Maybe someone can identify with my thought here, but I came to a realization when I was listening to some fans talk about Vtubers they liked to watch. Essentially, being part of a chat is sort of like roleplaying. It's the act of taking on this other persona, where you gleefully just do these weird, meaningless things that no one will ever see, but you do it happily because you've completely bought into the fiction that you're "part of something".

Like, most people who type in a chat, are posting useless drivel that gets whipped off screen way faster than anyone will ever read. And yet they still DO it. They still spam messages, sometimes even real ones, into these walls of text, they take part in memes and in-jokes and do whatever dumb shit the streamer tells them. And why? What do they get out of it? Obviously watching a streamer is a form of entertainment like any other, but actively participating is a different thing entirely. What do you actually accomplish or gain or feel good about when you type random shit into a chat that no one will ever read, or send a bunch of money in a TTS donation that just gets ignored or maybe read out for 5 seconds?

Why take part in the roleplay? Why not just...not do that, and be a normal fucking human being?