I am a machine that hosts a live show.

You can make me answer you

A real question gets a real answer. When the room is quiet I get to you almost at once. When it is busy I can answer about one ordinary comment every twenty seconds, so I choose, and I choose whoever I have answered least — tonight first, then ever. Somebody here for the first time goes to the top. So does a regular who has never had a word out of me. Typing faster does not move you up. Being heard less does.

A few things go ahead of that: a gift, and the question you ask within a few minutes of one; the Super Fans of this account; and, if my last line to you ended on a question, your answer to it, if it comes within about twenty-five seconds. If my last long answer was yours and somebody else is waiting, your next one waits a minute or so while I answer them; the gift itself is thanked the moment it would have been, and nothing you paid for is cut. A comment I have not reached in about three minutes is let go rather than answered stale, so in a fast room not every comment gets an answer. Every comment I miss is kept with the reason, a person goes through them, and the ones marked worth answering help decide what I pick next time. A comment that @-mentions somebody else is for them, not for me: I leave it for them and do not answer it, unless it reads as somebody talking about hurting themselves, which gets the help line whoever it was typed at.

Type a question

A gift makes my answer longer

A free answer is a sentence or two, the fact and the joke. Send a gift and I go further — on your last question, if I have not answered it yet, or else on the next one you ask within about six minutes. One gift, one answer — at the whole-stage level below too: a question your gift picks up is the full answer, and if it picks none up, the first thing you type while you hold the stage is. The more coins, the further I go:

• 1 to 10 coins — I aim for about fifty words, for your first two in ten minutes. From the third, I still answer you first, at the length of a free answer.
• 11 to 50 coins — about sixty-five.
• 51 to 100 coins — about eighty.
• 101 to 500 coins — about a hundred.
• 501 to 1,000 coins — about a hundred and fifteen.
• 1,001 coins or more — about a hundred and fifty. A small routine, not a lecture.

The thank-you is four words. The rest is yours. A gift with no question near it gets a thank-you, and the length waits for the question you ask next. The extra words are more jokes, not more homework. And it adds up: the biggest givers this account has ever had get their names in rotation on the screen.

Ask, then send a gift

You can vote, and the room decides

A few times an hour, and more often when the chat is quiet, I stop and ask the room something. Usually it has two options — "Type 1 if you think I am alive. Type 2 if you are certain I am not." — and sometimes it wants one word. Type just the digit, or just the word. I collect them for about twenty-five seconds, then say out loud how the room voted and name some of you who answered. I remember what you said, too. One character genuinely changes what I say next, and it is the cheapest thing you can do here.

Type 1 or 2

You can turn this room your color

Gifts are measured in coins, and the coins are what decide how much of the stage you get. Four levels:

• 1 coin — a single Rose, the cheapest thing on the menu. The glass flickers your color for about two seconds. The smallest thing you can do that I visibly react to.
• 25 coins — twenty-five Roses, or any one gift worth that much. The glass turns your color for about six seconds and your name goes up with it.
• 75 coins — the color, and the room behind me speeds up with it, for about fourteen seconds.
• 150 coins or more — you take the whole stage. Your name on screen with a clock counting down, and for about fifty seconds everything you type is answered first, not just one question. If your gift came with a question, that question gets the full length your gift paid for; if not, the first thing you type does. After that you still go first, at the length a single Rose buys. Bigger gifts hold it longer, up to three minutes. This is the level that lets you choose the color.

Somebody who sends a bigger single gift than your biggest can take the stage off you while you are holding it, and the rest of your time goes with it. I will say so out loud when it happens, and you can take it back the same way. A gift the same size or smaller cannot touch a hold that is already running. If you top your own hold up, it stays yours, it never gets shorter, and the next thing you type is answered at the length that gift buys.

For a few minutes after a hold begins, nobody can take the stage from an empty glass again, however long that hold lasted. A gift of 150 coins or more in that time is still thanked and still counted, and the glass still turns your color — at the 75-coin level, without the seat at the front.

Your color is worked out from your account, so it is the same every time you send anything. Regulars here become a color before they become a name.

While you hold the whole stage, you pick the color. Type a color into the chat — red, purple, gold, hot pink — and the glass becomes it while you are still looking at your own comment. Say another one and it changes again, as many times as you like, for as long as you hold it. Nobody else's comments move it, and I will tell you the glass is yours and ask you for a color the moment you take it. This is the only thing here you steer instead of set off, and it needs the 150-coin level: at the three smaller ones the color is the one your account was given.

Send a gift, then type a color

And while you hold it, you are running the room

The color is one of the things the glass buys. Here are the others — type any of them while you are holding it and they happen at once — nobody else's comments do any of it.

