[HN Gopher] Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics
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Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics
Author : mef
Score : 408 points
Date : 2024-09-09 01:06 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.matthewball.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.matthewball.co)
| tennisflyi wrote:
| Seminal article (I guess), https://xsrus.com/the-economics-of-
| onlyfans
|
| > It's just as easy to imagine demand for the "real thing" going
| down due to the emergence of more substitutes as it is to imagine
| the premium for parasocial authenticity going up. And yet only
| Generative AI "creators" will truly do whatever "you" want and
| only for you. And unlike real ones, they speak in every language
| and are available at any time (and eventually, in immersive 3D).
|
| Disagree. When (AI is) mentioned it has a negative correlation.
| Real content will fetch a premium
| nemothekid wrote:
| It's the same pipe dream as "AI content creators will take over
| youtube".
|
| There is no "formula" for success in the creator economy - the
| winners are largely random. A better way to look at it is there
| are 4 million humans out there trying every permutation to
| crack success, and ~400k actually do it.
|
| Unless you have a sufficiently advanced AI agent that is both
| varying it's content and it's marketing strategy to the tune of
| maybe ~1000 different iterations it's unlikely we will see a
| version of OnlyFans that exists that is majority AI generated.
|
| The "parasocial ai girlfriend" sounds like a flawed premise
| aswell. OF girls are not therapists - Cardi B, Bhad Bhabie, and
| others aren't raking in millions because they are good
| girlfriends (although that is part of the upsell). Social
| status plays a part in the most successful girls, people seem
| to subscribe because the creator is popular, especially if
| she's already built a platform elsewhere.
|
| In short, social status does not have an AI substitute.
| ghaff wrote:
| From another angle, a bunch of us in the tech sector made
| pretty nice salaries. Very few of us were really all-stars in
| the sense that everyone knew who we we were on YouTube, etc.
| Which was fine.
| kiba wrote:
| A good AI girlfriend wouldn't be a therapist but would mimics
| every aspect of a girlfriend, including arguments and fights
| and makeups, because that's how bonding occurs. That's going
| to be how successful AI girlfriend will be made.
| squigz wrote:
| Nobody is going to pay for an AI girlfriend service for it
| to breakup with the user and refuse to get back together -
| because that's how growth happens in reality.
|
| What AI girlfriends _will do_ is mimic perfect Hollywood
| relationships, complete with hot makeup sex.
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| Isn't there a rule on the internet that says "if you can
| imagine it, there is porn for it" and "if there isn't
| porn for it, somebody is making it"?
|
| I'm pretty sure that applies to this scenario too. I'm
| 100% sure that there exists a set of customers who would
| pay good money to get dumped by a realistic AI
| girlfriend. And once dumped they'll turn around and pay
| for the next AI model to dump them only in some other
| fashion. Maybe the AI model thinks the customers anatomy
| is the wrong dimensions? Maybe they smell? Maybe they are
| too short or tall? Perhaps the AI "girlfriend" is a
| triple tentacled sea monster who wants to return to
| oceans on Titan? Doesn't matter. Somebody will pay very
| good money to experance it.
|
| You want a hot quad breasted space babe who cheats on you
| with bubble wrap covered little people? Done. Want that
| with extra bondage? Done.
|
| This is the internet after all. Why pay for a boring
| "normal" AI girlfriend when the sky is the limit? I say,
| use your imagination.
| jjmarr wrote:
| Your assumption is that the status quo provides those
| things. Nowadays, people will break up as soon as they get
| "the ick" or just have a rotating group of people they see.
| Lasting relationships are much less common than they used
| to be because it's easier to switch partners.
|
| People just want to chase a local maximum of constant
| validation that they're pretty/smart/correct. They don't
| see or understand the value in working through fights to
| create something beyond the sum of two people.
|
| AI excels at maintaining that local maximum. It can
| confidently reassure you better than any human can even if
| you're wrong. AI partners following this are successful
| _now_ and people in their teens and early 20s are being
| hooked _en masse_.
|
| Historically, superior pieces of technology haven't
| displaced older incumbents when the learning curve is too
| steep.
|
| I don't see why a person dating an AI partner that has
| lovebombed them for several years would switch to another
| AI (or a person) that starts fights and bickers. Even if
| it's better in the long-term, that's still a marked
| decrease in short-term satisfaction.
| bitzun wrote:
| > people in their teens and early 20s are being hooked en
| masse.
|
| Any reference for the scale of this? It feels unlikely to
| me from my bubble but I only know one or two people I
| think would be likely to try it.
| jjmarr wrote:
| https://www.ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/is-
| ai-c...
|
| The biggest callout is that NSFW AI already has 10%
| relative market share compared to OnlyFans. And there are
| no frontier models in that market.
| kiba wrote:
| The whole point of having fights and arguments at just
| the right level is to maximize engagement, retention and
| ultimately making money for the corporation.
|
| I was imagining the most diabolical addictive AI
| girlfriend. That's necessarily going to include
| 'negative' elements.
| dgfitz wrote:
| I completely agree with your point, if it is that ai will
| be twisted to generate a significant other that will
| essentially become addictive. I get very uncomfortable
| thinking about that reality.
| jjmarr wrote:
| Implementing the cycle of abuse in an AI partner could be
| as impactful as the invention of the cigarette.
|
| I'm now very concerned about hypothetical young men who
| enter into relationships with AI in university or high
| school, then graduate and have an algorithm abuse and
| take their money.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Your AI girlfriend that goes from crisis to crisis but
| with microtransactions.
|
| "I need $34.99 for storage space or they are going to
| delete me, please save me white knight!"
|
| "The met a nice guy yesterday and he was able to afford
| my premium package, the one that lets me feel more
| emotions, I just don't know if I feel for you like I once
| did..."
| knighthack wrote:
| There are many successful relationships that don't involve
| arguments - and which are about constant peace.
|
| Relationships don't require 'arguments and fights and
| makeups' to be real. And if AI girlfriends offer 'ideal
| relationships', how is that not 'good'?
|
| You are conflating what people actually want with the
| artificial drama of TV shows and Hollywood/the messy
| scenario of reality. If people can pay to get their fantasy
| girlfriends/relationships brought to life, they will, and
| it will be successful especially if all forms of
| conflict/relationship dissatisfaction can be avoided.
| kiba wrote:
| _There are many successful relationships that don 't
| involve arguments - and which are about constant peace._
|
| I am not saying things about successful relationship. I
| am merely pointing out how exploitation of users can
| occur.
|
| Emotional bonding often occur in orderal and other
| challenging events. It is one of the tools that companies
| will use to push users' button and to exploit them for
| economic value.
|
| _And if AI girlfriends offer 'ideal relationships', how
| is that not 'good'?_
|
| Ideal relationships aren't necessarily good for AI
| companies' pocketbook.
| nasmorn wrote:
| Bonding to a computer program under control of a
| corporation is like looking for a sociopath as a partner
| explicitly. You would lose complete control of your life
| to the other side. Reciprocity is off the table
| completely.
| Dries007 wrote:
| > There is no "formula" for success in the creator economy -
| the winners are largely random.
|
| I think that strongly depends on what you call "the creator
| economy". For example, on YT it's really mostly skill:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip2trao6dYw
|
| Not that I believe its easy, nor do I think AI will be super
| good at it, at least not before everything else also
| enshittifies into the habsburg-AI-powered dead internet.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| The idea that success is earned through luck rather than
| merit is a firmly ideological position, regardless of the
| domain you're talking about. If you succeeded via luck then
| that provides a better moral justification for the related
| ideological position that you should be deprived of the
| fruits of your labor as much as possible, for
| redistribution to others who were simply less lucky than
| you. It's really just sour grapes.
|
| The formula for success in any field is simply to make a
| product that other people want to consume. It's not 0
| variance, but if you have some insight into what people
| want, and you do the work to execute your idea, then you
| can simply work through the ups and downs and success is
| almost inevitable.
| darby_nine wrote:
| > The formula for success in any field is simply to make
| a product that other people want to consume
|
| Well, the formula for success _in selling products_ is
| this. Most people don 't define success in terms of
| business acumen.
|
| Except, of course, businessmen. If you perceive our
| society as centered around successful people, of course
| you'll see it as merit-based. If you perceive our society
| as poorly run and catering to the rich, of course you'll
| see success as primarily a product of circumstance
| outside of your control. Is it so hard to see that
| "merit" is necessarily defined in subjective terms?
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| This is just arguing over phrasing. It doesn't matter
| what you're trying to do, if you're making YouTube
| videos, or music, or paintings, or cakes, or web apps, or
| cleaning diveways, your ability to succeed boils down to
| your ability to provide something other people want. That
| is the objective source of your merit.
|
| Perhaps your own idea of success in life is something
| that revolves exclusively around your own satisfaction,
| like going off and living in the woods. But this is
| exactly the same situation, you're just only trying to
| provide the things that one person wants in that
| scenario, yourself. Your ability to do this will again
| come down to your own merit.
|
| Of course if you're chronically frustrated by being less
| successful than you would like to be, then looking for
| alternative explanations such as luck will be an
| attractive scapegoat that could excuse you from
| scrutinising your own capabilities. But the human
| inclination towards doing that is certainly not morally
| righteous.
| SunlightEdge wrote:
| I don't think its black and white. I think sometimes
| success is a matter of luck. For example, in large
| organizations there can be a lot of roles generated where
| there isn't always that much direct pressure and people
| can be hired through luck (e.g. getting on with the boss,
| some types of diversity hires, being loyal to a company
| even if you are not that good etc.). If teams of people
| make products/reports etc. sometimes it can be hard to
| shine, and 'talkers' who don't contribute much can get
| promoted into a 'lucky' role. Its not black and white.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| You illustrate a perfect example of simply not
| understanding what people want. Talkers get promoted
| because talkers have social skills, and companies are
| social systems, and social skills are required to advance
| through them. Social skills are probably more desirable
| than technical skills most of the time. It's not luck
| that these people succeed, it's the fact that they have
| the qualities that people want.
|
| You can succeed through partially through luck, like if a
| record executive decides they going to manufacture some
| massive level of fame for you. But this isn't a viable
| long term strategy, only providing what people want is.
| Over time the variance of luck goes away. The luck
| outlook relies on the fallacious idea that you only get
| one opportunity to succeed, but you don't, you have as
| long as you're willing to keep trying. Maybe a failure on
| one particular day can be explained by luck, but you get
| to wake up and keep trying every day, and if you have
| what people want then luck becomes irrelevant and
| eventually you will succeed. That's how basically every
| single successful person you've ever heard of has done
| it.
| somenameforme wrote:
| One of the few domains where this is testable has also
| demonstrated this. Writing is about as hard to break into
| as anything, yet Stephen King demonstrated success
| writing under a completely unknown alias. [1]
|
| No he didn't immediately received the same level of
| reception and success as Stephen King does, but neither
| did Stephen King at first! That's why it's skill +
| dedication. If you look at some of the old videos of
| people who have succeeded in e.g. social media, they tend
| to have terrible production quality yet still
| significantly stand out from the crowd, even their early
| days. For instance this [2] is one of the first videos
| Vertasium ever uploaded, 13 years old now! That video,
| even now still 'only' has 230k views, and certainly had a
| tiny fraction of that when it was initially released -
| but he kept at it, clearly putting way more into his
| videos than he was getting out of them - until that trend
| reversed.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bachman
|
| [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBjZz0iQrzI
| jcranmer wrote:
| > One of the few domains where this is testable has also
| demonstrated this. Writing is about as hard to break into
| as anything, yet Stephen King demonstrated success
| writing under a completely unknown alias.
|
| I don't think it actually demonstrates this. As your
| wording hints, the hard part of writing is getting
| yourself out of the slush pile and into an editor and
| publisher's hands, and Stephen King's actions relied on
| his existing relationship with said editor and publisher
| to publish under a different name. He never demonstrated
| pulling the feat of escaping the slush pile again.
|
| In modern content creation, the similar metric is getting
| to, say, 1k views, or even as prosaically simple as being
| part of the 50% of streamers to get _1_ view. It 's not
| sufficient to have talent to get to even that level of
| success; there is a lot of luck necessary to get you
| there.
| latexr wrote:
| > For example, on YT it's really mostly skill
|
| I watched that video from start to finish and disagree with
| your conclusion. I watched it all so I could make an
| informed comment but regret spending those 15 minutes on
| it.
|
| The author essentially made a video about a popular
| streamer, then went on their stream and baited them with
| 50$ and a video about themselves. It was literally click
| bait. It was so transparent that the streamer realised at
| the end what had happened but still decided to go along
| with it since it cost them nothing.
|
| That's just directed spam (which, by the way, is a word the
| author used themselves). It was _one_ video about drivel.
| Granted, it's not dissimilar from the other garbage that
| populates YouTube, but it also didn't get views for being
| good. It's the equivalent of video junk food. You know it,
| the creator knows it, yet it's still hard to stop
| consuming.
| bostik wrote:
| > _There is no "formula" for success in the creator economy -
| the winners are largely random._
|
| That observation has echoes of the music industry - another
| extremely top-heavy creator business. There are formulaic
| ways to make "good enough" and "catchy enough" songs, but the
| window for "X enough" keeps shifting. Cranking out grunge
| won't be sustainable in the age of K-pop.
|
| But the massive runaway hits have been predominantly outliers
| for their age. They have veered far enough from the
| mainstream to be interesting in new ways, different enough,
| and _surprising_ enough to break through.
|
| But to predict in advance what kinds of outliers will win the
| lottery? Largely random, indeed.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah but Rick Rubin is always involved and Max Martin has
| written a hell of a lot of megahits. Makes you think.
| dumbo-octopus wrote:
| Jack Antonoff as well. There certainly exist a handful of
| people who consistently produce hits for decades.
| 71bw wrote:
| >Rick Rubin
|
| Dear God, I've looked into his discography[1] and nearly
| every album I think of as great from the last 30 years is
| there. Seasons in the Abyss, The Life of Pablo, 99
| Problems, SOAD self-titled + Toxicity, The Geto Boys
| self-titled, Licensed to Ill... Is this man a hit printer
| or something? Really shows that Metallica went to him
| with Death Magnetic after the joke called St. Anger lol
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rubin_production_d
| iscogra...
| sirspacey wrote:
| His skill is helping creators do their best work. It's a
| rare one.
| renewiltord wrote:
| There's a great interview he's got with Anderson Cooper.
| A fantastic line from it is "I have no technical ability
| whatsoever". What a guy. Seemed quite likeable.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That's arguably _all_ entertainment. Fiction writing, art,
| music, movies, sports, vloggers, influencers, OnlyFans
| creators, etc. There 's a couple brands so established that
| literally anything they do prints money, then there's a
| winner-takes-all dynamics that keeps making few randos
| briefly successful every season, and then there's everyone
| else who never makes enough to break even.
| sigmar wrote:
| To what extent is the current content being paid for on
| onlyfans "real content?" There are companies that you can pay
| to manage your onlyfans messages[1]. As in- people think they
| are messaging the content creator, but are actually messaging
| some random employee of a third party company. I'm not sure how
| many of the people paying to message the content creator
| understand that this is common, but I'd imagine some are
| willfully ignorant about who is replying to their messages.
| Couldn't they also be similarly "blind" when interfacing with
| an AI substitute?
|
| [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/onlyfans-management-
| agency-c...
| creer wrote:
| Further, different audiences are looking for different things.
|
| One other response mentions social status.
|
| I will contribute another: personal human interaction with
| someone that seems both "out of your league" AND "no-need-to-
| get-away-from-the-computer" available. That configuration has
| significant value (as real content from a real human) for
| enough of these fans, enough of which recognize this and pay
| well for it - to make it worth the performer's time. And still
| very far from "generative AI".
| safety1st wrote:
| There are a few key points to understanding the OnlyFans
| business which are not covered by either article (and the one
| on xsrus.com is pretty old and is off by several billions
| regarding revenue now).
|
| * Point #1, OnlyFans is the biggest thing in porn by far, its
| rise is meteoric.
|
| * Point #2, OnlyFans is in the business of selling
| relationships. It's not a tech company and attempts to analyze
| it as such are therefore off the mark. Customers pay OnlyFans
| because they feel they are obtaining a relationship with the
| model, that she is aware of them and responding to them in a
| personalized fashion.
|
| * Point #3, The relationships OnlyFans sells are fraudulent - a
| high percentage of customers actually believe they are talking
| to the model. In reality none of the models who are successful
| have time to talk to fans, everything is outsourced. Some
| models run their own accounts but most of the time it is more
| professionalized with a pimp/production company behind the
| scenes who just orders pictures and clips from the model, so
| the intimacy the customer is buying is a lie.
|
| * Point #4, and this may be the biggest one explaining OF's
| meteoric rise, OF creators are allowed to advertise via their
| social media profiles, whereas a conventional porn site is not.
| Reddit, X and Instagram are all massive drivers of OnlyFans
| traffic and signups. The business model is that softcore porn
| is hosted on these social media sites, which makes tons of
| money for the social media sites, and then there is a link or
| mention to the OnlyFans profile where OF delivers the service
| for whales who want to escalate their porn consumption.
|
| I'll say it again, the key innovation in the OnlyFans business
| model is that they figured out how to get women to advertise
| their service on Instagram. Not a tech company.
|
| Another significant takeaway is that since OF's product is
| fundamentally a lie, the social media giants are indirectly
| profiting from fraud.
| williamdclt wrote:
| > In reality none of the models who are successful have time
| to talk to fans, everything is outsourced
|
| It depends how you define "successful", but I would say
| that's not true. I personally know several OF models for whom
| it is their fulltime job (earning decent money), and they do
| not outsource anything. Highly popular models almost
| certainly do, but there's a lot of smaller creators who don't
| sulandor wrote:
| for now, but chat will be llm-fied before the content is
| created by an ai, that's for sure.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Point #2, OnlyFans is in the business of selling
| relationships [...] Customers pay OnlyFans because they feel
| they are obtaining a relationship with the model,_
|
| Is there any hard evidence this is true beyond a tiny deluded
| fraction of the userbase?
|
| Aren't 99% of users just straightforwardly transactional,
| trading money for access to photos and videos, just like
| subscribing to a newspaper?
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| This was a minor point in the Diamond Age novel. Artificial
| intelligence is capable of acting in digital movies, but is
| still imperceptibly off. Requires a real human being to give
| that extra bit of authenticity.
| beAbU wrote:
| Sure, real content will fetch a premium, but I think there is
| absolute bank to be made with AI enhanced or AI generated
| curated pornography in our near future.
|
| I will also not be surprised at all when the inevitable scandal
| breaks where some popular OF creator was ousted as being AI
| generated instead of being "real".
|
| There are Instagram influences that are on the platform /today/
| that are immensely popular, and they are completely AI
| generated. Some of their followers even know this, yet they
| don't really care.
| llm_trw wrote:
| >When (AI is) mentioned it has a negative correlation.
|
| I have an llm inference rig that I enjoy on the weekends and
| the problem for the first time in my life is that I have
| supernormal stimulus which doesn't seem to reduce in potency
| the more I use it.
|
| It's gotten to the point where I don't visit porn sites any
| more because the locally generated material is better than what
| I can find there, and these are just the first sparks of gen AI
| porn.
|
| Gen AI porn will make the issue of online pornography seem
| laughable when it drops in requirements so you can run the
| state of the art models in prosumer hardware.
|
| What do you do when reality is a distant second to the digital
| world?
| chasontherobot wrote:
| > I have an llm inference rig that I enjoy on the weekends
| and the problem for the first time in my life it that I have
| supernormal stimulus which doesn't seem to reduce in potency
| the more I use it.
|
| I have no idea what this sentence means
| k33jf33l2 wrote:
| He's jerking off to the output of a stats library and can't
| help wondering if/when it'll lose its luster.
| jpsouth wrote:
| I read it as they have a powerful enough machine to
| generate _weekend material_ that doesn't seem to degrade in
| user experience or satisfaction (i.e get boring over time)
| which you may experience when enjoying 'normal' _weekend
| activities_.
| sulandor wrote:
| > What do you do when reality is a distant second to the
| digital world?
|
| realize it's a torus and wander happily in circles
| akomtu wrote:
| That's what going to turn our society upside down before we
| realise what we're dealing with. Sex is a lot like doing
| drugs that as a side effect make you release your life
| energy. The same energy that creates new life in the right
| circumstances. In the nature, obtaining sex is difficult,
| which limits the amount of this sex drug we can consume. AI
| removes this "obstacle" from our way and opens the gates to
| such dungeons of our mind that we thought never existed. The
| effect at the society level will be a giant short-circuit
| when the electric energy that makes our bodies alive will
| rush down and burn the wires.
| spencerchubb wrote:
| Just don't tell the consumer that it's Gen AI
| ec109685 wrote:
| It's already fake. The creator is not really into you and your
| interactions are with some dude in an offshore call center, not
| intimate chats with the person you think you're having. It's
| ridiculous this is considered okay by the platform.
|
| Unlike something like professional wrestling (that is make
| believe real content), the AI equivalent to only fans seems
| like it will be trivial to make.
|
| And as the article pointed out, part of why onlyfans exploded
| in popularity is that other sources of free porn dried up, so
| it shows there is a substitution aspect where if something
| better / cheaper comes along, people will switch to it.
| kragen wrote:
| > _Seminal article (I guess),https://xsrus.com/the-economics-
| of-onlyfans_
|
| is it possible to write a _non_ -seminal article about
| onlyfans, though?
