Patreon is actually failing. They owe their investors a lot more money than they bring in, so this has been coming.

https://youtu.be/kio8CEGJ_cw

that got me thinking ...

is Patreon a discrete ponzi scheme?

A flawed permutation of the concept, but a shallow shell where investors pour in funding and it gets re-allocated as needed?

Entirely possible... I could see them suddenly shutting down and disappearing with a lot of money; maybe even try to blame it on trolls/Russian bots/Alt-Right. They already named their future scapegoat, so it may not be too far-fetched.

it's honestly hard to tell if they're intentionally going to do a fly-by-night dissappearance with the funding ... of if they really have gone Don Quixote and are stupid enough to believe their own lies

Considering that they bend their rules to match their whims (i.e. far left ideaology), a second mass exodus is inevitable.

Patreon seems to have this idea that they employ the creators, and aren't merely a glorified payment processor. This is influencing their pricing model, as they try to determine a way to get more of the pie.

Honestly, I suspect more artists are going to go the way of SubscribeStar, asking people to set up a Monthly Paypal auto-deduct, or something similar with credit cards. Patreon has convenience going for it, but as they nickle and dime content creators and patrons, the pressure to leave will increase.

To say nothing of their ideas of appropriate content and censorship.

Pretty much.

Honestly, they aren't even treating it as a business in any form. It's an "experience"

no, you don't want more ME. it'll just stain the franchise further.

you want it to die in peace.

pretty much. Especially since people are realizing there's alternatives (including doing it themselves via Paypal)