How-to guide for acting responsibly and sustainably (in terms of having fun) on the internet involved in a particular web based fandom
Also an analysis of MCYT fan culture on twitch twitter reddit etc from a noob who only has them for her current hyperfixation to those either slightly younger and newer or newly exhausted.
Some stuff Iâve realized:
There are smart streamers/creators and there are less experienced streamers and some stuff that is creator side issues/fixes, as well as stuff that you can do.
Tommy is actually one of the smartest streamers Iâve been watching recently and his stream inspired this, he keeps people engaged with music and memes but heâs also picked up on some stuff to make issues more bearable, in fact Sleepy boys got a lot of this stuff down that dream team is still learning.
CALL âBLANKâ TALK TO âBLANKâ
Hereâs what you as a chat member can do for this, consider it rude to talk/ask for someone else in a stream. Call other people out for it. Perhaps a â¤ď¸ creator/moderator support â¤ď¸
What the streamer can do: the LULW meme (I first saw in Tommyâs chat is genius even though he did not create it, also F1NN pointed this problem out well) train ur chat to do this and they will keep themselves in check, garnering some creator specific pride
What you can do: realize that whatever you want to say has been said a thousand times, and ponder the uselessness of this endeavor unless itâs a collaborative joke and itâs in good fun
What the creator can do: donât be afraid to put chat in follow only or sub only for a few minutes. Also acknowledge when chat is trying to tell you something even if just to refute it, people will just keep going if they think that you arenât responding bc you didnât see it
What you can do: I know itâs difficult but not only should not spreading it be a priority but also not refuting it by badmouthing everyone it just escalates things. You may be baby raging but someone else is LMFAOing and it turns out calling someone a horrible human being for smth they type on a whim makes them defensive. Also if you are that person, respect boundaries my dude, they very creator to creator.
What streamer can do: donât take chat too seriously, call them out & remind them itâs just a joke. Turns out that most people actually get jokes on the internet but as itâs easy to OVERREACT and EXAGGERATE by TYPING IN CAPITAL LETTERS itâs hard to tell, especially when itâs thousands of people. (Wilbur is very good at this.) Chat is basically a mewling dramatic child bc itâs form of expression is so two dimensional
What you can do: put up or shut up. You have your moment to be proud that you all came from the same place, then adapt to whatever is being streamed. It can be alright to be proud and advertise whoever it is to the new streamer IF they welcome it bc they are grateful but if itâs not appropriate donât, if you donât like the new content leave (TapL had an issue with this recently)
What streamers can do: Be careful raiding non mutuals, it can go really well such as Michael having a riot and getting pissbaby on trending or the person could not be ready for all the attention kinda like that Collin controversy, a little, someone could not be used to literally thousands of people suddenly holding them to a different standard. Sending a friendly message is a nice idea, channeling chat to a goal can prevent them from creating their own and becoming overdemanding
What you can do: So basically Dream Team is in a unique position that it is growing basically exponentially. This means that a lot of people are arriving that donât know everything and may take smth seriously thatâs not meant to be taken seriously or vice versa. Fun fact on the internet we are communicating with like 10% of the ways we can in person, the internet is handicapped communication. So if you are not new, gently remind someone of the facts of the situation (aka dreams face reveal really being more of a business move than a sensitive one) if you are new, please refrain from making general judgments or PSAs and stuff before you are around for a while, they get annoying and overdramatic
What the streamer can do: for the love of god have mods, Dream started out on twitch with no mods and thousands of viewers and it was almost a crime, it was pure chaos. Keep your old VODS accessible if possible, and Q and Aâs too, they save a lot of time
What you can do: ok so as someone newish here I can say definitively that a lot of the internet culture words in this corner of the internet change rapidly. To âSTANâ is so much more of a meme then it once was, same with âsimp,â both words have been softened so that someone casually enjoying fanart and whatnot may call themselves a Stan as a joke and for comradery to fit in with the rapidly growing fan base and thatâs all it is to them. Even if you still entertain the more serious versions of these, please recognize that that isnât the same for everyone. The number of actual crazy obsessive people is very low % I promise you, but this is another problem with such a large group of people is that may not be a small number of people, even if they are a very low %, as techno put it SO well, you gather enough people and a couple of them will be serial killers, all you can do is say âmurder is cringeâ and move on. The other problem is that itâs hard to recognize that these Stan accounts may be a very small part of someoneâs lives but they compartmentalize so that all their energy on this topic goes to this one account, maybe coz itâs embarrassing, or their IRLS donât understand, maybe coz theyâre multifaceted. Again a problem with Dream team being so new/big is that there is so much new creation based on it all at once, bc it doesnât have years of history and ideas that have become outdated itâs all new and exciting to the person who found it yesterday. So chill. If you genuinely are one of those few crazy people, also chill but as advice from someone who has this as their current hyperfixation, realize that saying less, posting less, outputting less, may be better for you. Chances are whatever you want to say has been said a thousand times, so ponder this and turn off your phone
