The money you give to steamers doesn’t enable you to watch them so it’s not exactly comparable to purchasing TV

Well, your individual dollars don't buy access to a controlled resource, but people in general contributing certainly does. That streamer would definitely do something else if there was no income coming in. The younger generations seem less tied to the idea that money must always be part of a quid pro quo transaction, and are more willing to throw money into a pool to support things they really like. Sounds like a pretty solid step forward in human cultural values to me.

Not at all. It's still a transaction. It's sold as a membership in a community, but that's not real. That just means they pay more.

Your criticism would be no different leveled at donating to charity, giving loose change to someone on the street, dropping money on a collection plate, or using the "buy me a coffee" tip like for FOSS projects. What's not real about being part of a community that doesn't have restricted access? Is a community in a FOSS project only real because you need a GitHub account or is that also fake because it doesn't cost money? lThat's a mighty sad outlook on life.

> lThat's a mighty sad outlook on life.

That's not what I said. Paying a streamer to pretend to like you is not being part of a community. There is no community; they just constantly call it a community. A real community wouldn't vanish if one person (the streamer) left. That's a cult.

> Your criticism would be no different leveled at donating to charity, giving loose change to someone on the street, dropping money on a collection plate, or using the "buy me a coffee" tip like for FOSS projects. What's not real about being part of a community that doesn't have restricted access?

Doing none of those things is being part of a community.

Parasocial relationships are monetisable. That's all. I think it's a bad idea to be on the paying end of that transaction.

> Paying a streamer to pretend to like you is not being part of a community. There is no community; they just constantly call it a community. A real community wouldn't vanish if one person (the streamer) left. That's a cult.

I see, so the communities that developer around FOSS projects would continue if the FOSS project disappeared? Do you think having a friendly and personable regular bartender that smiles when you talk to them makes you a cult member? Or is that different because some of your money gets you a beer?

> Doing none of those things is being part of a community. Parasocial relationships are monetisable. That's all. I think it's a bad idea to be on the paying end of that transaction.

Oh, being in a church congregation isn't being part of a community? Or being part of a FOSS user group? Come on now.

> Parasocial relationships are monetisable. That's all.

Any relationship is monetizable, including the ones I listed. Not everybody that chips in for a streamer has an unhealthy parasocial fixation, just as not everybody who plays video games is addicted to escapism, not everybody that drinks is an alcoholic, and not everybody that drops a coin in the collection plate is an obsessed zealot.

> I think it's a bad idea to be on the paying end of that transaction.

Yes, I gathered that, and you're certainly free to spend money on whatever you want. It's your needlessly black-and-white perspective and subsequent judgement of people who disagree that's strange.

If the streamer wasn't making money would they continue streaming?

Most of the ones worth watching, I'd guess.

You don't have to tip your waiter at the restaurant. But their salary is fundamentally dependent on you tipping them ~15-20%, so by not tipping them, you are effectively stealing from them. Similarly, not subscribing to people I watch heavily is in effect stealing from them.

To be clear, I don't actually like this model of payment. I'd much rather there be a system that could automatically distribute a pool of money in terms of how much I watched.

Streamers are making their streams free for the vast majority of the people watching them. Its not stealing when they're producing the content with the expectation most people will watch for free.

If a waiter was expecting only 10% of people would actually tip, its not stealing to then not tip most of the time.

If the streamer didn't want me to watch for free, they should have put up a paywall.

You can say the same thing about Patreon, donations, etc.

Sure, you don't have to pay to watch them but its a way of giving back to them. And on platforms like twitch, being subscribed to a channel does things like remove ads and access to emotes that are part of the live interaction if you want to participate in that.

Paying to remove ads is a bit different though. Paying $100 so a streamer pretends to like you for three seconds is really not healthy.

Leaving aside the multi-millionaire streamers, I do think it is commendable to take care of the long-term sustainability of what you like instead of being a free rider.