A youtuber I follow took a week off recently after several years and apologized a lot for it, even though his followers encouraged him to do it. He was frightened about loosing his user base
They might say that but it's more about the revenue. Certainly the overseers at YouTube, etc tune the algorithm to " encourage" a steady stream of content.
When, for example, the YT'er you follow steps away, the platform has to have some idea that traffic (read: revenue) to the platform will also dip. Sure, some followers will consume other content. But if the content creator was your initial "gateway" to engagement and that isn't there then you might not engage the platform at all. The platforms know this and make it far too difficult for the CCs to say "No, I need a break."
Sadly, the rest of us fellow proles are the key enablers of this paradigm.