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| OnlyFans is run by a very small tight knit group of people. A
| while back, I sat at a poker table in vegas with one for 5 hours.
| We discussed technology and the future of OF. I was offered a job
| to run a technology team there - often think I made a mistake not
| taking it.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Super interesting
|
| I wish I was cut throat enough to know real players in internet
| commerce
| monero-xmr wrote:
| I know this team also. Very tight group that came from a prior
| failure. Very focused and knowledgeable of legal minefields.
| brandnewideas wrote:
| You probably did. Pornography plays an important role in
| shaping and controlling today's societies and the powers that
| be will certainly push its distributors and creators more and
| more in the future.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| > important role in shaping and controlling today's societies
|
| In what ways?
|
| As an industry, it seems pretty much a pariah. In terms of
| political power, the religious organisations that that
| pressure the finance system to break ties with pornography
| seem more powerful. Maybe it influences culture/perceptions
| about relationships and sex in more ways than I can see.
| throw7 wrote:
| 2/3 of its revenues were from the U.S. That's... sad.
| xyst wrote:
| I wonder how much of that is from a group of lonely whales.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 2/3 of its revenues were from the U.S. That's... sad.
|
| Probably common for a lot of luxury products; US is like 1/4 of
| world GDP, and a lot higher than that in personal income beyond
| basic needs.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| But still around 4 to 5% of the global population. Every stat
| in the global context of usage/consumerism gets weird when
| you consider this, and even weirder when you account for
| debt-to-income ratio.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But still around 4 to 5% of the global population.
|
| Yeah, but so? "Subsisitence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa
| spend substantially less per capita on online adult
| entertainment than Americans" is...not a surprising bit of
| information.
|
| > Every stat in the global context of usage/consumerism
| gets weird when you consider this
|
| Seems to me that the weird thing is the implicit premise
| that consumer and especially luxury spending should be
| expected to track population and not wealth.
|
| > and even weirder when you account for debt-to-income
| ratio.
|
| Are you assuming that the ability to borrow should be
| negatively correlated with luxury spending?
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| Tiktok ban mentions of WeChat just like they been saying
| onlyfans.
| yen223 wrote:
| This just means a) the US is a huge market, and b) they haven't
| cracked the China market yet
| xyst wrote:
| Wow - those AI generated influencers would be enough to fool
| older populations. If I was a shitty person, I would build my own
| network of "influencers" to manage and pump money from the
| lonely/desperate.
|
| Baby steps towards the "dead internet theory"
| Loughla wrote:
| Old people and desperate people who are inclined to believe,
| yes. But the glitching and weird movements are a dead giveaway,
| I think.
| mervz wrote:
| Yeah, I'm sure you "would".
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I have a buddy how likes to tell how he "had the idea for
| Onlyfans first" but I advised him not to pursue it.
|
| The reality is that OnlyFans wasn't the first to try this model.
| You have to give them credit for successfully building the
| business, especially with several close calls between them and
| government regulations.
| doix wrote:
| Yeah, I'm sure millions of people had this idea. My friends and
| I talked about it at some point as well.
|
| The problem is the payment processor. How the heck do you
| accept adult-content related payments? That is the hardest
| problem to solve when it comes to these things in my book.
| creer wrote:
| Second is the issue of promotion: how to you become known to
| enough fans to make it worth it. The sites offer a true
| service of discovery.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Seemingly, it is posting a variety of content on Reddit
| that incentivized people to click on usernames which then
| advertise the OF.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Payment processing for porn has existed a long time. The
| problem is trying to convince people to pay for porn. The
| assumption was free tube site would replace membership sites,
| as the was the trend already.
| mattfrommars wrote:
| Payment is the hardest part in this space. Somehow OnlyFans
| had the privilege to use Stripe for all their transactions.
|
| It's beyond knowing the business model, I guess the founder
| were at the right place and right time and knew the right
| people to make this venture succeed.
|
| Also, the marketing, how the heck did these guy blow up so
| fast. The funds for marketing and all, it's not cheap!
| roenxi wrote:
| If someone has a serious pitch to the tune of "I've got
| enough leverage with key players in Stripe to make an adult
| site work", everything afterwards would get pretty easy.
| Finding money to advertise is no problem, these sites are
| in a great position if they can work around the payment
| systems. The difficulty becomes the moat.
| duggan wrote:
| As far as I understand it isn't Stripe setting policy on
| this, it's Mastercard/Visa. Though presumably,
| ultimately, it's really government.
| avianlyric wrote:
| It's a bit of a mix. Mastercard/Visa do set some policies
| around this, but only due to, quite frankly undemocratic,
| political pressure. There been a few documented cases of
| particularly puritanical US politicians sending letters
| and making arbitrary public claims to "embarrass"
| Mastercard/Visa into restricting certain types of
| perfectly legal commerce. The impact of these policies is
| a bit arbitrary, as Mastercard/Visa generally aren't in
| the business of restricting commerce (and thus their cut
| of the profits). So they tend to have short lived, but
| high impact, consequences on specific individuals or
| groups.
|
| Really though, the primary reason why a company like
| stripe don't want to be involved with these types of
| business, is the very high levels of fraud and
| chargebacks that come with the territory. Turns out
| people get embarrassed about porn appearing on their bank
| statements, and often put in dubious chargeback claims.
| Not to mention many banks have their fraud controls set
| to a hair-trigger for anything porn related.
|
| The end result is processing these transactions is
| normally very expensive and high risk, due to the fraud
| and chargebacks. Which in turn put you at high risk of
| being kicked of the Mastercard/Visa networks.
| Mastercard/Visa mostly don't give a shit what you're
| selling, as long as you pay your dues. But they do get
| very upset when it looks like your business might
| threaten the perceived safety of credit/debit cards. As
| usual, protecting profits is treated much more seriously,
| than preventing any perceived moral failing.
|
| As for governments, they officially don't care. Selling
| porn is perfectly legal in the western world, so it only
| individuals in government who choose to abuse their
| positions to enforce their personal moral code on others
| (beyond what the law requires) that creates any kind of
| government "policy".
| fakedang wrote:
| > Mastercard/Visa do set some policies around this, but
| only due to, quite frankly undemocratic, political
| pressure. There been a few documented cases of
| particularly puritanical US politicians sending letters
| and making arbitrary public claims to "embarrass"
| Mastercard/Visa into restricting certain types of
| perfectly legal commerce.
|
| Not much political pressure as much as online smear
| campaigning by Bill Ackman. And for good reason. The
| platforms then went overboard and swung the pendulum
| hard.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Somehow OnlyFans had the privilege to use Stripe for all
| their transactions.
|
| Is this accurate? Because (a) Stripe explicitly says they
| won't be a payment processor for adult-oriented businesses,
| and (b) I read somewhere (this was a while back) that
| OnlyFans had a slew of payment processors that they would
| rotate/diversify whenever things got too dicey with a
| specific processor (e.g. too many chargebacks)
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Yes.
|
| It's like international law:
|
| There are fixed rules, until there aren't.
| qingcharles wrote:
| OnlyFans banned adult content at one point:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/24/22639356/onlyfans-ceo-
| tim...
|
| Recently they've tried to launch OFTV to try and build up
| more regular (non-spicy) paid content, but it's a tiny
| fraction of their revenue I would imagine.
| paulpauper wrote:
| It was covid
|
| Otherwise, paid porn was already on the downswing due to the
| rise of free tube sites. Onlyfans somehow got men paying for
| porn again.
| debacle wrote:
| Onlyfans is more than porn. DMs with your "star" (her
| assistant), exclusive content, and other parasocial
| interactions create a kind of connection that is a lot deeper
| than just porn.
|
| When you can combine that experience with AI generated
| content, you will create something that I don't think anyone
| fully understands the ramifications of yet.
| knallfrosch wrote:
| Even "assistant" (singular) is misleading. It's 30 men in
| the Philippines mashed together with AI-bots.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| It was 100% covid.
|
| The strip clubs were closed, the strippers and the patrons
| moved to the online strip club.
| __rito__ wrote:
| This is relevant:
| https://x.com/cyantist/status/1832921451986632777
|
| A similar app creator talks about her experience and why it
| failed.
| ashconnor wrote:
| It's worth listening to the Hot Money podcast which goes into
| detail of how OF makes money: https://www.ft.com/content/762e
| 4648-06d7-4abd-8d1e-ccefb74b3...
| comebhack wrote:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1832921451986632777.html
| joenot443 wrote:
| Highly recommend this thread. I think these kind of honest
| post-mortems from founders are super valuable and Cyan's
| delivery is frank and charitable.
|
| It seems she and Justin Mares are running some kind of micro-
| funding for passionate <25yos. $2k to help young people
| develop themselves; super cool.
|
| https://www.inflectiongrants.com/
| luuurker wrote:
| > Highly recommend this thread.
|
| Shame that Twitter doesn't let people without an account to
| read it.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Wow some of those tweets are long. Twitter lost something
| when it removed the character limit.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I find myself a little sad at how lucrative a job this will
| appear for an entire generation. $1500 average creator pay is
| higher than 40 hours a week minimum wage.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| That's $1500 _annually_ for the average creator, and due to
| concentration at the top, the median take home is going to be
| even lower than that.
| tazu wrote:
| Yes, it's misleading to share averages for power-law
| distributions. Median take home pay is probably $20 annually.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Doh! I read that as monthly. My bad.
| animal531 wrote:
| The thing that should be really worrying for new OF creators
| should be how that value is dropping per year.
|
| It (along with the growing revenue) tells us that a lot more
| people are joining constantly, so you will really need to
| stand out to make anything (just as in music, games etc.)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > $1500 average creator pay is higher than 40 hours a week
| minimum wage.
|
| Only in jurisdictions where minimum wage is less than $0.72/hr.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I don't. People get to take home 80% of what they make, have
| full control over their work and it eliminates the biggest
| drawback of sex work which is safety issues. The day when
| enough people have a way to opt out of grueling min wage work
| is probably when it's finally automated or at least people get
| treated better.
| williamdclt wrote:
| > it eliminates the biggest drawback of sex work which is
| safety issues
|
| It certainly reduces it a lot and your point is valid, but
| let's note that it doesn't "eliminate" it: doxxing and
| stalking are very much a thing and my OF creator friends live
| in flatshare or have building security for safety reasons
| evantbyrne wrote:
| Who do you know that's making $9/hour avg today? That's what I
| was earning at a student job back in 2010.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| 16 states still have minimum wage at $7.25/hour
| https://www.ncsl.org/labor-and-employment/state-minimum-
| wage... and I presume there still exist employers who don't
| offer much more.
| paxys wrote:
| Federal minimum wage is largely an irrelevant number. <1%
| of hourly workers in the country are making minimum wage.
| And most of those are making _below_ minimum wage (under
| the table), so their wage would remain low even if the
| government raised the number.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| It seems to be 1.3% of all hourly workers:
|
| https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-
| many-...
|
| However, that figure doesn't include the people who make
| a dime over minimum wage. 23.3% of American households
| earn less than $35,000/yr
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-
| distri...
|
| This number would decrease dramatically if our national
| minimum wage was raised to $15 or more per hour.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Why should there be a national minimum wage? Cost of
| living varies so much, it is impossible to derive a
| figure that is reasonable for the highest cost of living
| areas and the lowest cost of living areas.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Because there are a number of states that have repeatedly
| demonstrated that they can't be trusted to make basic,
| life-improving changes for themselves. Then respectable
| places like California end up footing the bill when they
| shake the proverbial can.
|
| A fair number of these states had to be held at gunpoint
| to eliminate slavery.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Not only is it basically impossible to do a national
| minimum wage fairly, it is completely antithetical to our
| system of government. We are a federation of states, not
| a centralized national government that runs everything
| else. I wish people would stop trying to make the US
| something it isn't and was never meant to be.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| The states have a lot of leeway in how they run things,
| the federal government is there to make sure the system
| stays in some sort of accord.
|
| They do this by offering emergency relief funds for
| natural disasters, interstate highways for trade and
| economy, and all manner of things.
|
| I think a federal minimum wage makes sense in this
| system, ensuring that the people of Tishomingo,
| Mississippi have the same fundamental buying power as the
| people to Los Angeles, California instead of them earning
| $1 an hour because it's comparatively cheaper to live in
| Tishomingo.
|
| Raising the federal minimum wage is also a good way to
| decrease old debt, deflate the value of stagnant money
| (increasing the likelihood that the money moves,
| improving the economy) and to temporarily boost the
| financial status of the poorest and most disaffected.
|
| In an age where no one working minimum wage can afford
| the cheapest 1 bedroom apartment without an extraordinary
| stroke of luck or some sort of financial dispensation,
| someone needs to do something and it needs to come from
| on high.
| evantbyrne wrote:
| Not sure where you're getting that idea. Maybe there is
| some niche case law out there that I'm unaware of, but I
| can't even think of an example of state law voiding
| federal law.
| eleveriven wrote:
| I think it's also the question about how this type of work is
| viewed in society
| nemo44x wrote:
| This is why PornHub was sold to bag holders earlier seemingly out
| of nowhere. Their business is dead.
|
| Second point - is this really Europe's most successful tech
| company of the last 15 years?!
| knallfrosch wrote:
| The article limits the claim to a "probably" and "UK"
|
| > it is probably the most successful UK company founded since
| DeepMind in 2010
| Peroni wrote:
| >$6.3 billion in gross revenues
|
| Not sure I can name many US companies founded in the last 15
| years with higher revenue numbers
| paxys wrote:
| UK != Europe
| lucb1e wrote:
| Or at least, don't tell them
| listless wrote:
| Is anyone willing to admit they subscribe to an OF and explain
| why over the free pornography alternatives that most of the
| internet is full of?
| conductr wrote:
| My proverbial homies that use it say it's because they get
| private show or host will watch via a 2-way video. It's
| basically peep shows and phone sex meets FaceTime. Stuff like
| this is why the growing part of their business is "One-off
| Transactions". It should be called "Jerk-off Transactions"
| because that's how it's being used.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I have known people who have been content creators on OF or
| similar. The whole industry is pretty abusive and exploitative,
| but on platforms like OF you can be more (certainly not
| entirely, but more) sure that the creator isn't being exploited
| and is the one benefitting from the work. A big part of it is
| also the creator interacting with the fans up to creating
| custom content for individuals.
| TheCapeGreek wrote:
| I would liken it as "digital sexual companionship" in many
| cases, rather than just porn. That's the value here, for a lot
| of the same reasons that people would engage with a
| "traditional" prostitute/escort. It's just cheaper (at first),
| and less likely to get you arrested or put in dangerous areas.
|
| The article makes mention of AI content potentially coming for
| this industry, but I believe it's the "GirlfriendGPT" and
| similar that will be the bigger threat, once they improve.
| logicchains wrote:
| Some of the OF models are more physically attractive than most
| of the actors in free pornography. There's lots of free
| pornography on the internet but very little of it contains 9s
| and 10s.
| flwi wrote:
| I think it is the general attractiveness of para social
| relationships
| (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction).
| People look for personal, intimate interactions. OF creates
| (the illusion of) such relationships.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| None of these commenters actually use OnlyFans, because there's
| literally a free tier option to subscribe. You still need a
| credit card to sign up because they obviously want to reduce
| the friction for subscribing or paying for extra content. I've
| seen a lot of models that will use Twitter > Free OF > Paid OF
| funnel. Twitter is mostly soft-core / flirty, Free OF has some
| nudity, typically no videos, and the Paid OF is where most of
| explicit content is.
|
| Revenue wise, you'll make a lot more money tailoring content to
| a small group of users who will pay for custom content / live
| cams etc than having any mass appeal with small donations. The
| large social media funnel is mostly there to get model's
| content out there to find the whales.
|
| Context: I have a side business deploying chat LLMs for
| OnlyFans models for fans to "talk" to that's currently at
| 65k/MRR. It definitely helps with user retention, as models who
| chat to their fans will have a 2x or 3x spend rate per fan.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| > Context: I have a side business deploying chat LLMs for
| OnlyFans models for fans to "talk" to that's currently at
| 65k/MRR.
|
| good job
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| This is hackernews after all!
| greenie_beans wrote:
| would be hilarious if you were THE gary numan. why tf you
| making SaaS income? i would not be anywhere near tech if
| my art was successful.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| I'm just a fan, although Gary is still making great
| music!
| licnep wrote:
| > Context: I have a side business deploying chat LLMs for
| OnlyFans models for fans to "talk" to
|
| How did you market this? Do you have a website for it?
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| No website or advertising. All word of mouth / cold
| emailing.
| zephyrfalcon wrote:
| > Context: I have a side business deploying chat LLMs for
| OnlyFans models for fans to "talk" to
|
| Seems illegal, or at the very least a violation of OF's Terms
| of Service.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| Their ToS doesn't apply to off site content
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Four years after the pandemic and people still pretend not to
| know that onlyfans is often free? Its such a tired trope to
| debate, but there is the possibility you're serious
|
| The article itself explains how subscriptions are a low part of
| OnlyFans business
|
| But maybe this is only offering a glimpse
|
| Many successful creators have a marketing strategy that
| includes a free subscription tier, and make money in pay per
| view DMs, or charging for DMs at all
|
| So for people browsing for free pornography, its the same or
| better
|
| Either way, its nice to see your attractive friends naked. Many
| women you meet in real life have a link in their social media
| bio that includes their onlyfans. In my world its very
| predictable based on visual attractiveness. Astoundingly, often
| it seems other women in their friend groups don't know this and
| haven't checked the "link in bio" of their girl friends. This
| masquerades as acceptance of sex workers.
| kowbell wrote:
| I have subscribed. I have paid for PPV.
|
| Why? I have disposable income and I feel good when I spend it
| supporting creators I like. I subscribe to several Patreons of
| artists and YouTube creators, I've got that yearly Nebula
| subscription locked in, I buy merch and CDs from local bands
| (even though I don't really listen to them after shows), and I
| also will pay folks posting tantalizing stuff on the internet.
| Sure I can get similar things for free, but sometimes I want
| content from _that_ person and I see no issue giving them a
| couple bucks for it. I can afford it, so why not? Why do they
| not deserve it when I'm willing to also sub to a Patreon for
| someone who makes cool digital art on Instagram?
|
| The "para-social" aspect is icky to me. At no point do I expect
| that this person knows who I am or has any care for me; any
| time I receive messages insinuating or fishing for that I
| ignore them. My "relationship" to them is a consumer who enjoys
| their work and is willing to compensate them for it, and that
| "relationship" only exists for a limited amount of time every
| so often.
| standardUser wrote:
| I have subscribed on and off to many different OF accounts. I
| usually just want to check out their spicy content, not chat or
| form a connection of any kind. But I have chatted with and
| formed connections with people on webcam streaming sites. I've
| also performed on streaming sites and met many awesome people
| through those interactions (and earned a tiny amount of money).
|
| The OF content I pay for is usually from someone I discovered
| via Instagram or a camming site.
|
| But the money I spend on camming sites is usually because it
| offers two things that aren't easily found elsewhere. 1) direct
| interaction with the models in real time and 2) seeing couples
| who are _actually_ couples and have a real and pre-existing
| relationship. Part 2 is a tiny amount of camming content, but
| it is some of my all time favorite sex content.
| xyst wrote:
| Very simple - parasocial relationships. It's the same reason
| people donate to Twitch streamers.
|
| Donate to streamer, get mention, get hit of dopamine.
|
| Donate to OF person. Get a "personal" video. Get a hit of
| dopamine or whatever chemical corresponds to love/friendship.
| braza wrote:
| Not a moralistic take, but one issue that interests me is the
| second-order impacts associated with the long tail of producers
| in OF who do not make a career from it.
|
| With traditional adult entertainment, creators are aware of the
| social ramifications (e.g., social stigma, familial ostracism,
| difficulty dealing with the future, and so on), and there is a
| decent theoretical economic framework to measure that.
|
| I am not sure if there's the same this new army of "civilians"
| joining OF, let alone the additional toll it will take on the
| creators in terms of social ostracism, future prospects, future
| opportunities, and mental health.
| bool3max wrote:
| That issue exists in the context of all other novel "social
| media" careers as well.
| tessierashpool9 wrote:
| not to the extent of having a video published where you have
| sex - to put it mildly.
| debesyla wrote:
| Yeah but having sex on tape isn't something special or
| shameful.
| beaglesss wrote:
| If you take a video of taking a shit mostly no one is
| gonna think you're immoral or shameful but if there's
| videos plastered everywhere of you shitting on cam for
| cash then it could be detrimental to your social
| standing.
| debesyla wrote:
| I would argue that video of taking a shit could display
| video production and marketing skills better than, let's
| say, doing a socially unacceptable political rant.
|
| But I agree that probabbly being super racist is
| currently more accepted in some social media than showing
| genitals. I'm not promoting it, of course.
| wincy wrote:
| Blippie the children's show star has somehow come out
| unscathed after literally shitting on his friend while
| doing a Harlem Shake video. I'm not really sure how. I
| tell every parent I meet who mentions Blippi but it's
| like trying to stop a river from flowing.
| __oh_es wrote:
| Really?! I think putting rockets on youtube is a pretty far
| stretch from being a naive onlyfans creator...
| habinero wrote:
| With the mainstreaming of feminism, that kind of social stigma
| is rapidly going away. The whole idea that women have to
| maintain 'purity' is no longer acceptable in today's world, and
| that's a good thing.
| groestl wrote:
| And it's not just that it's no longer acceptable (as a
| normative declaration), people just stopped caring. At least
| in a bubble that's large enough so you can lead a comfortable
| life without any serious ramifications.
| lynx23 wrote:
| Really? Would you go for a relationship with an ex-OF-girl?
| Because feminism told you so? Or you sincerly dont care?
