Don't want to beat a dead Khet and keep bringing up the 1MM thing, but I think it's interesting to talk about, especially since there's actually arguments instead of just saying it's an ego thing.
With priming, concept is theory, but I don't think it works in this situation. Phil likes to delay or hide 1MM tips and often needs to be prompted/questioned to bring it up. This shows reluctance. Priming is about setting expectations in the beginning, throwing a few tips in the jar before your shift begins to show tipping is worth it. Phil himself has also said several times he doesn't think people will tip beyond the goal, so any money he donates towards the goal is, in his mind, less real money he'd actually get.
I can at least see the logic for the priming argument, but I think any argument that relies on Phil using a secondary identity falls apart almost immediately. Phil has demonstrated time and time again he can't hide himself. We found out about his gacha spending precisely because he uses the same handle everywhere. We've also agreed that a lot of "fan" donations in the past were Phil lying and saying a fan donated something. It's always a fan behind the scenes. He never names then. So why make up a name for 1MM? Why not just do the usual Phil thing and say it was a fan?
You could argue it makes the lie seem more genuine if it's an actual person, and with anyone else I'd probably be using that reasoning myself. But this is Phil. The previous examples are all proof of how little creativity Phil has with his lies and his inability to conceal his identity. Phil's idea of masking himself is insisting that he's never heard of DSP when he's caught using an account with the exact same name as his twitter handle.
The stuff about Phil not bothering to use it on the second stream also doesn't really make sense because when has Phil ever been satisfied by a higher tipping stream before? Again, it's one of the examples of him not wanting his fans to know he was successful because if they remember he made a bunch of money in the first stream, it ruins the begging for the second. So why inflate that number even higher with a constant fake donation?
I realize there are answers to some of these, but I just want to stress again, remember we're talking about Phil. I absolutely believe some smarter cows, and hell, even some not so smarter cows would employ basic psychology to scam people out of money. Phil's "creativity" for begging is primarily limited to insisting he needs to pay his bills for the 30th time in a week after receiving hundreds of dollars the previous day, or invoking sympathy by saying he *might* have to eat a ham sandwich or scoffing at the idea of not eating out on his day off.
Phil is also famously bad at keeping up with lies, remember when his parents were on death's door? Or Jasper was sick, but he couldn't take him to the vet because they were all closed/inconveniently booked until Phil's day off? Or his shower? Or that time his car might need thousands of dollars of repairs but it was just a flat tire? I genuinely don't think Phil is capable of keeping up a consistent narrative, even something as simple as making up a donation every day.
