Gen 1 Gameplay Mechanics

The first generation of Twitch Plays Pokémon originally consisted of Pokémon Red being played on an emulator where the protagonist was controlled by inputs to the twitch chat on which the game was streamed. The inputs were then read by a bot written in python and relayed to the emulator.

Anarchy
Originally the only mode available. Every 0.5 seconds it would read the latest input to the chat and use that move in the game. As a result the buttons input into the game were of an extremely erratic nature and combined with the delay of twitch many users were forced to attempt to plan ahead with their inputs so as to move in the correct direction etc. Anarchy was also the major reason behind many of the Pokémon from both Generation 1 and Generation 2 being released because of rapid input when using the PC.

Anarchy was and is by many still considered the optimal way to play TPP because it is viewed by a large populace of the community as an accurate representation of thousands of players all trying to play one game at the same time.

Democracy
Democracy was introduced by the creator as a means to get past difficult areas and puzzles as the Team Rocket hideout. This mode would select the most popular input every 30 seconds and use that for the stream. To activate democracy a supermajority vote was required while to re-activate anarchy only a majority vote was required. This mode of playing slowed the game down by a considerable amount in favour of making more precise and controlled movements which was a key part of conquering the aforementioned Team Rocket secret hideout's spinning pad puzzle and was useful in other portions of both Generations.

However the opinion that Democracy was being overused was brought up as a concern point many times during Generation 1 as people would complain that Democracy was being voted for any time the collective hivemind spent more than XX minutes at a particular point. While Democracy was incorporated for the reason of getting through those challenging parts of the game that would otherwise take a considerable time to complete in Anarchy, many insisted that Democracy should be used as an absolute last resort and that Anarchy should be the default method of play. The split in the community meant there was constantly a flux between the two, and to combat this the Anarchy supporters began the Start9 crusade.