You're pedantically nitpicking again, when you clearly understood that I was paraphrasing to highlight the obvious inflammatory intent behind your blatantly disparaging remarks. You're concocting confrontation. You even just edited your comment to include more disparaging commentary and suggestions that I'm ignorant of the existence of a group of people. All you did (before editing your comment) is claim that I don't know things because your extremely limited personal anecdotes somehow outweigh my professional experience, which is the definition of inflammatory behavior.
> Which is core to the arguments and the error major not minor. Companies like Twitch have multiple high-cost options
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.
So, no, the higher-cost items are, in fact, not "pushed" or "marketed" as the OC or you suggest, which makes your entire argument a nitpick. All you did was mention that a thing existed, without providing any context or evidence as to how it's exploitative or how it could even be considered marketing. Twitch even makes a point in the site's verbiage of labeling any subs larger than $5 as "going above and beyond," which makes clear that even moderate amounts are more than is expected of the user. Again, the existence of functionality does not constitute nefarious behavior -- it doesn't even qualify as "marketing," and it definitely doesn't qualify as "exploiting dysfunctional users."
> Super Fans donate hundreds of dollars per action to streamers who are sometimes making millions per year. This is not the "I'm tier 3 for my favorite streamer so they can stay full time" crowd it's the "I'm top bit donator/sub gifter on a top channel" crowd. I consider myself part of the former hobby/support group but I can't see any way to construe the latter group as part of the same hobby either. I'm open to hearing ways that whale segment could be though if you'd be willing to expound
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.
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.