Twitch Basics
Twitch Basics
Chat Fundamentals
GachiBass
An integral part of the Twitch website and what makes it so enjoyable is the memes that the viewers and streamers create and use in their emotes and the eventual "meta" that inevitably comes from it. What I mean by meta is essentially memes that are acceptably funny/usable at the time and not over-used, stale or "cringe", unless in an ironically funny way. This is always changing ever so quickly but with the fast moving, non-stop running, platform of twitch and the portion of the streamers that stream daily they are able to mostly to keep up with the everchanging meta. To be clear, an emote like Kappa is not necessarily part of the meta that I am referring to as Kappa will most likely always be around and it is an integral part of communicating through global emotes.
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The gif on this page is an example of one of the few emotes/memes that have withstood the changing metas over the years of Twitch and managed to stayed relevant as it is still used today, largely due to the story and meaning behind it. (To simplify, gachi is based off a male adult film actor and is used in chat many different ways but mainly when there is some sort of guy on guy sexual interaction or joke made, but more detail coming soon) It is also important to remember that relatively important and long lasting emotes like this one will have several other variations of emotes based off the original emote or meme. (Ex. GachiGASM GachiBASS, GachiHYPER) Emotes can also be in the form of animated gifs like the one shown here, but you will only be able it see it with the proper extension.
Chat Fundamentals
The Twitch Chat shown on this page is an example of a relatively medium sized stream and chat, moving at a medium speed without any extensions for emotes installed. As you can see with the subscriber badges (See Bits & Badges for more detail), even they can have memes integrated within and usually do.
In this case they used the earlier example of gachi as the foundation for their subscriber emotes. Twitch is amazing in this sense as everything seems to be connected across multiple chats, streams, and even other media platforms like YouTube and Reddit.
Chat Fundamentals
When getting into this topic there is almost too much to cover and it may sound overwhelming at first, but Twitch truly is something that requires you to pay attention and keep up with a fair amount of content in order to feel in touch with the communities and memes. There are only some streamers that really influence these aspects more than others, and of course a lot of it is subjective depending on your perspective and what streamer you watch. Twitch chat is so complex under the surface that at points it can feel more like an uncontrollable force of nature to be observed and studied for the simple fact that it is fascinating. Additional analysis of chat coming soon....