The fans are happy that their favourite creators are getting the bag in a world where that's impossible with just an average salary, I think it's sweet. I do this too though I don't really have any creators I like
No doubt getting the bag is nice, but when millennials were kids the selling out part was considered bad not because getting the bag is bad in itself but because getting the bag usually means changing the nature of the art to make it more marketable. It means answering to the rich guys handing you the bag. I just miss that acknowledgement, that the art would be inevitably watered down by appeal to larger markets.
it's not so much that it's celebrated, selling out still sucks, it's just that we understand that you gotta do what you gotta do in this fucked up system we're in. selling out is winning, and we can respect that you won, even if you sold your soul to do it
See also the flowchart next to this one, where artists want to make something as a passion project, but there is no market for it and they have rent to pay, so they have to go with the safe, soulless option instead, slowly dying inside as their dreams are crushed.
Patreon is like that, except that instead of a single patron, you get dozens or hundreds and they all expect to monopolise your time each month for $3 each.
One thing I like pointing out to gamer types who believe there would be no innovation without capitalism is that many of the most successful games on the market are derived from free mods.
On extremely rare occasions the right people exist in a company where they're funded to do it for profit and somehow manage to turn it into an untainted passion project.
This creates things that stand out as absurdly over-delivering compared to everything else in their field. And nothing comes close to them again until by some accident another team manages to create a passion project with full funding.
I would say Steve Woz is probably the one millionaire who isn’t a complete dipshit and who I’ll defend sometimes. His primary goal was to just make computers and share it with people, he got cheated and lied to by Jobs who he thought was a friend, he begrudgingly let Jobs turn his products into a business venture, and he became wealthy.
Now that’s he’s rich, he just fucks around and goes on interviews sometimes. He doesn’t do motivational speeches or pretends to be some tech guru like Musk. And I’m sure he showers. I don’t think he’s been in the loop with new tech, but he still seems genuinely interested in it from the technical side which is rare for knowledgeable people who become rich and alienated from their field