So I think we already know the outlines of the typical criticisms of Breadtube, namely that it's vaguely-leftist content that focuses on cultural critique and gives a nod to socialist theory here and there but it doesn't actually achieve anything and it's just a media-consumption demographic with no moves towards anything that resembles on the ground organising and activism. (Obviously there are a few outliers but as a rule this generally holds true.)
I dipped out of Breadtube years ago for plenty of reasons but I just posted on Lemmygrad criticising the SPD Three Arrows movement which prompted me to have a look at the Breadtuber Three Arrows and they have done exactly the same thing that Contrapoints and a lot of other large figures in this genre have done:
They build up a healthy Patreon base and then their content drops off to like a couple of videos a year, if that, while continuing to draw off a personal salary which rivals that of a full-time worker.
In the past two years Three Arrows has produced 4 videos, amounting to less than 4.5 hours of runtime all up.
That's staggering for someone who is getting over 60k a year, at the most conservative estimate.
Likewise Contrapoints claimed to be getting 20k a month and she's putting out like 1-2 videos a year. And there's plenty of other examples of this too.
Imagine what could be done if people supported their local grassroots organisations instead of paying boatloads of cash for their twice-yearly YouTube treats smh.
Disclaimer: I've never watched any BreadTube in my life
I think you're looking at BreadTube from a wrong angle. You seem to judge it as a socialist project when you should be judging it as entertainment
I could be wrong about this next part but I don't think anybody has ever claimed that BreadTube was an educational project to further advance the working class' struggles. Youtuber making videos and their fans voluntarily supporting them with donations isn't a grift because the Youtuber hasn't claimed that it will help the class struggle or help bring forth communism
If people wanted to do this, they would've already done so. I don't think them donating to BreadTube would stop them from doing so. Not to mention the donations are so geographically distributed that if these donations did go to local grassroots orgs instead it'd probably be negligible amounts
Even people here did sometimes, some of those people were me (though from an infotainment angle which challenges the ideological hegemony a bit).