I think creating a community and then paywalling people out of it - even if only partially - is an immoral and shitty thing to do. I obviously don't think paywalls themselves are evil. I think they are evil when they force you to pay for your social interactions within the community. For example, I think the OB posts are a good target to be paywalled, but I don't like the paywalled comment sections in them. I think paywalling the rigging tutorial is a good idea, but I don't like it being a paywalled live tutorial with chat. In general, I just have a problem with the "you can't hang out with us because you didn't pay" attitude. I believe the communities of streamers are much more than a bunch of people who happen to be watching the same streamer. Streamers don't "own" their communities and the interactions of the community, but they have all the control over it. Because of that, they are able to create paywalled platforms for social interactions. The members of the community can be pressured into paying to join the paywalled platforms by exploiting their need to belong in the community. After all, nobody wants to be left out or to feel like a lesser community member. What makes it even worse is that it's not only their interactions with the streamer that's being paywalled, but their interactions with each other.
I don't like the paywalled membership interactions, and I also have trouble understanding why such a few people are opposed to them. I've watched a lot of small chuubas, and some of them are EXCITED to start creating paywalled interactions with their communities. It doesn't affect the type of content they can produce, nor does it affect their ability to communicate with their community, but for some reason they are happy about being able to exclude a subset of their viewers. It's almost like the non-paying community members have some kind of disease that can only be purified with money. It's difficult for me to fathom their way of thinking. Is it just love for money? Do they require some form of explicit hierarchy that defines the devotion of their viewers? Is streaming nothing but a job to them? They spend months building their communities, they have all those people who have supported them, and they decide they want to exclude everyone who doesn't pay them. I find it genuinely strange how easy it is for so many streamers to do something like that.
I don't expect many people to agree with me, but I feel like it might be partially because they are so used to paywalled membership streams. For example, I'm sure most regular members would get angry if she started doing OB only streams. But why would they get angry? After all, they don't HAVE to watch the streams. However, they have a very strong need to do so, as they are very attached to the community, and they don't want to be left out. Some may argue the example is nonequivalent due to the higher price of the OB membership. To me, personally, the amount of money you have to pay is irrelevant, as I hate the idea itself so much.
There exists more ethical ways for streamers to make money. It's not even certain that paywalling community interactions is more profitable than not doing so. I might be wrong, but I find it more likely that the vast majority people join the membership to support the streamer. I personally refuse to join the membership of anyone with paywalls like that, but I wouldn't mind joining if I'd agree with their membership policies. It's almost as if the streamers think everyone will leave their memberships the moment they tear down their unethical paywalls.
