My edit was to add:

> Not working with folks that try to get this type of viewer to press this button multiple times per months is a fantastic thing not something to get inflamed about. At the same time it doesn't mean these types of streamers and fans don't exist just because you don't work with them and clearly they do exist or Twitch wouldn't have bothered to make all of these types of options and fancy effects and the aforementioned bad example streams wouldn't have them triggered constantly.

I'm genuinely interested in how/why this is being taken as disparaging or concocting confrontation. It's not intended to be so at all but often on the internet plain text can be interpreted many different ways, maybe ways I can't see from my point of view alone. Regardless, apologies if anything has come across as being written to incite confrontation.

Nothing I've talked to is about my personal experience vs your professional experience or anecdotes though, it's been about what is factually on the site and available for all to see. I do have some personal anecdotes I could bring but I haven't as I like to stay away from them when possible. Them same avoidance can be given as well to relying on any experience, be it personal or professional, when the information itself is readily available.

In general if there is something you find nitpicking, confrontational, disparaging, inflammatory, or so on I'd greatly appreciate if you could provide an example of what and how it could have been better worded to focus on the content. As it stands now I'm having a hard time distilling what or how you're expecting things to be different, just that you seem extraordinarily unhappy with every comment I make.

> The core argument made by the OC was that "the vast majority of super fans" are "socially dysfunctional" and "companies pushing this have all the data and know exactly what's going on, but market to this demographic anyway." The suggestion here is that these companies are nefariously encouraging people to donate higher amounts. When in reality, the functionality to gift groups of subs isn't even visible by default on Twitch and the user needs to go out of their way to switch to the gift subs tab, before consciously deciding to click at the bottom of the list of amounts, which also requires scrolling on some mobile screen sizes before you can even see the higher amounts.

On the contrary these things are extremely visible and advertised. Popping into a top Twitch stream right now with an incognito tab these are the things I see right away:

- The top gifters for the week are pinned to the top of the chat. The number 1 place has a large golden gift box with a 1 in it followed by their name and gift count (which is near 500)

- High spend actions result in ever more exclusive emotes next to names such as having max tier subscription and being the top gifter resulting in very elaborate icons while cheap actions like prime sub very plain ones. This is made apparent by these displaying by default next to every message these users type (both an advertisement and incentive system)

- High spend actions place themselves in chat with links to how you yourself can do the same thing

- Hype trains also appear on the page with much fanfare pushing the use of gifts and bits. These give exclusive emotes and individual callouts as well.

- Once subscribed (at any level) the gift sub button is actually displayed by default on the page and the section does list the $499.00 option by default. Hidden would be the $999.00 options for tier 2/tier 3 gifting I haven't even mentioned.

- Many of these are mirrored for bits

And these are just the things from Twitch itself, not the things Twitch is fine with streamers adding on top. On the flipside the strongest action you can do without spending money is highlight a message.

Marketing pushes aside though I also disagree with the premise that marketing is even central to whether it means it's not exploitative or not, to me it just makes it even more nefarious as a whole. Simply having a 100 gift sub button in the UI, well hidden and never mentioned otherwise, is still extremely hard to justify as anything but exploitative. There are very few select cases $499 is reasonable in one month let alone needs to be available in one purchase flow and Twitch is well aware it's being used more often than could ever be attributed to non-exploitative cases so I argue the existence itself is nefarious, before even getting into the whole incentive system built around it.

> Super fans are not exclusive to million dollar streamers, so you're using a rare example to make generalizations which are not reflective of the overall industry or culture. The existence of a personality type which seeks attention by donating large amounts to see themselves on a leaderboard where thousands (or tens of thousands) of people are watching, does not magically mean that applies to all donors and, in fact, applies to so few donors that your argument really has no foundation.

Million dollar streamers are the stealman case. One can still find this type of "Super Fan" in many other streams, no need to rely on generalization, but the example makes for a case where it's easy to show the exploitation is well known and large in scale.

Also the conversation was never about all "donors", from the beginning it was about "the vast majority of Super Fans are not buying courses or supporting the development of content". Disagree or not with the statement it never made claims every single

> For one of thousands of examples I could provide, a relatively small streamer I worked with has an average viewership of less than 150 per stream. Yet, roughly 20% of their regular viewers contribute more than $100/mo, with several over $500/mo, and exactly zero of them are doing it for attention -- a fact, given that there is no leaderboard and they receive no acknowledgement verbally or via overlays. In reality, most large contributors prefer to do so anonymously anyway, and streamers typically make a point of communicating with those supporters to ensure that larger donations aren't risking their financial well-being.

Sounds like a well built community :). Unfortunately even * 1000 these numbers pale in comparison and don't exactly line up with the "dump their life savings or steal a family member or relative's credit card" type users described in the GP, both in strength and volume, to the large stream examples and do not set what the majority is. The leaked Twitch payout data is a great example of this, a small handful of streams make the majority not the long tail of thousands.

Edit clarification: Remembered hard Twitch payout data was leaked and added a note on how you could help me with the items felt confrontational.