True fans or true Scotsmen? ;-)

Ninja is the most visible example, but the same pattern holds true at virtually any audience size (within the range of what is typically monetizable). This pattern is actually more extreme on platforms like Patreon because the audience is expecting something for their money. They are closer to a customer than a typical viewer.

The distinction between a 'true' fan and just a 'fan' is a vague one. If a creator has a total audience size of 1 million, you can bet that less than 1% of them are giving the creator any amount of money, even 1 dollar. Does that 1% count as their true fans? The folks with thousands of paying subscribers, or tens of thousands, have audience sizes to match.

Given that less than 1% pay anything, what percent of those do you think pay at least 20x the normal amount ($5 -> 100$)? Many creators make this somewhat visible by highlighting their contributors and the air is quite thin.

To make a long story short, I disagree with the concept because it paints a very rosy picture of the situation and doesn't match reality much, if at all. If you had 1,000 'true' fans you'd probably end up with $2,000 a month after taxes/platform fees/expenses. And of course, that assumes that you're able to consistently monetize through a subscription platform. If you had to sell individual products to get there it would be even worse.

Right, but while ninja might have lost $140,000 by going two days without streaming, almost none of the youtube channels I support on patreon are producing a video daily. Much easier to take two days off if you're only producing one or two videos a week!

On that front, I totally agree. Some platforms are far easier to manage an acceptable work-life balance than others. Unfortunately, a month off due to illness would still result in a massive loss of income which could take a long time to rebuild. The financial situations many creators put themselves in scare me, to be honest.