What on earth does lower-middle class celebrity mean here? Where does the alleged class difference come from?

There are many valid criticisms of YouTube/IG stars, but is Michelle Phan really lower-middle class compared to say Nicki Minaj?! Because lots of the private-school mums I know are more than happy to watch Michelle Phan with their daughters but ban Nicki Minaj.

In the past being a profitable artist meant superstardom or poverty, with a rare few in between with middle class incomes. Now with Youtube/patreon, there is a good chunk of 'middle class artists' that are developing today that didn't exist in the numbers that these platforms created.

Like the grown men dressing up as Elsa from Frozen and Spiderman and recording two minutes of weird sounds, just because they figured out why the analytics said 35 year old women watched that, while the marketers couldn't figure out that it meant their kids were seeing it on internet connected toys that happened to play youtube videos.

Anyone can do it, for now.