Pretty sure Lily's never worked a real job in her life.
These two things are completely different. A customer service job is when a corporation pays you to deal with disgruntled customers. You are forced to interact with people who are already angry or frustrated and in need of assistance with a product or service -- or even calling you specifically to bitch -- and who oftentimes wind up channeling their frustrations onto you, since you at that moment represent what they're angry with, even if you have literally no power to set things right.
But a content creator?
You are under no obligation to even interact with your audience. The only obligation you have is to regularly output content for them to enjoy. If they enjoy it, you get the ad revenue or the Patreon dollars or both. If they don't enjoy it, they stop watching you and they stop paying you.
They might say things about you, and technically to you, but you don't need to read the comments or run a Discord where you talk to them directly. You're posting your videos in a public space where anybody can comment on them for any reason; that's the nature of being public. It's absolutely not the same thing as being trapped behind a desk while people berate you for things you had no hand in and no control over; you're on the other side of the Internet, you're completely free to just not read comments and treat your audience in the abstract. Say 'thank you' sometimes for their support, but don't actually get down and dirty, don't respond to comments (and certainly don't curate them), don't have a Tumblr where you constantly blur your personal life with your 'work' opinions and invite people to send you Asks about both. Let people have their conversations while you go about doing the work that they're tipping you for.
Some people have said that Lily's Patrons are her employers or customers, but this isn't really true. The relationship between a creator and their audience is that the creator makes videos they presumably want to make and people contribute to their monthly tip jar to support that endeavor. Maybe they do have stretch goals where they take suggestions from that Patrons, but that's a pretty uncommon thing; mostly it's 'if I reach X goal I'll be able to produce an extra video' or 'if I reach Y I'm now paying my rent, thank you so much!"
Basically (in theory) you're doing something you want to do, and people enjoy your work -- and presumably you -- enough to give you financial freedom to do it.
I can understand maybe feeling stress to perform or perform better because of the financial incentives -- being paid for something feels pretty different than when you're doing it for free -- but that's not what Lily is talking about. She's basically saying that creators can be shitheads to the people who are, out of the kindness of their hearts, funding their creative pursuits because... what, it's their right? I understand that the internet is a minefield and negativity flourishes easily but at no point should it be accepted that a creator can just be an asshole to their audience and then get offended when people call them out on it.
Lily is regularly an asshole to her audience. She has infamously said that her audience is worse than the alt-right Nazi trolls who want her dead. For
some reason, people don't like being talked down to and shit on when they're just asking somebody about their opinion on a cartoon or video game.
This isn't a situation where a customer service rep is being berated and screamed at because the hosting site is down and they're trying to say that maintenance work is being conducted and it's going to take some time and this is unacceptable you motherfuckers are ruining my business I demand to speak to your supervisor what's your name I want to make sure he knows you're worthless!
This is Lily being a nasty, hateful person who is nasty and hateful to the people who support her and then getting angry that they aren't taking her abuse. She's the instigator -- always has been -- but she wants to twist this to being the victim. I have every right to be nasty to my audience because they stress me out! (Ignore that I've always been a piece of work.) It's just like those long-suffering customer service workers. But it's worse because one rando that I admit I don't care about said I have a superiority complex in a video that I had to actively seek out. (Have I told you how my ex was literally the devil today? Just asking.)
Lily is right in that creators don't really owe their audience anything (and honestly they shouldn't; I don't mean that in a dismissive way, I just meant that a creator should establish their boundaries and the audience should respect them. But there's a huge gulf between keeping a neutral distance from an audience and insulting them.
Timing of a comedian.
