> What value/meaning is derived from this?

Someone is supporting a creator whose content they like and the creator is publicly saying thank you.

How is this confusing to you?

They can say "thanks to all my supporters". it's just fallacy to think the creator actually cares. it's a simple copy&paste from a list from their patreon (or whatever) to the text editor of their editing software. it's even less if they aren't even the ones doing the editing. sure, they all say "we love our supporters". it's just like people that donate to NPR so they can have their names read out over the air.

how is their sincerity (more to the point, lack thereof) confusing to you?

> They can say "thanks to all my supporters". it's just fallacy to think the creator actually cares.

How deeply cynical and also, besides the point; even if you believe all creators don't give a shit (I believe many do), people still like being thanked.

I mean, clearly you don't ...

what you call cynical, I call naive on your part. We clearly have different opinions on creators and their level of sincerity towards supporters. i hold them just this side of influencers. i understand that they may depend on the support, but it's not like adding someone's name on a screen for .5 seconds means "they care about me". it just means they're fulfilling some obligation they used to entice people to donate. people that decide "because my name will be on the video for .5s" is what pushes to donate is beyond silly.

I think we follow different "creators" ...