The contradiction is that once they start making serious money from this (to the point that they can start considering this can be their job) then it’s in their interest to keep that not only going, but growing as well. More viewers = more payers = more money.

This places them squarely in the petite-bourgeoisie, objectively speaking. But because of parasocial identification whenever I talk about this phenomenon there’s always someone that says “but not my guy though! He’s good!”

I’m being a bit mean above and I don’t want to antagonize anyone on lemmygrad but it’s just objectively true. It’s in their interest to make more money and thus they engage in the same process as any other capitalist venture: if you don’t grow, you get eaten by someone else. I’m not saying it’s good or bad inherently, it’s just how it is.

And likewise it’s in their interest to keep doing this since it’s a livelihood, and a pretty cozy one at that: you just make videos and streams. There’s worse jobs out there.

When Lenin said “the capitalist will sell us the rope we will hang him with” he was saying many, many things - and none of them literal. But one of the things this phrase means is also that capitalism has its upsides, much like these content creators can have some upsides. They can make a good video once in a while. They can start bringing some people over to new ideas. There were, in the Bolsheviks, actual infiltrators who were also very good organizers - they needed to be, if they wanted to be good infiltrators (otherwise you’d just give them the mind-numbing paper-pushing job far from anyone and they would never get a chance to actually infiltrate you).

But they also won’t stop selling ropes.