4th person pronoun?

First person: Talking about oneself. I, me. Second person: talking about the listener. you, your. Third person: talking about someone who is not the speaker or listener. He/she/it/they Fourth person: Talking about total bullshit.
In this context, "Chat" is second-person plural, used by streamers to address the portion of their audience able to respond in the text chat that always accompanies these things. It does contrast with how a radio personality might address "listeners" because radio listeners don't usually have a method to respond in real time, so it's usually a rhetorical question; a streamer addressing the chat is asking for a response.
- Crystal clear, thanks chat.
- i saw someone argue for chat being a 4th person pronoun because it breaks the 4th wall usually seen in mass broadcast media, there's still a degree of interaction that isn't there on live TV, so "chat is this real" prompts a direct response from a unified mass of people, there's a conversation happening through the 4th wall basically
  the other person explained it better lol
  
  Eh, I don't think that holds up.
  I might buy the 4th person as "someone outside your continuum or reality," but I've yet to see a language construct specifically for that. Fictional characters invariably use second or third person to refer to the audience outside their world.
  Streamers talking with their chat audience aren't fictional or otherworldly though. I don't see a linguistic difference between a streamer asking the chat what game he should play next, to Bob Saget saying "Home viewers, if you have a funny home video, send the tape to the address on your screen for a chance at appearing on our show!" It's a communique addressing a large scattered audience through audio/video telephony soliciting a reply. The only real difference is round-trip latency.
  While I think the phenomenon of live streaming and their audiences is interesting and presents a fairly new experience, I don't know if it's "we're inventing new pronoun tenses over here."
- Ty! So.. you all
- Thanks for the explanation. As an old guy I was utterly baffled.

There are languages with a 4th person pronoun. The 3rd person is kind of the main character and the 4th someone else. That helps to disambiguate sentences like "The criminal shot the cop and drove away on his (own or the cop's) bike".
Or the "gay fanfiction problem": "He looked at him and lay his hands on his lap". Is it a happy ending or a sad one? That's one theory why gender in pronouns is so resilient: more often than not, the gendered pronoun can disambiguate which person is talked about. It doesn't always work, a 3rd/4rd person distinction is superior.
- You can have an alternate third person pronoun I suppose in order to distinguish two third person individuals, but that doesn't mean there's a fourth person pronoun. The general definition is:
  first person - the speaker
  second person - the audience, whether present or not present
  third person - someone or something other than the audience
  So things like "chat" and "breaking the fourth wall" are second person pronouns. There is no fourth person pronoun, because anything other than first and second is covered under third person.
  
  I've looked it up and the official name is "obviative" and it is sometimes referred to as the "fourth person".
  
  Isn't 'chat' essentially treated as a name, except that it refers to a group of people instead of an individual?
- Fourth pronoun was doing well, until the fifth person enters the scene.
  
  missed opportunity to say enters the chat
- Also solved by a reflexive pronoun, as in Russian
  
  Northern Germanic languages like swedish do the same trick btw
  
  Now that is clever. I forgot my Slavic language had this feature

Why isn't that just 2nd person plural, like "y'all"?
- It speaks to a person that isn't physically present and just an observer. "You" typically addresses someone directly, but can be used to break the 4th wall and talk to observers. "Chat" is exclusively for breaking the 4th wall.
  
  Nah, "chat" is talking to a specific, present group of people, and is used in lieu of writing a text chat. It's not like a film actor speaking to the audience, who has no way of responding. Even so, any terms used in breaking the fourth wall would still be second person, ability to respond and presence aren't a requirement here (e.g. you'd use "you" in letters, and the reader is absolutely not present).
  
  You are wrong on both counts.
  I just addressed "you", even though you're not physically present, so clearly that's not a requirement of second person usage, not to mention that presumably this child saying "chat" is being heard by people physically nearby in this example.
  In order to break the fourth wall, the speaker must be part of the media. In the instance of streamers talking to their fans, it's clearly meant to be an interactive experience between streamer and host, consuming the same media (albeit in different ways). They're asking a question and getting a response which informs their actions.
  Fundamentally, it's no different than when my wife asks "did that wizard just cast fireball?" while she sits on the couch watching me playing Skyrim.
  
