The Vigil for a Chat Moderator

Honestly, I figured I'd be lucky if even a single viewer stepped up and volunteered to become a moderator.

Compared to the recruitment notice Shackleton put out for his Arctic expedition, this was a drop in the bucket.

A completely wrecked sleep schedule. No pay. The occasional toxic viewer dropping by. A solid chance there'd be zero sense of accomplishment. And even if you worked yourself to the bone—no honor, no glory, nothing.

It was a job with absolutely zero motivational upside.

And yet so many viewers had applied anyway. Something in my chest went tight.

"This is going to be hard work, though. Why is everyone so…"

That warm feeling lasted all of a second.

One look at the viewers' nicknames and whatever tears had been welling up dried right up.

Why were they all so desperate to torment my wheelchair and crutches?

And then there was AlwaysBrandNewNoelRightSneaker.

I couldn't figure out why that nickname even existed—my brain just stalled—until I looked down at my right foot and it clicked.

Well. You can't exactly look at something that isn't there.

More precisely, I confirmed the absence of my right foot.

"Pfft."

It was so absurd that a laugh actually came out.

No—I was pretty sure I was laughing because the nickname itself was just funny.

It wasn't like these people had shown up intending to actually do something to my wheelchair or crutches. They'd just made the names as a joke.

Anyway, the chat was right. I couldn't hire every single applicant, which meant I had to pick just a few of them as chat moderators.

Having the choice in my hands meant I could at least put off dangling any rewards for now.

If there had been some kind of prize attached, sure, more people would have applied—but there also would have been people sniffing around purely for the freebies.

Giving ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠something as a token of thanks to the people who volunteered to moderate would look better, and it'd make it easier to pick the decent ones.

So rewards could wait. First I needed criteria for who to elect as moderators.

"Mm. First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who so readily volunteered. Some of you have familiar nicknames, and some of you I'm meeting for the first time today—but you're all offering to help because you want my stream chat to stay clean. I'm grateful for the applications, but I don't think I can take all of you."

I'd only said it because I didn't have that many rewards to hand out to moderators. The viewers just invented their own reasons and nodded along.

Which meant I didn't have to manufacture any more awkward excuses. Instead, I asked how other streams handled moderator selection.

"How do other streams usually pick their mods? You're all kind enough to watch my stream, so I don't think I can rank you by something like affection. And it's not like I can settle this with League of Champions tiers, right?"

And just like that, the viewers offered up a solid idea.

Internet streaming really was something the audience understood far better than I did as the streamer. That made sense—I was a brand-new streamer who'd only just started, and mixed in among them were actual veterans.

Even without that, whenever enough people gathered, at least one usable idea tended to surface. Group projects were the same way; somehow a clever suggestion always popped out of somewhere.

Of course, ideas and execution were two different things, which was why I'd usually ended up doing all the work myself. But still.

"By autopsy, you mean… look through what they've written before? Like this?"

Unlike group projects, where everyone just sat there eyeing each other even when someone floated a good idea, I put it into practice immediately.

The controls themselves weren't hard. Hover the mouse cursor over a viewer's nickname and you could check their chat history and a rough scrap of personal info.

Not that "personal info" meant much—only whatever they'd chosen to make public. And I wasn't trying to figure out where someone lived or how old they were. I just wanted to see what kind of chats they'd been dropping.

That was more than enough.

The viewers horsed around, trying to dodge my right-clicks. Not that it mattered—there weren't enough people for the chat to surge like a tidal wave, so hovering the cursor over anyone wasn't difficult at all.

On top of that, the other viewers seemed to be making room for me to check the volunteers' histories; most of the people still chatting were the ones who'd said they wanted to be mods.

Which meant all that clowning around was basically them flashing their presence one more time so I'd notice them.

I think people called that tsundere. Acting like they didn't care while still looking out for you the whole time.

Anyway—first target.

If I had to name the person who'd probably dropped the most chats in my stream, it was this one: Tti-hwak-jjit.

Borrowing the viewers' phrasing, I started the autopsy with him.

There was a little anger simmering under the surface, sure. But overall he just seemed like someone who genuinely enjoyed my stream.

He might have wandered over from Jaemin's broadcasts. Judging by the things he usually said, he watched other streams too—but that didn't mean he had no affection for mine.

He'd volunteered himself. No disqualifying marks.

Nobody in chat seemed to mind giving him moderator privileges, so I sent over the manager authorization right away.

Next up—maybe I'd check the chat history of whoever had just typed.

NoelWheelchairThief. The kind of nickname people usually labeled toxic on sight. And when I actually ran the autopsy, the name-change history was pretty extensive too.

"Why are you trying to steal so many things?"

For a brief second, I actually wondered whether I really had that much worth stealing.

Just the other day I'd been living on cup ramen, waiting around to die. Thanks to people's attention, I'd ended up living this abundantly.

But that was one thing, and this was another. This was straight-up villain behavior.

What exactly did he keep insisting he was going to steal?

And the fact that his actual chats were completely normal on top of all that was almost more ridiculous than I could handle.

The rest of the chat laughed themselves breathless right along with me.

Content where one person got embarrassed and everyone else had a great time—so that was why people had pushed for the autopsy.

Sure, having your chat history aired out was mortifying for the person on the slab. But if you'd lived with a clear conscience, there wouldn't be anything to flinch about.

And the chats themselves had been clean. Looking at the themes of all those changed nicknames, this was clearly someone who'd been watching my stream consistently.

That was passing grade enough, wasn't it?

"Still, you've been enjoying my stream and clearly care a lot about it. I think I can gratefully take you on at this point."

So ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I gave him manager privileges, and he immediately committed the atrocity of timing himself out.

It was so ridiculous a hollow laugh just slipped out on its own.

But hey—he hadn't pranked anyone else. He'd pranked himself to get a big laugh out of the room. That much was fine.

Next was someone I'd already had my eye on: BurgersNCrunch.

He'd declared he was going to run an iron-fisted regime, so I needed to check whether he actually had the credentials for it.

Things I'd let slide without a second thought when I'd first heard them… stacked up like this, they started to feel like they were quietly sanding down my self-esteem.