What do you mean by "tiny realm vibe"?

Are you on mostly smaller servers, or is it unrelated to server size?

You can definitely port the crushing silence/violent turmoil dichotomy of a large freenode room to Discord with enough users.

So often on discord i feel a vibe of "its our place our rules" something I never sensed on irc. People kick you blind at the first polite disagreement. IRC doesn't breed this to this extent even on the worst Channels I ran into. And o irc, kicks happen if someone abuses others a lot. Not if you voice a different opinion (again politely)

Hence my belief that discord makes people built tiny castles way too stiff.

to add a little, on IRC i often have a feeling I'm joining a topic, on discord I feel like joining a brand

people dont feel like they own #anxiety on freenode for instance..