This is one of those instances... is Phil the bad guy here? Yes it's disgusting, but I mean, there's no manipulation. He didn't lie or scam or anything like that. He said people could donate to name that shitty prop, and they did... this is just absolute exceptional individuals donating a lot of money to a pig for a stupid reason. It's incredibly... sad. I am trying to imagine what your life has to be like to be someone who donated money for this. Quite pitiful. But Phil offered something, and they were stupid enough to go along with it.
I have very mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, Phil didn't deceive his audience. But on the other hand, Phil knows very well what kind of pathetic, lonely and sad people they are. Strange situation.
In my opinion, it's a case of exceptional individuals being out-exceptionalized by an exceptional individual who, as usual, is walking a very thin line between what is (morally) acceptable or not on a platform like Twitch.
I personally think the most shady part is that he stops the bidding war using an imaginary clock of which only he knows the exact time of, while simultaneously being very strict in people not being able to qualify for a bid anymore once time's up. Like, a literal matter of seconds.
I mean, "4 PM" for him could still be 3:58 PM for someone else because not every single clock in the world has the same exact time. The fact that he denies bids within seconds after "closing" the auction using an invisible timer, while STILL taking the money for said bids, is really close to running a scam, in my opinion.
Let me put it like this: if you don't want to get burned for running an actual auction over the internet where people use real money, then at least make sure participants can't get fucked over and go after your ass. If you don't, you'll most likely end up with some kind of shitshow/drama at some point, and you're basically setting yourself up for chargebacks and/or issues with Twitch/PayPal/your bank.
If he'd really care about his fans/viewers, he'd make the auction more honest by:
1. having a visible clock on screen that counts down to zero
2. immediately "closing the line" once time's up so people can't spend money on something they're literally unable to get
But hey, we all know DSP: he'll bumble along, doing things half-assed until it bites him in the ass so he can scream about him being the victim and how he did nothing wrong.
-EDIT- Oh, and in case people are curious about the finances of the past two days:
Friday, DSP received over
$327 in tips and around
$200 in (gifted) subs and cheers, so over
$525 from two streams.
$240 of that total amount was raised by just four people through tips and cheers, while
11 out of 36 subs were gifted (basically a third).
Yesterday, he received around
$350 in tips and at least
$148 in cheers and subs during both streams in total. A staggering
$246 of the $350 in tips came from four people, with survivesweettreat being responsible for
$155 of that, basically two-thirds.
Survivesweettreat also takes the cake by having sent DSP
$82 out of the
$148 in total cheers and subs: he
gifted 16 out of the 18 subs that came in during the late stream and cheered
$42 out of the $75 daily total.
DSP has raised a total of over $1000 in two days (looks like somewhere around
$1025), with about
$675 of that in tips. Survivesweettreat on his own is responsible for roughly 25% of the total amount.
