>>43959767The merch is a great point for all the wrong reasons. I rather think of the merch as memorabilia of social interactions with people I actually interact with (or used to).
I have a Goodsmile Okayu at home which I bought while camping next to some tourist trap with my friends. Okayu specifically because I watched a Mario Kart tournament together with some other friends the year before and one of them really liked and rooted for her.
Most of my merch are actually just plushies, which I ordered while visiting my then-relationship partner who I used to watch streams with together, and we used to exchange plushies as some dorky ritual whenever we see each other. I even bought one as a gift but never got around sending it. I used to just put them in random corners of my door's or webcam's field of view, f.e. while streaming or having guests.
Then there is a music CD which I talked about with one of my friends who also makes his own music and it didn't seem like a huge pricetag at the time.
The indie I watch mostly because she played my favorite game and had zatsudans and fanart drawing streams about it. I skip streams when I have social calls though or decide to work later. It's arguably parasocial because I haven't moved on and I like chatting with her. So I'll give you that I am partially guilty, I suppose.
The memberships I bought because I used to record and leak membership content when it still was more acceptable to do here. I think it's stupid to have paywalled streams but I also understand that free content has to be funded somehow, so that was my way to say thank you and fuck you to everyone.
