I mean paying for its existence; most of the content people consume is paid-for content whether by advertising (in one form or another) or direct support via Pa

I mean paying for its existence; most of the content people consume is paid-for content whether by advertising (in one form or another) or direct support via Patreon and similar. And the reasons for this are ones I know firsthand; I am a video producer as well as a software developer. I could not afford to do the former without being the latter. Building a A reasonable-quality single-camera A/V rig that a video producer would actually want to work with is comfortably in the middle four digits. Three cameras, low five. That money must come from somewhere, as must the rationalization for the time in a world as productized and generally fucked as ours, and "that's OK, art and media can just be done by wildly wealthy dilettantes in their spare time" is a shitty world.