  I don't think it's accurate to call the barrier between a streamer and their audience "the fourth wall". The fourth wall is a concept that exists in theater, and then more largely in fiction, where characters exist in a world where they do not know that they're characters in a story. And the fourth wall breaks when they realize that they are.
  If "chat" breaks the fourth wall, then self-help books that use "you" are too, or news anchors addressing their viewers, or politicians saying "my fellow countrymen" in a broadcast address.
  
  Now that is an interesting distinction to make. I suppose that the 4th wall didn't exist throughout most of history (with the exception of theatre) and so there wasn't much reason for this feature of language to develop
  
  In this regard that would rather be 2.5 plural, kind of present, but kind of not
- It just sounds like shorter version of "hey guys" hah

Is it really that different than saying "Audience"? Or radio shows referring to "listeners"? Etc.
- Or "y'all"
  Saying "chat" to address a group or room full of people isn't different at all from addressing them as "y'all"
  
  All y'all more specifically
  
  Except y'all is a second person plural, and I think 'chat' here is still functioning as a noun.
- Seems like the same thing to me. I think the person saying it's the first of its kind is wrong, but it would still be equally bizarre if people were addressing their "listeners" in normal conversation.
  
  Lemmings, do you agree? ;)
  
  Yeah, it would be weird to say 'listeners' when talking to a group. But social conventions and language shifts. "chat" has established itself for pretty obvious reasons, so I'm not surprised to see it catch on in the physical world. It's a bit like people saying 'lol' in person was super weird at first, but isn't that weird any more.
  Also, I don't think it is anywhere near as weird as how politicians address what they are saying to "Mr. Speaker" when they are clearly actually not talking to that person at all.
  
  Are you and Stamets related? I keep mixing you two up.
- Or on a serial killer podcast, run by 35yo ladies, "murder muffins"
- Ladies and Gentlemen
  Friends
  Guys
  [To the] Saints in Ephesus
  Gentlemen of the jury
  Kids!
  Class
  Respected Members of the Lemeritus Comment Section Elle
  [the] House

it's definitely 2nd person collective in its original usage and outside of its original usage it's not a pronoun because it doesn't replace a noun.
- I don't think it's a pronoun at all. It's a collective noun, and a term of address.
  "Ladies and Gentlemen" is also not a pronoun.

First person = someone describing their own point of view (ex: I, me)
Second person = someone being addressed (ex: you, y'all)
Third person = someone talking about someone else (ex: they, them)
Fourth person = the point of view of a collective group (ex: we, us)
- I can't tell if you're making a joke or not, but when I learned it "we" was first person plural. Likewise "y'all" was second person plural, etc.
  
  Y’all’s takes are both valid.
  
  The difference is that we as a first person plural is generally used for a more discrete group of people, but still from the perspective of a single narrator. Fourth person we is generally used for a collective of people with a shared perspective; there is no single narrator that is separate from the collective group, the entire group is there narrator. Fourth person is a concept that has only recently begun to be recognized as a distinct point of view.
- Bird Person = friend of Rick Sanchez and generally good guy who doesn't appreciate dick moves
  
  It fascinates me that an entire family can be this critical and suck this much.
  
  Wubba lubba dub dub.
- Fourth person
  Doesn't exist. We/us is first person plural. Some languages have a little complexity here (e.g. Tagalog has "kami" which means "we without you" and "tayo" which means "we with you," but they're both still first person plurals).
  first person - speaker
  second person - audience excluding speaker
  third person - everything else
  
  Some linguists disagree and have recently begun accepting the existence of a fourth person point of view. Languages evolve, and I guess we'll just have to see if it catches on and becomes more widely accepted in the future.
- One does not simply just make a fourth person point of view.

I usually say "smash that like button" but ill throw in "chat" in the future to stay relevant with these kids.
Smash that like button if you agree with me chat
- "This pop quiz is brought to you by Raid Shadow Legends"
  
  Its ant league now right
- Not sure I agree, but I like smashing stuff, so I still upvoted.
- Petition to rename 'chat' to 'hulk'

It's just a pronoun to address the Collective
- Chat are idiots and can't be trusted
- Chat will be assimilated. Resischat is futile.
  
  pepehands is irrelevant.
- But the collective that excludes yourself. It’s like a “we without me”, which is also not the plural you.
  
  Y'all
  
  Exclusive we is actually found in many languages, but usually it's the listener who is excluded. Malay kita "we" includes the listener, kami excludes the listener.
  
