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[Thread] Parasocial Conversations
First things first. Before using sarcasm in chat, understand a few things. Streamers are juggling conversations and threads with others in the chat, as well as trying to maintain a certain expectation for their own entertainment whether
First things first. Before using sarcasm in chat, understand a few things. Streamers are juggling conversations and threads with others in the chat, as well as trying to maintain a certain expectation for their own entertainment whether
It’s gaming, art or even putting on a show. Lots of newer streamers are entering a period where they have active chats but are small enough to maintain a consistent relationship with the individual associated with their text. One of the common misconceptions that stems from this
Type of environment is an expectation that they’re capable of juggling the nuances of conversations with each associated name. So while some may be asking more legitimate or serious questions, others will throw in some kappas in between.
This is where you have a systemic issue between these two parties. One party may be “yeah my sarcasm is so obvious” but when trying to read a room, it’s relatively easy for them to ignore the fact that the streamer is looking at a chat that looks something like this
Person 1: serious
Person 2: emote
Person 3: actual friend
Person 4 sarcasm
Person 2: emote
Person 5: serious
Person 6: troll
Person 7: copy pasta
Person 4 sarcasm
Person 2: emote
Person 3: actual friend
Person 4 sarcasm
Person 2: emote
Person 5: serious
Person 6: troll
Person 7: copy pasta
Person 4 sarcasm
They’re constantly in a situation where they have to code switch in real time while handling what activity they’re doing.
This lack of social awareness makes it easy for someone to be like “I’m just kidding bro” but in reality those people don’t understand the difficulty of
This lack of social awareness makes it easy for someone to be like “I’m just kidding bro” but in reality those people don’t understand the difficulty of
Processing all this information at once. This becomes often attributed to why many streamers with maintainable audiences get so distraught. While on one hand you can tell them to suck it up and it’s part of the job, the other is bringing awareness since most people don’t stream
Others get into a reluctant phase where their audience understands that they’re in a vortex of emotions and just embody and embrace the wave of chat. For some reason this same expectation gets applied with the assumption that the streamer should treat it similarly.
Finally the attention seekers. They foster themselves into smaller communities knowing their voice will be heard. They tend to leave when streamers grow past this point. The toxicity stems from a realistic expectation that as a streamer grows larger they’ll be able maintain that
experience. Some people have different thresholds, but at some point it’s just easier to focus on being an entertainer for the masses. It’s always the attention seekers who complain when this shift happens and misconceive this as them not caring about their audience.
In reality. They’re the one who doesn’t care about the audience. They only care about that parasocial interaction. They didn’t want to support you, they just wanted to be seen. The overlap between those who use sarcasm and those who foster this behavior is frequent.