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Wait, you would seriously hold that against a potential
| mate if they were open about it and honest about their
| motivations?
| lynx23 wrote:
| Er, yes. Without a question. Would you date an ex-
| prostitue?
| groestl wrote:
| How would you even know if somebody you like had engaged
| in transactional sex before?
| ljsprague wrote:
| He admitted it in an attempt to get me back.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| As long as she matched with me on a personal,
| intellectual, and moral level, and is a good match in
| general, sure. I would like to understand her motivations
| for doing so of course, but that's what dating is all
| about.
|
| Besides, if some other hypothetical perfect match told me
| she still went to church until her 25th and actually
| believed all that stuff I wouldn't dismiss her outright
| either for doing something so silly, but similarly seek
| to understand her first.
| hungie wrote:
| If we connected, why not? I guess I'd make sure we both
| had clean sti panels before engaging in sex, but I'd do
| that with any partner.
|
| "They used their dick or vagina to make money" is not any
| different to me than "they used their brain or hands to
| make money".
| alt227 wrote:
| Thats a fine opinion, and I fully agree with you.
|
| However its slightly different to the discussed point
| here, which is that people who use their dick or vagina
| to make money publicly can later have that used against
| them.
|
| Theres nothing wrong with dating a sex worker, but when
| you want to make them a wife and have children, there
| becomes a risk that some crazy drug addict is going to
| spot them in the future and do something. Mabye they are
| going to call out to your wife while she is dropping the
| kids off at school. Maybe they will be a bit more
| sinister and threaten to send old OF videos to your kids
| ands kids teachers email address unless you give them
| some money, or do it again etc.
|
| These are of course hypotheticals, but they have happened
| in the past and it is a risk, however small, of having an
| ex sex worker as a life partner.
| beaglesss wrote:
| I wouldn't and I haven't, and I have dated a sex industry
| worker.
|
| BUT
|
| When I dated someone in the industry I quickly realized
| why many people avoid such workers. It's highly
| correlated with HEAVY drug use, severe mental illness,
| and sad family stories. Not challenges lot of people
| looking for in a relationship, especially if they want
| children.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Oh wow, god forbid you date someone who wasn't as
| privileged in their past.
|
| I get what you are saying, but nearly everyone who has
| ever lived is full of baggage. After a certain age, any
| relationship you start will involve talking about all the
| bad shit you both experienced, how it affected you, how
| you've grown and dealt with it, etc. Just be an adult
| about it.
|
| What matters is whether a person who had a bad past is
| willing to put in the effort to deal with it. A former
| heavy drug abuser who sought out some form of treatment
| or has largely healed is a fine partner. A partner who is
| still sneaking out and stealing to get their fix is much
| less so.
|
| It's really really easy to just not hold someone's past
| against them too hard if they are demonstrably a better
| person currently.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| I would. I have a different relation to sexuality and
| intimacy. Never say never to love, but it certainly
| wouldn't help.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Are you the kind of creeps that ask their partners how many
| relation they had before you?
| quibono wrote:
| What's wrong with asking that? I thought it's all about
| people being open.
| prmoustache wrote:
| being open about your own past != having to know/ask
| everything about your partner's past
| quibono wrote:
| I guess I fail to see why one should be open in the first
| place if this isn't going to be reciprocated by your
| partner.
| prmoustache wrote:
| There is a difference between solicited and unsolicited
| information. In my experience people who can't live with
| someone without asking them the number of past partners
| are the toxic ones.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Maybe - or maybe they just have different viewpoints on
| sex than you.
|
| Do you think it would be okay to ask someone how many
| kittens they have stomped to death in the past? And, if
| the answer is greater than zero, to break off the
| relationship?
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| If you regard it as unsolicited information, you seem to
| put a judgement on it yourself. Perhaps more than the
| people who would just like to know. Not a requirement but
| it would also no be unusual in a relationship.
| prmoustache wrote:
| By unsolicited information, I mean it is normal to be
| open and comfortable speaking about your past sex life
| regardless if you partner asked to know about it. But
| specifically be curious and intrusive about your
| partner's past is different.
|
| Bottom line: this kind of information might come
| naturally without someone having to ask for it and in
| that context it is totally fine.
|
| Sorry english is not my native language so maybe I am not
| making it clear enough.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Eww, asking your prospective partners about their
| personal history? That's like so creepy!!
| prmoustache wrote:
| If the number of ex or sexual intercourses is the one of
| the first questions you ask when you are in the
| "prospective" state, yes that is creepy. And a huge
| warning sign that you are probably a toxic person.
|
| I don't care about ex partners. I'd rather know if my
| sexuality is compatible with that person and if that
| person is comfortable/confident with their sexual life.
| lupusreal wrote:
| You added "one of the first questions" to make your
| position seem less insane, Lmao.
|
| Nobody's first question is "have you ever been a porn
| star" but it's going to come up eventually and, whether
| or not _you_ care it will definitely be a deal breaker
| for many.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Your comment above was mentionning "prospective partner",
| so it implies happening during the early stages of a
| relationship.
|
| Or I don't know, maybe in your culture you have to wait
| months / years before considering a partner someone you
| are dating regularly / spending a significant part of
| your life with.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Knowing somebody before being in a relationship with them
| is anything but unusual. Even if you start dating
| somebody you never knew before you still get to know each
| other before making any sort of commitment. Keep coping
| though.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| It is like asking for your surname. Way too personal!
| standardUser wrote:
| I'd never seriously date someone if we couldn't be
| totally open and honest about our sexual histories and
| desires, etc. I think you're referring to a specific
| _motivation_ some people have about wanting to know such
| information that is based on shame
| /insecurity/prudishness. Don't discount that some people
| want to share these things with their partner because it
| creates more intimacy and/or is hot.
| prmoustache wrote:
| sharing != asking
| standardUser wrote:
| Of course I'll ask once we've achieved an appropriate
| level of intimacy to discuss such topics.
| samatman wrote:
| Are you one of those creeps who asks prospective
| employers about their work history before hiring them?
| Fargren wrote:
| I would be in a relationship even with a current OF-girl.
| Not because "feminism told me so", but because I don't see
| anything wrong with it.
|
| Would you not have a relationship with someone you like and
| likes you back? Because patriarchy told you so?
| vagrantJin wrote:
| Patriarchy explicitly tells us so.
| almatabata wrote:
| > Would you not have a relationship with someone you like
| and likes you back?
|
| For a lot of men the knowledge of the OF carrier kills
| the attraction that they had. Just like some women lose
| attraction when they learn that you subscribe to OF
| content.
| alt227 wrote:
| > Just like some women lose attraction when they learn
| that you subscribe to OF content.
|
| Well said.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Women are actually more likely to reject a man on account
| of working in porn, than men are to reject female porn
| actress.
| https://x.com/PaulaGhete/status/1832391170619490813
| alt227 wrote:
| This is not about gender or sex. This is about any person
| creating damage for their future selves online. Whether you
| like it or not, people running businesses and hiring people,
| or school teachers etc, have opinions and views of their own.
| These factor into their decisions when they are interacting
| with you through daily life.
|
| If somebody who takes a dim view of promiscuity sees that you
| have an only fans account, they are going to immediately have
| bias in any decisions that involve you. This is just a fact
| of life, and nothing to do with the gross reduction of 'women
| needing to be pure'.
| habinero wrote:
| That's true for every part of the human experience. People
| discriminate because of religion, etc. Sounds like you care
| too much about what other people think of you.
|
| Anyways, my point is this sort of thing is rapidly becoming
| something nobody cares about, and that's due to feminism
| and it's a good thing.
| benterix wrote:
| While I somewhat agree with you, feminism and related
| ideologies created a whole new network of concepts of
| what is good and wrong, and these can bite you as much as
| the old prejudices. A good example is the Harry Potter
| lady: while I don't necessarily agree with her view, I do
| understand her concern and the right to express it - but
| for many people it's a criminal offense. Almost as if we
| replaced one cage with another.
| prmoustache wrote:
| What are "related ideologies" of feminism?
|
| By all accounts, JK Rowling hasn't suffered any negative
| consequence of her transphobia, she has even marketed it
| and is benefiting from it: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ink-
| Black-Heart-Robert-Galbraith-eb...
| https://www.amazon.co.uk/Troubled-Blood-Cormoran-
| Strike-5-eb...
|
| And Harry Potter merchandising and derived works are
| still selling like pancakes.
| defrost wrote:
| _Troubled Blood_ isn 't marketing transphobia save in the
| mind of a reviewer with an axe to grind wrt Rowling's
| public statements.
|
| The wikipedia page outlines the charge that it contains
| "pernicious anti-trans tropes" and continues:
| Nick Cohen, writing for The Spectator, argued that the
| transphobia accusations were baseless and slanderous,
| noting that Dennis Creed is investigated along with a
| dozen other suspects. He also stated that
| the book does not engage in the politics of women-only
| spaces and access to gender reassignment treatments.
| Alison Flood, writing for The Guardian, expressed similar
| views, arguing that people who have not read the book
| were making wrong assumptions based on a single review.
| Allan Massie, writing for The Scotsman, stated of the
| character of Creed that "there is no suggestion that he
| was transgender".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Blood
| prmoustache wrote:
| The point is not that these books include transphobia or
| not, the point is she chose to include transgender
| characters after all the drama on twitter relating to her
| likes and accounts she folllowed/supported.
|
| She definitely used all that drama to sell books and
| benefited from it.
| meowface wrote:
| The prime suspect of the novel is a serial killer who
| cross-dresses. A book written years after she started
| campaigning near-daily about the threat of trans women.
| Those media outlets are being very misleading.
|
| _The Spectator_ is a right-wing British newspaper with
| dozens of anti-trans articles and op-eds. _The Scotsman_
| and _The Guardian_ also have very anti-trans skews. (The
| latter less so, but definitely more anti than pro
| overall.)
|
| It's fair to say that fearmongering about trans people
| isn't the central focus of the novel, but she obviously
| knew exactly what she was doing and why.
| habinero wrote:
| If JKR is your worst example of feminism, we're just
| fine. She's extremely wealthy, popular, and 100% not in
| jail.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >the right to express it - but for many people it's a
| criminal offense
|
| No it wasn't. Even in the UK, a supposed hellscape of
| unfree speech, she only finally got into any trouble when
| she repeatedly told outright and trivially knowable lies
| about another person. There's no guarantee she loses that
| court case either, so she hasn't exactly faced any
| repercussions for her speech. Companies are still making
| boatloads of harry potter content and it still sells like
| hotcakes.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| This is 100% correct. We haven't become more enlightened
| and tolerant, we have simply exchanged what we don't
| tolerate. That may or may not be good, but it certainly
| isn't worth patting ourselves on the back as if we're
| somehow better than our forebears.
| alt227 wrote:
| Thats the whole point, that some people view promiscuity
| and sexualising ones self no differently to smelling bad,
| or wearing scruffy clothes, or having a negative
| attitude. Its just another trait which some people view
| dimly.
| graemep wrote:
| > People discriminate because of religion, etc
|
| Which is illegal in most places.
| habinero wrote:
| Only for certain protected activities like employment or
| housing, otherwise it's entirely legal to be a bigot.
| standardUser wrote:
| People used to say the same about getting divorced or
| getting a tattoo or having a child "out of wedlock" (even
| the terminology sound hopelessly outdated).
|
| Maybe think about which side of history you prefer to be
| on.
| alt227 wrote:
| These things you mentioned are all still looked on
| negatively by some people. My grandma curses 'bastards'
| and children 'out of wedlock'. People still lose out on
| jobs for having face and neck tattoos, its in the media
| regularly.
|
| In exactly the same way as having an OF account, its up
| to the person doing these things to judge the
| consequences of whether they are happy with some people
| in the world looking down on them.
| standardUser wrote:
| > These things you mentioned are all still looked on
| negatively by some people.
|
| I don't know anyone who has been denied a job or an
| opportunity because of those issues. I also don't know
| anyone who has been denied an opportunity because they
| made adult content. Does it happen? Absolutley. Is it
| crippling to the point of ostracization? Not even close.
|
| If anything, being able to filter out people who would
| look down on those attributes/experiences is increasingly
| becoming a net positive. I wouldn't wan to associate with
| someone who disparaged people because they have a piecing
| or like to take naked photos.
| alt227 wrote:
| There was a big news story about this happening literally
| the other day
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/tiktok-tattooed-
| wom...
|
| > Is it crippling to the point of ostracization?
|
| Nobody is arguing that it is, I think you are taking this
| a bit too far. All anybody has said is that some people
| have a dim view of sex work, thats it, and its true. Stop
| trying to extrapolate and assume further than the point
| in question.
|
| > being able to filter out people who would look down on
| those attributes/experiences is increasingly becoming a
| net positive
|
| And there I was foolishly thinking we were all trying to
| move to a more tolerant and accepting world. Thats an
| incrdibly devisive opinion and is the basis for cancel
| culture. I for one would rather try to understand peoples
| opionins and discuss it with them rather than to 'filter
| them out'.
|
| > I wouldn't wan to associate with someone who disparaged
| people because they have a piecing or like to take naked
| photos.
|
| Then we are very different people. I will associate with
| anybody, and try to find the best in them along with some
| common ground to work on together.
|
| Want a better world? You can only change peoples minds
| with kindness.
| standardUser wrote:
| I don't know about you, but my life is too short to
| associate with troglodytes. Especially when there are so
| many amazing open-minded, open-hearted weirdos out there
| I can spend my days with.
| alt227 wrote:
| No I dont consider myself so important that I am above
| interacting with anybody, nor do I think my opinions are
| better or more correct than anybody elses.
|
| I think even if you were to spend your life just getting
| to know and educating 1 bigotted person so much so that
| they change they views just a little, that would be a
| life well spent.
| standardUser wrote:
| > nor do I think my opinions are better or more correct
| than anybody elses.
|
| Well, you should. If you don't, you should work on
| formulating more correct opinions that you believe in and
| can defend.
| alt227 wrote:
| > Well, you should
|
| Thanks for telling me what to do!
|
| > you should work on formulating more correct opinions
| that you believe in and can defend.
|
| No thanks, Im happy being open minded and willing to have
| good debates which can change either sides opinion. If
| you are not open to having your mind changed, you can not
| call yourself open minded.
|
| Lets not let this devolve any further into a spat about
| opinion. Im not telling you yours is wrong, you can stop
| trying to tell me mine is now.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Why are the bigoted people so important that it's worth
| wasting a perfectly good life appealing to them?
|
| Fuck em. Progress happens when a new idea achieves enough
| cultural cache that the expressing the backwards view
| becomes a fringe belief, worthy of ostracization. 30
| years ago, gay marriage was a contentious issue. Today,
| it's sociopolitical suicide to oppose it. Before that it
| was women entering the workforce, or desegregation.
| alt227 wrote:
| Because if everybody had the same attitude as that, this
| world would be a horrible place to exist.
|
| History judges people on how they treat the people they
| disagree with.
| k33jf33l2 wrote:
| > I don't know anyone who has been denied a job or an
| opportunity because of those issues.
|
| How would they know? I suspect there's some selection
| bias at play here because it might not be legal to
| discriminate on this basis.
|
| > (...) because they have a piecing or like to take naked
| photos.
|
| That's a strawman. The discussion doesn't concern people
| who _" like to take naked photos"_; it concerns people
| who do it _for money_. Depending on your values, that can
| be a significant difference.
| standardUser wrote:
| I was being mildly playful with my language, but I mean
| and intended to mean people who get naked for money. The
| difference is pretty minimal if you ask me.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| Firing someone for having tattoos or having done sex work
| is completely legal in almost all US states. Generally
| speaking, the only things private employers can't
| discriminate based on is things intrinsic to who the
| person is (race, sexuality, non-relevant disability), and
| religion. Past choices are completely legal to fire
| someone for, even if it has nothing to do with the job at
| hand.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| People who are covered in tattoos (not just having a
| tattoo) and who have children out of wedlock are still
| widely looked down upon.
|
| And there is very little that is more obnoxiously smug
| than making "right side of history" claims. If anything,
| I want to be on the opposite side of people who do that,
| because they're so fucking self-righteous I can't stand
| them.
| severak_cz wrote:
| But there is some backslash against feminism in western world
| and there are communities where OF is (and always was) off
| the limits. Also I think that some parts of OF are at least
| debateable from feminist POV.
| lynx23 wrote:
| Well, those civilians who can think for themselves, especially
| about the consequences of their actions, are clearly in
| advantage. I am lacking empathy for those who are apparently so
| hooked up to the here-and-now that they seem to ignore the
| future. If you sell your body, most societies will punish you.
| Thats fine, societies have all sorts of norms we all need to
| learn.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| > If you sell your body, most societies will punish you.
| Thats [sic] fine, [...]
|
| How is that 'fine'?
|
| I would like to see a future where someone doing sex work to
| make ends meet (or even as a freely chosen profession!) is
| not ostracised for it. Sex is part of society whether you
| want it or not, and so is paying for sexual acts.
| lynx23 wrote:
| Thats also fine. You can "like to see" everything you want.
| Question is, what the rest of society believes. Oldest
| bussiness and all that, I am actually on your side. But
| that doesn't mean I can ignore what overall society feels
| and thinks. Besides, there is a difference between
| consuming payed sex, and having a relationship with a (ex)
| sex worker. The difference is quite huge.
| bad_user wrote:
| I would like to see a future where people shouldn't have to
| prostitute themselves to make ends meet.
|
| Some cultural norms are outdated, but prostitution is still
| degrading and dangerous for those practicing it, especially
| for the women; who may not be doing so willingly,
| prostitution being the main incentive for human
| trafficking. And the online medium doesn't change that by
| much.
|
| Some people may be willing to pay for sex, some people are
| willing to pay for many other things or activities that
| should be or are illegal.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Sex work will never go away. The only way forward is to
| make sure it can be done safely and legally.
|
| Consider the sex workers who deal with mentally or
| physically disabled adults. Most people have sexual
| urges, and those who are unable to participate in society
| in the usual way of addressing their urges with a
| romantic partner or a one-night stand still have them.
| There are a good number of very professional sex workers
| out there who can provide these people with sex (often
| with specific expertise for the relevant handicaps) and
| generally significantly improve the wellbeing.
|
| Are those sex workers doing something they shouldn't be
| doing?
| medo-bear wrote:
| > Are those sex workers doing something they shouldn't be
| doing?
|
| You are asking a binary question for which there isn't a
| binary answer. Better to ask are those sex workers doing
| something they will get a pat on their backs for from
| other members of society? In a way a builder, chef,
| firefighter, and even a prison guard would.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Perhaps the lack of a "pat on the back" is society's
| fault.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Why? it's so easy to make content
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Well folks appreciate different things and to different
| degrees. Some are born with natural talents and others
| work hard for it. Regardless, folks generally get at
| least some respect for doing the work to produce things
| others appreciate. Stigmatizing OF work seems unfair when
| so much praise is heaped on creators and workers of all
| other kinds.
| medo-bear wrote:
| For what? For opening your legs and getting paid for it?
| Without criminals and sleezy execs as clients
| prostitution would cease to exist. The edge cases
| mentioned before are tiny
| seper8 wrote:
| Would you be happy if your daughter was a sex worker?
|
| Think honestly about what this means for your view on
| this.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| If she's safe, successful, healthy, and doing it of her
| own free will then why not be happy?
| Freak_NL wrote:
| That would depend entirely on her circumstances. Is she a
| professional helping disabled people like my example
| above? That's laudable. A self-employed dominatrix with a
| select clientele? Sounds lucrative. A popular OnlyFans
| starlet just making some money on the side during her
| studies? Clever. Participating in explicit forms of BDSM
| porn? If she does so of her own volition, with the
| consent of all parties involved, for a fair pay and
| without lasting harm? Cool as long as she's working with
| professionals with a good reputation.
|
| In all of those cases I would council her to the best of
| my abilities on safety and long-term planning, if she'd
| let me. And of course, as any parent, I would worry about
| her safety. But hey, I'd worry if she went paragliding or
| mountain climbing too.
|
| Honestly, I would be more disappointed if she became a
| lawyer in the pocket of, say, Amazon or AirBnB. Or a
| politician for some extreme right political party.
|
| Would I be happy if she was a sex worker in some seedy
| part of town with a pimp hovering over her? Of course
| not. But that is not dismissive of sex work as such,
| rather of exploitation and coercion. All of the examples
| above avoid that.
| standardUser wrote:
| Well said, and unnecessarily downvoted for such a
| thoughtful comment.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Would I be happy if after the education I paid my
| daughters they decide to work in public sanitation?
|
| Think honestly about it. Do you think I have anything
| against sanitation employees?
| GreenWatermelon wrote:
| Bad comparison.
|
| Public sanitation workers keep our society functioning,
| they're a cornerstone of civilization.
|
| Online prostitution, on the other hand, ranges from
| providing 0 value, to extreme negative consequences, such
| as the current porn addiction epidemic, or the loneliness
| epidemic.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Your moral compass is truly fucked. One makes a mess of
| their own life and contributes to making a mess of many
| other lives. The other cleans up messes.
| mgaunard wrote:
| It's not "to make ends meet". OF work allows people with
| no skills to get income in line with the top 10th or even
| 1st percentile of the population.
|
| Would you rather be flipping burgers all day for 30k or
| would you rather take a few nudes every week and make
| 300k?
| beaglesss wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised to find out an absurd fraction of
| those 300k is just straight up money laundering. Who is
| actually gonna be able to verify the value of someone
| allegedly showing their tits to a whale at 3am? The fact
| this all passed through traditional financial networks
| with a clean and reportable earnings report at the end is
| just pure gold.
|
| OF is like the wet dream of a drug dealer or whoever else
| with a baby momma and some kind of scam/fraud/counterfeit
| operation.