What creators can do: this is more in the realm of unique situations, so the majority of my advice is Godspeed. What else you can do is remind your audience that you are a person, Wilbur has also done this, pointing out that itâs not wholesome to say youâre a Stan of someone bc they are âunproblematic.â Having a second account like dream and skeppy do is also ideal. Also only in the rhelm of my imagination, but perhaps pick your battles carefully âtalk lessâ like my buddy Burr said. If youâre growing fast itâs probably a realization that people are probably going to defend you regardless and sometimes giving more attention to someone either gives them more credence OR it sends an army of your defenders to rage against someone who doesnât deserve such a harsh response. Instead of realizing that whatever you want to say has been said a thousand times, realize that what you say will be multiplied with the force of everyone who agrees. I can only imagine that having safe IRLS to talk to is increasingly important. Finally, F1NN5TER said itâs difficult to be affected by positive and negative stuff when you get so much attention, and what Iâve seen from people whoâve made it and are actually happy, itâs important not to be desensitized to the position you have, I know Iâd have difficulty, but practicing genuine gratefulness for just like 5 minutes occasionally can assure that you donât take things for granted. This goes out to everyone, everyone can and should be more grateful if they want to be happier
TWITTER VERSES REDDIT AND GENERAL SOCIAL MEDIA EXHAUSTION
In the last few months Iâve been introduced to a few platforms for the very first time. Itâs made me realize that while all of them have General bad stuff about them (the people who own these places are despicable and they take your time and eyes like lotus eaters they do not have your interests at heart and the attention economy needs to be regulated for how deliberately addictive they make it but thatâs another rant) and from speaking to people in masks and online waaaay more often in quarantine Iâve realized that there are certain deficiencies that make it tiring and ineffective, but from what I can gather I dislike twitter more than others for a few reasons the biggest being the bandwagon effect that it has. On someplace like Reddit or Pinterest or Tumblr, you seek out places to speak on your particular topic. You follow a tag or a board or a subreddit specifically for that topic. On Twitter, the topic comes to you, with disastrous consequences. Having a trending hashtag is one of the worst inventions on social media because it causes people who donât know or care about something to give an unsolicited opinion. It also leads people to take themselves too seriously, bc dream team has taught me, itâs ridiculously easy to create one if you exist in unity, it literally only takes a couple thousand people to get smth on trending, which is a small part of a twitch audience and an even smaller part of a YouTube audience. Itâs a horrible gauge for what the average person is thinking about and whatâs popular, especially bc of the nature of stuff that gets on trending. Half the time thereâs the trend of people genuinely talking about a topic and the other half is people reacting to it being on trending! So say you and a couple thousand of your buddies get âhitlers ballsâ on trending, it gets blown way out of proportion by people LMFAOing to it being on trending. Numbers lie bc of the people behind them taking them out of context. Like twitch, you are extremely limited in how you communicate, especially with the dreaded text limit. Which leads to more people overreacting or overreacting to what they think is an overreaction. Also another thing Iâve realized is nice about reddit is itâs passive down vote system. Instead of being a separate dislike which could fuel rage it instead keeps people in check, as generally scuffed ideas canât get as much traction, it lets people check themselves, but doesnât wipe out dissenting opinions bc you can still actively seek out controversial ideas. Twitter seeks your attention through outrage and itâs exhausting, itâs stupid, and itâs outdated. (And it definitely doesnât represent humanity so stop taking it so seriously) The main lesson about this rant is to tune into multiple sites when youâre outraged, chances are the only upset ones are a very very small minority on Twitter that donât gain as much traction elsewhere.
Take everything with a grain of salt, get some tougher skin, when in doubt donât say anything, treat others like you want to be treated, and thereâs a radical idea that you are accountable for your actions/words morally and not in fact by the multiplicity of distant people.
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