Comment by benignintervention@lemmy.world on 4th person pronoun?

Is this the uncanny valley of dril tweets? I have no idea what this means

I see it on TikTok a lot, in the comments on a video that seems implausible. It’s sometimes someone genuinely asking the other commenters if the (whatever it was) is true. Other times people just use it to express astonishment.

Think of it as a replacement for “For real??”

Thanks, my near 60yo brain was having a moment till your comment came along

So ‘guys’ or ‘people’ or ‘audience’?

In this sense, “chat” is just a second person plural pronoun

Not really, because it’s the indeterminate group watching you. If you say “you” or “you all”, it’s referring to the people interacting with you, not the audience. You have to break the fourth wall to initiate that interaction and make it second person

But streamers sometimes will sometimes, mid conversation with someone else, say “chat, can you get me the link to that?” And continue talking to the other person while waiting for it. They’ll also say “chat is saying I should ask you about XYZ”.

It’s a specific relationship that straddles the line between a second person and third person. They’re also usually not included in first person plural

It’s not even a pronoun, it’s still a noun.

Yeah it’s substitutable for “y’all” in the sample usage.

Or if you use proper english, “you,” which is both singular and plural. Many languages have a specific second person plural, such as the Spanish ustedes (or vosotros in Spain and speaking informally), so those could be directly substituted for “chat.”

A fourth person, if it exists, would have to somehow refer to a “nothing” without giving it an entity, because that’s the only gap between first, second, and third person pronouns.

Proper English would use thee/thou as singular and you as plural. Royal we, excepting. Or maybe royal we is the 4th person since you are speaking as yourself but more as a representing some other entity? I dunno this 4th person thing is confusing me …

There’s no such thing as a “proper” form of a language

That’s just not true. There’s a reason we all study grammar, and that’s so we can all learn the rules that have been built up along the way. Without that, we’d get more severe language drift, which gets in the way of the primary reason we have language to begin with: to communicate. So the proper form is the form we’ve all essentially agreed to.

Hargrove hydrogen Greco.

Doesn’t mean it makes sense. Isn’t that still just second person plural? “Chat” being using as a collective noun.

A collective noun is a word or phrase that refers to a group of people or things as one entity.

This isn’t some new-fangled youth speak breaking all the laws of language!!! It’s literally just…english. Leave it to the media to blow something way the fuck out of proportion to create unnecessary conversation around their stupid ass article.

the media

Two random tweeters

I also remember reading a tweet where someone said their young kid would whisper “like and subscribe” at bedtime like it was part of saying “goodbye”.

It’s bizarre.

Oof. And how about kids when some of their first words are “OK Googie” b/c the parents are always playing music on their smart speaker?

Thought it was clever marketing to disallow changing trigger phrases, but it’s actually child abuse! (OK not quite but it’s uncomfortable. I don’t even want a brand on my t-shirt, much less out of a relative’s mouth before they understand it.)

yeah that’s what happens when you let the internet raise kids.

I guess we’ll see how much worse that is than being raised by good ol’ fashion network television.

A little bit of everything, all of the time.

dumb kid not even telling them to comment as well

And not even a mention of the Patreon or the merch store.

I’m inclined to believe it, because lots of videos have that as an ending.

I’ll see YOU… in the morning! Buh-bye!

My daughter, 8, wanted to send a birthday message to her grandma. We made the video, she sang happy birthday, and said “like and subscribe” at the end.

We did a second take without it.

My son is autistic and used to say “Like and Subscribe” to things he liked, and “Dislike and Unsubscribe” to things he didn’t. He watched a lot of YouTube when he was little because his late father couldn’t be arsed to actually parent while his mother was working.

Cutest thing though when he’d get a video he liked and the creator would tell you to give the video a thumbs up if you liked it he’d physically give the screen a thumbs up and say “I liked it. Good job.” He later figured out how to leave comments and his first comment was a string of poop emoji. Never expected to have to give a 5 year old a talk about internet safety.

It was kinda wholesome tho since the conversation went like

“I like and subscribe you too” as a meaning of affection

Kids are cute with their lingo

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4th person pronoun?(startrek.website)

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