  Doesn't spanish have this? I think it is nosotros and vosotros?
- We must seize the means of production, chat!

It’s not even a pronoun in this context, it’s just a noun.

My pronouns are Chat/Commentor
- Nice to meet you. Mine are lurker/asleep

Is this the uncanny valley of dril tweets? I have no idea what this means
- 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.
  
  Oh I'm just old
  
  In this sense, "chat" is just a second person plural pronoun
  
  So 'guys' or 'people' or 'audience'?
  
  Thanks, my near 60yo brain was having a moment till your comment came along
  
  Ah geez this is sad
- 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??"

me when i've taken half a class of english: bro chat is 4th person 🤓
- Is sis chat 5th person? Or is that misandrynistic to make sisters a higher number than brothers?

"Everyone"?
- Dude
  
  I'm a dude. He's a dude. She's a dude. We're all dudes, hey!

I'll need to see some solid evidence and proof of this being done unironically before believing this.
- Pull up that evidence, chat.
- My GF works at a school, yes, this is a thing. This is the first time I've seen it mention outside of the time she told me tho
  
  My uncle is the president of school and he told me that "chat" is a secret code to get a level 100 Mew.
- Kids under ~10 don't really understand irony, they can only copy but not use it correctly.
  
  https://trustmethisisnotascam.com
  
  You know YouTube links get thumbnail previews, right?

Not to sound 105 but parasocial relationships as meaningful interaction bad.
It's just adapting to a world that is less connected by building bonds in a way that can be maintained in a disconnected world.
Maybe it's not all bad but I can't help but think our brains are definitely wired for in-person communication and it'll never totally fill that void.
Being an analog being in a digital world sucks.
- There's still plenty of real life happening, go look for it
  
  I'm not saying there isn't I'm just saying especially within the US it's prevailing problem you can look it up in any psych journal that people are feeling more lonely. This is a systemic issue due to the way our cities are structured.
  I think that parasocial relationships are definitely one of the ways we have coped with that.

My rl name starts with Chat and I introduce myself as such most places. It's pronounced differently though, since it's based on a French word. The Ch has an Sh sound. And yes, I know what that sounds like...
- Actually the t is silent so it's SHA in french
  SHAT would be for female cat but really means pussy
  You're welcome.
  
  Lmao find it funny he says he knows but then doesnt know
  
  You're talking to famous Irish scatologist Shat O'Kun right now
  
  My name is based off the cat thing though. Chatoyer, chatoyant, chatoyancy, all based off of cats eye.
  And pussy is better than how it sounds in e glish, so ty :P
- You know what it sounds like, but you still introduce yourself as such?
  We should party.
- miau
- I live in quebec so to me it sounds like pussy (chatte)
- "chato" also means boring or annoying in portuguese.

they are all constantly streaming, and they've crawled way, way down inside the Matrix

Chat: The perfect autistic pronoun

Maybe she should be more concerned that students are asking if her class is real.
- I am not sure if you are being genuine or not (chat?) but in case you are the phrase is not asking if something is literally real. It's a way to express surprise at a situation "wow this thing is really happening".
  
  I was being genuine, but the explanation “is this really happening?” shouldn’t seem much better from a teacher’s point of view.
- But they're not asing if the class is real

Actually kinda fascinating, we're watching language evolve in real time
- That's always been the case
  
  That sounds bonkers. Chat, can you verify it’s real?
  
  No, it's never been like it is now. Pre-internet, language was far more isolated and stagnant. Pre-television, even more so.
  Now I'm noticing regional accents flattening out, everyone sounding more and more alike. Our vocabulary has exploded with new words. It would be frustrating as hell to go back in time 30-years and try to explain 2023 to my younger self.
- It's crazy chat
- if this is the new language then I'm leaving the english speaking world and becoming a tibetan monk

But have they begun unwittingly emulating the ancient Greek chorus yet, or is this that? In either event, I'm amused, but slightly moreso with the former of entire groups addressing their situation

Probably has something to do with meat crayons video, I've been hanging out with some 20 year olds in discord and theh routinely make jokes based off this video.
https://youtu.be/Quhb0RMtfH4
- Dude i think the joke is in reference to twitch streamers, not just XQC and not just MeatCanyon
  
  So we agree

I actually think this is hilarious and approve

What’s your question?