Earlier quoted context omitted.
They try to emotionally manipulate their viewers into donating to them. Or they try to form a real bond. There’s some clear mix of genuine value for the lonely donators and id assume emotional abuse on the part of the streamers.
I had to laugh if showing some cleavage, saying thank you or talking to you is emotional manipulation or even abuse. Maybe there is really some truth to the lonely nerd. It's probably just people stuck in their teens or teenagers. It's exactly like the teenage girls loving some star they never met and thinking they'll get married and all. The more I read and think about it the more I'm asking myself how there can suc…
The difference here being that this star acknowledges you existing as soon as you "donate" 5$, the more money you donate the more acknowledged you supposedly become, there is a direct feedback channel here that didn't exist like that before.
It also ties heavily into the whole "attention economy" concept and I'm also very certain it's not a healthy lifestyle for the Streamers themselves, reminds me very much about that whole situation of the commoditization of interpersonal relationships that's been happening in Japan with Hostess clubs [0].
You may think this is funny, that some people are willing to pay for casual social interactions, but only because you've been lucky enough to have a functional family/friend network to fulfill those particular needs for you. Yet, not everybody is lucky like that, quite many people feel very lonely most of the time (as they are pretty much alone) but that it's not a healthy way of living for humans so they are looking for ways to cope.
The real sad thing is that this is very likely one of the main motivations for streamers and donators alike; The feeling to belong, the be acknowledged.