Ask Lemmy

I've donated once to a small time streamer as he spent years translating mods from Russian and hosting them. He's funny and I felt like I owed him some beer as I spent thousands of hours playing his translated mods which I otherwise wouldn't have been able to.

There are three small-time streamers i occasionally watch. I have donated to two of them and i sub to one.

I subbed to Jerma for a long time on twitch and bought merch when he was more active and gave a couple dollars to Callmekevin when he streamed.

The cool thing about donating is they respond to your message if they arent a dick that just has a tts going 24/7. For example Jerma didnt really push donating he just enjoys reading chat and I actually got my message read once by him. I feel like using tts is a cheap and soulless copout of interaction that most suckers feel they get value out of just because it was shown or heard on stream.

Never directly. I have bought merch, but I have low acceptance for stuff that just makes me a walking billboard. It has to be something I like separate from any association from the content creator.

I recently bought a shirt from Caitlin Dougherty, YouTuber on death traditions. If you know her content, you would recognize the shirt as one of hers. If you don't know her, it's just a cool shirt that tickles my happy goth vibes.

I suppose a patreon subscription is probably their best bang for buck, but buying their merch is still better than a YouTube subscription from what I understand. I've heard that from many creators. Buy their merch, use their affiliate links, that nets them more than YT does.

Edit: oh, you're asking if I pay for porn. Nah, there's plenty of free shit.

No. I do not.

Does critical role count? Though, I now subscribe to their Beacon streaming service instead of their Twitch account

The only thing I've "paid" to a streamer is the free monthly Prime sub, usually to a smaller streamer. I've bought merch from a couple Youtube channels before also, but that's about it.

Small Patreon amounts here and there for niche channels. Never any to the big popular ones. I have also occasionally ordered merch.

I've never donated to a streamer. When I first started watching Youtube there wasn't a way to process donations, so content creators were doing it for their own satisfaction. When streaming became an industry, I didn't feel any obligation to change my way of using streams.

Nope, I tend to hate watching streams in general.

I hate the whole "shout out" to people who donate money, it breaks the flow.

The fun streams I have watched is when the streamer does zero shout outs but ask the chat what they should do, no polling, just watching the live response in the chat.

No

No. I mainly subscribe to streamers to remove the ads, and the one exception is a smaller streamer.

Nope. Only those starting up/getting by. I will sub to my favorite large streamer but no gift subs, points, etc.

Donate the money to your savings account. Or at the very least, gift yourself something that actually retains some sort of value.

I don't follow anyone that closely, but at best, I might buy merch. I would never donate money to a streamer. If others have enough to share with strangers in the Internet, good for them, but I have kids to feed.

There are a few things that influence me not to.

1. Have you never been in a situation where you buy something expensive only to need emergency money and not have any? Have you never been in a situation where you have a notable interaction with a stranger but someone you know says "what about me"? Have you never seen bad economic outmaneuvering and look at the victims and just not want to be in the crowd of people who make it their modus operandi?

2. I'm a non-native in a land with strict economic/banking rules regarding communal establishment.

3. I'm not strictly what many would call a socialist, but many of the implications of, conceivably, money, just come off as peculiar to me, and I consider myself detached in a way.

I don't even know who "big time streamers" are. I'm aware streaming is a thing, could not care less.

Blogs > Vlogs > Podcasts > Streaming

Not interested.

"I mean His Only Fans is estimated to be pulling in 250K"

FUCKIN WUUUUTT??? Legit whores don't make 250k a month. The fuck is this dude doing on camera that's better than actually getting your dick sucked?

I don't donate anything but I might buy merchandise. I think the people that do continue to donate are looking to get some sort of perk like a jump scare or some other silliness.