“Hey guys, and welcome to GTLive!” Matthew Patrick started in his signature cadence, his hands open and spread, welcoming the viewers at home.

“Not just any regular ol’ GTLive!” his wife and co-host Stephanie Patrick chimed in, a bright smile tinged with excitement.

“Yeah, this is Diet GTLive,” Matt replied, picking up his nearby can of Diet Coke to further the purposes of his joke visually.

“No, this is like the opposite of a Diet GTLive,” Stephanie corrected. Matt set the Diet Coke back down on their table.

“A regular GTLive, then,” Matt said in return, with a faux confused face, as if that answer was obvious.

“Nooo, like how a,” Stephanie paused, thinking how to word her thoughts.
“Like how Diet would be going one way off of a regular GTLive, this is going in the other direction,” she explained, pointing to her right for the first point, then thumb-pointing to her left for the second.

“Ahhh!” Matt said in a fake “I understand” sort of fashion. “So like GTLive Extra!” he exclaimed.

“Ooh I like that,” Steph said. “Like how it goes on the other end, too. Diet GTLive. GTLive Extra. I like how it sounds, too. GTLive Extra.” Steph said, putting on her rougher “cool” voice to say GTLive Extra the second time.

“Anyway!” Matt took back over, ready to explain. “The reason today’s GTLive is a GTLive Extra is because this is no ordinary stream. This is a…” he paused for dramatic effect, “charity stream!”

“That’s right, today we’re raising money for a good cause. This is something we’ve been wanting to do for a while, we just needed the right stream for it. And today we got our hands on something pretty interesting.” Steph explained.
Matt then went into detail explaining what they were raising money for, and why it was a cause they supported and believed in.

“Any amount helps. It doesn’t matter if you only donate a dollar. You don’t have to drop a huge donation to make a difference. Every single dollar counts and we appreciate them all equally,” Matt finished.

“That is absolutely right,” Stephanie agreed. “Now, let’s explain what we’re doing during this livestream.” Stephanie’s smile seemed slightly mischievous and knowing.
“So Matthew,” Stephanie began, “has volunteered to be the guinea pig today. We managed to borrow a fancy schmancy gadget from one of our friends in the tech space. This thing is like super cool.” Stephanie leaned out of frame, and when she returned she was holding a cube with rounded edges and a small dish, resembling that of a satellite somewhat. The main body seemed to be made of a hard, dark gray plastic. There were several indentations resembling holes that were actually unlit lights, with one larger square one on two of the opposite sides.

Steph gently set the cube on their coffee table and gestured her hands around it, showing it off.

“Yeah so this is the world’s first commercially available mass reduction apparatus. Well, commercially available if you have a few mil sittin’ around burning holes in your pockets. But let’s called a spade a spade, it’s a shrink ray,” Matt explained.

“Yeah, and the friend we’re borrowing from actually helped develop it. He says it’s fully functioning, he claims it totally works, and showed us a video of him trying it out on some stuff,” Steph started, before Matt cut in.

“I’m still kind of betting on this being an elaborate prank. In case it doesn’t work, we do have a backup game to play!”

“We do, but he said it works, he explained somewhat of how it operates. Unfortunately, it’s not point-and-shoot like you want out of a cool sci-fi gadget.”

“Yeah so like, I had to give this thing some of my DNA earlier so it could like, lock on to me and accurately, uh, reduce my mass, I suppose. Our friend said it took some time to calibrate to a target but it’s taken all flippin’ day. It only finished about twenty minutes before the livestream so we didn’t have time to test it and make sure we weren’t being punked.”

“Yeah, so the way Chris and Jason have the thing hooked up, we’re basically going to be shrinking Matthew in increments based on donations. We didn’t want him to shrink away to nothingness within the first twenty minutes of the livestream, so we had to set it kind of steep, but hopefully that just makes you guys really wanna donate. Anyway I think what we decided on is Matt loses one-fifth of an inch for every thirty dollars raised. Is that right?” Steph asked, looking off camera.

“Yeah, one-fifth of an inch for every thirty dollars, but depending on volume of donations we can just do one full inch for every $150. Which is the same rate either way,” Jason’s disembodied voice explained off-camera.

“Aww, I wonder how little he’s gonna get,” Stephanie cooed, slightly puckering her lips and talking in a cutesy voice.

“Why do I have a feeling I’m going to regret this so much,” Matt said.

