I heard you like Stats! Here is a more comprehensive breakdown of the live chat activity.

Since data was brought up, and that is how I make a living, thought I'd do a small dive into chat.

Context: Am a long-time fan (Pre-podcast) who hasn't missed anything posted. For some time I've felt the live feedback that is received has a large impact on the content presented.

As someone who limits posting online to a bare minimum, and as someone who doesn't know anyone who actively posts on message boards/comment sections/chats... I got curious

Thesis: A small group of chatters influence the direction of the show

Conclusion: TLDR: Ethan stop reading chat. You're talking to such a small group of individuals that they would fit in my sad, sad, sad studio apartment.

After Dark #121 Chat Stats

Total Chat Stats

* Please note that viewership numbers were extracted 24 Hours after the live stream. Exact live-stream numbers are only viewable by the channel owner. There is room for error here, and there is an inherent overvaluation of live viewership numbers. There is around a 21-hour window where people may have watched the podcast on-demand/After work on Friday.

Top Contributors

10 Individual users made up %11 percent of the whole chat!!!!!!!!!!!!

I repeat 10 individual People represent >%10 of all chatters.

100 unique Individuals make up close to %40 of chat

This means the Sentiment of 100 people holds an overwhelming weight on how the audience is represented.

From a numbers perspective, this is a huge skew.

I will keep arm-chair psychology out of it (as it is out of my realm of expertise) but as the viewership numbers are so large, and the activity is so condensed to a small group, the personality or make-up of those who actively participate must be at least taken into consideration to some extent. They are atypical outliers, and should not be viewed under the same lens of the typical viewer.

This would be the equivalent of judging the sentiment of a population based on the ramblings of a single individual who yells in the street. (so much for keeping arm-chair psychology out)

Low Activity Chatters

Even though live chatters make up the vast minority of viewers. The vast majority of them drop in for a quick message, then proceed to view without further activity.

More than %38 comment only once, while over 3/4ths of chatters comment 5 times or less.

Chatter Activity Over Time

This represents chatter activity over the duration of the episode.

I would give limited attention to Ham/Spam/Meme indicator. There is an abundance of emoji spam, or hello messages that have been segregated, but didn't put the effort to parse them any further than that. Can use tools to better parse, but tried to put this together in a short amount of time.

FYI:

Ham = Legitimate contributions or reactions ("LOL" and emotional emojis such as laughing counted Spam= non-sentiment emojis, and messages such as "hi"

Show Memes= Messages such "Audio" "Who is Sam?" and other typing of soundbites.

Again. wouldn't give too much weight to these indicators, not super accurate as I didn't deep dive into the content of messages too much.

Interesting notes.

The intro to new segments sees an uptick in activity.
When Ethan Eats, activity declines steeply. (are the chatters bored of this? or are they also joining in on eating, and their fingers are occupied? who knows)
Chatters have strong opinions about Ice Cream
Chatter activity peaked when stats about them were presented and they were talked about + when Gabe showed up. Hard to tell which was the catalyst. Probably a little of both, but I'd assume mentioning chat activity, caused chat activity
Pre-show activity is the highest activity, and chatters punch themselves out over time.