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It's a proxy war, and the donations are foreign military aid.
No one thinks Ukraine "deserves" billions worth of military equipment on their own merits. Western supporters believe that they deserve their independence or Russia's invasion deserves to be opposed (either idealistically, to take a stand against offensive wars, or pragmatically, to weaken the geopolitical rival Russia) and weapons shipments are the way to achieve this.
Shiloh Hendrix isn't being given $750,000 as a reward for saying a bad word, she is being given money to defend against the attack on her, which is perceived as unjust and/or as the frontline of a war between tribes. This is both practical ("if we give her money, they can't ruin her life") and symbolic (actual money is a credible signal of support against the moral accusation on her.)
The previous fundraiser for Karmelo Anthony is also revelant here as an initial escalation. If the Evil Empire sends weapons to the Evilist regime in Proxystan, the Coalition of Good needs to match that in support for the Goodist rebels.
Your explanation is certainly the steelman for fundraising in such cases, but to expand your (kinda) Cold War metaphor, there is such a thing as geostrategy. If crying "help, we are fighting commie rebels" leads to being drowned in US$, then a lot of countries will find commie rebels to fight.
Is the marginal dollar of the 750k$ sum really more helpfully spent on her than on the next person in a similar situation? How do you prevent the people to get into similar situations just for the payout?
For Ukraine, the case is different. No country in the world thinks "Look at Ukraine, getting all that sweet NATO gear. I wish we would get invaded by Putin so we can benefit from international aid like Ukraine has, perhaps we should try a border provocation or two." The thing is that even with the military aid, getting invaded by Russia is still horribly net-negative for Ukraine, and nobody envies them at all.
My impression is that the median donor is not thinking "spending 10$ here is the best way I can use disposable income to bolster my preferred groups, this is the hill it makes most sense to fortify". Instead, it is likely all emotive. "This story makes me feel enraged. The only impact I care about is to make my outgroup feel enraged in turn, and I am getting my emotive worth for my donation here."
I wasn't really intending it as a steelman. I was trying to describe what I think are the actual motivations and mindsets of the donators.
Yes, it's emotive. They want to defend someone who's being attacked and stand up to "bullies". If my post gave you the idea it was a coordinated strategy motivated by cold calculations about cost-effective activism, that wasn't my intention.
Imagine them less like western leaders approving budgets and shipments and more like the people who donated to ukrainian forces to get custom messages written on grenades. (Notice the similarity to people leaving spicy messages with their donations?) It's about wanting to support the fight.
The desired outcome for the donators is that leftists see that trying to cancel people as racists no longer destroys them when the victim instead get lots of money, stop doing so, and therefore no one gets into those situations anymore (i.e. no viral shitstorm happens when people say "nigger"). Similar to how, althouth it strains the comparison, the West is hoping that Putin realizes that invading another country is not worth it because of the support they'll be getting.
Whether that outcome is achievable is of course a different question.
I do not think that this will work. The left can cause shitstorms a lot easier than the right can cough up money.
And even if that was not true, the non-exploitable equilibrium would be if the left stopped trying to cancel people because they realized that the minute they focused their anger on someone, they would be showered in money by their opponents. I am not holding my breath for that. It would require playing politics on level two, and most people play level one. I mean, the single most important asset Trump had for winning the primaries was the left-leaning press, which loved to hate him. "You won't believe what the horrible racist has done now" etc. They never stopped to consider that the median R primary voter would be rather unsympathetic to them, and might consider "Trump really riles up the liberals" a point in his favor.
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I think your analysis is roughly correct, but the framing is bizarre.
Is my job proxy war? Im pretty sure my employer doesn’t believe I “deserve” wages for nothing.
No, you "deserve" wages for doing your job. Which is roughly ("deserve" still hides a lot of complexity here) the modal case for giving money to someone: You pay them for something you want.
My point is that this is a different situation: Hendrix isn't being paid to say this, she is being supported against an attack.
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