“It’s for charity!” Stephanie reminded him, then went back to making the same face back at him.

“Yeah, but we could have done lots of other stuff! If I hate this I’m blaming Jason!”
“What? You guys are the ones who picked this out, I had nothing to do with it,” Jason retorted.

“Hashtag blame Jason, everybody,” Matt said, like he usually does.

“And what if it’s super cool and a totally unique experience that you love?” Jason said, clearly expecting the “blame” if it went well.

“Then it’s hashtag blame MatPat for choosing a super cool incentive to donate!” Matt said confidently. Stephanie rolled her eyes.

“C’mon man, isn’t your inner scientist super stoked about this opportunity?” Stephanie said to Matt. He thought it over for a second.

“Yeah, this could be pretty cool, actually. Alright, Chris is gonna get this thing set up and ready to go, but in the meanwhile,” Matt paused and turned to Steph, “I think the viewers need to know how to engage with the stream.” Matt leaned over and grabbed the square chalkboard with #GTLive written on it in chalk, and below it a crude chalky depiction of a small faintly human-shaped blob near the bottom, with outlines similar to his body shape extending outward, bigger with every consecutive one.

Stephanie was about to begin to explain how to engage with the stream as she does on every livestream, but Matt spoke up while eying the drawing.

“Chris, what on earth is this hot garbage?” Matt said facetiously.

“Hurtful!” Chris said in his tone of voice that made almost nothing sound serious to him. “It’s a person, they’re shrinking. He’s cute!”

“Aw I can see it, he’s kinda blobby but he’s a cute little shrinking blob,” Steph said. Then she launched into her usual. “Anyway, there are three, count them three ways to engage with the stream today. That’s right, I said three, not two. The first way is in the chat, which is either over here,” she pointed to her left, to a chat that is only there if you’re watching the stream, “or down there,” she pointed down at the ground, “depending on your browser configuration. You guys know this, there’s tons of you in the chat typing away already.

“The second way is on Twitter via hashtag GTLive,” she said while gesturing towards the chalkboard.

“Yeah, if you even get on Twitter today,” Matt grumbled teasingly.

“I check Twitter!” Stephanie practically yelled in incredulity.

“What’s the third way?” Matt asked through his laughter, jokingly using his arms to shield himself from his wife’s outburst.

“The third way is through the Superchat. Superchat allows you to donate money and leave a little message, which will be kinda like, stickied to the top of the chat for a set amount of time, and it’s there longer the more you donate. Superchat is a good way to almost guarantee we see your message and acknowledge your donation. Chris will be keeping track of the running total while making sure he inputs the correct instructions to our little shrinking ray thingy,” Stephanie explained in length.

Chris, who had been crouched low on the floor fiddling with the matter reduction apparatus during Stephanie’s explanation, gave a thumbs up while not looking away. He was working some buttons and settings on the top of the device, behind the little dish. Some of the lights on the side were lighting up, until they all turned green, save for the large one on the side.

Chris shuffled off screen, and Stephanie looked at the device excitedly.
“Looks like we’re about ready to go! We’ll be opening the Superchat donations any second now, so get ready everyone!” Stephanie exclaimed.

“Oh boy,” Matt muttered.

Stephanie was looking at her laptop, which was sitting on her lap. She practically jumped in excitement!

“First donation!” she yelled happily.

“Alright!” Matt said excitedly, happy about raising money for a good cause despite what was in store for him.

“Damon S. from Michigan just donated thirty-five dollars, and he said ‘Hey Matt and Steph, I’m a huge fan and I’m so excited to donate to this cause. But also I’m excited to see your shrinking thing work. So here’s a fifth!’ Thank you so much Damon, thirty-five dollars is amazing!” Steph said gratefully.

“Yeah holy cow, thirty-five dollars for the very first donation? That’s totally awesome. Thank you so much, Damon,” Matt agreed.

A quick beep beep emanated from the device on the table, while simultaneously a green pixelated arrow pointing downwards flashed on the larger screen on the side.
Matt kinda looked around oddly. “Well…I kind of felt a little funny there, but I don’t notice any difference,” he said, curious.

“Well, it is only a fifth of an inch,” Steph pointed out. Matt nodded and gave a “Yeah,” in response. “Oh, but the chat is going wild! And I see five more donations already!” Steph exclaimed.

“Here we go,” Matt said with a nervous laugh.