| djtango wrote:
| I agree with what you say but we know enough about
| youtubers and mobile gaming to safely assume that the
| numbers in this space are wild. I remember on Pewdiepie's
| first ever charity YouTube stream he was printing
| thousands per second via donos
| toyg wrote:
| Who would have thought that all those big numbers in TV
| deals were actually _underestimated_ by the billions. The
| general public is even more desperate /gullible than we
| ever considered possible. And OF and YT are just the
| beginning.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| But you can't compare with top performers in a power law
| / winner-takes-all setting. Comparing random youtubers or
| OF-ers to PewDiePie is like comparing the guy owning a
| fruit stand down the street to Jeff Bezos. Owns business,
| owns business; the same thing, right?
| djtango wrote:
| I agree that power laws are in play, but 1000 subs paying
| $10 a month is already a six figure income and 1000 users
| isn't a big number on the internet, especially when as
| TFA mentions you can go on reddit and advertise cosplays
| on subs that have audiences in the millions
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| 1000 users isn't a big number. 1000 _paying users_ is.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Source? Like all entertainment sold with near zero
| marginal cost, why should only fans work also not follow
| an extreme power law formula for compensation.
| achenet wrote:
| > prostitution is still degrading and dangerous for those
| practicing it, especially for the women;
|
| degrading: no. I've met prostitutes who very much like
| their work and find it empowering
|
| dangerous: ...yes, because it's illegal and they don't
| have access to proper legal protection.
| huuhee3 wrote:
| I would like to see a future where people shouldn't have
| to do any work they don't enjoy to make ends meet. As far
| as I can see, working fast food (and many other badly
| paid service jobs) is not much different from
| prostitution, except in that there is no social stigma
| attached, and you earn much less.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _but prostitution is still degrading_
|
| Why? Especially compared to e.g. advertising/marketing?
| At least in the former case, all parties to the
| transaction are there voluntarily, for an honest,
| mutually beneficial exchange of value.
| beaglesss wrote:
| Society accepting sex work is the worst thing that can
| happen to sex workers. They can have their cake and eat it
| right now -- not terribly illegal in the west but shunned
| which limits competition.
|
| When it becomes fine, it will be worth no more than someone
| coming to mow your lawn, and probably less than that.
| ithkuil wrote:
| Wouldn't that put at least some pressure into pursuing
| other options (like mowing somebody's lawn)?
| ithkuil wrote:
| Wouldn't that be an incentive towards other career paths
| (such as mowing lawns)?
|
| EDIT: brace for the lawn mowing cartels led by ex human
| trafficking gangs. On a more serious note, there is so
| much criminality involved in that field precisely because
| it's illegal and lucrative. You remove that and you
| remove a lot of abuse.
| ptsneves wrote:
| Wow i never thought of that! I love this reasoning (no
| sarcasm intended!). Based on supply/demand, the lack of
| social acceptance leads to low supply which in turn makes
| sure the price matches the moral cost. I honestly wished
| it was not (considered) degrading and just as acceptable
| as any hospitality service, although in my culture it is
| indeed immoral to take or provide sex services. Even so
| if it still is degrading indeed there should be a
| matching cost, but damn economics is a tricky one.
| lennxa wrote:
| not treating sex workers like crap doesnt mean they'll
| make lesser. one must also consider the monetary
| equivalents of the mental health of the worker. and the
| demand will increase by a lot too.
| mgaunard wrote:
| There are many countries in the west where prostitution
| is legal and taxed like any other activity.
|
| It seems the main complain is that it brings the prices
| down due to competition from eastern europe.
| amelius wrote:
| It's fine because otherwise we'd evolve into the social
| structure of Bonobo monkeys, where every problem is solved
| with sex.
| sheepdestroyer wrote:
| Not following why that, if true, would make the current
| situation better ("fine").
| prmoustache wrote:
| > where every problem is solved with sex.
|
| Would it be a problem?
| sulandor wrote:
| obviously better than fighting
| zakki wrote:
| Yes. Till this day Bonobo has no invention.
|
| Do you like this kind of society?
| ath3nd wrote:
| One could argue that it's better to have no inventions
| than inventing the following:
|
| - the Spanish inquisition
|
| - jihad/crusades
|
| - guns
|
| - PFAS
|
| - agent orange
|
| - iron maiden (not the band, the torture device)
|
| - the atomic bomb
| prmoustache wrote:
| Well it depends what kind of society brings the most
| happiness out of our lives.
|
| I can't say, I have never lived as a Bonobo.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| This is exactly what everyone means by "return to monke"
| medo-bear wrote:
| I would certainly not like to live in a future where
| selling your body to make ends meet is considered normal.
| To me it is already concerning that normalization of
| prostitution is happening to some extent in mass media.
|
| Sex is in all (?) human cultures viewed as most intimate
| and private expression of civilized love. It is also how we
| teach our kids about sex. Pornography and prostitution
| serve only our primal desires which goes against all this.
| Does it really surprise you that society will shun people
| that partake in these things? To me it is obvious as day.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| We all have to sell ourselves in order to live. I'm sure
| that there are plenty of people working at jobs that they
| thoroughly dislike. Shouldn't we concentrate on making
| sure that people really have a choice rather than on
| discriminating against people who make a choice?
| medo-bear wrote:
| Discrimination against people making the wrong choices is
| natural. Discriination against people repenting for the
| wrong choices is wrong
| smolder wrote:
| > Sex is part of society whether you want it or not, and so
| is paying for sexual acts.
|
| Yes, and this seems to be a discussion of whether people
| want it or not. I don't think paid sex acts ruin the world.
| Some people probably need it in place of real intimacy, for
| their own mental health. I still think it's generally
| scummy and unproductive. Then again, I think all sorts of
| businesses can be described that way. Snake oil has been
| killing it for as long as commerce has been around. Another
| example: if you go around gutting productive companies to
| line your own pockets, e.g. buying & dismantling
| competitors to stop competition, I see that as a greater
| moral failing than baiting lonely people with sex appeal.
|
| It's common that people forget or fail to understand that
| business is a way to cooperatively shape life into
| something desirable, and instead see it as a way to win at
| others expense.
| mihaic wrote:
| If you want to take purely moral grounds, there's nothing
| to make prostitution or Onlyfans "wrong", except if done
| with exploitation. At the same time, it contributes to the
| demographic crysis, and if you care about results, you have
| to put pressure against the lifestyles that are nudging
| people away from starting a family and having kids.
|
| Drug dealers are also part of society, yet we still frown
| upon them.
| I-M-S wrote:
| An individual has no obligation to respect a societal
| order that doesn't respect them back.
| mihaic wrote:
| Why do you say that? Most individuals that aren't
| respected by society had that respect, yet lost it
| through some action (like dealing drugs).
|
| I think we're seeing things in different frameworks, and
| I'm considering the end result more important than the
| principles here. If you don't accept that some seemingly
| individual decisions have a cumulated effect on society
| long-term, and that shaming is the only mechanism to make
| changes here, there really is no discourse possible.
| benterix wrote:
| > If you sell your body, most societies will punish you.
|
| Why though? It is an interesting issue when you look closer.
| For an individual, it's more obvious - I wouldn't like to be
| with a prostitute because of possible hidden diseases and
| lack of trust - but there is no way of telling how many
| sexual contacts my new partner had, whether paid for or not.
|
| But I wouldn't have any problem working with an ex-pro in the
| same company or team, they would be just a colleague like all
| the rest, and I can't imagine any adult making any immature
| comments about the past of any colleagues on my team.
| tessierashpool9 wrote:
| same here, i think some people are just a little too
| submissive and uncritical to the so called rules of
| society. also engaging in porn or even prostitution isn't
| really "selling" of one's body.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Leasing, then?
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| is a selfie leasing your head?
| ath3nd wrote:
| People working in the mines, or the military, I wonder
| why that's a socially acceptable way of "selling" their
| body, but prostitution is not. Even we, behind a computer
| screen and getting back pain and wrist RSI, we also
| "sell" our bodies in a matter of speaking.
|
| I can only imagine that the negative perception of
| prostitution as "selling" your body is coming from
| mainstream religions which are the great society
| moralizer.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Even coming from mainstream religions, that's annoyingly
| knee-jerk. Sure, prostitution is shameful and sinful and
| whatnot, but what about maliciously lying to your
| neighbor, trying to get rich off their misfortune? Even
| from a mainstream religious perspective, marketing gives
| prostitution a run for its money, and outside that
| framework, arguably it's less shameful to do OF than to
| be a "regular" influencer, or go into telemarketing. At
| least with this kind of sex work, all parties to
| transaction tend to benefit, and all are in it
| voluntarily.
| ath3nd wrote:
| > At least with this kind of sex work, all parties to
| transaction tend to benefit, and all are in it
| voluntarily
|
| Beautifully put!
|
| > Sure, prostitution is shameful and sinful and whatnot
|
| Only according to some. Imo it's much more immoral to
| work in fossil fuels or the police/military (where you
| abandon morals to execute orders).
| broken-kebab wrote:
| It's whataboutism, isn't it? It surely hypocritical when
| someone only fights other's sin while ignoring own (and
| one mainstream religion has a special piece about it -
| speck in a brother's eye). But my harmful behavior still
| doesn't make your harmful behavior good, and vice versa
| ath3nd wrote:
| > But my harmful behavior still doesn't make your harmful
| behavior good, and vice versa
|
| In principle I agree.
|
| We have a society praising a soldier for killing and
| risks losing limbs and life (basically selling his body)
| during military service, but demonizing a sex worker.
|
| This society needs to take a good hard look in the
| mirror. We have people admonishing sex work and marijuana
| use, while its most "successful" members are in arms
| dealing, fossil fuels, workers exploitation (amazon), and
| gambling with the livelihoods of people (banks/wall
| street).
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > At least with this kind of sex work, all parties to
| transaction tend to benefit, and all are in it
| voluntarily.
|
| Haven't some OF creators come out admitting they were
| pressured into it, or at least doing it more than they'd
| like.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I can believe it. Sex work in general is fraught with
| various degrees of abuse. However, it's also clear that
| there is a large class of workers that's doing this work
| voluntarily, under no pressure (at least not beyond the
| pressures every employee in any field experiences); my
| comparison would apply to them.
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| >I wonder why that's a socially acceptable way of
| "selling" their body, but prostitution is not.
|
| Probably because its not the same at all. Getting naked
| and spreading your legs is neither as productive nor
| difficult as serving your country. Neither should it have
| the same social status.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| ath3nd did not write same social status, they wrote
| socially acceptable. Relevant username, I guess.
| ath3nd wrote:
| I guess I meant a bit of both.
|
| We don't give high social status to killers, thugs,
| murderers and hired assassins, but when it's
| institutionalized killing, (which is the military) that's
| okay? The fact that an "official" gives the word, and the
| victims are not citizens of your country doesn't make the
| military be less about killing.
|
| There also is nothing "productive" about paying for
| salaries, equipment and training to a bunch of grown men
| in the anticipation that you have to send them to do
| violence to your bidding.
|
| If the military was not under the veneer of "official",
| wrapping it in an "institution" and all the language of
| "serving your country", we'd not been able to distinguish
| between military, militia and armed thugs.
|
| Yet, our society at large reveres them as some heroes and
| they are mainly socially acceptable.
|
| I bet that if we had a "Department of pleasure", with
| ranks, hierarchies, rules, promotion paths, etc, sex
| workers wouldn't be as marginalized as they are now. In
| fact, in many civilized countries, prostitutions is both
| legal and taxed, and less stigmatized than it is in the
| US, who are too puritanical/religion influenced in their
| views to want it to be otherwise.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > There also is nothing "productive" about paying for
| salaries, equipment and training to a bunch of grown men
| in the anticipation that you have to send them to do
| violence to your bidding.
|
| I disagree. First and only rule of nature is might makes
| right, and being capable of dishing out the most violence
| (and hence also least likely to be the victim of it) is
| very "productive". It is a huge contributor to the
| purchasing power of the US dollar, which is a referendum
| on the stability and productivity of US society.
|
| For example, the oceanic transportation routes around the
| world are kept mostly safe and humming along because of
| militaries enforcing it.
| ath3nd wrote:
| > Getting naked and spreading your legs is neither as
| productive nor difficult as serving your country
|
| We have different moral compasses, I guess. To me,
| obeying military orders (which often result in killing
| people) is neither productive, nor difficult (as a big
| part of thinking/initiative is replaced by blindly
| following orders). Military personnel basically outsource
| a large chunk of thinking and assessing good/bad to a
| "higher power". In a way, that's very easy and
| comfortable life for a specific type of people: all
| higher order judgments are deferred to higher ups in the
| military chain. Besides, I wouldn't say military
| personnel are "serving" their country more than, say,
| plumbers, electricians, railway workers, postal service,
| healthcare workers, or, even sex workers.
|
| > Neither should it have the same social status
|
| I disagree. The fact that somebody who has no other
| skills and initiative but to be a death machine/robot
| blindly following orders, doesn't warrant them to be a
| hero, and sure as hell doesn't qualify them to a high
| social status in my book. And, at least to me, calling
| military service "productive" is just plain hypocrisy.
| Their only function is to either destroy things during
| war, or sit around looking menacing when there is no war.
|
| Imo, money spent on weapons and the military could be
| better spent to build more social housing, solve
| healthcare problems, etc.
| broken-kebab wrote:
| Those rules aren't taken from the thin air though. It's
| really easy to argue that sexual gedonism is detrimental
| to society, and its online incarnation is even more so:
| as any addiction it steals productive time from people's
| lives, it puts hormones over culture which patently
| breeds violence, it leads to social atomization, and
| consequently to mental issues (which means violence
| again), economically bad on a level comparable to
| fentanyl imports, and the list goes on.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Citation needed
| benterix wrote:
| > as any addiction it steals productive time from
| people's lives, it leads to social atomization, and
| consequently to mental issues (which means violence
| again), economically bad on a level comparable to
| fentanyl imports, and the list goes on.
|
| Well the same could be said of social media, mobile
| phones, netflix binge, computer games (although I don't
| agree with the violence part). So why single out sex
| then?
| NeutralCrane wrote:
| You are tying to make an argument for destigmatizing sex
| work, but for me I think it really points out how we
| should really increase the stigma towards those working
| for social media giants, sports gambling sites, and other
| tech companies whose main operating model is actively
| getting people addicted to something and then profiting
| off of it. Social media is one of the worst developments
| for society in recent history, and the people working for
| Facebook or TikTok absolutely deserve to be shamed for
| actively participating for personal gain.
| GreenWatermelon wrote:
| Straw man. No one singled anything out, this thread is
| specifically talking about one topic. In many other
| threads you'll find people discussing the extreme
| negative consequences of social media.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Use and particularly overuse of those things is
| definitely a relationship deal killer for many people.
| Ask around with the women you know what they think about
| men who spend most of their time playing video games.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| It's a classic chesterton fence phenomena, It's just that
| we can't connect the externalities to the fence.
| croes wrote:
| >but there is no way of telling how many sexual contacts my
| new partner had, whether paid for or not.
|
| The same is true for their clients but they don't get the
| same treatment.
| jpadkins wrote:
| > If you sell your body, most societies will punish you. >
| Why though?
|
| In stable families and societies, women use sex as control
| (power) over men. Younger women who sell sex are
| undermining that power structure. That is why they must be
| punished.
|
| Another way to look at in economic terms: Female sex is a
| scarce resource. Female selling transactional sex is
| commoditizing this resource. In general, people don't like
| their valuable service getting commoditized.
| beaglesss wrote:
| It's already commodities in places like California. For
| instance, the state considers a wife a depreciating asset
| that goes to zero at year ten, now owed potentially
| lifelong alimony as you've used up her most fertile years
| and therefore you must support her for life.
|
| As a married person in balancing my finances I always
| then half it and then subtract 20 percent of my pretax
| income to find what's truly mine after liabilities to my
| spouse. This makes me explicitly aware of the true cost I
| pay, and if god forbid i am divorced i have already
| mentally written off most my wealth and home I
| painstakingly singlehandedly built stick by stick over a
| period of years as not actually mine.
|
| Prostitution causes a real problem here as it throws a
| bone in the resource extraction from male to female by
| making the consumer more informed on costs up front.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >I wouldn't like to be with a prostitute because of
| possible hidden diseases and lack of trust
|
| Why do you inherently distrust a former sex worker? What
| about sex work is distrustful? Do you think prostitutes
| have a habit of not delivering after payment or something?
| ht85 wrote:
| > I am lacking empathy for those who are apparently so hooked
| up to the here-and-now
|
| A large amount of those people are very young, at an age
| where you don't really pick your options solely on their
| super long term consequences.
|
| Most people are going to be "stupid" in their early
| adulthood, failing and adjusting is a big part of it.
| Unfortunately, some of those decisions will stick more than
| others and sex work is very sticky (zing).
| lynx23 wrote:
| So, if young people are unable to take responsibility for
| their actions, we will need to raise the age for
| maturity... I am sorry, adults are adults are adults.
| Either you make your own decisions or you don't.
| brainwad wrote:
| Unironically the former. It's weird that we have at the
| same time reduced the legal age of adulthood, while
| simultaneously extended the actual period of adolescence
| and dependence for the average young person. It used to
| be a century ago, that you started working for a wage at
| 14 and didn't get legal independence until 21. Now you
| get legal independence at 18 but might be in full time
| education until you are 25 (with a masters).
| djtango wrote:
| Yah my mum was helping out with the family business
| around age 5. It's kind of crazy to think how quickly its
| swung from having that kind of responsibility thrust on
| you from so young to now where people in their mid 20s
| may still be in their "incubatory" period
| jdasdf wrote:
| >A large amount of those people are very young, at an age
| where you don't really pick your options solely on their
| super long term consequences.
|
| And they will continue to be if there are never any
| consequences.
|
| Stop bailing people out of problems they make for
| themselves and people will start learning to not make those
| problems.
|
| Human beings are not stupid machines who see others put
| their hand in the fire, getting burned, then they put their
| own hands in the fire get burned, and then keep doing it
| over and over again.
|
| Most will stop when they see others get burned, others
| still will stop when they get burned, and a small minority
| will stop once there is no hand left to burn.
| ht85 wrote:
| There is a reason why many parts of the world will ticket
| you for not wearing your seatbelt. There is a reason you
| cannot (could not? crypto changed a lot) do advanced
| stock trading without a license. Why gambling is
| regulated, etc.
|
| We don't want people to hurt themselves, because we have
| humanity and because they become a drain on society.
|
| I find it hard to be that black and white with
| phenomenons like OF, that emerge from a mix of societal
| and technological advancement.
|
| There are grey zones and not everyone is fortunate enough
| to be taught to be responsible. Not everyone can go
| through life without feeling desperate and resort to
| doing things they would not be proud of.
|
| We should try to educate and protect people instead of
| pointing internet fingers at them.
| vel0city wrote:
| > Most will stop when they see others get burned, others
| still will stop when they get burned, and a small
| minority will stop once there is no hand left to burn.
|
| And this explains how drug problems solved themselves
| hundreds of years ago. Good thing we've all decided to
| stop doing debilitating drugs after seeing the
| consequences of addition in the past!
| croes wrote:
| Some societies had the norm to punish gay people, at least
| many learned that was wrong
|
| Somehow it's mainly the ones who sells their body and not the
| ones who buy them who get punished.
|
| Buying is more often voluntarily than selling.
| djbusby wrote:
| > If you sell your body
|
| That's how all labor works.
| trackflak wrote:
| It doesn't matter whether I write a module in Fortran, fold
| laundry or sell a kidney on the black market. It's all
| morally equivalent!
| standardUser wrote:
| Historically, many of societies' "norms" have been hateful,
| vile and narrowly targeted. There is a thousand years of
| history showing us that we are better off challenging norms
| than adhering to them.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > the additional toll it will take on the creators in terms of
| social ostracism, future prospects, future opportunities, and
| mental health.
|
| Is it such a big problem nowadays as it used to be? My
| impression is that society in general, and younger people in
| particular, have become more tolerant of such things; at least
| in Northern Europe.
| fleischhauf wrote:
| that's the thing, the more people do it the more it gets
| accepted. the same is happening with drugs for example.
| prmoustache wrote:
| And the more it is diluted by the sheer number of people
| involved in it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| All the data I keep seeing suggests drug use (including
| alcohol) is on the decline.
|
| https://nida.nih.gov/news-events/news-
| releases/2023/12/repor...
| standardUser wrote:
| That's only young people.
| random9749832 wrote:
| It is worse here because it is competitive as well. People
| get incentivised to do things they normally wouldn't in
| order to please whatever algorithm is driving the content
| on the site. A race to the bottom.
| brightball wrote:
| I see discussions on Reddit periodically where it makes long
| term relationships complicated.
|
| I'm an old married guy, but I can't imagine dating and then
| finding out that the person you were involved with was doing
| that type of thing. In a friend group I wouldn't even blink.
|
| Based on the conversations I see, this seems to be a common
| experience.
| Rhapso wrote:
| Welcome to millennial reality, we don't begrudge anything
| non-harmful that people had to do to make ends meet.
|
| I know too many people with masters degrees and student
| loans working food service to not think OF is smart if you
| can find your niche.
| 1980phipsi wrote:
| You're speaking for all millennials?
| acdha wrote:
| There are plenty of millennials who have conservative
| views about something, and don't forget that the damage
| is done regardless of the motivation. From the
| perspective of the victim, it doesn't matter whether the
| person who just sent their boss the link to their OF is a
| zealous right-wing Christian or an incel bitter about
| being turned down. Millennials are more accepting about
| sexuality on average but a double digit percentage of
| that large a cohort is millions of people.
| bluGill wrote:
| I doubt any boss would open an onlyfans link and if they
| tried I'd expect the company firewall would block it.
|
| I could imangine a boss getting links to those videos on
| some other site that looks innocent [perhaps at home] but
| the boss is unlikely to do anything as those are what you
| do in private. The only exception would be if you work
| for a church where such is not allowed - and even then if
| it is a much younger you, you can rebent of your past
| sins.
|
| the above is about work. If you were trying to marry the
| guy (who presumably isn't your boss as an ethics) it
| would be different some guys would not accebt that.
| tivert wrote:
| >> From the perspective of the victim, it doesn't matter
| whether the person who just sent their boss the link to
| their OF
|
| > I doubt any boss would open an onlyfans link and if
| they tried I'd expect the company firewall would block
| it.
|
| Attachments are a thing. If someone's trying to get
| someone harmed by outing them, I'm sure a good number of
| them would include an image directly in the email.
|
| > I could imangine a boss getting links to those videos
| on some other site that looks innocent [perhaps at home]
| but the boss is unlikely to do anything as those are what
| you do in private. The only exception would be if you
| work for a church where such is not allowed - and even
| then if it is a much younger you, you can rebent of your
| past sins.
|
| I really doubt that's the only exception, or even the
| biggest exception. _At a minimum_ , I'd think OnlyFans
| would probably disqualify anyone from working with young
| kids and many positions where the employee represents the
| company to the public. I wouldn't be surprised if having
| an OnlyFans would be considered evidence of poor personal
| judgement, and exclude the performer from even more jobs.
| acdha wrote:
| You would be so very, very wrong. Try searching the news
| and you'll find plenty of examples of employers who feel
| they should have a say in what employees do on their own
| time - that's most commonly schools but far from
| exclusive: the most common justification is that this
| somehow reflects on their corporate image but some will
| use more overtly religious justifications, too. This is
| especially common as people climb the ladder, so someone
| might have a decision they made in college haunt them
| decades later.
|
| The other thing to consider is that it's not just whether
| you get fired but also whether it has other negative
| effects like creating a hostile workplace with "jokes" or
| having to fend off harassers who think you're easy or
| will acquiesce as the price of silence.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| The sad part is that most people seem to be happy when
| businesses fire people for things done on personal time -
| as long as the person doesn't agree with the thing in
| question. I remember when Mozilla fired Brendan Eich, a
| lot of my "liberal" friends were all for it. They didn't
| care the least bit that it set a dangerous precedent for
| businesses to fire people for being gay, or being a sex
| worker in the past, or whatever else. They just were
| happy that someone they didn't like was being punished,
| damn the potential for collateral damage.
| acdha wrote:
| There's a bit of a difference when it's a corporate
| officer, and the action in question is not their personal
| freedom but attempting to restrict other people's
| freedoms, including many of the people who would report
| to them. Someone having an OF doesn't impact anyone else
| but there's at least a valid argument that Eich went
| beyond his personal freedom of speech when it came to
| materially contributing to the removal of rights from gay
| people.
|
| I'm not saying there's no room for disagreement there but
| simply that the two problems aren't identical.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Err.. count me out of this. I wouldn't deny a job for a
| former sex worker, but definitelly I wouldn't want to
| have any kind of personal relationship with one.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Could you explain why?
