Sometimes You Need to Stop Obsessing Over Numbers
A megacorp. The word meant more than just raw capital — it referred to a massive enterprise that wielded enormous economic, social, and cultural influence.
These were the companies whose brand value was so absolute that even a complete stranger would go, "Oh, that company?" the moment you mentioned the name. That was the kind of entity that typically fell into the megacorp category.
And when the word drifted into the world of personal internet broadcasting, it was often used to describe streamers whose viewer counts and video views were so overwhelmingly dominant that they commanded serious influence of their own.
Even a streamer who consistently held a few hundred thousand concurrent viewers was said to earn far more than your average office worker. So how much, exactly, were the people making several times — or several dozen times — that amount raking in?
Imagine it: a walking megacorp. It wasn't all that strange that the term had caught on so easily among people.
There were those who bristled at a culture where cracking the top five percent was enough to get yourself called a megacorp.
But that reaction wasn't particularly strange either. Among the streamers commonly labeled megacorps in the community, the income gap between the absolute top and the absolute bottom stretched across tens, hundreds — in extreme cases, even thousands of times.
Of course people's perceptions of what a "megacorp" even was would end up all over the place.
But the whole debate was painfully petty. What, exactly, was a personal streamer that people would fight this hard over a single word?
Eventually, someone exhausted by the unproductive bickering offered a compromise to defuse the situation before it fully devolved into a flame war.
Only the top one percent are megacorps. Even the people who'd been throwing around every argument under the sun eventually nodded at the symbolic weight of that one-percent figure and had no choice but to accept the proposal.
Top one percent in average concurrent viewers. Top one percent in subscribers. Top one percent in memberships.
On Olive — where rigorous security architecture made artificially inflating those numbers extremely difficult — anyone who cleared those thresholds would be designated a megacorp. And the numbers settled out like this: an average concurrent viewership of twelve thousand, two million subscribers, and a hundred thousand memberships.
To me, right now, everything except average concurrent viewers was a number I couldn't even dream of touching — which was probably why it all felt like someone else's world.
Those absurd figures were the bar for the top one percent. What a fascinating result. I suppose that's what you get from the number-one platform.
Come to think of it, even being able to compete on average concurrent viewers is ridiculous. Sure, I cracked ten thousand once during an outdoor stream, but my broadcast basically plateaus around six thousand.
Becoming a megacorp was no easy feat in this world.
Maybe that was why people hyped those megacorps up so much — because even with the bar set like this, the road was still impossibly long.
So for now, don't get greedy about viewer counts. Just figure out how to hold on to the ones you've got.
That was what I'd thought back then, stumbling across the community's definition of a megacorp while idly browsing the internet.
...But wait. Twenty thousand? All of a sudden?
I was stunned. There was no way not to be.
My viewer count had suddenly, casually vaulted past my all-time high of twelve thousand and was barreling straight toward twenty thousand.
My first instinct was that the number had to be a glitch — some kind of display error.
But when I flicked my eyes across the chat window, scooping up the messages pouring through so fast the whole thing looked ready to explode...
That was when I finally realized this wasn't a natural occurrence.
Shitquettes. Digging through my memory, I'd heard that word a few times on a certain community site. It was a slur aimed at the Croquettes — the fans of a famous streamer named Menchi.
Which meant... Menchi's influence was the reason my viewer count had rocketed all the way to twenty thousand?
Ah. While I was dancing, Menchi must have dropped her viewers over. The number she sent... eleven thousand. Ah, so that's what happened.
I quickly settled my rattled nerves and urgently checked the stream log, confirming that yes — a drop had hit my broadcast.
A drop: sending your own room's viewers over to someone else's stream. And of course, the sender was Menchi.
I had no idea why, but a streamer who more than qualified as a megacorp had dropped her audience onto my stream, and my viewer count had soared past twenty thousand...
S-so I didn't mess something up. If this is the reason, well...
I couldn't have been more relieved. I'd been terrified that I'd made some catastrophic mistake without noticing, or that some nasty malware had infected the system.
If it wasn't anything unsavory like that — if it was simply the result of my existing nine thousand viewers getting joined by eleven thousand outsiders — then I, the one who'd unilaterally received this goodwill, had no reason to hem and haw. Straighten your back the way you always do. Lift your chin.
"Ahem. So Menchi-nim sent over a drop. It's my first time receiving one, so I got a little flustered. Thank you so much."
