A Very Wicked Plan to Deceive the Viewers
Phone dating.
Someone who didn't know the context might picture a pair of lovers cooing sweet nothings at each other through a phone — but when the term got used in internet streaming, it usually meant something a little different.
It was a kind of two-way content: a streamer you wouldn't normally get anywhere near, and a fan, connecting over a phone call to talk.
From the viewer's side, you got to actually speak with the streamer you liked. From the streamer's side, you got to chat directly with a fan who already adored you — in the lowest-risk way possible — and turn the whole thing into content.
A modest little win-win. Calling it that wasn't really an overstatement.
Well. Unless the viewer turns out to be a mood-killer who freezes the whole atmosphere, or an assassin who says something malicious just to get the stream shut down — then content, vibe, everything goes up in smoke. So from my end, I'd have to be extremely picky about who I pick.
Still, it was far better than a face-to-face meetup, or any anonymous participation format where you couldn't filter out the antis at all.
As long as I wasn't just posting my number and inviting anyone to call, I got to set the conditions for who I talked to first.
Worst case, I could pull from people who'd been watching since debut, ranked in the top one percent of chat activity, and had never once been timed out. It might not be the most exciting pool — but assassination attempts would almost never get through.
No need to tense up. And the people watching me at this hour don't seem like the type who'd try to wreck a stream. If someone starts looking clueless, I can just hang up myself.
The initiative was mine either way. And come to think of it — if I put a slight delay on the broadcast and something ugly slipped through, I could just cut it fast, right? Yeah, I should tell Noise about that before we start.
I wrapped up the rough plan in my head and, still wearing a gentle smile, turned my attention to the chat.
I was still a fresh-faced rookie streamer, only about four months in. I'd never done a fan meeting, obviously — the closest I'd come to interacting with viewers was the occasional viewer-participation game.
Dropping something as high-stakes as a phone date out of nowhere, with a background like that… well. You could expect reactions like these.
Overall, no real pushback — the vast majority of viewers were cheering and celebrating.
Judging by how fast the chat was scrolling, if those messages could have carried sound, the roar of cheers would have been loud enough to sting your ears. The speed was almost violent.
…I hadn't expected them to like it this much. I knew phone dating was the kind of content that didn't usually split people into love-it-or-hate-it camps, but I hadn't really pictured a reaction this intense.
Maybe it was just that I still had ordinary human feelings. Watching the viewers get this happy made me feel good too, almost automatically.
They were so delighted I even felt like throwing in an extra little service. Was this what they meant by small-town hospitality?
"Hee, everyone's reacting so well. Do you all want a phone date that badly?"
"Hmm…. But there are so many of you. Two thousand…. Ah, three thousand? Even so, calling everyone here would be a bit much, right?"
Obviously I couldn't phone-date all three thousand people currently in the stream. I couldn't physically split myself into three thousand bodies, either.
Even at thirty seconds per person, three thousand times that was thirty thousand seconds — roughly eight hours. Yeah, absolutely impossible. Factor in people still joining and it would never end.
And the viewers seemed to have realized that on their own. The ones with a grip on reality were already posting chats that reeked of early surrender, having grasped just how abysmal their odds were.
Being one out of a few dozen was already hard enough. Being certain you'd be the one out of thousands required an ego of truly impressive strength.
"Still… don't give up already. I don't really want to just draw one person completely at random… so we should set some conditions, right?"
"Alright, alright, no fighting in chat. And no bullying the newcomers either. This room does not discriminate against new viewers. You — take a little break from chatting."
No matter how entertaining a stream was, you could never guarantee viewers would stay locked in forever. Internet streaming was a structure where, without new blood coming in, the audience would slowly shrink.
In other words, newcomers in a personal stream were like fresh blood. If you thought of a stream as a body, driving out new viewers was like old blood chasing away the new — a thoroughly rotten thing to do.
So newcomers were precious. They were babies, and babies needed protecting. Bad old-timers who discriminated against new blood got a temporary chat ban.
That said, picking phone-date partners based on how early they'd started watching wasn't a terrible idea in itself.
Watching for a long time usually meant you understood the stream's rules and atmosphere. It could serve as a reasonably trustworthy metric.
But as I'd already noted, using only that method risked making recent newcomers feel left out. At worst, it could breed a culture where viewers mocked other viewers…
And besides, there were more reliable ways to filter people than simply how long they'd been watching. No need to cling to a method with that kind of downside, right?
"How about this. I'd also enjoy talking on the phone more with someone who's actually my fan. And wouldn't you all rather see someone who knows the stream and knows me get picked, instead of a completely random person?"
"Alright, settle down for a moment…. So instead of random — how about we take a test?"
I wanted to talk with a fan who actually liked me, and the fans themselves would rather see someone qualified win if it wasn't going to be them.
So why not open a short quiz that everyone here could join, and whittle it down to a final one?
"That Nia Quiz we did for the hundred-thousand-subscriber event! We'll raise the difficulty a bit and run a simplified version to find the last person standing! The final survivor gets a phone date with me! How about it? Sound fun?"
"Since this isn't a regular segment today, I'll wrap it up depending on the time. At most, maybe five or six people?"
Of course, this meant the original goal of cheering on the job-seekers had gone flying off into the distance. But what could I do? It wasn't as if I could precisely pick those people out of the crowd.
All I could do was hope the ones who needed the help would make it to the final one. Hang in there — I'm rooting for you on the inside.
"Alright then, um…. Since I'm feeling lazy this time, we'll skip the stage format from before. I'll put a survival marker next to your usernames, and we'll keep running the quiz until that marker belongs to the last person standing. …There, I just sent the participation message. If you're joining, hit accept!"
Out of the roughly three thousand viewers currently in the stream, the number who joined the quiz was well into the high two thousands.
As if to prove it, chat was spitting out messages from people with the survival marker attached like a machine gun rattling off rounds — dudududu.
Thinking that every single one of them wanted to talk to me on the phone almost made a dazed expression slip onto my face…
But flipped around, didn't that just mean I was loved that much? Good things were good things. I should take it that way.
But those people have no idea that everything up to this point has gone exactly according to my plan. Heh heh heh….
Granted, the overall flow that led to a phone date had been almost entirely chance and impulse.
But herding the viewers into a quick true-or-false quiz and producing a final survivor… that was clearly part of a plan I'd designed well in advance.
And that plan was this: find the Salvagers hiding among them, and make contact with them by any means necessary!
"Alright then, shall we start the quiz! Who knows me best! We'll even throw in a few modest Ooparts as stakes for bonus questions… it's a showdown!"
As the situation rolled along far too smoothly, I grinned like a villain on the inside — while beaming a bright, sunny smile at the viewers watching me.
Just you wait, Salvager! Whether you're in here or not, I'm going to find you… and squeeze every drop of information out of you!
Completely unaware of those scheming thoughts, the viewers only cheered even louder at the suddenly added bonus prizes.