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Sociopathic exploitation of simp psychology is not a
| positive character trait.
|
| Feminism of course wants to keep sacrosanct the right of
| women to manipulate the male sex drive for any and all
| purposes with no consequences.
| jajko wrote:
| Human mind, good character, good heart... are all very
| fragile things, good one can be broken rather easily, a
| broken one can hardly ever be properly mended back
| without major cracks that keep coming back ie under
| stress or hardships.
|
| Nothing is impossible and I talk about lets say rather
| about unprobable matters. If you want to take additional
| risks on top of usual risks with new relationships, be
| anyone's guests, but they are there.
|
| Or maybe you don't care if you have a stable relationship
| (hardly ever the case but it happens), also fine. At the
| end, you can approach relationships as probability game,
| and folks normally want to tilt it in their favor.
| hungie wrote:
| That's fine for you (though I'd challenge you to ask
| yourself why), but younger generations and many in older
| generations like myself are realizing that sex work is
| just work. Bodies are just bodies. Relationships and past
| sexual history are in the past.
|
| It's another flavor of bodily autonomy.
| jacobgkau wrote:
| > sex work is just work. Bodies are just bodies.
| Relationships and past sexual history are in the past.
|
| Emotions are just emotions. Might as well just stop with
| the whole "dating" thing and only use each other
| transactionally when we want kids. Or better yet, just
| don't reproduce, right?
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Yeah no. I would never be in a relationship with someone
| who did sex work in the past. I can easily be friends
| with a former (or even current) sex worker, but I can't
| stomach sharing the intimate parts of a romantic
| relationship with other people.
| I-M-S wrote:
| In fact, it might be a great way to filter out narrow minded
| people / organizations you don't want to deal with anyway
| standardUser wrote:
| What toll exactly do you expect people to have to pay? I've
| been naked on the internet for money. That content is still
| there. It has not impacted me adversely in any way, nor has
| it had a negative impact on the many women I know who have
| created adult content. If anything, for me it has been fun
| and liberating.
|
| I think you're just projecting.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >What toll exactly do you expect people to have to pay?
|
| That depends. Ask Erick Adame[0] about the toll being outed
| took on his life.
|
| [0] https://www.advocate.com/media/erick-adame-weatherman-
| webcam...
| random9749832 wrote:
| "Northern Europe". Yeah maybe within the White population
| that is shrinking. You people need to wake up up from this
| ultra-liberal crap unless you want your population to die
| off.
| prmoustache wrote:
| OTOH this is not the same as "VHS" porn of the past decades.
|
| A few decades ago, there weren't that many "productions",
| performers were much fewer and some porn performers name were
| known by anyone, regardless if you had seen porn with them
| staring or not. A person getting out of the business and trying
| to make a new career would have a high chance of meeting
| people, especially men, in real life who might have seen at
| least one movie.
|
| Nowadays pornhub and onlyfans are flooded by wannabee
| independent performers. Even the most addicted to porn can't
| possibly follow and keep track of more than a tiny subset of
| performers. So there is a good chance you can still have a
| career alongside it or switch from OF to a non sex related
| career easily.
| defrost wrote:
| > So there is a good chance you can still have a career
| alongside it or switch from OF to a non sex related career
| easily.
|
| I have no comment on the morals and ethics but as far as
| modern technology goes; most if not all of OnlyFans finds its
| way to darkweb | pirate | hoarder megasites where there's
| always a few because-we-can obsessed techlords training
| facial recognition, gait recognition, and seeding AI
| generated VR porn engines, etc.
|
| We can be certain that any woman with an OnlyFans portfolio
| will face that being dragged up later in their life if they
| are at all slightly public.
|
| They do have the modern available hand wave explaination of
| "deepfake by weird ex" that becomes more and more believable
| each passing day.
| prmoustache wrote:
| > We can be certain that any woman with an OnlyFans
| portfolio will face that being dragged up later in their
| life if they are at all slightly public.
|
| I fail to see how it would be limited to women with an OF
| portfolio and not any female with an
| instagram/tiktok/facebook/linkedin account? Deepfaking is
| an online abuse problem that can reach anyone who has a
| public photo online on the internet.
| graemep wrote:
| There must still be a substantial risk that someone would
| find out at some point? Once one person knows gossip spreads.
| SXX wrote:
| I would bet lot of producers and consumers live in
| different countries. A lot of online porn is produced in
| eastern europe and ex-USSR and societies there a lot less
| prude and religious compared to US. Some bullshit
| politicians might state otherwise, but US is far more
| conservative.
| broken-kebab wrote:
| I would dare to disagree, and my source is meself as I'm
| from the region. You're mixing up social conservatism
| with protestantism apparently. For starters, Eastern
| Europe is quite a big thing. Some parts of it are very
| religious, and some completely not. But it's not the
| point: it's absolutely not OK on a mainstream level of
| society of probably all EE, and former USSR countries to
| earn on onlyfans. And FWIW being publicly known as a
| subscriber puts LOOSER over one's forehead
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| Actually in modern times it could be blink of an eye of a
| search if someone wants to find and has the motivation. In
| some cases such a search result match/suggestion might as
| well be inadvertent. But easy nonetheless.
| seper8 wrote:
| pimeyes.com does exactly this.
| acdha wrote:
| > Even the most addicted to porn can't possibly follow and
| keep track of more than a tiny subset of performers. So there
| is a good chance you can still have a career alongside it or
| switch from OF to a non sex related career easily.
|
| This is dangerously wrong coming at least a decade after
| there are entire communities devoted to unmasking performers'
| real identities and multiple reverse image search tools exist
| as apparent businesses. That used to be a human-driven
| practice - I first heard about it coverage of the Chinese
| internet mobs from the perspective of victims of
| misidentification - but like everything else it's reportedly
| adopting AI. Here's a story which got a bit of discussion a
| few years back:
|
| https://thenextweb.com/news/creepy-programmer-builds-ai-
| algo...
|
| One of the big things to remember is that these systems don't
| need to be perfect, or even close, to cause harm. Even if
| they were only 10% accurate, that's still a lot of people
| living with the question of whether the person they just met
| knows or whether today is the day some nut sent those links
| to HR. You can't rely on getting lost in the crowd any more.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| That is assuming that the identification will be solely
| driven by random individuals. However, expect there to be,
| if there already aren't, professional services that will do
| that in an organized way e.g. somebody may hire them for
| building an online presence profile of a future spouse.
| With the advent of AI and scaling afforded by cloud, such
| initiatives will only get more effective.
| prmoustache wrote:
| The fact these tools and some creeps exist doesn't mean
| your actual coworkers in your career will use those to find
| you.
|
| And more importantly, said creeps would be the one who
| would have an inappropriate behavior in the workplace
| regardless of the tools they have at their disposition.
| acdha wrote:
| It doesn't guarantee it, no, but it does mean the odds
| are rapidly getting higher.
|
| It's also severely optimistic to think that the guy doing
| it will suffer the consequences: if you search the news,
| you'll find plenty of examples of cases where someone
| thought they knew the attacker but wasn't able to prove
| it. Moreover even if they could prove it and the attacker
| did suffer consequences, it won't magically wipe everyone
| else's memories.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Similar to how job listings often ask for LinkedIn, I wonder
| how long until there is a field for OnlyFans or PornHub
| creator accounts. Dystopian _and_ depraved, sounds perfect
| for this godless timeline.
| tivert wrote:
| > Nowadays pornhub and onlyfans are flooded by wannabee
| independent performers. Even the most addicted to porn can't
| possibly follow and keep track of more than a tiny subset of
| performers. So there is a good chance you can still have a
| career alongside it or switch from OF to a non sex related
| career easily.
|
| Your model of "social ramifications" seems to assume no one
| ever talks to anyone else, which is dead wrong. So to see
| problems, the only thing that needs to happen is _one_ person
| needs to see their porn out of maybe the 1000 people who
| _could recognize_ the performer IRL, then a rumor starts and
| a significant fraction of the 1000 (and more people besides)
| find out. No fame required.
|
| Then the problem can balloon if _another_ person out of that
| 1000 is angry with the performer, and decides to dox them by
| creating a website or posting that explicitly outs them to
| anyone who searches their name on Google.
|
| Then, on top of that, there's all the facial recognition tech
| that's floating around, which is basically a "go strait to
| jail, to not pass go" thing.
| kragen wrote:
| in most cases, i don't think the social ramifications to
| worry about are 'your family finds out' but rather
| 'obsessed fan won't stop calling you', 'companies decline
| to interview you for a non-porn job', or 'cute guy turns
| out to have enough of a hangup about your past sex work to
| not date you' (which apparently doesn't _necessarily_ imply
| he 's not relationship material, though i'd think it ought
| to)
| tivert wrote:
| > or 'cute guy turns out to have enough of a hangup about
| your past sex work to not date you' (which apparently
| doesn't necessarily imply he's not relationship material,
| though i'd think it ought to)
|
| Obviously such a person is not relationship material for
| a sex worker, but why would you think he ought not be
| relationship material for anyone else?
| kragen wrote:
| well, i was more thinking about a _former_ sex worker, a
| group which includes many more of your friends and
| acquaintances than you 're likely aware of. i'd think of
| it as much less of a red flag for anyone else!
|
| still, it's a clue that what he wants out of the
| relationship is not an equal partner but a sort of brood
| mare or something. here in argentina, the kind of guys
| who would have a problem with former sex work often use
| the term 'mileage' ( _kilometraje_ ) when they're talking
| about why they want to date virgins. they see you as a
| commodity to be consumed (the explicit analogy is
| comparing your vagina to a used car) and see your own
| sexual expression not as an opportunity for your
| flourishing but as degrading and damaging to you, since
| you are the good being consumed in the sexual encounter.
| this is the same conception of human sexual relations
| that underlies the rhetoric that prostitution is 'selling
| your body', rather than renting it like any other kind of
| hazardous physical labor, and that gives the name to the
| 'purity rings' worn by evangelical high school girls
|
| this implies that, unless he's looking for a no-sex-
| until-marriage relationship (an honorable but tiny
| minority of such men), he's looking to exploit you,
| putting some mileage on your vagina, as he sees it. he's
| hoping you'll let him degrade your purity with his penis,
| if you aren't too used up already
|
| of course, different people are different, and not
| everyone who has these hangups buys into this whole
| misogynistic ideology. but it's a real thing, and it's
| something that women have to be cautious of
|
| the practical problems that result, even for non-former-
| sex-workers, are that guys like that are likely to have
| problems with the fact that you actually weren't a virgin
| when you started dating (unless you were, but that's also
| a tiny minority of all intimate relationships); if, god
| forbid, you get raped in the future, he might abandon you
| when you most need him, considering you to be 'damaged
| goods'; and he probably will feel entitled to cheat on
| you, since you're the good being consumed, and he's the
| consumer. in the best possible case, where he wants to be
| celibate until marriage and honestly monogamous
| afterwards, you're probably looking at a year or more of
| celibacy followed by marrying someone you might not have
| sexual chemistry with
| tivert wrote:
| > well, i was more thinking about a former sex worker, a
| group which includes many more of your friends and
| acquaintances than you're likely aware of.
|
| People say stuff like that, but I'm skeptical. It
| probably indicates more about "your friends and
| acquaintances" than mine.
|
| > still, it's a clue that what he wants out of the
| relationship is not an equal partner but a sort of brood
| mare or something.
|
| I don't think you can infer that from not wanting to date
| a former sex worker, and you seem to be fixated on a
| certain stereotype (which may be super common in
| Argentina, for all I know). Others may not want to date a
| former sex worker for other reasons, for instance because
| the choosing sex work indicates a willingness to use
| intimacy transactionally and to be manipulative (or at
| least insincere) as well as experience and habits of
| doing that.
| kragen wrote:
| i do think sex work is more common in argentina than in
| other places i've lived. misogynists don't seem to be
|
| i'm not just talking about a simple stereotype, though;
| i'm talking about a whole misogynistic ideology which is
| so widespread that you have to understand it in order to
| give any coherency to widely used phrases like 'sell your
| body' or 'purity ring'
|
| i don't have any experience with prostitutes or camgirls
| as a client or social media manager or anything, so i
| can't really speak to their transactional use of intimacy
| and manipulativity, or lack thereof. they certainly seem
| sincere enough in the social interactions i've had with
| them, though hard to shock and rather unwilling to 'go
| along to get along' or to use euphemisms
|
| intuitively i'd think that such a 'willingness to use
| intimacy transactionally and be manipulative' would tend
| to improve their earning potential, as with waitresses
| who are willing to flirt with clients, or psychologists
| whose work depends on clients trusting them with intimate
| emotional details, but many other factors seem like
| they'd come into play in all of these situations
| prmoustache wrote:
| > and to be manipulative
|
| sex work seems to be anything but manipulative. It is
| rather blunt. Give me money and I will provide this
| service. Said service can be pretending acting like
| someone who actually love doing it for you or have
| feelings but this "acting" is not hidden.
|
| If your issue is manipulative and insincere people, I
| would say the people you want to avoid are people working
| in politics, marketing, insurers or people reaching some
| level of management in general.
| kragen wrote:
| it's possible, we'll see. certainly the stigma is much less
| now than it was 40 years ago in the vhs age
|
| also most of the camgirls i know in real life block access to
| people who live in the same country as they (and i) do; that
| greatly reduces the chance of awkward dialogues with long-
| distant uncles at the next family reunion
| kj1415 wrote:
| This is a topic I can speak on. I was a top male performer on
| one of the live sites about 10 years ago. I've went on to
| having a successful career in software, it helped me afford
| getting through college, I'm not sure I would have had the
| career I did without that help.
|
| I think the odds of getting recognized were a bit lower for
| me being a male, my peak live viewership was a little over 1k
| viewers. A video of me also got reposted and featured on
| PornHub gay and was able to accumulate ~100k views before I
| was able to get it taken down. There are still plenty of
| videos around that I wasn't able to get taken down but the
| big sites like PornHub respect DMCA takedown requests.
|
| Regarding getting recognized, I think you are somewhat right
| but it likely still happens. I had 2 people recognize me in
| person, only 1 found my real name because they recognized me
| at my college graduation. Nothing came of it besides them
| trying to add me on FaceBook. I think for girls they would be
| more likely to get recognized if they are successful because
| they get a lot more viewers.
|
| I was lucky that nobody that did recognize me posted anywhere
| about what my real name is since that would be a way to find
| the videos of me when people search my real name. I think
| that is probably the biggest risk with performing is that if
| that association happens, it would probably be hard to wipe
| that association from the internet. One way out of it for
| women though is that they could take their spouses last name
| when they get married, their new name wouldn't be associated
| with the old porn name.
|
| I have told people in my life about that past job. It had no
| impact on any of those relationships and never really came up
| again. So if it did come up again, I don't think it would
| have much impact on my life. In my mind, sex work is real
| work and those who do it should not be shamed for doing it.
| jappgar wrote:
| The problem here is that ceratain members of our society think
| sexuality is immoral and that sex performers deserve ostracism.
|
| The idea that someone shouldn't be hired for a job because they
| have/had an OF is puritanism plain and simple.
|
| I expect that fewer people actually care about the "morality"
| and simply want to use morals as a weapon against women in the
| workplace.
| tpurves wrote:
| This. This is the real social problem we should be fighting.
| SW should not impinge on career or social status.
|
| As a hiring manager, if anything I'd want to consider sex
| performers as a green flag in a job history. Speaks to
| resourcefulness, social skills, courage and self confidence.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| And your women in tech won't be SWERFs
|
| last two decades all the representation was sex worker
| exclusionary, fighting for a libidoless morph of the
| corporate world, talking over and on behalf of any women
| that thought or acted differently
|
| glad that was temporary
|
| booth babes and atmosphere models coming back soon
| jappgar wrote:
| only if i can be a booth hunk
| yieldcrv wrote:
| it'll absolutely be the inclusive version
| anthomtb wrote:
| With some waxing and a tan I could probably swing this
| gig. Not sure it'd be worth the associated male attention
| though.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Not in a million years. Men's sexuality is a bad, no
| good, evil, unethical thing.
|
| All types of "objectification" have been deemed extremely
| unethical and immoral. Progressives think you're a
| horrible person if you take part in any kind of beauty
| pageant or other activity which causes objectification.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| You jest, but it's easy to retort using their same
| phrasing
|
| "that sounds gendered" and if it leads to them being
| unable to distinguish why it isn't, then you get to call
| them sexist and they're out of your way and the company
| forever, you get to morph it to something more
| entertaining and libido inclusive
|
| alternate path is to talk about the importance of
| consent, _nonconsensual_ objectification is bad, every
| objectionable action is okay if its consensual
|
| third path is to point out how they cant speak for the
| women involved, or how they neglected to elevate the
| voices of those most affected. many of which are very
| prideful of their work and are waiting for that kind of
| representation and allyship. the bonus here is that there
| likely are secret sex workers in your organization
| already, and they'll reveal that to you after you use
| their even more progressive phrasing against the
| misandrist
| beaglesss wrote:
| Id make sex work legally equal to other work.
|
| Of course a consequence of that would be the engineering
| boss can ask the team to pole dance, and if they refuse
| they can be fired as easily as they could be for refusing
| to take out the trash.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Although intended to be a hyperbolic example, pole
| dancing isn't sex work and will likely achieve that kind
| of representation for other reasons
| ghastmaster wrote:
| There's an inherent risk to hiring someone who has sexualized
| themselves. False allegations or true allegations are more
| likely to arise that put the employer in legal jeopardy.
|
| It adds risk that another hire may not have.
| jappgar wrote:
| "sexualised themselves"
|
| I would say there's a greater risk hiring sanctimonious
| prudes.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| In this day and age it won't matter much.
|
| You can hire anyone and have them target of allegations
| from colleagues. Them having a higher social status won't
| really help, we're post #metoo and there has been way too
| many cases of well regarded people being predatory. Whether
| the employee had some arguable past jobs, you'll have to do
| due diligence and get to the bottom of it either way.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| You say it won't matter much, but it does matter.
|
| 1: This is location specific. You should hide it if you
| ever want a decent job in a smaller town.
|
| 2: It is position specific. Many public jobs or jobs in
| childcare, teaching, or where the company relies on its
| appearance in the community will not hire someone with a
| history of sex work in whatever form it takes, and if you
| hid it to begin but the truth came out you will at best
| receive backlash for it and at worst be immediately fired
| (or fired as soon as the paperwork clears).
|
| I have nothing against sex work in any form, but our
| society as a whole has a strong reaction to it and it
| will be at least 50 years before we get over that.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Pornography is exploitation of the biological male sex drive.
