CHATTERS GUIDE

---THE CHATTER'S GUIDE FOR SPERGS AND AUTISTS---
#1. Lurk before you post
	New to the stream? Or maybe you just tuned in? Read the room before you chat.
What are other chatters talking about? What is the streamer saying? Is it a reading stream? A zatsudan? Maybe something bad happened and the streamer is venting?
	Don’t be the person that types “hello looking cuter than usual today” the first second of you tuning in without listening in beforehand. It makes you look clueless or at worst - like you're just seeking attention. You can make your presence known by adding to the conversation, instead of by derailing it. Try to be a beneficial chatter, not a detrimental one.

#2. Be original
    Memes are funny. They can help people feel like they are part of a community. But every joke has a shelf life. You can only repeat it so many times before it becomes unfunny, stale or even annoying. You must let old jokes die if you wish to replace them with new ones.
    To quote another anon "Speaking in coded memes is laziness on both the content creator and chatters and deflects responsibility from creating original, meaningful, lasting jokes for the channel." Think about all the things people like in media: Character arcs. Story progression. A dynamic, evolving, changing narrative. Don’t be lazy by settling for the same old 5 jokes every stream.

#3. Not your discord
    This applies to both streamers and chatters. The stream should be its own separate entity. The obscure inside jokes or references you make in threads, Discords, Twitter and DM’s will make newer people feel left out if you rely on them too much. It’s not the end of the world if you make them, just keep it to a minimum instead of using them as a substitute for twitch emotes.
    When the stream is live, you're just one of the many chatters. There’s many other people who want to talk and add to the discussion. Some of them might be new to the stream and the inside jokes and insular topics might make them feel left out. People in this very thread have complained about it, imagine how a complete outsider feels.
This insular culture may have just lost the streamer yet another viewer. It chokes future growth. So try to be mindful of lurkers and newfriends.

#4. Respect the keyfabe
I can't formulate this any better myself so this is another quote I’m taking directly from an anon:
    “Read the comfort level of the streamer and the culture of their community. Don’t bump up to the streamer’s comfort level but match it and tone it down. Remember that you’re interacting with a character, not the person playing them and you need to respect the kind of character they have. Even though Yoro and Little_S joke about cum all the time you should wait until they bring the stream to that level first.” So don’t be forceful.

#5. Ask questions
    You don’t have to be a funny memelord to be a chatter. For a lot of people it's much easier to be another friendly face who joins streams and engages in good faith with questions that help start a conversation. The onus on filling dead air may lie in the hands of the streamer but as a chatter you can make their job a lot easier with little effort.
	Just make sure to keep your questions civil and at least tangentially related to the context of the stream (if it’s a non-gaming stream then random questions about games might not be the best fit, unless it’s a zatsudan.) If you’re not sure what to ask, go back to rule#1 and get a feel for what sort of topics come up and what the streamer likes.

#6. MY DOG DIED. LETS GOOOOOOO
    If you’ve read and followed all the rules up till this point, then this really wouldn't even be a point of discussion. The streamer is there to entertain. They are not a personal therapist. Even if they state that they want to help people out through their streams, a person can only take so much.
    Watching the streamer MIGHT help you de-stress or escape from reality for the day, but that’s as far as you should take it. Take that motivation and dopamine and use it to improve yourself IRL.

#7. Compliments
    This will bother some people, so I left it for last. Tone it down on the empty compliments.
You can only call someone “cute” so many times before the word loses all meaning. A lot of the people in this community might have low self-esteem (by their own admission) but spamming compliments will do nothing for them past a certain point.
    You’re just forcing them to conform to your opinion of them, rather than letting them build themselves up through their own efforts and giving them positive affirmation when they need it. Even if you were to swap one compliment for another, the impact will be severely lessened if you already showered that person with praise. There are appropriate and inappropriate compliments, but there's also appropriate and inappropriate times to make them.
There are even those who become uncomfortable when they receive too much praise. That might be funny to you in a “Oh, they’re just flustered" type of way, but they may not feel the same. So use them sparingly.