I moderate live streams from time to time. The one that made me quit had no viewers, but an active chat.

I am a moderator on a well-known streaming platform. I tend to take the jobs that pay the most, and I’ve gotten used to seeing some pretty fucked-up stuff that I had to keep under control. Most of the time, there’s just people flashing the camera or doing self-harm or being racist, homophobic, misogynistic and so on. I also delete harmful things from the chats and make sure stuff isn’t escalating. You know the drill.

However, I have had some gigs in the past that made me want to quit moderating. I’ll probably tell you all about that, but for now I’ll focus on this one, since it felt weirdly personal.

I had almost decided to quit due to a previous incident I don’t feel like getting into right now, but I figured that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and it doesn’t hurt to do one more job like that.

So that’s what I did.

The listing said something like:

Pre-broadcast moderation for internal livestream content. No audience interaction required.

That last part mattered. No viewers, that meant I wouldn’t have to deal with any trolls or doxxers. I was just going to monitor a stream that wasn’t public yet. It was part of a delayed broadcast system. My job was to watch the live feed and flag or remove anything that would violate guidelines before it ever reached an audience.

Basically, I was cleaning it in real time so when it aired later, it would already be “safe.”

They were simple, but weirdly specific:

1. Do not pause, rewind, or refresh the stream
2. Do not take screenshots or record the screen
3. Do not open the “Chat History” tab
4. Remove any message that appears to reference future events

That last one really stood out.

When I asked about it, the guy running the onboarding just said that sometimes test data gets injected into the chat, and just to remove anything predictive.

I thought he meant spoilers. Like if the stream was scripted or something. I figured it might be one of those fake haunted house or magic trick livestreams, so I didn’t really give it a second thought.

I was wrong. The stream was… boring.

Just a fixed camera pointed at a room. Looked like an apartment living room. Couch, coffee table, a door in the back, one lamp on.

No movement, and no sound except a faint hum, which I assumed was the fan.

The chat panel was empty.

I sat there for maybe twenty minutes before anything happened.

A message popped up.

door opens soon

I hovered over it. It didn’t look like a normal user message and it had no username, just grey text. I assumed this was the “test data” they mentioned, so I removed it. About ten seconds later, the door in the stream opened, then closed again. That reminded me of some scene in a found footage movie, where the bad filmmakers are trying to scare us.

The empty room was making me uncomfortable as shit. I’d seen a lot of obscure videos on the internet that start with an empty, grainy room.

Messages would appear, I’d remove them, and then something in the stream would happen shortly after.

lamp turns off (delete) Lamp went out.

something moves behind couch (delete) A shuffle behind the couch.

At around the one hour mark, I got distracted and didn’t delete a message right away. I’m sorry, but when you’re staring at an empty room for hours, you tend to go insane.

door opens

I let it sit for a few seconds and nothing happened when, about half a minute later, the door opened.

I stopped deleting messages immediately and started timing them.

Every single one happened, but always after a delay.

I opened a notepad and wrote a few down: the timing wasn’t perfectly consistent, but it hovered around the same range, which was like 20 seconds. It kind of dawned upon me that the chat hadn’t been reacting to the scripted stream, but it was actually ahead of it.

This was supposed to be pre-broadcast, so where the fuck were the messages coming from? And how the fuck were they predicting what was gonna happen?

I wanted to get mad, but I didn’t have anything to get mad at. The instructions had been clear, and nothing weird actually happened. They did tell me the chat was gonna be predictive. There wasn’t any catch in the listing. I thought it was freaky, and I just wanted to take a picture, so I opened chat history for two seconds to do just that.

Yeah, I know. It was one of the rules.

When I opened it, I expected logs, it was just a long list of messages, all of them describing events. I scrolled… most were about the room, which was stupid, since there wasn’t anything in the fucking room to begin with-

moderator closes chat history

I froze.

I hadn’t done that yet.

… Should I?

moderator feels happy they closed chat history

I closed it immediately, then went back to the main view and kept watching.

Hands kind of shaking at that point, but I told myself there had to be a technical explanation. Preloaded logs or simulation or something. I didn’t rule it out as a prank, because my webcam was always covered so my reaction to it was hidden.

Then a new message appeared in the live chat.

moderator checks behind him

I stared at it. Didn’t move or delete it.

Nothing happened in the stream, the room stayed empty. Ten seconds passed. Twenty. Thirty. Then another message appeared.

too late

I turned so fast I almost broke my neck. Nothing was there, of course. Jesus Christ, that’s the worst part, right? When nothing’s there. I laughed, actually laughed, closed the chat and went back to the stream.

The door was open now. And beyond it, there was a hallway. I hadn’t seen a hallway before.

it looks at the moderator too

it leaves the room

Slowly, something passed the doorway.

Nothing else happened in the stream, no more messages appeared.

Everything went still again, and at exactly four hours, the system logged me out automatically.

I stood up and turned on all the lights, then walked around the house for a bit to shake off the stiffness that was caused obviously by sitting down for so long, and not by anything else.

The next night, I checked the notepad file, where I’d written the delays.

There’s a line at the bottom that wasn’t mine and read moderator rereads notes.

And under it:

turns around again

I turned around to see my window, wide open.

Yeah, I don’t fuck with moderating anymore.