I didn't understand the mentality of these people before, because it's so different from my own. I just had to see it before me in full to actually get an idea, and this happened after I joined anny's discord server. At first I wasn't really looking at it, thinking it was a normal server for like telling people when there is a stream, or sharing art. But then when I looked some more at how people interacted there, I realized they had formed some kind of hierarchy similar to what appears when people gift subs in chat. They place themselves so low on the social ladder or scale or whatever we should call it, that I couldn't see the steps earlier.
The true meaning of an "orbiter" was only revealed to me after a few months of idly looking at this community now and then.
That article about some subscriber who donated $10k to meet some streamer girl and only got a 5 min meeting and a hug, was an important reference to understand what these people are about. The girl then used the money to go on vacation with her bf. It was not revealed what the simp thought about it, but it can be assumed he was perfectly find with it, since he gifted that sum with no guarantee of getting anything at all.
These are the kinds of people who lurk imageboards but never contribute. They can't contribute, because there is no "donate" button on here. They can't contribute by sharing anything in text, because they never do anything worth mentioning. All they can do is read what others post and repeat it by copying and saving the posts, or complain about things they feel uncomfortable with. This of course from a perspective of having no way of understanding what they read, because they never practiced or did anything, even less made an effortpost or started a thread.
Some of these people then get an education in "science" or whatever else, where they can memorize "le current year opinion" and then if they are submissive enough, they can get a government job where they get paid to read posts on here and keep files on the posters, to identify threats to their paycheck which they believe are "illegal pixels" and combinations of ASCII characters.