He never struck me as the type that did it for the money, but rather to send a message. Was he always money hungry, or did the Rumble money corrupt him?
No one ever wants to admit this but, everyone is greedy to some extent. It's a basic flaw of human nature that easily corrupts and ruins, it has been understood as such for all of human history, it's one of the 7 deadly sins and every culture that has ever existed has created parables and fables about the pitfalls of avaricious behavior.
Also consider that easy money is intoxicating and potentially as addictive as any hard drug, gambling addiction immediately comes to mind. However, we've discussed this before in relation to Chance, he got donated a lump sum of money once more than he had ever had at that point on twitch, and ever since has been absolutely obsessed with all these streaming sites. Now he is constantly chasing that dragon, trying to sneak back onto them and ban evade long enough to get another super chat and taste that sweet sweet dopamine spike and free money again.
After John John got involved and more and more people were following the trial saga and escalating antics they did what people who watch streamers have been psychologically conditioned to do and started donating. Whether it was out of genuine support or parasocial attention seeking doesn't really matter, what does is that it was happening more frequently every stream as things continued to get progressively more over the top. As things continued and the entertainment aspect overtook the original mission statement they got lazy outsourced a bunch of their buddy trolling and allowed too many cooks in the kitchen, think Jason and that kennel kicker guy who played the lawyer, Cassandra etc. That combined with all of these people's greed and competing egos was their real unraveling, as far as I can tell.
It's also one of the main reasons for the situation we're in now. In the new and revised Cyraxx community rulebook it's apparently taboo to "grift" by accepting donations in this community now, but if we're being honest jealousy was the primary motive for the kennel kickers mess as well as the Jason situation and probably "Jackie" when I think about it, every one of these people adamantly denies it when pressed, but it's plain to see when you listen to their reasoning for why they are angry with William and company. Ever since he's returned CVG has been super hesitant to receive donations and constantly tells people not to worry about it he is doing fine financially, I think this ruining everything and the fallout is big reason why he's so avoidant.
