I think it's pretty clear you should feel sad for the guy, who is obviously, I try to say without cruelty, pathetic and misled. It's like people who are very dumb falling for obvious scams - e.g. send me your money and I'll double it.
I don't mean that everyone watching these streamers is like this guy, but some portion of them, probably a higher percentage of the donating "whales", likely think that they somehow do have some kind of chance or relationship with the steamer. These people, it seems to me, are essentially exploited for profit.
I realize it's not the same as a scam. Not the same exactly - because the streamer never says or suggests she'll be your girlfriend for X dollars or something, but knowingly or unknowingly the streamer is creating that suggestion for some and profiting off of it.
It strikes me as a really complicated moral issue, because some people do seem exploited by it, others like it, and the streamers benefit by it. I don't know what to think about the enterprise, but I think it's at least clear we can feel bad for that guy, even recognizing that he's being a jerk.
>These people, it seems to me, are essentially exploited for profit.
This has always been true of the online sex worker/camgirl/streamer world. There have always been some that feel that way and are emotionally led on by the actress, who knows exactly what's going on. It moved into Kik and then Snapchat, Twitch, and OnlyFans. There are also some that will profit off of manipulating emotionally questionable viewers and then calling them a simp when they're out with their own friends. It's kind of a vicious world.
This will also be going on with the next big thing too. And the one after that. I worry that it's actually causing MGTOW and intel culture to grow more widespread.
It's a good point that just as the actress bears some moral responsibility for exploiting the pathetic, the company bears responsibility for that too. Maybe easier to justify if you work for kik, but OnlyFans seems like it has a higher ratio of exploitation to non-exploitation than kik.
No reason you can't be sad for both. When you make money based on having a cultivated persona it benefits you to allow people to sink themselves as deep into your fandom as possible. You don't even have to be particularly active or purposeful about it. You just respond to your audience in whatever way gets you the best reaction and the most money, and like many other industries like gambling and mobile gaming you create dolphins and whales who will embrace a worldview where it's worth it to give you hundreds or thousands of dollars. The difference is that when the illusion is shattered the mobile gamer who wasted ten grand on Candy Crush can't send the CEO of King Digital Entertainment a private message telling him to go to hell.
There's no motivation for anyone to protect people. Twitch has no reason to stop viewers from devoting their time and money to a personal fandom and neither do the streamers.
He seems genuinely upset.