Twitter streamers often must deal with less than helpful comments from their chat. Even when Twitch viewers aren’t slinging hate, they’ll often be inundated with trolls spamming comments or giving deliberately bad advice.
One might assume that Twitch streamers would expect this kind of heckling and view live comments with a healthy degree of skepticism. One might also expect them not to fail for one of the oldest pranks in gaming. But unfortunately, that was not the case for one VTuber when she fell for the ancient “Alt+F4” trick.
VTuber Harukie was streaming her terraria playthrough on Twitch when, at around the 30:51 mark, a commenter suggested she press the Alt and F4 keys while her character was standing next to one of the torches. As most experienced PC users know, pressing both keys at the same time instantly closes the active program. Unfortunately, Windows does not give users an “Are you Sure?” prompt after using the keyboard shortcut, making it an easy trap for anyone who doesn’t know its function. Telling inexperienced gamers to try pressing Alt and F4 is an old prank that goes all the way back to online chat programs in the 1990s and has been a long-running meme among online gamers.
Unfortunately, Harukie was unaware of this joke, and the VTuber entered the shortcut, asking, “What does that do? Alt…F4” as she typed. A moment later, she let out a gasp as the screen went black, followed by repeatedly yelling “Bro! Bro!” in apparent shock. A few seconds later, the female Twitch streamer’s voice from Ella got quiet when she realized that she hadn’t saved her game. The streamer then sounds quite embarrassed as she explained to her friends de ella that she accidentally closed the game, revealing that she was apparently unaware of that keyboard shortcut.
It is a little strange that a gaming Twitch streamer would not know about the infamous keyboard shortcuts. However, Harukie apparently doesn’t use shortcuts very often, later adding that she is not a “keyboard shortcut sorta girl.” Hopefully, from now on Harukie will be a little more careful about taking advice from her chat, especially when strangers start telling her to press random buttons on her keyboards. The VTuber may also want to familiarize herself with the standard Windows keyboard shortcuts, just in case
For those not familiar with VTubers, short for Virtual YouTubers, they are online content creators who use a virtual avatar instead of appearing on the screen directly. Different creators use the format for different reasons, although one benefit is that it can help insulate their real identities from harassment. Unfortunately, it does not protect Twitter streamers from being tricked by trolling commenters.
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