YouTube Chat

On Tuesday nights, when the YouTube algorithm spits out another video of 'the latest YouTuber who regrets everything', Dani_92 enters the room with the link already copied to the clipboard. It's not the first time: since his mobile review channel stalled at 87 subscribers, he's been coming here to vent about what he doesn't dare upload. 'Does anyone else think this is a MrBeast script but with crocodile tears?' he writes, and in less than a minute, there are already three responses: a sad puppy meme, a 'Dani, upload the video anyway, I liked it' comment, and a five-message thread about whether the green screen in the background is the same one AuronPlay used in 2019. Dani didn't expect a response, but there he is, hooked again.

Here, we don't discuss YouTube as an abstract concept. We talk about how Ibai's water balloon short has better editing than El Rubius' documentary about Japan, whether Vegetta777 is still alive or a deepfake controlled by his team, and why no one mentions that Luzu and Luzugames are the same person but with different filters. There are debates that last for weeks — like the one about whether Willyrex betrayed TheWillyrex by changing his style — and others that die in three messages, like when someone asks 'what happened to DalasReview?' and the entire room responds with a RIP followed by a link to his last video, uploaded in 2017. There's also practical help: 'How do you prevent a politics video from being demonetized?', 'Does anyone know of affordable software for editing in 4K?', 'Where can you find legal bots to increase views? (serious question, no spam)'. The tone oscillates between dark humor — 'YouTube is the only job where you get fired for not having views but hired for having likes' — and pure nostalgia: 'Do you guys remember when HolaSoyGerman was funny?'

What makes this room unique isn't the topics, but how they're discussed. There's an unspoken code: if you mention PewDiePie, someone will automatically post a 'brofist'; if you talk about Fernanfloo, another person will respond with a 'what happened to your life, Fernan'. Regulars have internal nicknames: Jordi Wild is called 'the alien documentary guy', MisterJäeger is called 'the one who always uploads Minecraft gameplays but with a late-night show host voice'. On Sunday afternoons, when Spanish streamers are live, the room fills with messages like 'did you see IlloJuan's fail at minute 42?' or 'TheGrefg just got donated 500 bucks for saying a bad word on live stream'. There's an absurd tradition: every time a famous YouTuber announces they're 'retiring', someone opens a thread titled 'Bets: how long until they come back?' and people place bets on dates. No one ever wins, but everyone participates.

To join, all you need is a nickname and an IRC client (mIRC, HexChat, or even the webchat of