This comes up all the time on services like Kickstarter or Patreon. These sites suggest to varying degrees that you’ll get a product (in which case you’re more of a customer), but also that success is not guaranteed (in which case you’re more of a patron or investor). Sometimes one gets the sense that these sites deliberately blur the lines between these two categories because they want to have their cake and eat it, too.
This comes up all the time on services like Kickstarter or Patreon. These sites suggest to varying degrees that you’ll get a product (in which case you’re more of a customer), but also that success is not guaranteed (in which case you’re more of a patron or investor). Sometimes one gets the sense that these sites deliberately blur the lines between these two categories because they want to have their cake and eat it, too.