I understand the busker metaphor, but the $100/$500 donations we hear about most often are to successful streamers, so it's more like throwing $500 at Axel Rose. That's the bit I find interesting.

Such donations strike me as unusually altruistic for the demographic involved, in a way that we don't see en masse in other public online venues (such as on YouTube, donating to open source, Instagram, bloggers, etc.) I'm quite interested in learning more about the psychology around that because I think other arenas deserve it too.