Well, yes, very clearly it's a "man on screen said it" situation, but it's not like that's new.

People who repeated "ground control to {insert name}" to get the attention of someone whose mind was elsewhere didn't believe they were actually addressing an astronaut. It's an idiom born of the current cultural zeitgeist.

Lol bro younger generations just say random shit to sound cool.

I'm remembering how many times I said "epic" or phonetically pronounced "lulz" in every day speech when I was younger. It's just something kids do.

I think it's Gen Alpha, not Gen Z.

A friend of mine teaches middle school maths, and every kid in the class is striving to be an influencer or twitch streamer, no other aspirations in life.

I used to be with it. Then they changed what "it" was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DlTexEXxLQ

My real name starts with Chat and since it's a little difficult to pronounce if you don't know French I use it as a nickname.people always asking me weird questions on the Internet.

hope the cloud heard you

Tbf, the zoomer/boomer thing is in the same vein.

If I can recall, chat was a term used in old IRC rooms, too. Just fads coming back around. Its just like "groovy" or "bees knees". Every gen has their slang.

Its literally too much stress for me to get irritated over something so small. I have enough stress already. We all do. Save yourself a pointless wrinkle, friend.

Your second paragraph should've been your clue. The "chat" they're talking about is the chat attached to a YouTube or Twitch stream. It's influencer brainrot slang.

Funny moments get shared between friends and spreads its reach -> Long form reaction content creates sharable moments -> Livestreams generate long form reaction content -> Livestreams have a chat that accompanies the streamer -> Streamer refers to chat during funny moments -> This is referenced as a meme -> Talking to chat spreads beyond the original context

I think it comes from streamers who might legitimately ask their viewers, who are partaking in the stream through a chat, "chat, is this X?"

... If you do it occasionally, when contextually appropriate... it is funny, a self aware reference to how they spend a lot of time on twitch streams, and are expressing disbelief.

When you do it all the time, reflexively, regardless of context... yeah, that may indicate that that just is your baseline norm for social interaction and you fundamentally cannot or do not distinguish between the contexts of online interaction and irl interaction.

There a whole lot of kids now who are just basically raises from near birth by screens. Parents with no free time or parents who don't give a shit just give the kid a distraction rectangle so they don't have to ... raise them.

lmao I'm gonna start to say goodbye like that XD

Chat just became synonymous with readers/listeners in modern slang. I also went through my "old man yells at cloud" phase about it, but it's fine, I guess. I still get annoyed when people say the name of twitch emotes, though.

This is a gen Alpha thing, please do not associate us with those creatures.

"chat" is this Lemmy thread, in this example. it addresses the audience. it's the streamer equivalent of breaking the fourth wall.

My guess is it was accidentally done by people watching too many streamers who would intentionally call the group of chatters as chat. It was then done ironically as a way to illicit a reaction on something as a streamer did. Then became more regular nomenclature to query a group

"don't forget to like and subscribe"

That seems more like the result of bad parenting.

I think a lot of young people see content creation as the only way they can make the money they want/need. I think many of them idolize streamers/content creators, and so they emulate them however they can. Part of that is dreaming to eventually have a 'chat' to say 'chat' to.

Makes me pretty sad, tbh.