| merrywhether wrote:
| Are action or horror movies exploitation of the biological
| adrenaline drive? Every leisure activity is appealing to
| more than just hyper-rational thought.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Entirely unironically I believe that that first line is the
| prime cause of crashing birthrate. Surely labor exploitation
| contributes substantially followed by urban over-population,
| but THAT has to be it.
|
| Japan's actually got the least-worst birthrates among Far
| East, and everyone knows what it's best known for on the
| Internet.
| highcountess wrote:
| I agree, but it gets even worse than your individual impacts.
| All these, mostly women have now essentially made themselves
| vulnerable to blackmail both if their own feelings and views
| about things change, as well as if society/culture changes.
|
| Beyond that, they are both now vulnerable to being pressed into
| service of unscrupulous criminal, as well as our current
| criminal government agencies, and they can also make themselves
| ineligible for many government related jobs outside of very
| specific roles, e.g., honey pots, femme fatale, etc. unless
| they are willing to expose their lurid past to partners,
| parents, and their community/social circles.
|
| It is a little known idea that the government's background
| investigations are more interested in whether you can be
| blackmailed and whether you are easily bribed (i.e., lack a
| moral or principled character) not what you actually did.
|
| An example would be a woman who refused to tell her parents
| that she was picked up for shoplifting when she was younger,
| which her older brother, acting as her father to bail her out.
| She was denied a clearance in spite of being rather expert in
| her field, not because of what she did as a girl, but her
| inability to tell her parents out of cultural pressure,
| demonstrating that she could just as easily be pressured by
| anyone else.
|
| Are these 18-22 y/o floozies going to want to come clean about
| their actions, even publicly, later in life when they have a
| career, children, a husband they snagged, and maybe want to run
| for some public office?
|
| This is actually a national security threat on many levels,
| including for corporate espionage. "Hello Mrs Technical Manager
| of Corporate R&D, remember when you did OF in a past life you
| wanted to leave behind, it would be a shame if you didn't tell
| us what you are working on and give us technical specs, and
| then somehow accidentally your old OF content coincidentally
| surfaced by being sent to all your coworkers and family
| members".
|
| It Is basically the Epstein operation on a lower level, larger
| scale, and future farming operation. It's no coincidence that
| there are similarities between people involved with OF and the
| Epstein operation. The ramifications of this are massive
| national, social, and cultural security threats. And I say that
| based on modeling I've done but will leave out for the time
| being because it will distract from the overall issue.
|
| Any healthy society would ban all OF type content immediately
| on national security threat grounds. And no, it is not free
| speech any more than giving secrets to hostile actors of any
| sort or level; state, corporate, or generally criminal. The
| only alternative would be to keep a public register of all
| people who have ever done pornography of any kind that anyone
| and everyone could look up. There should be no objections of
| course since it's all fine, and it is being retained by bad
| actors anyways, so there is no reason it should not be public.
|
| The only saving grace may very well be AI and its power to
| allow for obfuscation, i.e., there's no telling what is or is
| not real anymore unless it is irl. See the end of the OP for
| reference examples.
| almatabata wrote:
| > Any healthy society would ban all OF type content
| immediately on national security threat grounds
|
| By this logic we should ban all extra marital relationships
| as well. Add to that mandatory DNA tests for all kids just in
| case.
|
| People will do things in private that they do not want known.
| No amount of legislation will fix it.
| alt227 wrote:
| I agree with what you are saying, and people should
| definitely be allowed to do whatever they like in private
| as long as it is legal and consentual.
|
| That said, OF is not private, and that kind of negates your
| point.
| almatabata wrote:
| Aren't some of the interactions on OF private chats? Kind
| of like sexting and caming? Let us say you limit it all
| to one on one private interactions, it still causes the
| same issues you mention.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Requiring mandatory DNA tests (I.e the anti France) would
| be amazing! Men shouldn't be on the hook to raise kids
| which aren't there's, and the men who is the biological
| father should be required by the state to do their job.
|
| Banning infidelity is another thing entierly, but DNA
| parental tests are the bomb.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Not enough people point out the connection between hacking
| the male libido and powerful forces operating in the shadows
| with an agenda.
|
| Men get so stupid when they think with their member instead
| of their brain.
|
| This is well known by your local spymaster, and all nerdy HN
| types should be extremely suspicious of beautiful women
| asking them questions. Femme fatales and honeypots are some
| of the lowest cost, easiest ways to get powerful, horny men
| to spill the beans on just about anything.
| knodi123 wrote:
| Like the recent story about a woman who ran for congress in
| Virginia, and lost 48.7% to 50.7% after it came out that she'd
| made tons of (consensual, legal) porn videos with her husband
| and sold them online.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >With traditional adult entertainment, creators are aware of
| the social ramifications (e.g., social stigma, familial
| ostracism, difficulty dealing with the future, and so on)
|
| I don't know why you say this, as it is laughably untrue. The
| porn industry has ALWAYS filled itself with very very young
| women who were assured (by liars) their family and friends and
| coworkers wouldn't see it, promised they wouldn't have to do
| certain things that they then get pressured and bullied into
| doing, and giving the women zero control over the produced
| media, how it is represented, how THEY are represented, and how
| it is portrayed to the audience.
|
| There's an immense amount of regret and "I didn't know" in the
| industry.
| brikym wrote:
| If people are aware that more people are doing it surely the
| stigma is lessened as the practice is more normalized. For
| instance homosexuality is not a big deal now because it's seen
| as more common and therefore more normal. Certainly at high
| levels of revenue most people would consider it a financial
| success and a sign of status to be that beautiful.
| omnee wrote:
| Two parts stand out for me:
|
| 1. COVID: The explosion in revenues during 2020 is self
| explanatory.
|
| 2. Product market fit/Execution: The owners having previously
| created other, albeit, unsuccessful platforms certainly helped
| with creating Onlyfans. This is a very simple idea that thousands
| will have had, but creating it successfully necessarily requires
| a good understanding of a sector avoided by most major
| corporations.
| lucb1e wrote:
| 1: is it? Why would the established platforms not get that
| boost instead? I don't find this very self explanatory, do
| explain :)
| eszed wrote:
| Just guessing, but OF's social interaction (or "interaction",
| if you will) with creators was more appealing whilst we were
| all starved for human connection.
| lucb1e wrote:
| There's various places where you can talk directly with the
| person offering their services though, that's not something
| OF newly introduced to the internet -- if that's what you
| meant by their "social interaction" since I haven't used OF
| so could be missing a detail
| dachworker wrote:
| Being a digital pimp is just as morally disgusting as being an
| irl pimp.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| This is the free market, check your moral reservations at the
| door.
| arandomusername wrote:
| So you would have no reservations about a business selling
| class A drugs to kids? Free market after all.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| Yes, selling drugs to kids and being a "content creator" on
| OnlyFans are the same thing.
| arandomusername wrote:
| In an untethered free market, how are they different?
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| No, not particularly. Society should raise it's children to
| know better.
| arandomusername wrote:
| I think that's a horrible way to go about life, and I am
| glad most do not share your outlook and do take moral
| responsibility for their actions.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| I would simply not let my children decide to buy drugs
| based on what the free market provides
| jodrellblank wrote:
| If you'd do that for your children, why not regulate the
| free market and save everyone's children from the obvious
| and predictable harm that you can see your ideology leads
| to?
|
| (if your ideology leads to very predictable harm to
| children which you need to intervene protect your
| children from, maybe your ideology sucks).
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| Let's investigate that claim. Does OF physically and
| emotionally abuse its creators? Does it perpetuate human
| trafficking? Does OF create drug addiction and use that to
| control its creators? Does OF force its creators to have sexual
| contact with potentially violent or diseased/depraved
| individuals?
|
| Ask yourself, would you prefer your family members to be under
| an IRL pimp or run their own OF?
|
| If you look at this realistically, OF is not nearly as morally
| reprehensible as an IRL pimp.
| standardUser wrote:
| Which is to say, not disgusting at all.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| It's really interesting to read the comments here -- I would not
| have expected this type of moralistic attitude from such a large
| share of commenters.
| paganel wrote:
| It's good to have morals.
| defrost wrote:
| Not all moral codes align.
|
| _A Man 's got to have a code_ https://old.reddit.com/r/philo
| sophy/comments/t3ptd/about_the...
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| What's yours?
| paxys wrote:
| Morals like "don't harm others" and "be nice", sure. "A woman
| should be modest and keep her body covered"...not really.
| paganel wrote:
| That's your opinion, and this wasn't about a woman wearing
| a dress or not, it was about women selling their sex to men
| in exchange for money, because this is what this is (even
| though the sex is virtual, it's still sex).
|
| So, yes, it is important to have morals in situations like
| this one and see companies like OnlyFans for what they
| truly are, i.e. SV-funded pimp organisations.
| standardUser wrote:
| What precisely is wrong with consensually selling sex?
| paganel wrote:
| There is really no "consensual" part in there.
| standardUser wrote:
| I've done sex work. You tell me how what I did was not
| consensual. Explain it in detail. No need to be so coy or
| shy. After all, you're reading about and commenting on an
| article about porn.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| What I find fascinating/disturbing with OnlyFans and in some way
| with Twitch and streaming in general is more the client side than
| the creators. Here are basically people paying, and paying a lot,
| for parasocial relationships. Because clearly it's not about the
| content per see which is a dim a dozen and available for free in
| trove.
|
| I think it says something quite dark about our society as a whole
| that we have basically commoditised distress and are encouraging
| some people often themselves in dire circumstances to prey on
| others to the benefits of the middle men. I find these new pimps
| scarier than the old sort in that they pretend to have clean
| hands.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > Because clearly it's not about the content per see which is a
| dim a dozen and available for free in trove.
|
| I think you should step back and look at it with a bit of
| distance. Is the content they're paying for really the same as
| you think is available for free, and do they even get it under
| the same conditions, in morality and circumstance.
|
| Not knowing your life, it feels like you could have said the
| same towards people buying pricy concert tickets when there's
| royalty free music abundantly available.
|
| > commoditised distress [...] often in dire situations
|
| The first step to alleviate these specific situations could be
| to stop marginalizing this kind of content and give them a
| regular professional status, instead of systematicly pigeon
| hole it.
| ant_li0n wrote:
| > The first step to alleviate these specific situations could
| be to stop marginalizing this kind of content and give them a
| regular professional status, instead of systematicly pigeon
| hole it
|
| I dislike arguments made in this vein, it's sortof a way to
| intellectually dismiss someone's point without addressing it.
|
| I share the grandparent poster's concern. Parasocial
| relationships feed us in a certain way, but do not nourish.
|
| Don't get me wrong; I'd rather have OnlyFans than pimps. But
| that's not the point.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I'm not sure what's to address about parent's point, in
| that it's already a focus of law enforcement, there will be
| widely popular polical campaigns to gather people with
| these inclinations, and it's the standard rethoric of most
| western societies.
|
| I don't see the CrossFit like dogma of "if it's not working
| just do more of it" as beneficial in this topic.
|
| I also don't like looking at a service like OF and only
| focusing on the extremes.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| But the OP is right about the parasocial aspect. OF content
| and other such platforms is about the personalization aspect.
| Sure, there's some kinks/fetishes too.. but it is primarily
| about engagement. In some ways, it's just an explicit,
| subscription based, social media platform where it feels like
| you're being treated uniquely... But most times you are not.
| itishappy wrote:
| How is that particularly different from, say, concerts? The
| social aspects are what drives value.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| It's the feeling of being more personalized. I see what
| you're saying about concerts, but it is not the same.
| Nobody is going to the concert thinking the musician is
| "talking to them" or making content specifically "for
| them".
| itishappy wrote:
| I think there's significant overlap in both.
|
| Most OF content is not personalized. It might be consumed
| solo, but it's produced for a wider distribution. On the
| concert side, I feel there's a similar situation where
| you can pay a little to get the same experience as
| everyone else, or you can pay a lot to get VIP passes and
| a personalized experience.
|
| Also, both situations are strongly dependent on the size
| of the fanbase. You're not going to get a personalized
| show from Taylor Swift or Bella Thorne, but smaller
| musicians and OF performers target that vibe exclusively.
| tomhallett wrote:
| Tom Petty said we were such a great crowd that we should
| all get on sail boat and go to Tahiti. Felt pretty
| personal to me. /s
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| I'unno every concert I've been to has included the
| band/singer replacing a placename randomly from the
| lyrics of one of their songs with the name of whatever
| town the concert was being held in. _shrug_
| flyingpenguin wrote:
| I don't know about you, but I also find concerts very
| strange and off putting. Like, is "Denver" really a
| special crowd? I'm pretty sure you are doing a very
| staged reppeded performance but making us think its
| specially for us.
|
| I like things without crowd interaction, like
| musicals/plays, because there is no dystopian parasocial
| aspect to it. I am only there because the live is
| different than the recording.
| vunderba wrote:
| I'm 100% with you. When people say that they go to these
| types of events and say things like they're "feeling the
| energy", I just can't understand at all. All I'm feeling
| is the massive amount of BTUs being emitted by humans
| packed in close proximity...
|
| However, give me a good piano recital with elevated
| seating to be able to see the pianist hands, and I'll be
| there in a flash.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| How is a solo classical pianist's concert any less
| staged, rehearsed or repeated performance than any other
| concert, other than a (not so) vague sense of elitism?
|
| Unless you're close, you're not catching the nuance of
| the pianist's hands any more than guitar licks from a
| guitar frontman. Indeed, many modern pianists are
| following in the footsteps of rock concerts and having
| live video camera work to capture these details for
| people not in the front 10 rows.
|
| All this does is give vibes of "Area Man Constantly
| Mentioning He Doesn't Own A Television"
| (https://theonion.com/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-
| doesn...).
| grvbck wrote:
| > Like, is "Denver" really a special crowd?
|
| As someone who frequently goes to concerts, I can
| absolutely testify that the audience can vary a lot
| between cities. You can usually tell if the band/artist
| is genuinly enjoying their performance or if they are
| doing the bare rehearsed minimum.
|
| If you read/watch interviews with touring musicians, all
| have stories about how "Tokyo was crazy", "London was
| boring" etc - even though the set list was the exact same
| every evening.
| julienmarie wrote:
| Concerts can be magical and unique.
|
| https://youtu.be/qtR5L-RGKgw?si=BNdfle2M1cxXlR9A&t=357
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| I've seen plenty of crowd interaction in musicals and
| plays too. Ever been to Rocky Horror Picture Show live
| before?
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| This comparison is backwards.
|
| Listening to music performed in person by other humans is
| the natural way of things, like actually having sex with
| another human.
|
| Recorded music is much more like pornography.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Following that logic:
|
| 'Reading words etched into a stone or inscribed on
| papyrus by other human hands is the natural way of
| things, like actually having sex with another human.
|
| Reading words created via machines is much more like
| pornography.'
| itishappy wrote:
| Words etched in stone? Bah! Words were created for
| speach!
|
| > For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the
| minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not
| practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced
| by external characters which are no part of themselves,
| will discourage the use of their own memory within them.
| You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of
| reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of
| wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things
| without instruction and will therefore seem to know many
| things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard
| to get along with, since they are not wise, but only
| appear wise.
|
| > - Socrates
|
| https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=3439
| hooverd wrote:
| He's not wrong- the average bookcel doesn't have the same
| sort of oral recall that storytellers of past had. Not
| that it's a bad thing.
| itishappy wrote:
| That's a fascinating perspective. I wonder if there was
| any pushback when recording was first introduced?
|
| A quick search shows... of course there was!
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/06/06/the-record-
| eff...
|
| https://archive.is/PDR04
| vundercind wrote:
| Kurt Vonnegut wrote in a couple of places about how
| recording and mass reproduction destroyed the social (and
| monetary) value of small-time creative or artistic-
| expression talent, like knowing how to play the piano OK
| or being a pretty-good singer or dancing decently well,
| or being a quite good (but not top 0.1% good)
| storyteller, or being fairly good at sketching people.
|
| Took social, and perhaps making-a-living value almost
| totally away from anything but tip-top talent in those
| areas. Nobody in your family needs you to play music at
| get-togethers and parties--you're worse and less-
| convenient than thousands of artists on Spotify. They
| don't wonder with excitement what sort of sketches Uncle
| Robert will bring to the next holiday, to give to his
| extended family. At best, that kind of thing's indulged
| and tolerated now. The _demand_ is all but entirely gone.
|
| I reckon it was a real belief of his, given he wrote of
| it more than once, and whose voice it was put in, the one
| specific case I can call. There's a chapter in Bluebeard
| about it for sure (that novel's kind of a whirlwind tour
| of _most_ of the major themes and points of Vonnegut's
| work--dunno if it was intended that way, but that's how
| it turned out) and I know I saw it other places, can't
| recall which books.
| amoorthy wrote:
| Really thoughtful comment. (An upvote was not enough :-)
| vundercind wrote:
| Haha, the thoughtful parts are Vonnegut's.
|
| I found an abbreviated quote from the bit I'm thinking of
| in _Bluebeard_. Loses some of it, but gets his point
| across:
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/277466-simply-moderate-
| gift...
|
| But I am quite sure I saw similar sentiments at least one
| other place in his work, and I think a couple places--
| years and years ago I read most of his novels, plus most
| of the collected short fiction and short stories, but
| it's all pretty fuzzy now.
| jofla_net wrote:
| I see the same things emerging in the computing realm.
| Really, we don't need you to come over and help with X,
| ill just get off-the-shelf commoditized do-hickey and
| we'll be all set. I'd like to think the same won't be
| said for developers in the future.
| zizee wrote:
| This is very close to my feelings about the swathe of AI
| tools being released. The ability to write an essay,
| create unique art, spit out a SQL script, write a pithy
| limerick... all these things are being cheapened
| somewhat.
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| It's like every time hundreds of millions of humans
| figure out how to do a creative thing to a given mediocre
| standard, the rest of us figure out how to either give
| global broadcast reach so that the work of one can
| satisfy millions and raise the bar that way (large
| amphitheaters, printing press, public transit, tv,
| telephone, internet), or teach a robot how to accomplish
| the same task (sewing, precise assembly labor,
| automobiles vs horses, GPT, maybe eventually self-driving
| cars or vending-machine cooked to order fast food).
|
| If I talked about putting all of the telephone sanitizers
| on a spaceship that might be a reference those of a
| certain age might be able to grok. :)
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow, how is listening to music
| performed by another human live different from watching
| another human performing a sexy act live ?
|
| The analog to actually having sex would be playing with
| the band on the stage.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Fair point.
|
| The reason I don't think only playing with the band
| counts is: in a hunter gather tribe 70,000 years ago, did
| everyone sing all of the songs all of the time? Or did
| some people just listen, at least some of the time?
|
| Practically speaking I think it must have been the
| latter.
|
| Of course there are lots of unnatural aspects in live
| music still, like too many people, too loud, etc. But
| recorded music is wholly unnatural, like pornography is.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I get how it could be seen as "natural", but I'm not sure
| to see value in that definition. From that token, most of
| human culture is unnnatural, but honestly it doesn't
| bother me much.
|
| I'm glad we have books, even as it's not as natural as
| oral transmission. I love photography, I'm so glad we
| have chemical food that requires such a brewing process
| to come to fruition, and I have no desire to go back to a
| hunter gatherer society, I like civilization in general.
| And pornography is sure part of it.
| nullstyle wrote:
| > Practically speaking I think it must have been the
| latter.
|
| This assumes music was made as a performance. Music can
| be (and i argue probably mostly was) people jamming
| together. Musician and audience are blurred in this
| scenario.
| RevEng wrote:
| Agreed, that's my experience growing up in a family where
| we regularly sang songs together casually as part of
| parties. It was less about listening to one performer and
| more about being part of the performance. Same still
| happens today with things like choirs - people are in it
| for singing with others, not for the eventual public
| performance. It's a very social activity.
| vunderba wrote:
| It seems like you're drawing an arbitrary line in the
| sand to determine what things are natural versus what
| things are unnatural. Furthermore, it seems like you
| think by definition, unnatural is negative.
|
| By your logic, writing things down is also unnatural and
| we should've kept with the oral tradition only.
|
| Natural is stepping on a piece of metal, contracting
| tetanus, and dying without appropriate medical treatment.
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| That's the spirit, porn is like hospitals. :D
| velp wrote:
| Highly recommend the book "This is your brain on music",
| as it explores this question (among other interesting
| things).
|
| According to the author, having separate words for
| singing and dancing is a relatively new phenomenon in
| linguistics, and the concept of a performer and an
| audience as a distinct separation is also relatively
| recent. He likens it to conversation - sure in any given
| instance there may be people more or less involved in the
| dialog of a conversation, but we would all think it very
| strange if someone said "I only listen to conversations,
| I don't talk in them" in the way someone today might say
| "I only listen to music, I don't sing/play/dance".
| roninorder wrote:
| It's safe to say that the impact on one's emotional and
| mental state is vastly different. This is a wider
| discussion of porn vs music, not necessarily OF vs
| recorded music though.
| antimemetics wrote:
| The natural way of things is to die at 30 of dysentery-
| I'm glad we are past that
| vasco wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature
| standardUser wrote:
| There is plenty of live streaming porn as well. Not to
| mention live sex shows.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| People go to concerts to socialize with the crowd, not
| with the artist.
| emj wrote:
| Maybe a parasocial with the crowd then. Small venues are
| better for social life but bigger venues create more
| revenue. So we get less social life.
|
| People build connections whatever they do, we have had
| phone sex for a long time. Now you need a camera and take
| some clothes off to do it. It is obvious that the people
| who manage to earn a lot streaming are mass producing
| content. There are ones who strive for a social
| connection and the creators who give that are never going
| to be big earners. Same as small venues.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > it feels like you're being treated uniquely... But most
| times you are not.
|
| That's just any customer business.
|
| When you go buy a house it feels like the agent is really
| looking at your personal circumstances and trying hard to
| be your friend. When you go cut your hair the staff will
| remember your name and ask about your day. Your dentist
| will keep track of your operations, personalize your care
| and make sure you're in trust and as comfortable as
| possible.
|
| There's really nothing special about having people you pay
| be friendly with you.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| The first time my dental hygienist asked a small talk
| question referencing something I said last visit, I was
| impressed by their memory/vaguely flattered . The second
| time it happened I was pretty sure they're just writing
| notes about what to say in my record. Especially when the
| new hygienist did the same trick :)
| sharemywin wrote:
| I worked in the pizza business before there are some
| regular customers that you pretty much would call
| friends. similar to work friends.
| chgs wrote:
| Any pub landlord will have regulars
| darkr wrote:
| Americans are weird. I've been going to the same barber
| for years. He doesn't know my name, barely says a word
| and it's just so comforting.
| Muromec wrote:
| Which is exactly why you pay them, right?
