? you can paste stuff into wechat just fine. Think WhatsApp, not IRC

Idk where GP came up with 18MB tho, it's eating up 100 on my laptop right now.

I've sent plenty of pictures over DCC in my day. OBS lets me stream whatever to wherever at unlimited quality without paying.

The point is most of what Discord provides is low value for the resources it demands.

I could do that in 2007 with 256 MB of RAM.

Part of the issue is that 64-bit programs end up taking close to twice as much memory, because pointers are twice as big, instructions are longer, etc.

Higher screen resolution uses more memory too.

I'm sure dependencies / libraries have grown in size too, and yeah, using web for UI takes memory.