When giving money to the content creator is the game mechanic that allows the cc to "win", it becomes something else imho.

There is "I tell stories and here's a hat you can put some pennies in" and there's "I'm in a contest, the one with the most money in their hat wins". I feel like there is some abuse of human traits to extract money going on here.

But I agree, there's many wat more sketchy MOs around. In a way I have to respect this one, they make it work with so few moving parts.