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| You may not realize just how lonely a lot of us are.
| hooverd wrote:
| Funny enough, I follow an OnlyFans creator on Xitter, and
| they've been complaining that OnlyFans was cracking down on
| kink/fetish content. I guess OF only wants parasocial slop
| on their platform!
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| Well given that OF tried to ban _all porn_ a year or two
| ago (obviously quickly backpedaling while dodging
| projectile-spam of rotten fruit) I 'm certainly not
| surprised.
| marcandre wrote:
| > it feels like you could have said the same towards people
| buying pricy concert tickets when there's royalty free music
| abundantly available.
|
| The analogy holds. Most people don't pay concert tickets for
| the music itself. It's the experience, the crowd, the
| physical presence of the artists, etc.
| wubrr wrote:
| Yeah... if the main goal is to listen to the music - most
| concerts are a terrible way of doing that.
| zpeti wrote:
| > Not knowing your life, it feels like you could have said
| the same towards people buying pricy concert tickets when
| there's royalty free music abundantly available.
|
| Wow, What a great analogy. That really is almost the same
| except not with music but sexual attraction.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| You can think of it as content, but its parasocial none the
| less.
| godelski wrote:
| > the content they're paying for really the same as you
| think is available for free,
|
| Btw, you misinterpreted the OP
| paxys wrote:
| It's way worse in the case of YouTube/Twitch than OnlyFans IMO.
| People have been paying for pornography/sex for millennia. It's
| just part of human nature. On the other hand an 11 year old
| throwing money at MrBeast...why?
| magic123_ wrote:
| While I agree with the general sentiment of your comment, the
| specific example you used is not really relevant: MrBeast is
| not on twitch, and his revenue comes from youtube ads and
| brand partnerships. He also has 'classic' merch and several
| companies (burgers, chocolate bars), but he doesn't bring in
| any money from subscriptions/donations the way twitch
| streamers or onlyfan creators do.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| The vast majority of people will not have ever paid for porn
| or sex though. Sure sexual indulgement in some form is human
| nature, but it always is a special group that uses such
| direct or indirect services.
| paxys wrote:
| The vast majority of people are also not paying OnlyFans.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| That is what I meant, I understood you comment as "paying
| for OnlyFans" is human nature. I would dispute that as a
| general statement because I believe it is a very special
| demographic that does that.
| paxys wrote:
| Sure, but that "special demographic" has stayed
| consistent throughout human history. Which is why this
| entire market has existed for a similar period.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| I would understand human nature to mean that it affects
| every human, but sure, after that definition I guess it
| remains some form of constant at least.
| andrelaszlo wrote:
| 9.4% of men in an official Swedish study from 2017 said
| they have paid for sexual services (0.5% of women). It's
| a minority but still almost 1/10. I can only imagine that
| OnlyFans has normalized this behavior a lot since then.
|
| There's also the narrative that people on these platforms
| are choosing to do this because they make a lot of money,
| and that it's less problematic than the rest of the porn
| industry somehow. I'm very sceptical about both of these
| notions.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Ah the slippery slope of distinguishing dating vs pay for
| sex.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > slippery slope
|
| An excellent porn star name.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| Same reason why kids have paid for Transformers merch, Star
| Wars merch, band merch, etc.
|
| It's a brand, they like it, they want to be reminded of it
| and show their love of it off. It creates an "in group" which
| is socially valuable. Streamers are nothing special in that
| regard.
| fourside wrote:
| There is an important difference between a kid spending
| money on a toy versus spending it on a person.
| krisoft wrote:
| Would you tell us what is that important difference? Just
| for those of us who can't read your thoughts yet.
| bikingbismuth wrote:
| I think the implication is that if a kid buys a toy they
| will have something tangible that they can play and
| interact with, but tipping/donating to a streamer doesn't
| provide that.
| vasco wrote:
| I had football jerseys with my favorite player's name on
| them growing up and I'd look up to my birthday to see if
| I got one or I had to wait another year. This seems like
| an arbitrary decision. I don't see any difference in
| buying a jersey of my favorite player or a kid now
| getting a t-shirt merch of their favorite youtuber.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| I'm not talking about toys, though I'd argue they're much
| the same.
|
| I'm talking backpacks, lunch boxes, t-shirts, hats, etc.
| You know, merch.
| philwelch wrote:
| You can get porn anywhere. The selling point of OnlyFans is
| specifically the parasocial connection. These people are
| paying money to exchange DM's with LLM's and third world gig
| workers pretending to be their favorite porn star.
| sirspacey wrote:
| Porn once again predicts the future of social tech.
| gspencley wrote:
| You're making an assumption.
|
| I owned an operated a "free" adult website for 18 years.
| For 15 years it was my primary source of income. During
| those years I always got a kick out of "there is so much
| free porn online, why would anyone ever pay for it?"
|
| The way that my website worked was that it was very
| content-rich and content-focused. The content came directly
| from the affiliate programs that I was advertising for.
| Despite it being all advertising, I often got compliments
| that my website was "ad free." That's because I didn't push
| banner ads or anything intrusive. It was free content plus
| a text link that you could click on if you wanted more of
| that content.
|
| The website shut down in 2022, and the bank accounts are
| all closed. But many of the affiliate accounts are still
| pulling rebills.
|
| Most of the subscription based websites that were
| advertised were not websites that promised any sort of
| interaction with the performers or models. It was very
| obvious that you were paying for content, not social
| interaction and if anyone were ever confused as to that,
| the rebill numbers would have reflected otherwise. The fact
| that an indivdual subscription rebills is not a conclusive
| indication of a happy customer. But when so many in the
| aggregate rebill, it doesn't really paint the picture of a
| large number of people feeling duped. It's also worth
| noting that chargeback rates were nearly non-existent. I
| could count the number of times that happened over 18 years
| on one hand.
|
| Now, if you've read this far thanks, I will acknowledge
| that we're talking about OF specifically.
|
| At the risk of TMI, I subscribe personally to one adult
| content site: suicide girls. I am happily married, I'm not
| looking for any social interaction. It's purely eye candy.
| Many of the models on that site promote their personal OF
| pages, and while I haven't subscribed to any, I will admit
| that I've been tempted because they produce content that I
| like and I'm curious about what else they offer. I'm not at
| all interested in DM'ing them or trying to start some kind
| of parasocial relationship. I've watched a few live streams
| on SG, have even had some interaction in the chats in those
| ... but there's no desire what-so-ever to try and have some
| kind of "relationship." I've never tipped them or sent them
| money or gifts. Just the annually recurring subscription to
| the SG website.
|
| People who are in difficult situations in life, have mental
| illnesses or physical disabilities may try and use online
| porn to fill a void in their life, and for some it may be
| unhealthy. People also stalk celebrities for the same
| reason. Yet we seem to make more assumptions and talk about
| it a hell of a lot more when it comes pornography for some
| reason. I'm not saying that there aren't social issues that
| are important to look at and talk about. But when it comes
| to porn there's such a taboo and willingness to shame
| others and make mass assumptions about their motivations
| even though we have very little idea of what we're actually
| talking about.
| jayd16 wrote:
| I'm sure celebrities and socialites and thought leaders and
| such have existed throughout time ... But we've gotten really
| good at monetizing it.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I suspect it was always monetized as well, but the internet
| allows for both for a massive increase in followers and an
| increasingly easy path for money to move from the
| followers' wallets to the celebrities. It seems new or
| unprecedented, but similar models have existed on smaller
| scales for thousands of years at least.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Think back to ancient philosophers. Who got students to
| pay for their work or students parents, or just outright
| donations... And later various artists both those
| creating works and performing them. Patronage is very old
| model.
| tjs8rj wrote:
| We're the cohort putting our hand on the stove to remember you
| get burned.
|
| Vices like gambling, obscenity, prostitution, drugs, etc are
| banned or heavily controlled societies over because they have
| significant negative cultural effects. "Why do YOU care what
| other people do in their private lives?" was always a stupid
| justification: if everyone in your community is addicted to
| vices, that DOES affect me.
| hiddencost wrote:
| Obscenity?
| lazide wrote:
| Do you think 2 girls 1 cup, blue waffle, or 'the jar'
| helped anyone in society to see?
|
| If so, how?
|
| Should they be required watching in elementary school? If
| not, why not?
| samtho wrote:
| Supposing the premise that these things were entirely
| unhelpful to society, I would argue that the obscenity
| specifically is not what makes these things unhelpful.
| lazide wrote:
| Then what was?
| samtho wrote:
| Depends on how you define helpful or how much of a
| requirement for content to actually be "helpful".
|
| A strict definition might require content to have
| academic or intellectual value (implied by the remark
| about it being shown in an academic context) but this
| would also exclude a vast majority of non "obscene"
| content. Further, if you could swap the obscene elements
| for non obscene elements, I would argue the "value" of
| the content, as measured by its helpfulness, stays the
| same.
|
| This all moot, however, as it's likely not the right
| conversation to have. There is more useful discussion to
| be had on harm caused as a result rather than any sort of
| value judgement.
| flir wrote:
| Not OP, but it is possible for something to be both
| "obscene" and "helpful" (maybe we should say "of value"?)
| Say... footage of Hiroshima? Or the liberation of
| concentration camps? I'd say those are examples of things
| that are both obscene and have value.
|
| So I think you're looking for another property those
| videos have in common. It might be closely related to
| obscenity, but I think it must be a bit more nuanced than
| that. Why are those videos valueless? (I don't know the
| answer).
| samtho wrote:
| Yet humans have fared mostly fine as a whole with even a
| moderate level of those things, legal or not, consistently
| happening throughout history and cultures. The biggest
| problem we have is when these vices are driven underground so
| the vice itself is conflated with the additional risk of
| having to put one's self in a dangerous situation to engage
| with it.
|
| Looking at western culture (the only one I feel confident
| speaking about), we are still bound by puritanical values
| that were imposed as control mechanisms but managed to sneak
| their way into a set of cultural norms as a moral code
| despite their actual value to us not being evaluated and
| actively selected.
| vel0city wrote:
| > Looking at western culture
|
| It's not a "western culture" thing. Many western cultures
| do, sure. Many eastern cultures do as well. Not literally
| puritanism and that specific history, but very similar
| kinds of thoughts and ideas.
| philwelch wrote:
| There's still value in curbing many of these vices. Smoking
| is a good example. You can smoke, but you can't advertise
| cigarettes, you need to be an adult to buy them, you can't
| smoke them indoors, and we've all been subjected to
| propaganda from birth about how smoking is bad for you. If
| you have all of that in place (which took decades for
| tobacco and now people are trying to ban it in some
| places), you can have legal vices.
| asdasdsddd wrote:
| It's absolutely not western nor is it puritanical. The
| value is clear, there is a wide funnel like no other from
| starting drugs to ending up on the street, etc. Other
| societies, asian, middle eastern, etc found their way to
| the exact same values, sometimes enforced much harsher by
| the state.
|
| This libertarian stance where neither you nor the state
| should care about how your neighbors lead their lives is
| the exception, not the norm, and it has its merits, but the
| cost of this ideology is obvious.
| knodi123 wrote:
| A better justification is, "prove that it's actually harmful
| using sources other than your gut", and "suggest a method for
| controlling it that doesn't almost immediately devolve into
| puritan witch-hunting, racism, and/or misogyny."
| golergka wrote:
| > Vices like gambling, obscenity, prostitution, drugs, etc
| are banned or heavily controlled societies over because they
| have significant negative cultural effects
|
| Do they? Citation needed. So far it seems that marijuana
| consumption leads to far less violence than alcohol, and
| proliferation of porn leads to much lower rates of sexual
| violence.
|
| > if everyone in your community is addicted to vices, that
| DOES affect me
|
| Then choose and manage your own community, but don't push
| this view on the whole country. Dozens of millions of people
| (I don't know what country do you live in, so not sure about
| the population) are not a "community" that you can put under
| the same norms. If you think that porn is bad, it's your
| right to do so, and to find likeminded people to build a
| community that shares these values. But why would you want to
| force it on other people?
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| I think it also is quite a special demographic, which is hard
| to nail down. There are a lot of people that don't have many
| social contacts but would never pay anyone for only fans.
| Perhaps you need to have a special character trait to be able
| to use such services.
|
| But while there are successful people on only fans with either
| more or less clothes on, the vast majority of creators probably
| sell their dignity for a few dollars.
|
| Agreed that there is something fishy about these new pimps. I
| guess there are still the conventional pimps too, but they now
| call themselves manager.
| hungie wrote:
| This framing, "sell their dignity", is your moral judgement
| (coming from your cultural, religious, or some other)
| background.
|
| I don't see it as any less dignified than any other work. You
| sell your labor to someone who pays you less than the value
| it produces.
|
| Now, if you want to argue that median creators get payed only
| a tiny fraction of their time, and like Twitch/YouTube it's a
| losing game for most, then we're on the same page.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| You are correct, my value judgements are very likely
| influenced by my cultural background and experience, as are
| yours.
|
| I do live in a country where sex work is legal. There is
| still a darker sides to the trade. I think customers do
| lose even more dignity. Or someone who does sex work
| because it is "empowering" compared to someone that is
| forced into it.
| kidintech wrote:
| > don't see it as any less dignified than any other work
|
| You do not, and that is your moral judgement. Rationalizing
| earning money by any means necessary is a very slippery
| slope, and the discussion is much more nuanced than popular
| media would lead you to believe.
| JALTU wrote:
| To the moral question, semi-related is a comment I heard
| about the idea that a person might raise a child for the
| purposes of having sex with the child when they reach some
| age. The idea behind this scenario is asking if such an
| activity or intent is moral, and if there are certain human
| relationships that are rich and complex and more positive
| by leaving the sex out? And if the answer is somehow self-
| evident or "just" cultural?
| agumonkey wrote:
| The shocking part is how new generation have a fully rational
| reinterpretation of all this, they call it "ethical sex". It's
| beautiful to them (probably in contrast to the boat loads of
| issues IRL social and intimate relationships can bring with
| them). And anything not aligned with their view causes a lot of
| angry arguments.
| antimemetics wrote:
| Every new generation is worse than the one before them
| frogpelt wrote:
| Until there's a great revival/revolution. Then we start
| over.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| Only 426,875 years of Kali Yuga left!
| Demiurge wrote:
| Dtaisk Afai. Cof Lemma, 19:1, 2, 549-552 /
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/25414613
|
| Let me first give you four quotations.
|
| Firstly: "Our youth loves luxury, has bad manners,
| disregards authority, and has no respect whatsoever for
| age. Our children today are tyrants; they do not get up
| when an elderly man enters the room--they talk back to
| their parents--they are just very bad."
|
| Secondly: "I no longer have any hope for the future of our
| country if today's youth should ever become the leaders of
| tomorrow, because this youth is unbearable, reckless--just
| terrible."
|
| Thirdly: "Our world has reached a critical stage; children
| no longer listen to their parents; the end of the world
| cannot be far away."
|
| Finally: "This youth is rotten from the very bottom of
| their hearts; the young people are malicious and lazy; they
| will never be as youth happened to be before. Today's youth
| will not be able to maintain our culture."
|
| The first quote came from Socrates (470-399 B.C.); the
| second from Hesiod (circa 720 B.C.); the third from an
| Egyptian priest about 2,000 years ago; and the last was
| recently discovered on clay pots in the ruins of Old
| Babylon, which are more than 3,000 years old.
| hyggetrold wrote:
| "It seems like nobody wants to work these days" has been
| a refrain since ancient Mesopotamia!
| Demiurge wrote:
| That's probably why they call it work! :D
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I mean, all of those civilizations rose and fell, so
| there was certainly a point at which the productivity
| level was no longer sufficiently globally dominant.
| kurthr wrote:
| That's the thing, everyone can be right here. You don't
| want to regularly yell "fascist, racist, pimp, rapist" or
| the power of those words disappears. At the same time, if
| you refuse to use the words when they apply, then their
| power is irrelevant. Stability breeds complacency,
| complacency breeds contempt, contempt breeds instability.
|
| The Kids perceptions and mores change every generation
| (both in some multidimensional average and in their
| dispersion) based in response to their elder's beliefs
| and their material conditions. Those changes could be
| destructive or not, but the idea that "there is no truth"
| or we've reached "the end of history" mark a more
| dangerous part of the cycle.
| deepsun wrote:
| Some historians say that the main cause for the Fall of
| Rome is rising inequality. Initially, society was mainly
| based on small farmers/warriors, doing war close to their
| home.
|
| But as Rome grew, wars tended to get farther and farther
| from home, so farmers could no longer tend to their
| farms, and also large influx of slaves made them
| noncompetitive against large slave-owners. So they had to
| sell their farms to those large owners, exacerbating the
| problem even more.
|
| I honestly don't know any single revolution that happened
| for any reason other than inequality.
| knodi123 wrote:
| Firstly: The Plato quote is fake - It was crafted by a
| student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge
| dissertation published in 1907.
|
| Secondly: Hesiod was right, his culture no longer exists.
| ;-)
|
| Thirdly: Yep, that quote is fake too.
| https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/22/world-end/
|
| Can't find any sources on that fourth one, but I suggest
| that the British Medical Journal might want to update
| their article.
| Demiurge wrote:
| Good to know, appreciate the review :)
| emj wrote:
| > Hesiod was right, his culture no longer exists. ;-)
|
| Hesoid lived when ancient greece got started what
| followed was 6 centuries of Greek dominance in the
| mediterranean region. :-)
| bazoom42 wrote:
| The Socrates quote is certainly fake. Are the other
| quotes from the same source?
| voidmain0001 wrote:
| Yes, your quotes' source is from a 1971 paper and I
| realize this source isn't much better than you saying
| otherwise, but it could be that the Socrates quote is not
| accurate - https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maveri
| ck_philosopher...
|
| The Egyptian priest quote is muddied too -
| https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4923/was-
| this-q...
|
| I wouldn't build an argument on them...
