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.
As someone who frequently goes to concerts, I can absolutely testify that the audience can vary a lot between cities. You can usually tell if the band/artist is genuinly enjoying their performance or if they are doing the bare rehearsed minimum.
If you read/watch interviews with touring musicians, all have stories about how "Tokyo was crazy", "London was boring" etc – even though the set list was the exact same every evening.