Opening a Fan Cafe
"That guy's Byeolstar blew up?"
I got the news right in the middle of a game. The Steam trash-tier title my viewers had recommended was nearly finished when word came through: the nameless drunk who'd picked a fight with me had been jumped by a swarm of mystery users and his Byeolstar had finally detonated.
"Ahem…."
I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel good. I couldn't exactly tell my viewers to go wreck the guy themselves — that would've been controversy bait — but deep down I'd been hoping he'd get a proper education. Hearing a viewer report that the flood of comments had finally forced him to shut down his Byeolstar page delivered a small, satisfying hit of catharsis.
"You're saying the Kabyungs blew up his Byeolstar? Isn't the real reason it exploded a complete mystery to everyone?"
It was a rare piece of good news mid-stream. I almost felt like I could power through the rest of today's content with real energy.
"Alright then…."
A little laugh slipped out. I'd deliberately phrased it like I was about to end the stream, and the reaction was this honest.
Current viewer count sat around twelve thousand. Three hours ago, when I'd gone live, it had been about twenty thousand — meaning a full eight thousand people had peeled off in the meantime. Those eight thousand were the floaters: people hopping stream to stream, sniffing around for whatever looked entertaining. The reason they'd left was simple. I'd been playing a Steam trash game with a reputation for splitting the audience, the kind of thing that was boring to watch as content.
The content I was about to run wasn't for floaters bouncing between channels. It was for my regulars. So I'd deliberately run a viewer purge — shaken off the ants — and sorted the crowd. The twelve thousand who hadn't left were my true fixed audience, the concrete layer.
Twelve thousand. A full twelve thousand people. Just looking at a number that grand made my chest swell. It made the scale of my channel feel real, and it also confirmed that the purge before the main content had been the right call.
Nobody can call this a bubble anymore. Anyone can see this is a major operation.
Anyway — the teasing ended there. My viewers, thrown into mass hysteria by the AoE crowd-control skill known as "ending the stream," were still monologuing as a collective when I announced the real content.
"Starting Part Two content now. No, I'm not ending the stream. You think a pro streamer like me would go live for a measly three hours and call it? Sorry to everyone who recommended the game, but Part One was pure bait content. A filter to leave only the viewers who'll stick around no matter what I play."
The parenthetical in the donation was kind of annoying. If that was intentional, it worked.
"Honestly, it's not anything grand enough to call content, but…."
I let the pause hang for a beat, then continued.
"I opened a fan cafe. Part Two is a tour of the brand-new fan cafe."
Opening a fan cafe. It was something I'd been planning for a while, and after meeting Nikang just the other day, I'd more or less locked it in as something I needed to do.
Even if I couldn't do Byeolstar for fan communication, a fan cafe felt doable. The idea of a one-way channel where only I posted photos and updates — Byeolstar — seemed inferior to a fan cafe where viewers could post on the boards too and keep the conversation two-way.
Watching other streamers, I'd noticed plenty of them had opened fan cafes as well. Some even used browsing the cafe as a content segment. The way they'd start a stream, or fill dead air when they ran out of things to do mid-broadcast, by reading posts their viewers had written — that had left an impression.
"I opened a cafe to phone it in? That's slander. Slander. Did the heartfelt care I put into making this for my fans — for my viewers — not reach any of you?"
I said it like that, but a little part of me did flinch. Honestly, watching other streamers read their fan cafes, I hadn't exactly never thought, damn, that looks like free money.
Still, I stood by it. The part of me that opened the cafe for my viewers genuinely outweighed the part that wanted an easy content slot.
I'd seen that question coming too.
"Right. I was going to bring this up anyway. For a while now, a lot of you have been talking about my streams and about me over in the Abyss Gallery. Technically, you're not supposed to do that."
Every gallery has conversation topics that fit it. Those topics usually follow the gallery's name — so what about the Abyss Gallery? It's a gallery where talk about Abyss is supposed to be the main event.
And what does talk about Abyss mean? Abyss is a game, first and foremost. So of course the conversation should be about in-game play, game-related bait, new patches — game stuff. The founding pillar of the Abyss Gallery, a broadcaster tightly linked to Abyss herself, shouldn't have her name circulating nonstop in there.
"Up until now I've just sat back and watched, but my channel's grown to a certain size. I decided this isn't something I can keep ignoring."
Fans create antis. On a small scale that meant hate-baiting; on a large scale it could manufacture actual anti-fans. Picture a newbie starting Abyss who walks into the Abyss Gallery looking for information, only to find the whole board packed with posts about some streamer named Kayak instead. They don't even know who Kayak is, and they already start with one stack of bad first impressions.
"That's part of why I made the fan cafe. From now on, please use the fan cafe. Let's keep the gallery for what it was meant for."
Viewer reactions ran the full range. Some strongly agreed; others were clearly unhappy. Well — nothing to be done about that. No decision ever satisfies everyone.
"Anyway, the cafe's open, so please show it some love. Join now and you're a founding member. Sign up, everyone."
The moment I dropped the cafe link, the member count started climbing at a steep angle. Eight people, twenty-seven, a hundred thirty-seven… By the time it crossed four digits under that overwhelming firepower, the cafe site itself briefly crashed.
"For boards, I've only set up stream-related notices and a free board for now. Other boards — humor boards and the like — I'll add gradually later."
With that, I clicked into the free board to check what had already been posted. A brand-new fan cafe. What kind of posts would people write?
"Uh…."
The purpose of the fan cafe, the spirit of it — that part hadn't gone off the rails. The posts were about me, full of fan feeling. What threw me was something else. The handwriting, so to speak. The style of the writing felt familiar from somewhere.
In other words… this looked exactly like a gallery post.
The other posts were the same. They were written in a fan cafe, sure, but none of them looked all that different from what I'd always seen in the gallery. I let out a small sigh.
"So, everyone. Since this is our fan cafe… maybe we could try writing a little more like a fan cafe?"
Yeah. Was that even possible?
Even as I said it, I had my doubts about whether it could actually happen.