if this meme didn't mention tiktok i would guess it was from 2017. who even talks about elsagate anymore?
also anecdotal but personally i would say the visibility of small channels have gone way up these past few years. the amount of videos with very low view counts i see in my feed has gone from basically non existent to half of my recommendations.
jagex is a very shitty company and shitty companies don't want money, they want all the money. they will kill this game eventually. I hate jagex, from jagex accounts which is just a blatant attempt to phase out 3rd party tools and lock people to their ecosystem (which also fucked me over because the new account system blocks my entire country) to their customer service which is horrendous.
now they're raising prices to appear more profitable probably to trick another prospective buyer and get tossed around again.