ICMP pings and IRC pings kinda have the same goal, but are quite different. One is used to check if the target computer has a working Internet connection and does not notify anything other than the target computer sending a single reply packet back and the other is pretty much used to check if the target user is still alive and in front of their computer.



And yeah, despite being not annoying at all, some people still finds ICMP pings annoying for various reasons (such as the risk of DDoS making your equipment slow down or just security, sometimes you don't want to tell everyone you exist at this IP so you block requests). They usually block it on their router or server or they check its rate for DDoSes and attacks.



So yeah, better take precautions so some people wouldn't take it as an attack.