I think it says something quite dark about our society as a whole that we have basically commoditised distress and are encouraging some people often themselves in dire circumstances to prey on others to the benefits of the middle men. I find these new pimps scarier than the old sort in that they pretend to have clean hands.
I think you should step back and look at it with a bit of distance. Is the content they're paying for really the same as you think is available for free, and do they even get it under the same conditions, in morality and circumstance.
Not knowing your life, it feels like you could have said the same towards people buying pricy concert tickets when there's royalty free music abundantly available.
> commoditised distress [...] often in dire situations
The first step to alleviate these specific situations could be to stop marginalizing this kind of content and give them a regular professional status, instead of systematicly pigeon hole it.
I like things without crowd interaction, like musicals/plays, because there is no dystopian parasocial aspect to it. I am only there because the live is different than the recording.
However, give me a good piano recital with elevated seating to be able to see the pianist hands, and I'll be there in a flash.
Unless you're close, you're not catching the nuance of the pianist's hands any more than guitar licks from a guitar frontman. Indeed, many modern pianists are following in the footsteps of rock concerts and having live video camera work to capture these details for people not in the front 10 rows.
All this does is give vibes of "Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Own A Television" (https://theonion.com/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesn...).