Over the past decade or so, livestreaming on sites like Twitch and YouTube has become a major form of entertainment. There are many different kinds of streamers, but many of them incorporate humor and viewer interaction. Many of the funniest jokes and memes come from the chat.

This is a form of improv comedy in which hundreds or even thousands of people can participate. It works something like this: viewers throw out comments, jokes, and ideas, and most of them are lost in the noise. Depending on the number of viewers, a streamer may only see a small percentage of chat messages. If someone has a good idea or a funny joke, it may be repeated by others in chat, increasing its likelihood of being noticed. The streamer reads chat messages, and selectively repeats or responds to specific messages.

This has the effect of generating a huge number of ideas and filtering them for quality. Highly skilled comedic streamers take full advantage of this, taking and building upon chat’s ideas. This in turn promotes engagement from viewers and thus more and better ideas. I think this is a unique feature of comedy in livestreaming and an important part of why livestreams are so entertaining.