It does, and it's also a thing on larger channels. When you put people's names on screen for donations, you get that whale behavior.

A Twitch streamer I like handles this pretty well, yet there are still "whales" who spend easily thousands per year on their channel, and it's a small-ish channel (like 10-20k total as the top channel in a niche game; <100k followers). The streamer acknowledges bits and subs (calls out how many months they've subbed and total gifted subs as relevant), but otherwise doesn't simp for bits or subs. They even stopped mentioning out-of-band donations unless specifically asked to. Yet the whale behavior still persists because it's a way to stand out in front of others. I can even name the top handful of donators because they make themselves so visible.

I don't like it at all, and wish there was another platform where I can pay for content and not get that nonsense. Nebula is close, but it just doesn't have the content I'm interested in.