The problem is that the patreon model inherently only supports the big creators. Many of whom only BECAME big because they had alternative funding sources for so long.

For example: Giant Bomb more or less imploded a few years back. Nextlander (Alex, Brad, and Vinny), Remap (Formerly Waypoint but Patrick Klepek, Rob Zachny, Cado Contreras) , and Jeff Gerstmann (hmmm? I wonder who that could be) and even Giant Bomb (Fandom) are doing great. But people like Abby Russel or Renata Price very much immediately fell into that "Well, I like her but she is one person and I am already blowing 20 or 30 bucks a month on patreons..." hole.

And we see that on youtube/twitch. Creators will mostly not care and then suddenly do a year long subathon because they understand... they are in that threshold where they make just enough off of ad and sponsor revenue that they can just keep their resume updated but are fucked if Youtube/twitch change ANYTHING. They need to get to that threshold where people will subscribe to a patreon.

And the "Well, I will just subscribe to the creators I think are worth it" inherently fucks them over.

I'll add on that, for all his many flaws, Ludwig Ahlgren (?) has done a lot of good discussion on this topic. Because as twitch and youtube stop giving streamers giant signing bonuses, it gets harder and harder for the next crop of big streamers to come into existence. Because if there isn't money to get people out of that O(100) concurrents mid-tier... yeah.

That's a fair point, I do pay for subs in some smaller sites. A lot of the time I still watch the Youtube version because... well, that way the creators get paid twice and I'm probably already on YT, but still.

100% agree. I follow a few content creators who include a Cash App or Paypal information in the description box. They don't demand cash** because they do it for the love of what they do, and don't demand subscriptions or anything else. If I have an extra dollar, I send it. I'm guessing this either isn't their only revenue stream or do well enough that it is. If everyone who is appreciative would do a dollar or few donations, maybe it is a livble wage, with or without youtube's payment?