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in reply to @boodoo's post:

There was a common Twitch chat bot command implemented for that phrase that would time a user's messages out for a second: just short enough that it doesn't actually keep you from being able to talk, but long enough to count as a timeout in the channel and hide all your messages behind a <message deleted>

People would say hi and then lurk to hide their messages from others who arrived later or read their messages later.

This is not implemented in all bots nor all channels, but it was common enough in one place to have it be used elsewhere to basically no (or confusing, to your post) effect.

At this point it may have wrapped back around to being an ironic meme where the person saying it knows its not implemented, but either the confusion is entertaining for them or the lack of the timeout isn't necessary for them to convey what they're going for

oh yeah this is wild I had no idea about that behavior. My assumptions were more in line with Jack's comment below (and maybe I'm right about that in current use) but had no idea of this historical angle.

Some bots also have special commands that give you instructions about lurking, especially that if you're going to mute the stream, to mute the tab in the browser instead of clicking mute on the video controls because then Twitch might not count the view.