33. She’s the Main Character
‘She’s late again.’
‘Rippa hates us!’
“Ripripripriprip— fuck, I’m muted!” Rippa unmuted herself. “Ripripripriprip! Hello, hello! My name is Rippin’ Rippa!”
With that, Rippa was back in business with her regular stream. No interview with a god, no live broadcasting of brutal mob violence, no nonsense. The live viewer count hovered around one thousand, but it was normal in the first few minutes of the stream starting. Rippa knew it would ramp up to the usual in about an hour. She secretly hoped for a bit higher views, given the massive exposure she had gotten.
“As you can see on the screen, today we are watching how to make curry— BeenSalmon, you motherfucker, thank you for the Super Chat! ‘Did normies actually cancel their membership?’ Good question. Let me check.”
Rippa pulled up her creator dashboard on her second monitor, not visible to her viewers. She did some quick math. The member cancellation count sat around 80% of the members gained that day. ‘So, some are sticking around? Nice.’
“Yeah, about 80% of them canceled— wait! Fuck, how did I forget! It’s not a straight refund! The cancellation is for auto-renewal!” Rippa slapped her forehead. Of course, that was the case. She’d been a YouTuber for years, yet still managed to mess it up.
“Chat, did I scam hundreds of thousands of people?”
Chat was loving it. They were memeing to no end.
‘Lambo when?’
“Oh, this gonna look bad, chat,” Rippa was dying. “Haters gonna demand I donate the money to some bullshit charity of their choosing.”
Rippa and her chat had a good laugh.
As she was confessing to her chat about recently becoming a big fan of curries, the viewer count rapidly rose as more people noticed she was live.
By the time Rippa finally clicked the play button on the curry cooking video on the main screen, there were seven thousand people watching. ‘That’s a lot,’ she noted.
‘Where’s Buttons?’ a viewer asked.
‘No one cares about Indian food. Where’s the butler god?’ another chimed in.
The viewer count was still going up. Rippa’s mods were busy reminding everyone about the chat rules and silencing the normies asking the same question, ‘Where’s Buttons?’ again and again as more people came into the stream.
Rippa tried to ignore it and focus on reacting to the curry cooking video. But deep down, she felt frustration brewing. Humiliating, even. She paused for a second and prayed it wouldn’t lead to her resenting her now-famous friend.
‘I’m a paying member, and I want what I paid for,’ someone wrote in chat.
Ten thousand. The viewer count hit just over ten thousand, nearly triple her usual audience, and it was getting worse. Her regular viewers were now berating the newcomers in chat, but they had become a minority.
Rippa was torn. Buttons had, in fact, been the background noise in Rippa’s streams for the past many weeks. Heck, the kid even appeared in the Ganjang Gejang IRL cooking stream. So, for Rippa to suddenly tell chat not to mention Buttons was… that didn’t feel right. She nevertheless needed to get things back under control… but how?
“Wow, chat, I see a lot of people who are new to VTuber streams,” said Rippa cheerfully. “Be careful, guys, it’s a rabbit hole with no end, and you eventually end up demanding VTuber feet pics.”
She then brought up her chat rules to the main screen, cleared her throat, and continued, “Well, since it seems I’m the hole that you first jumped into, I think it’s my responsibility to tell you about the etiquette of the VTubing world before you go on and find other amazing talents on YouTube.”
She then explained the VTuber rules. About not asking for or sharing personal information, about not talking about before-debut times, about staying on the stream’s topic, and finally, about not talking about other streamers unless prompted.
“-It’s kinda rude, and derails the content they prepared. And it also makes it very awkward between them and me,” Rippa explained. As she was doing so, she noticed a direct message from Buttons on Discord.
“Rippa, I can’t Super Chat. Goggles says you banned me.”
Rippa finished her introduction to VTuber etiquette and resumed the Indian cooking video.
She thought about it. On one hand, Buttons was now public, so the doxxing risk was gone. But on the other hand, given what was happening in Rippa’s chat right now, Buttons Super Chatting would be adding fuel to the fire.
“Why you need Super Chat? You can just tell me directly,” Rippa replied back.
“I wanna tell chat to leave me alone.”
Rippa paused the video. “Wait, chat. Gimme a sec.”
She sat there and thought hard. Rippa couldn’t just deny the growing demand. However, it still was her channel. ‘Normalize, and minimize,’ she decided. Rippa took a deep breath and invited Buttons to a voice call on Discord.
“Chat, shut up, and let Rippa watch the video!” Buttons went off immediately. “This Makhni recipe is really good.”
“Hi, Buttons,” Rippa greeted with an audible groan. “Say hello to chat.”
“Oh… hello.”
Chat went into overdrive, spamming Buttolls.
“You had something you wanted to tell chat?” Rippa invited.
“Oh yeah!” the kid could be heard huffing and puffing. “I have only one hour to watch Rippa’s stream live before my bedtime, and I’m not tuning in to hear her talk about me.”
Rippa couldn’t help but burst out laughing. The kid was, essentially, demanding that the TV stay on cartoons instead of switching to a news channel.
“She’s the main character here, chat,” Buttons was still at it, “and that’s why I watch her stream to begin with!”
After a healthy dose of laughter and feeling a sense of relief, Rippa offered a solution.
“Well, Buttons, we love you. How about this? We have you on stream regularly. Maybe once a week? Once a fortnight?”
“I’m banned from Fortnite.”
“No, I mean once every other week.”
Buttons contemplated the offer for a moment. “What do I even do?”
“Oh, you know, just hang out and chat.”
“Oh! Oh! I’ll be a YouTuber?”
“Yeah…”
“Goggles! Goggles!” Buttons could be heard running off. The small footsteps, rapidly fading.
“Welp,” Rippa ended the call. “OK, chat, I’ll discuss it with her a bit more and let you guys know… by X or something. We cool?”
‘Why is she banned from Fortnite?’
“Huh? Ah, fuck, I should have asked!”