I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my eyes. I had about twenty more minutes of footage to cut down before I began my second pass of the edit. It had taken a whole week to cut down the dozens of hours of raw video I had been gathering for the past week. Six of my favorite streamers were going into this compilation; the third one of the year.

It was a tradition I had: creating a highly curated and heavily-edited compilation of the highlights from each streamers' past three months of content. Of course, it would be nearly impossible in the time frame I gave myself to sift through the thousand-plus hours of footage that the six streamers produced collectively, so I had a method.

I spent hours gathering clips from forums and fan pages-communities whose hobbies were collecting dramatic, cringe-worthy, cool, and emotional moments over a specific streamer's career and sharing them to the rest of the internet.

Though I wasn't well known in any of the streamers' communities, those who had seen my work had garnered me a modestly-sized presence on YouTube. Judging from the comments left on my latest upload, they were looking forward to my next video release.

My phone vibrated and a Discord notification sound startled me out of my thoughts. I grabbed the device from my desk and checked the notification. It was from TeslacoilBrit's server.

I had been a regular viewer of his for almost four years now. Although not included in my compilations, he was by far my favorite creator. His charismatic, sarcastic personality and sense of comedic timing made him a joy to watch. His posh-sounding voice and accent were amazing compliments to his distinctly dry sense of humor. There was an inside joke in his community that he was secretly American and was just putting on the accent to attract a larger female audience. I didn't think that was true, but to be fair, he did a really damn good American accent.

I put my phone back down and quickly hit Ctrl+S, a few more times out of habit, minimized my editing software, then clicked into TeslacoilBrit's server.

I opened the "event-announcements" channel and read over the ping he had posted:

@everyone I made a cake today and I'm too lazy to frost it. In other news, I'm holding an impromptu social event. For those of you whom arrive after my explanation in the VC-

I stopped reading and scrolled down the channel list to see a voice channel called "event announcement" had been created and dozens of people were joining, most of whom were muted automatically. Those that weren't were-from their pink usernames-clearly server moderators. I didn't, however, see the distinct gold text of TeslacoilBrit's username. There was still time.

I ignored the rest of the announcement ping and joined with the other waiting community members.

The mods were cracking jokes with each other, micspamming, roasting each other's profile pictures, and posting memes in the respective channels. They were likely trying to keep everyone entertained while we all waited for Brit to join.

Five minutes passed, and the familiar golden username popped into the channel.

The sound of smacking lips was the first thing we all heard, then a second later Brit spoke.

"'Ello Coilbois!" His words were muffled and more lip-smacking followed. 'Coilbois' were what he called his community members. It was a term of endearment that the community had collectively agreed upon.

"Dude, what are you eating?" LoofyGoop, one of the mods, asked. His accent was either American or Canadian.

There was an awkward silence as all that could be heard were chewing sounds.

Just when one would have expected a response, the chewing stopped, but there were another couple of seconds of silence.

It was enough that within those seconds, the mods-and myself-erupted into laughter.

"What's so funny?" Brit asked, his words clear and enunciated this time, tone deadpan. He was definitely smirking a little as he spoke.

"Brit, you have to warn me next time. I was literally in the middle of taking a drink! It shot out my nose!" An Australian voice coughed. 

I didn't see which one of the mods had scolded the streamer since my eyes were full of tears. I tried to compose myself, but as I replayed what had just happened in my head, another wave of laughter took hold.

I was slapping the padded armrests of my chair as I tried to fight back the giggles. I wanted to hear what else they would say.

"Take another sip," Brit said, his tone both deadpan and smug at the same time, "I can wait."

"Fuck you!" Cranberries-the Australian voice-replied with a chuckle, and then coughed a bit more.

"Sorry mate, You know I don't play that game."

"What are you eating?" Get$hifyinhere said as she chuckled. She seemed to share an accent with Brit.

"Cake," responded Brit, then audibly took another bite.

Get$hiftyinhere chuckled again, "Oh, you were serious about the cake?"

"Mm-hm," Brit replied.

"What kind?" LoofyGoop asked.

There was another silence and familiar lip-smacking.

"Don't you fucking dare." Cranberries said, his audio peaking. There was little doubt in my mind that his lips were firmly planted on his microphone as he said the words.

There was another short burst of laughter and as it died down, Brit spoke through a full mouth.

He took a full second to say the word, "Red…"

There was a short-but still far longer than was necessary-pause.

LoofyGoop chuckled, "Okay, Jesus Christ. Get on-!"

"Velvet." Brit finished casually, interrupting the mod as if he hadn't even been speaking.

Despite being off-stream, his signature flawless comedic timing was out in full force, and the mods were adding excellent material for him to work with.

There were a few more minutes of banter exchanged before Brit finally addressed the rest of the channel, with an empty mouth.

