Okay I’m just gonna say it.

I’m tired of our streaming culture being this black box of tribal knowledge with a mediocre focus on new streamer and new viewer education.

QUIT BLAMING NEW STREAMERS AND VIEWERS FOR NOT UNDERSTANDING ETIQUETTE WE ALL WROTE ON THE BACK OF A NAPKIN

- Don’t backseat
- Don’t self-promote
- Don’t call out lurkers
- Don’t spam
- Don’t send dumb messages
- Don’t curse
- Don’t talk politics
- Don’t talk in anything but English
- Don’t chat without reading the rules
etc.

The rules of etiquette for both streamers and viewers feels endless, and yet the only way to learn about them and why they exist is to break the rule yourself and get called out for it or to witness that happening to someone else.

Education is rare. Common is the iron fist.

Yes, Twitch has a rules popup.

No, it does not popup for EVERY new viewer.

Even if it did, our rules explain little and expect the reader to just “get it”.

What is backseating? What is spam? What is a lurker? What does “be cool” even mean?

Did you know in some LANDLOCKED states it's against the law to harpoon a whale out of the back of a moving truck?

Oddly specific? Yes.

Seemingly unrelated? Also yes.

Lacking context? Definitely.

This is how new viewers can see our "rules". That shouldn't be the case.

Rules are absolutely necessary to the successful functioning of a community. But we have collectively done an awful job at welcoming and educating new viewers to live stream culture.

And don’t even get me started on educating new streamers properly…

I never see anyone talking about this, so maybe it's not that big of a problem at the end of the day amongst everything else.

But it's something I care about deeply...

Someone (*cough* Twitch *cough*) should set a standard for etiquette, a place of codified rules that we have all agreed upon for both viewers AND streamers.

A unified codex that we can all point to, to better welcome new people into our corners of the internet.

I want that.