(2/2)

Conveniently enough this is the exact kind of conversation I was just talking about trying to find! Certainly particularly rich, particularly interested, fans of a particular stream can spend $1,000 on actions without causing personal financial problems and it can be a reasonable entertainment expense for that particular combo. The same could be said for gambling which was mentioned in the original comment but is also still extremely problematic for the majority it attracts in practice and nowadays heavily regulated. Being able to find many individual anecdotes of such users would even be expected given the original claim was about the majority not every single one of what is probably a group on the order of the mid 4 digits, most of which. In regards to articulating why it's a problem despite these anecdotes something else I've previously mentioned to build off this is the millionaire streamers (roughly the top ~10^2 of payouts not ~10^3) are more heavily weighted to be the ones getting these kinds of donations. Not that the ~10^3 pool won't get any but it's not a flat or even linear distribution. In general it's more this misalignment in distribution that defines how exploitative an industry/service is with whales than the presence of whales itself. The idea about it being in majority for supporting content only works if the majority of whales are very evenly spread out not highly clustered. Unfortunately it's exceedingly rare to regularly have someone or multiple someone's like the user that donated nearly 500 gift subs within the last week unless you're a top 10 exception or one of the streamer types the GP was talking about.

> And that's all still ignoring the fact that your perceived observations do not apply to the content creation industry as a whole, or even the majority of it. When I tell you that what you're describing can't be applied to the nearly 1,000 whales I've personally communicated with over the past few years, it makes no sense for you to double down on a blanket generalization that "the vast majority" of streamers are exploitative and large donors are being exploited, because even basic math doesn't back your argument.

Again I'm not really expecting to make much progress talking about how you perceive my perceived observations. If you want to talk about this in terms the publicly accessible data or hard facts from twitch.com itself I think there might be more interesting discussion to be had there. Or dive into the math you're talking about as if I've provided my derivations and sources and came to a conclusion I'm not going to be able to come no a new conclusion with just the additional info "even basic math doesn't back your argument".

> You listed the basic concept of subscriptions and rewards as evidence for nefarious activity and exploitation. That's rather silly, and I'm not going to engage with it.

It's 100% up to you what you find silly or not silly. Some people find the basic concept of casinos having meanendering layouts, free drinks/meals, and machines/games designed to make you feel continually close to a payout or needing to up the bet as rather silly evidence for nefarious activity/exploitation. At the same time it's very hard to have any meaningful conversation with someone who simply says things like "that's rather silly, and I'm not going to engage with it" when confronted with the reasoning of the other person.

> Please stop making pedantic nitpicks... You know exactly what I was referencing, and that you continue to turn these false nitpicks into full arguments is both exhausting and starting to resemble gaslighting.

> 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.

In particular my initial "internet filter" reading whenever you say nitpicking multiple times per comment without trying to build off of it is that every time I bring up a counter point it's just a nit to be ignored while every time you bring up a counter point it's something that could only be disagreed with if I'm trying to incite confrontation or personally attack you. Of course this interpretation isn't going to help either of us so again I refer to my comment that if you do feel these things it'd be very helpful of why the non-nit interpretations of my comments are invalid and how they could have been better framed to focus around the core of the conversation.

Claims like gaslighting (defined as "psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one's emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator") are particularly extraordinary interpretations of a few short comments on HN but if you really think these kinds of things I think it's probably best to report such things to the mod team and disengage completely as it's both extremely troubling if the claim as true or extremely troubling if you're interpreting comments as being that way but it wasn't true. Unlike the other things I'm not really sure how to gain new perspective when one of the parties is honestly suspicious they are being psychologically manipulated.

Regardless I appreciate your time so far, you've certainly opened me to the concept there are many more "wholesome" communities out there than one would expect from just looking at the top numbers. I also think you've helped me better see how wide interpretations of the same plain text statements can be taken and it will help to have that in mind in the future.

(2/2)