"Okay Coilbois, today's event is about making friends. Tomodachi. Amigos. There are ten new voice and text channels you can join. All server rules still apply. Use your manners, don't be a knobhead, play nice-all that gubbins. If there is a problem, contact one of the mods. They'll be drifting around the different channels, so make sure you tell them how much you love them," his delivery was dry, sarcastic, and silly; a balance I had never seen anyone but Brit pull off. "Mods? Introductions?"

"Hey, I'm LoofyGoop. Follow me on SoundCloud and Deezer. Donate to my Venmo and subscribe to my Onlyfans," his tone lacked any semblance of seriousness.

The other mods chuckled and I rolled my eyes as the left corner of my mouth lifted into an involuntary half-grin.

"I'm Cranberries, but you can call me Cran-daddy or Crab-" The Australian's words were undercut by a belch so loud and deep that I nearly mistook it for someone playing a bear sound effect. The fact that the audio peaked on top of that sent me into a dry-heave and the other mods into a fit of cackles. "Or you can call me Lewie. Subscribe to my Onlyfans," the mod finished without skipping a beat.

"Eight out of ten, can taste it from here," Brit said, deadpan, "Shifty?"

"Hi, I'm Shifty. I'm the woman," The second of silence that followed made her next words that much funnier as she built the anticipation, "Subscribe to my Onlyfans."

The frantic, exaggerated typing sounds from the other two mods that followed immediately afterwards soon devolved into smashing and thumping. Someone, probably Brit, began playing a recording of a chimp screaming, adding another layer of chaos to the scene.

It seemed too well timed not to have been pre-planned, though, I wouldn't doubt this group of friends to be that comedically in tune with each other.

By this point I was out of breath and out of my chair, howling. I was so glad I was here for this. My stomach hurt and I nearly peed myself, but I wouldn't have had it any other way.

Mercifully, the bit came to an end when Brit said, "If you three are done acting like a gaggle of coomers, I think we should let everyone go. Have fun, Coilbois! Go make some memories!"

I pulled myself back onto my chair and wiped the tears from my eyes for a second time. I drew my palm across my forehead, the beads of laughing sweat being taken away. I couldn't remember the last time I had laughed this hard. Maybe it was because of how tired I was, but I doubted that had much to do with it.

TeslacoilBrit's name disappeared, accompanied by the voice channel exit sound.

An instant later dozens more did the same as people began moving into the other voice channels.

I took a few deep breaths to compose myself and fought back the urge to recall what had just happened. Scrolling down to the event channels I clicked the least occupied one, which happened to be "event-7", joining eight others.

"-I swear to God I've never seen a more inept CS:GO pro in my LIFE. The fact he was blatantly hacking made me cringe even harder. I can't believe he fucking streamed that shit."

"Bro just ruined his whole career in a matter of seconds."

"How do you fuck up that bad? He didn't even have to stream but this idiot woke up and thought 'I think I'll open OBS and make an absolute fool of myself today.' "

"Oh, but you know he's gonna find some way to take advantage of this."

"True."

"What're you guys talking about?" I interjected.

"Bog Popper's poor life decisions," Kelptosaurusrex, the first voice said.

"I'm not familiar," I replied.

"Do you watch pro CS:GO?" The second voice, ThatFatRabbitMeme asked.

"Nah, can't say that I do."

"Well, this dumbass went full potato-brain and streamed himself cheating in the middle of this year's quarter-finals and got his whole team DQ'd."

"What an idiot!" I laughed, "I feel kinda bad for the rest of his team though…"

"I'm gonna make an educated guess and say his teammates aren't happy," a third voice spoke. JugHugger1337.

"Or their sponsors!" Kelptosaurusrex added.

I spent the next half hour chatting with the people in the channel and sharing memes. A few people here-and-there joined for a few minutes and left without saying anything. Eventually, I decided to go to another channel. I sent friend requests to the first three I'd talked with and exited after saying my farewells.

Looking at the channel occupancy, event-3 had surprisingly few people in it, with there only being three people.

Perfect.

It was so much easier to talk to three people instead of eight. There was significantly less chance of the channel devolving into everyone talking over each other, which I really hated. 

Luckily the previous channel had been mostly tolerable. 

I also noticed that one of the people in the channel had their camera on. For some servers this was pretty standard; letting people activate their webcams to engage in video conversations, but Brit's server had a rank system that meant you needed to be a high enough rank in the server to access those privileges. That required significant engagement in the server for an extended period of time.

My rank was well past the minimum requirements, but that was only because I had been an active member of the server for four years.

I remembered it taking me nearly a month of committed engagement with the text and voice chats to get to that point. When I'd finally gotten to the coveted 40th rank I had felt quite accomplished. 

I loved video chatting, as it felt far more personal than talking to a profile picture and made me more relatable to those I chatted with. 

Unfortunately, my webcam had recently broken as a result of me having left the cord bent at an awkward angle for years, exposing the wiring. It didn't help that the thing had been worn down when I first began using it. 

I hadn't gotten around to replacing it, which annoyed me a fair bit, since I would have loved to have had it for this event. But even without it, I was still enjoying myself.

I clicked into the channel.