The creator of the stream has indicated in an interview that if/when they get to the Safari zone, they will probably modify the romhack that's being played to remove the step counter. (The rom is already modified to enable all 151 pokemon without having to trade with Blue.)

The 45000 number is short selling the size of the stream. It's been that size at various points, but right now is around 70k. Earlier today it was up over 90k and was the single most watched thing on twitch.tv (usually League Of Legends is the most watched thing).

That's a voting input, not "merely" mindless shouting (there's still a lot of mindless shouting). In addition to moves, the chat can vote on what mode the stream takes input in. "Democracy" uses a voting a system, "anarchy" just does whatever is the first input the emulator receives the next time it polls for user…