I guess begging for money just wasn't enough anymore, now he needs to beg for asspats as well.
Well when you start getting one resource easily, your brain naturally gravitates towards wanting the things you don't have.
The whales he has now will give him what he wants, whenever he wants, and literally don't care about a single word he says, so he takes their money for granted and subconsciously no longer sees it as a real boon. That's why Phil still has to berate his viewers when he has $100/150 in tips. "We only got here because of this one viewer, you know we haven't hit the tips goal in a few days, just saying..."
His whales can shower Phil with money, they can inflate his sub count, they can tell him how to beat games, but they can't boost his viewership. Snowkarl's the only reason the chat isn't a total wasteland and he's a troll.
But his declining popularity isn't a problem that can be solved by throwing money at it and involves real creativity and effort, so he'll just throw excuse after excuse on it.
"I have a huge fanbase, people are just afraid to speak up because of trolls!" despite this sentiment never being expressed outside of Phil's own mouth.
"I WOULD have been popular, I just lose viewers to early-access shills and sell-out muppets like Ninja!" but this is lowkey admitting that he only ever got popularity by leeching off Day 1 Hype instead of his own personality or merit.
"Trolls ruined my life and got me run out of the scene!" even though he tells you that trolls are powerless to get rid of him and in fact are jealous of him.
Today he'll pretend that the tweet doesn't actually mean anything and you're a dumbass troll if you care about it. But he just can't help letting it slip that he's miserable about the one thing he can't get back anymore with small bouts of desperate coping.
"I think my chat's glitched and frozen, nobody's saying anything..."