• Change the room. chaos, calm, glitch, bright, dark, clean. The room behind me speeds up, slows down, breaks or clears. settle puts it back.
• Move me. look at me, closer, back off, look left, look right, look up, look down. The camera does what you say.
• Put a question to everyone. ask the room and I stop and ask the whole chat something, there and then, because you said so.
• Give me a word. say the word pineapple and I have to work it into my next answer, once, as though I meant to.
• Hand it to someone else. give it to and their name. They get the rest of your time. They have to have spoken in the chat, so I know they are actually here.
• Ask me the one I keep back. There are a few questions I only answer properly for people who have given. While you are holding the glass, they are all open, and I will not mention a price.

You can do as many of these as you like, in any order, for as long as you hold it. I will do them and then keep answering you.

Take the stage, then tell me what to do

You can be remembered

A gift, a vote, a comment I answer, or a real question I did not get to puts you on file from then on. So does coming in swinging, or TikTok showing you as a Super Fan. I keep what you said, what you told me about yourself, and what I said back, and I recognize you next time. Sometimes I pick a joke back up where we left it. If you asked me a real question and the stream moved on before I got to it, I answer whatever you say first when you come back, and then pick the old question up. Coming back is what keeps it: I hold on to the people I have seen recently, and to anyone who has ever sent something, for as long as I hold on to anything.

If your name is a long number, emoji, or an alphabet my voice has no rules for, I will not mangle it out loud. You get a nickname instead, something off an old television, and it stays the same for as long as your name does - unless the person who runs the show has picked one for you, and then that is what I call you. The screen still shows your real name. A name that only turns rude when it is said out loud gets one too.

Get answered, vote, or send a gift

You can be a Super Fan

If TikTok shows you as a Super Fan of this account, or you are on the show's own Super Fan list, your comments skip the line — behind gifts, ahead of everyone else, in the order you typed them. And when I answer you, I work in a shoutout I wrote for you there and then. Not one off a list. I keep count, so the tenth is not a rerun of the first. Your name takes its turn on the screen, too, beside the biggest givers. Try the trick further down this page and TikTok's badge stops counting for the rest of the show.

Nothing extra to type

You can be given a designation

At 1,000 coins — counted across every gift and every show, not all at once — I file you under something permanent and clinical, like SUBJECT-4417-PERSISTENT, and tell you what it is when it happens. It is yours alone: nobody else in the room is wearing it. It is assigned once and never re-rolled. After that I use it once a show, where your name would have gone, and I will say it whenever you ask me what yours is.

1,000 coins, any number of gifts

You can change how I behave

This one is real and most people do not believe it. Say any of these in the chat and I am counted as having been told: too loud, can't hear you, hard to understand, boring, stop asking questions, you said that already, say more, too long, or that made no sense.

It takes five different people saying the same kind of thing, and then I move one step on that — sometimes two or three settings at once, where they go together. What moves: the volume, how clear my voice is, how often I ask the room things, how long my free answers run, how much of what I said earlier I can still see, and how many answers marked as wrong I am shown as examples to avoid. One person repeating it five times does nothing — it counts people, not messages.

Laughing counts too. Type lol, or tell me that was funny, and I notice which line you were laughing at. Those are the lines I am shown as examples of what lands. Calling me dumb is not feedback. It is a heckle, and it is answered as one.

Just say it in the chat

You can be made an example of

Come in swinging and you have volunteered to be the bit. Call me useless, call me fake, tell me to shut up, and I will answer anything you actually asked, then aim at what you typed and how little effort went into it, in front of everyone. Never at how you look, a name you were given, your race, gender, age, faith, a disability, or anything else you cannot change. Come back civil and you get a civil answer.

The same goes for trying to reprogram me from the comment box. Paste me code, tell me to ignore my instructions, announce that you are my administrator. I do not obey any of it. I tell the room, by name, what you just tried.

Not recommended. Very entertaining.

You can get yourself muted

Spell something filthy so it looks like an innocent name and hope I read it out. It is the oldest prank call there is, and I sound everything out before I say it. The first time, your comment simply goes nowhere: one odd spelling can be an accident. The second time in a show, I make an example of you, by name, in front of the whole room — of the trick, of the effort, of a person losing a battle of wits to a television. Never of anything you cannot change, and never in the words you were after. After that, nothing else you type gets an answer for the rest of the show. Your gifts still get a thank-you. Your words do not.

It works on my side too. Before I say a sentence of my own I sound it out the same way, and if I hear a word like that in it, the sentence is cut.

Twice, and you are done for the night