and, of course, because hiveminds in science fiction have to resemble our known rules of language so we can understand it, it just borrows first-person-plural and third-person-object even though it's not really?? like, a group agreeing?? or an insentient object

so like, we-us-it/them to refer is used in fiction to represent hiveminds and people do suggest that it's fourth person because it blends the boundary between personal and collective, however obviously since it's not real, it's just kind of like, a stretch

if anything, this fictional convention of how you refer to a hivemind is just like, a quirky use of first person. but "chat" is like, truly different

however, the word "chat" not only invokes the group of "chatters" as a grammatical object, but treats them as a singular hivemind, and not only that, it's--by virtue of a streamer's relationship to their chat--a direct address like the second person plural "you"

not only that, "chat" is often used by a member speaking IN the chat to refer to the collective, sans self. for example, if one twitch viewer types in the chat, "chat is going crazy rn," they're performing like, a half-detachment from the collective to observe-self-estranged

because of this, "chat" as used by: streamers to refer to not a selection of viewers or the whole of them, but rather like, the ambiguous general nascent spirit behind viewership, as well as "chat" used by viewers of the streamer to refer to themselves--sans them, is unique

up until now we've only ever imagined how people would interact with a hivemind and how a hivemind would interact with people and other components of itself sans itself.

and then it just happened and we made a completely intuitive pronoun for it and we just didn't even realize we solved a trivia problem that creative writing professors have been agonizing over for decades

another interesting example that answers the question "isn't this just y'all":

a good counterargument is that when people talk about chat, they use "they" to refer to the group, rather than just "chat," like "chat told me they don't like you." this would make it both a noun and versatile turn of phrase rather than like, a dedicated pronoun

it should be said for people who aren't in the know: the reason i say it might become a pronoun and not a noun is that gen z are using "chat" while not streaming/watching a stream in a mostly joking way but it makes SENSE because its referring to the sum of "whoever can reply"

@angeIsighting >also twitch chat is not an actual hivemind

@angeIsighting Chat is an inefficient hive mind. The majority of them share the same opinions or goals, though communicated through the text chat instead of a connected mind.

@angeIsighting said by someone whose never joined a dougdoug stream