I bowed. While I'd been spacing out, chat had half-descended into chaos, so I hurriedly composed my expression and my emotions, then dipped my head toward the camera in greeting.
We weren't close — we didn't even know each other — but when someone gives you something this substantial, you give something back. Even if all you have to offer is a thank-you.
I still don't know why a megacorp like her would send viewers to someone she's never even met, but it's great for me. Events burn hotter the more people you've got.
Still, I should say this much — for my sake, and for Menchi's.
When you mix oil and water, you don't just shake them hard. You need an emulsifier — something that lets the two actually blend.
"To my Parang-dan who've been watching from the start, to the Croquettes who came over on the drop, and to everyone who stopped by just for the event — I'd really appreciate it if we could keep the aggressive comments in chat to a minimum. It'd be a shame if you wasted a rare chance to win an Oopart just because you got into a pointless fight in the chat window, right?"
Of course, saying that out loud almost never made everyone go, "Sure, we'll do that." Whenever a group activity scaled up, the larger the sample size, the higher the odds that a contrarian who just wanted to break the rules would slip into the mix.
Still, I wasn't worried. Saying it out loud was a first warning — and besides, I was the one holding the knife.
No matter how well you hid among a flood of messages, there was no escaping the eyes of Noise — the girl I'd raised on food packed full of CP.
I didn't even need to move a mouse cursor. One sharp look from her, and anyone using foul language got scrubbed. Chat began purifying itself at an astonishing rate.
Normally I'd just leave the people using bad language alone... but if I let it slide, it could end up reflecting badly on Menchi, who dropped her viewers over to me. Today, maybe I should keep a tighter leash.
I shot Noise a glance loaded with that thought, and from behind the camera — where she'd been diligently cleaning up chat — she nodded as if she understood.
Alright. That took care of the stream atmosphere for now. I'd given them a fair grace period to play nice, and only then cracked down on chat. Nobody could claim it was unfair. Don't like it? Go start your own stream!
"Well then... it looks like everyone's using nice words now, so shall we finally move on to the content I've prepared?"
There seemed to be some grumbling in chat, but none of it looked like it would turn into real complaints. The fact that the viewer count wasn't dropping — that it was holding steady — was proof enough of that.
"Alright, let me explain the rules. They're simple. We'll run a viewer-participation True-or-False quiz across five rounds total, and then the five people who survive to the end will go on to the Final Round with me."
As I laid out the game rules, those kinds of murmurs rippled through chat. Hm — had I worded that in a way that invited misunderstanding? I tilted my head at the reactions for a moment, then gave a light shake of my head as if to say that wasn't it, and corrected their assumption.
"Ah — it's not that only one person who survives the Final Round gets a prize. Once you survive the rounds, you're locked in. What the Final Round does is give those five people priority rights to choose which of the five Ooparts they get to take."
A brief silence fell over chat at my correction... and then, as if that silence had detonated, the viewers' reactions erupted in a blaze of heat.
Some people insisted that couldn't possibly be right. Others were already crying that they'd believed in me all along. A few made solemn vows that they would absolutely survive.
Good reactions. Nobody seemed to have any objections or complaints about the rules I'd proposed. I could push ahead as planned without any revisions.
"It's called the Nia Quiz, but making every single question about me would be way too hard... so I've mixed in general knowledge, simple math, history, and even little things that have happened on my streams. Even if you get eliminated early, please don't give up until the very end!"
I finished speaking, drew a deep breath, fixed my gaze on the camera, and snapped my fingers hard.
As if linked to that motion, the space itself began to rumble and shake. Startled reactions cascaded through the viewers — but there was nothing to be surprised about. This, too, was just one of the production flourishes. Nothing that impressive, really.
The stage floor twisted and shifted as though it had a will of its own, slowly forming shapes across its surface. On the left, a massive O. On the right, an equally massive X. And then, pebble-sized stones the size of a fingertip began raining down onto both platforms with a soft clatter.
"How to join is simple. Hit the participate button that just popped up on the right side of your screen, then click the O or X platform you see on camera with your mouse or finger. That's it. A horse with your name on it will automatically move onto the platform."
I watched the number of game participants balloon in real time, and the moment it crossed ten thousand, I grinned.
"Do your best to survive until the very end."
And right on cue came the scorching wave of reactions — a cascade of text that, if it had been voices, would have filled the room with cheers and roaring applause. Looking at that flood of words, I could already feel it in my bones: this plan of mine was already halfway to success.