So apparently kids now say “Chat” before they start a sentence, as in Twitch Chat. “Chat” might legitimately be the first dedicated 4th person pronoun in the English language, here’s why:
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My problem isn’t the “4th person” part, it’s the “pronoun” part. ‘Chat’ is a noun.
Well, pronouns are nouns, so saying it is a noun does not mean anything. The reason they are calling it a pronoun here is because it is being used in the same as other collective pronouns (y’all), to refer to a group of people, without naming them with proper nouns.
The fun thing is, language evolves over time. Non-binary for instance, never used to be applied to gender. Now it is. Dap and simp have been added to the Oxford dictionary. Speedrun is in there now. 30 years ago people would have been confused by dap and simp, and would have thought speedrun was someone saying they run fast, not race through a video game. Language evolves and words that mean one thing can eventually mean something else entirely. Canada used to mean village or settlement, now it is a country.
Fourth wall breaking can’t be done in musicals? I beg to differ… I’ve been in 10 musicals in my career and 7 of them not only encouraged it, it was part of the script (and not little indie productions, we’re talking Producers and Spamalot).
Opera? Pagliacci is one of my favorites and starts with a character playing the narrator singing directly to the audience.