I've done both too: ran a entreprenurial business for close to ten years and then converted it to a Patreon when my payment processor went bust, intentionally '

I've done both too: ran a entreprenurial business for close to ten years and then converted it to a Patreon when my payment processor went bust, intentionally 'marketing' it as a swing from competitive to largely charitable. I only made money when I was prepared to push really hard and be obnoxious. These days I refer to the behavior mockingly as 'all caps' and lots of exclamation points. It translates into shouting over people and steamrollering them with enthusiasm, as engagingly as possible. It also sharply limited what I could do: I had to couple the hyped enthusiasm thing with market choices that were extremely 'safe'. It becomes a numbers game like internet advertising. Once you're intentionally shooting for statistical positions and backing it with aggressive, emotional dominating, you're a jerk and the best you can hope for is that you can be a jerk with a heart of gold who keeps their promises. In order to get a large enough proportion of the market listening that you can do that, there is no 'nice' option and no way to be cooperative or coexist with others: the first order of business is to shut everybody else up, dominate them so that you are heard. Funny thing is, now I am leveraging frugality and some private capital sources like I was a startup again, in order to plausibly make the impresson that I'm like some zombie movie adversary: can't be killed now that I'm Patreon-funded, and expressing this determination to plow onwards producing frighteningly huge quantities of product for 'nothing'. I'm looking to be an existential threat to the companies I used to have to be a jerk alongside. So I am being a jerk to them, while professing how great it is to not have to be a jerk to customers and regular humans. So EVEN THEN people are nicer to you if you're a jerk, so long as you're a jerk towards the right entities :)