I don't mind the tipping during a livestream event, especially if it's free.
One band I follow is Lords Of The Trident. Their singer does those How (Queensryche) orders a coffee videos.
They do a lot of live streamy things and always has the tip counter going.
The J-metal and Korean acts do it on the regular, and do fairly well off it. I remember Rolling Quartz did a full livestream concert, and the chat was a constant stream of tips, they probably raked in a few grand easy. Nemophila does paid livestream shows all the time, and usually have a thousand or so peeps on them. I wish artists would do more of it like they did during covid. I know Tesseract did Portals, Nightwish had one, and even IQ got in on the act, though there's was a freebie (with a sweet shirt to boot!!)
I realize the drummer didn't make his statement with malice, but he did come off poorly, probably cause they're not a tipping culture to begin with. Even the merch guy in question came in to defend the fuck out of the band on the initial IG post. That being said, I'll continue, and always will be, loose with my cash when it comes to live shows, they're a treat, and the mere 40 or so bucks we spend for our level of shows is petty cash compared to what some other artists charge. We're pretty fucking lucky to be in love with the more affordable artists...fuck, we could be die hard Swifties and have to take a second mortage out for nosebleed seats.