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Veracity of the quotes aside, people always bust this
| sort of thing out like it proves that the current young
| people aren't so bad. But if anything, it convinces me
| that these historical figures were probably right! I can
| see, with my own eyes, how bad my own generation is (let
| alone those after me). So if that's the case, then maybe
| the ancient old guys were right in their cases as well.
| gershy wrote:
| On the matter of holistic degradation with each
| generation I always think about american presidential
| debates from several decades ago which, to me, offer
| irrefutable evidence of an older society with greater
| command of speech, wit, rationality, temper, etc. What do
| you think?
| kubb wrote:
| Please someone contribute the "bad times create strong men"
| meme.
| afavour wrote:
| The circle of life. People said the same thing about Playboy
| when it first came out, about Internet porn when it first
| came out... People have been "falling in love" with strippers
| for as long as strippers have existed. In many ways OF feels
| like a positive step because it allows the removal of toxic
| middlemen that stand between the model and their customer.
|
| To my mind the bigger issue is how much of it is a total
| scam. OF models offshoring their DM responses so their
| clients _think_ they're having conversations with the model
| when it's actually some dude half the world away. Or using AI
| for the same, which I'm sure is increasing exponentially.
|
| It's going to be interesting to see what happens when AI is
| able to generate on demand video/photo and chat that's
| realistic enough to satisfy an online client. If people are
| specifically told it's AI will they be content with that? Or
| will they still want an actual real human? We're not exactly
| rational creatures at the best of times so it'll be
| fascinating to see. We'll have gone from the phone sex lines
| of yore, where you are interacting with a real human even
| though they're definitely not the human you're imagining in
| your head, to an AI video chat where you're seeing exactly
| what you want but there's nothing behind it.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _OF models [...] using AI for [answering DM responses]_
|
| This seems like OF's Etsy trap moment.
|
| On the one hand, scaling creator:individual_fan multiples
| via AI assisted messaging = $$$ (to creators and OF)
|
| On the other hand, it canabalizes their core business value
| tenet -- authenticity.
|
| It'll be curious to see which path they choose, and if it
| ends up playing out similar to Etsy. I.e. temporarily
| increasing their revenue while erroding their brand, then
| having to tack back once they realize how dire things have
| gotten in customers' eyes.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| Doing it with LLMs may be new but the idea of farming out
| the fan interaction to an army of gig workers plus
| automation is well established, including automation for
| suggested replies, keeping track of past interactions,
| etc.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| Embracing gen AI is absolutely the wrong move for a
| content creators. People are not paying for visuals and
| conversations. They are paying for a genuine human to
| human interaction. If you take away that part, you're
| left with worthless pixels on a screen
| ethbr1 wrote:
| It's a weird set of game outcomes though.
|
| If it's not done, then creators have a fundamental time
| cap to the amount of personalized content they can
| create.
|
| If it's done, but users don't know about it, then
| creators increase their revenue several times.
|
| If it's done, but users do know about it, then creators
| lose several multiples of revenue.
| tivert wrote:
| > Embracing gen AI is absolutely the wrong move for a
| content creators. People are not paying for visuals and
| conversations. They are paying for a genuine human to
| human interaction. If you take away that part, you're
| left with worthless pixels on a screen
|
| If people are going to a porn site to spend relatively
| small amounts of money to get "genuine human to human
| interaction," there are more than a few flaws in their
| strategy. Unless they're spending many thousands of
| dollars _a month_ , there could be no reasonable
| expectation they're getting anything but _extremely_
| superficial interactions. If they get mad because they
| think they should get an e-girlfriend for $10 a month or
| whatever, I 'd say that's on them because of unreasonable
| expectations.
|
| Honestly, I think gen AI is pretty much inevitable for
| these kinds of parasocial services, but it will be
| clandestinely used because otherwise it makes perfect
| sense for the "content creator." Whatever relationship
| they think they have is an illusion in their head anyway,
| and they're probably expending a fair amount of energy to
| maintain it.
| chongli wrote:
| _removal of toxic middlemen that stand between the model
| and their customer._
|
| ...
|
| _OF models offshoring their DM responses_
|
| I mean this sounds to me like the toxic middlemen have
| changed form, rather than gone away. Now the toxic
| middlemen work for the performer, rather than the other way
| around. But they're still toxic and their toxicity is now
| directed at the buyer instead.
| deepsun wrote:
| I think people would still prefer "real" content, same way
| as they prefer live streams to recordings for some reason
| (hey, handpicked recordings are objectively better!). Same
| way as people want "real wood", and "real leather", even
| when there're objectively better alternatives.
|
| That said, people only need to _believe_ it's real.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Marriage rates are down nearly 80% and it matches exactly
| the decline of births. So the slippery slope did work on
| reducing population growth!
| afavour wrote:
| I'd you're suggesting marriage rates are down because of
| porn I'm going to throw a [citation needed] on there.
| Tyr42 wrote:
| You might be interested in the latent space podcast about
| using Ai to do exactly this, as compared to offshoring.
|
| https://www.latent.space/p/nsfw-chatbots
| codeAligned wrote:
| > In many ways OF feels like a positive step because it
| allows the removal of toxic middlemen that stand between
| the model and their customer.
|
| Wait, are you intentionally ignoring the fact that OF is
| the middleman? Because it definitely is, making about 1
| billion dollars off of 5 billion dollars of transactions.
| Or are you saying OF is a "good non-toxic middleman".
| afavour wrote:
| I don't know the ins and outs (pun intended) of Onlyfans
| but it certainly seems considerably less toxic than a lot
| of pornography producers, based on past stories I've
| read. If your numbers are correct a 20% take is orders of
| magnitude better than previous arrangements.
| golergka wrote:
| I've explored using LLMs for this exact purpose, and
| there's a huge problem. Onlyfans rules very strictly forbid
| incest and other kinds of icky content, and Onlyfans
| sexters are very, very aware of this. If you break the
| rules, Onlyfans is very eager with permabans, and getting
| your account banned effectively destroys your whole
| business.
|
| When it's that easy to screw up, it's easier and cheaper to
| pay real humans $1k a month for sexting than to build an
| LLM-based system that never makes mistakes and is 100%
| secured against prompt injection.
| tivert wrote:
| > The shocking part is how new generation have a fully
| rational reinterpretation of all this, they call it "ethical
| sex". It's beautiful to them (probably in contrast to the
| boat loads of issues IRL social and intimate relationships
| can bring with them). And anything not aligned with their
| view causes a lot of angry arguments.
|
| Do you have a source for that angrily defended "fully
| rational reinterpretation"?
|
| I suspect the word for what's going on is _rationalization_
| not "fully rational reinterpretation" (e.g. "This is a thing
| we're doing, therefore it's good because we do it. Let's
| reevaluate _everything else_ to achieve that result. ").
| agumonkey wrote:
| I wouldn't say rationalization considering the lack of
| experience of these teens. Lack of scope in life forbids
| this imo, hence my adhoc neologism.
|
| These were redditors that were unhappy saying that being an
| only fan model is the laziest thing one can do. That's when
| they taught me about their concepts.
| tivert wrote:
| > I wouldn't say rationalization considering the lack of
| experience of these teens. Lack of scope in life forbids
| this imo, hence my adhoc neologism.
|
| Can you explain that more? In my mind _anyone_ can
| rationalize their behavior ( "a way of describing,
| interpreting, or explaining something (such as bad
| behavior) that makes it seem proper, more attractive,
| etc.", https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/rationalization), so no experience
| is required. Even preschoolers can do it.
|
| > These were redditors that were unhappy saying that
| being an only fan model is the laziest thing one can do.
| That's when they taught me about their concepts.
|
| Do you have the thread? Or can you give more context?
| Were they OnlyFans models? Were they subscribers
| defending their participation?
| agumonkey wrote:
| Then call it rationalization if you think that it fits.
| But afaik they were not even trying to paint it as
| attractive, they felt sincerely in a belief that this was
| a great new invention that freed people.
|
| Hmm I doubt I could find the link unless I dug my last
| year reddit history comment by comment. I think these
| were dudes defending girl models decisions.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| Every generation shockingly reinterprets things. Our
| generation "shockingly" interprets a mixed race couple
| kissing on TV as normal, instead of obscene enough to be
| banned.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I don't think recurrences of this kind are an infinite line
| that can apply forever. Usually I account for the
| generational gap when thinking, even though it's something
| that may evade my mind.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The younger generation has a weird relationship with the
| physical reality of sexuality, I expect because so much has
| been perfection-optimized in media portrayals of it,
| post-~2000.
|
| If you go back and watch <= 90s movies and tv (PG-13!), it's
| amazing how pervasive and frank sexuality there is.^
|
| In contrast to current mores that mandate sexy, but never
| actually talking about sex.
|
| The deterioration of more honest discourse in mass media
| about realistic (read: fumbling, awkward, funny, vulnerable,
| spiritual) physical sexuality has left young folks ill
| prepared to enjoy that side of life.
|
| ^ Exhibit A: Hercules the Legendary Journeys (1994, produced
| by Sam Raimi!) S01E02, which would make most kids today
| cringe, despite just being scantily-clad depictions of
| consensual sexual desire and bawdy banter
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Tgz7burclcI
| throwanem wrote:
| "Everyone is beautiful and no one is horny."
| https://bloodknife.com/everyone-beautiful-no-one-horny/
|
| (edit: replace SEO spam blog with original host)
| sss111 wrote:
| There are shows made today that capture the realistic
| nature of it. White Lotus or Scenes from a Marriage on HBO
| are good examples.
| throwanem wrote:
| I'd be fascinated to see an ethnological elaboration of this
| concept, but nothing's turning up so far - not surprising, I
| think, but I wonder if you could point to something.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Ethical sex? I couldn't talk long with the kids but I
| assume they took physical safety and freedom as only
| important aspect when approaching onlyfans. Teen girl idol
| can spread her legs if she wants to and no one can take
| advantage (unlike the pre me too era)
| throwanem wrote:
| Okay, but what I'm really looking for is the account
| given by its adherents.
|
| I want to hear in their own terms, because I genuinely
| don't know if I can understand the idea in terms of my
| own experience. I can make it make sense to me, sure;
| anyone can do that with almost anything. I don't have a
| guide to how closely that would correspond to the sense
| made of it by the people who actually pursue it. Third-
| party opinions don't actually count for much there, but
| this might also be too new a thing to have been studied.
|
| I don't know. It seems to me like it would have to be
| terribly lonely and unfulfilling. But that might just be
| in comparison with my own pre-Internet experience, or
| maybe something I'm entirely missing.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Fair points. If I may add my own perception of their
| reality, these are often nymph like teen which maps the
| usual boy feminine ideal.. so instead of fantasizing
| about it in comics or animes they have real ones behind
| screens to interact / drool / peep on, which is also a
| very boy like mindset. Later on your understanding of
| beauty, love, relationship evolves beyond that thin
| layer. It's their neverending christmas.
| throwanem wrote:
| That's certainly a perspective.
| sulandor wrote:
| > parasocial relationships
|
| sounds like you meant "professional courtesy"
| _the_inflator wrote:
| Human reward system is magically and weird at the same time. To
| what extremes some visuals and sounds can bring people is
| fascinating.
| vunderba wrote:
| Although Onlyfans is certainly more exploitative, I would argue
| that this concept of one-way parasocial relationships has
| existed since basically the dawn of humanity and likely has
| roots to our earliest fundamental tribalistic nature.
|
| I mean look at the extremely popular K-pop bands, fans get
| insanely invested into these groups, following them, bringing
| glowsticks to show support, etc. Or the entire Japanese idol
| movement for that matter.
|
| Or think about how people stand in line _for hours_ just to get
| the signature of somebody at a convention.
|
| I think this is just the way a lot of people are wired. I don't
| know if it's bad or a good thing, it's just something I've
| noticed.
| zug_zug wrote:
| I agree.
|
| I do remember a study that people often think label their
| more popular friends as their "best" friends, but if you go
| ask THOSE friends, they label THEIR even more popular friends
| as their "BEST" friends. It's often asymmetrical.
|
| Though tbh going too far down these rabbitholes usually isn't
| healthy/productive imo.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Or how nerds are willing to argue about the superiority of
| Linux vs Mac vs Windows while having only faint notions of
| how to use each to their fullest extent or the workings of
| their internals. We on HN aren't immune from unthinking
| tribalism.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| I don't think it's new per see nor that OnlyFans is unique in
| this. The K-pop exemple you bring forward is good and I guess
| you could see the Hollywood star system as a kind of
| precursor.
|
| I still think there are multiple differences.
|
| One is how OnlyFans has successfully turned everyday people
| into this source of para-social fixation for a multitude of
| small communities and somehow massified the issue.
|
| The other and the main one for me is that in both the star
| system or the K-pop industry the system is a mean to an end -
| selling movie tickets or albums - while OnlyFans genuinely
| sells the illusion of closeness.
| chii wrote:
| > selling movie tickets or albums
|
| because OF models cannot realistically produce anything of
| that high production value to sell. They can take pictures,
| get videos shot, etc. And in any case, the closeness you
| speak also applies to the celebrity in mainstream industry.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| You say one-way parasocial relationships have existed since
| basically the dawn of humanity, but all the examples you give
| are of things that have only become popular in, generously,
| the last century.
| qingcharles wrote:
| This view isn't matched by the stats. I have a friend who is a
| successful OF model and only a fraction of one percent of her
| subscribers ever DM her. A lot of them subscribe, see what they
| want and then immediately delete their accounts. There's no
| apparent relationship between her fans and her, for the most
| part.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| >subscribe ... and then immediately delete their accounts
|
| Sounds like credit card fraud to me. Bots using stolen cards
| to scrape OF content. Also easily verifies that the number
| works before attempting a pricier purchase.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| > Sounds like credit card fraud to me. Bots using stolen
| cards to scrape OF content. Also easily verifies that the
| number works before attempting a pricier purchase.
|
| I've subscribed for one month to two different creators
| just to check the content. Neither was interesting enough
| to maintain a subscription. I don't think the described
| behavior sounds nefarious.
| taikobo wrote:
| The part that they delete their account immediately
| afterwards?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Perhaps to avoid unintended rebill or make it less likely
| for a loved one to discover it.
| aqme28 wrote:
| Buyers remorse after purchasing pornography? I don't know
| why you're surprised.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| Or regular embarrassment, or I don't want to "get in" to
| onlyfans, just this one time then I'll delete.
| luckylion wrote:
| I suppose that hinges on what "a lot" means in that
| comment. If it's "a lot" in absolute values, that's very
| plausible. If it's "a lot" as a percentage, OnlyFans
| would have to have a high rate of account closures.
| qingcharles wrote:
| OK, I asked. "A lot" is about 20%.
| rockinghigh wrote:
| Probably a combination of being a subscription model with
| auto-renewal and people regretting wasting money for this
| type of content.
| knodi123 wrote:
| Sounds like it, and I'm sure it is sometimes... but it's
| also legitimate behavior from people struggling with guilt
| or self-actualization. At least as far as internal fraud
| detection, a lot of sites like these have had to re-think
| what kind of behavior is a red flag. For instance, it's
| also common for sellers to have multiple separate
| identities on these sites, where they may re-sell the same
| content but they act as totally different personalities. On
| any other site, like say Facebook, that would definitely be
| a fraud indicator. On adult sites.... less so!
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| IME testers do the minimum to get a purchase go / no-go
| then immediately drop off. They don't bother trying to
| automate clean up.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Sounds like normal human behavior.
|
| The problem with subscription sites like that is that
| paying for a month's subscription gives you access to the
| entire backlog of the work that a person has been doing for
| years. There's only so much that an OF model is gonna be
| able to do in terms of posing before they've done all the
| angles that someone would want to see. Why pay for
| repetitive content when you can just pay for a month and
| download everything, wait a year, and then do it again?
|
| If these sites were smart, they'd implement a 3 month
| rolling backlog and then a set add-on price for accessing
| additional months worth of content.
| qingcharles wrote:
| That actually sounds like a smart system. It would also
| increase the barrier for those who log in just to scrape
| the whole profile and upload it elsewhere.
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| Article points out that some OF creators do exactly this,
| certain content is gated to subscribers who've been
| around for a minimum duration.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Also I wonder if there is something per account anti-
| scraping... So you might be able to scrape everything
| with single account, but if you hit multiple models there
| is some limits? Never used OF, but could be a some
| limitation.
| qingcharles wrote:
| She's had essentially zero chargebacks that I know of.
| She's tried to figure out if it is just guys in
| relationships who want to check her out and then clear up
| all the traces?
| numpad0 wrote:
| I feel the same, but I also feel that the desired levels of
| staged human intimacy actually depends on cohorts, as in
| it's probably not what large bulk of the users are looking
| for.
| ehnto wrote:
| Parasocial relationships don't require interaction, you could
| just watch a twitch streamer a lot. I think if we defined it
| by requiring interaction we would underestimate the percieved
| impact of these social phenomenon.
| mudita wrote:
| It not only doesn't require interaction, the lack of
| interaction is what makes is parasocial.
| jayd16 wrote:
| So like, movies are more para social because they have
| less interaction?
| NeuroCoder wrote:
| I've never subscribed to any only fans so my only
| exposure is checking out twitch. I assume there's a
| difference in that movies don't act like they're talking
| to you as an individual person. Also, parasocial is a
| fairly newly emerging term and I don't think we can
| clearly define everything that facilitates it, but we can
| easily identify some of the outcomes
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| No, because people don't usually form an opinion that the
| movie cares about them.
| mudita wrote:
| I wouldn't say that movies per se are parasocial, but if
| you behave and feel like you have a relationship with
| somebody in a movie, then it's probably parasocial.
|
| To a degree it's also quite normal to have parasocial
| reactions to personaes from media, it only becomes
| problematic once people substitute actual social
| relationships with extreme parasocial relationships.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >So like, movies are more para social because they have
| less interaction?
|
| More live TV/streaming series than movies, IMHO.
|
| How many times have you heard someone say they just
| finished watching $SERIES and will miss their TV friends?
|
| And with OnlyFans (I'm guessing here, as I don't use the
| platform), at least the sexual stuff there (is there
| other stuff?) it's like going to a strip club, except
| it's all recorded (and sometimes? mostly? more explicit)
| and instead of dollar bills in the garters, it's
| tips/subscriptions.
| Groxx wrote:
| On the assumption that there is a _relationship_
| (believed to be) involved: yeah, I would say so.
| Streamers (often) have a chat, _actual interaction_ is
| possible in a way movies do not allow.
|
| The closest equivalent you would get with a movie is to
| send fan-mail and get a response. Which people do, but I
| think it's safe to claim the frequency is much lower.
| jandrese wrote:
| I think the size of the crowd matters here. Streaming
| feels more personal because you are doing it by yourself
| and the total number of people watching the same stream
| is probably quite small. You could even message them and
| they might respond. It's more personal than watching a
| movie or TV show. On a slightly grosser level you know
| deep down that there is zero chance of ever hooking up
| with Megan Fox, but with a random OF model that feels
| like it might be possible. Even if it really isn't.
|
| An interesting comparison is K-Pop singers who are at the
| same time megastars with millions of devoted followers,
| but also carefully managed to always seem available for a
| relationship. A truly difficult bridge to cross, but they
| somehow do it and make bank.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| You can like Ryan Gosling and catch every movie he's in.
| But if you're buying a tabloid so you can see photos of
| him getting coffee at Starbucks, that's parasocial.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It is also parasocial if you just like Ryan Gosling and
| watch all his movies. You still have one-way feelings for
| a personality. It is just that it is not pathological.
|
| Parasocial relationships are not bad per se. Let's say
| you are thinking about Donald Knuth when working on a
| computer science problem, nothing bad here, taking
| inspiration from the leaders in the field. But it is also
| a parasocial relationship, it is like imagining Don Knuth
| next to you, helping you solve your problem, even though
| he has absolutely no idea about who you are. It is a one
| way connection, but here, it is actually productive.
| Maxatar wrote:
| Well movies, tabloids and radio/music were the original
| mediums used to study parasocial relationships in the
| 50s.
|
| Whether it's more or less parasocial than live streaming
| has more to do with quantity and access than it does the
| specific form of media.
| deepsun wrote:
| But then what's the difference between live streaming and
| recordings? There's some magic in live streams -- people
| prefer to watch boring live streams instead of hand-picked
| recorded videos of best games/conversations/jokes.
| danudey wrote:
| Is this true, or anecdotal?
|
| Personally, every time I decide "I'm going to check out
| this streamer's live stream" I always end up joining at
| some point where they're getting set up, they're taking a
| break, they're reading chat, they're eating soup... I've
| never actually tuned into a livestream I'm actually
| interested in.
|
| Meanwhile, RTGame was one of the first gaming content
| creators I ever subscribed to, and all of his content is
| his twitch livestreams edited down to actually
| interesting clips or sections.
| kyle-rb wrote:
| I think different people prefer different things, and
| also different creators provide different things.
|
| I enjoy smaller Twitch channels where the chat isn't
| going 1000mph because you can actually chat with other
| viewers. There's definitely a parasocial element if the
| streamer reads your message, but it's more that it's an
| online community with shared references and in-jokes.
|
| Also the people I follow are mostly part-time streamers
| doing 3-4 hour streams a few nights per week, so they
| don't need many breaks like the ones doing all-day
| streams.
| jajko wrote:
| There is generally a TON of money to be made in live
| streaming in porn. A friend of mine, way before current
| gen of social media, bought 2 apartments and a sports car
| doing exactly that.
|
| I'd say the audience willing to pay extra for that is
| very limited, especially once you move to lets say a very
| niche stuff, but oh boy they paid a ton. Live also means
| 2-way interaction, additional added value (and price).
| vasco wrote:
| Do you believe all livestreaming platforms combined have
| more views than youtube sans-livestream videos? I highly
| doubt that.
| setgree wrote:
| Regarding parasocial relationships in general, I like [0]:
|
| > a few exceptional people (many of them imaginary) get far
| more love than most people need or can enjoy.
|
| > This seems an essential tragedy of the human condition.
| You might claim that love isn't a limited resource, that
| the more people each of us love, the more love we each have
| to give out. So there is no conflict between loving popular
| and imaginary people and loving the rest of us. But while
| this might be true at some low scales of how many people we
| love, at the actual scales of love this just doesn't seem
| right to me. Love instead seems scarce at the margin.
|
| > Please, someone thoughtful and clever, figure out how we
| might all be much loved.
|
| [0] https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/alas-unequal-lovehtml
| infinitezest wrote:
| You mention that OPs conclusion Doesn't align with the stats,
| but then you only provide a single data point. Are there
| other stats that you were referring to?
| qingcharles wrote:
| OK fair point, but all the other creators she speaks to say
| the exact same thing. Nobody talks.
|
| But that really reflects the Internet in general. How many
| people browse HN vs. vote vs. comment?
| tonymet wrote:
| Do you pay ?
| golergka wrote:
| > I have a friend who is a successful OF model and only a
| fraction of one percent of her subscribers ever DM her.
|
| I have a friend who produces a few successful OF models and
| makes about 5-10x a good SF tech salary. He has a whole army
| of sexters who impersonate models and DM with fans. Vast
| majority of his income comes not from subscriptions, but from
| content sold in these DMs, content which is presented as
| "exclusive" to the buyer.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| > clearly it's not about the content per see which is a dim a
| dozen and available for free in trove.
|
| The free stuff isn't always as good, especially if you want
| something of a specific niche (fursuits, cosplay, etc). A lot
| of creators only upload cut-down vidros or "trailers" to free
| sites with a link to their OF.
|
| At least in my case, I simply see it like the Patreon model. I
| like supporting some of my favorite artists, especially with
| something like an ongoing comic series I'll get previews of and
| vote on polls to influence. Onlyfans is the same if I
| particularly like some creator. It's great that we can directly
| support content creators of all kinds now.
| marxisttemp wrote:
| I feel this way about strip clubs. I'm pretty libertine and
| think that if you can make money dancing naked, more power to
| ya, but the few times I've been dragged to a strip club all I
| can focus on is the clientele who as you say largely seem to be
| chasing this dark, parasocial connection that can never be what
| they need it to be.
| morkalork wrote:
| Burlesque shows are a 100% more fun than an actual strip club
| especially if they incorporate some good ol slapstick
| vaudeville routines in between the strip teases. The audience
| is also way less greasy.
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| At least at a strip club you know what you're getting. After
| what I've seen in group therapy, I'd prefer a strip club to a
| church.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This has been true since television. My parents have nearly
| zero community but watch TV all day.
| sesm wrote:
| > clearly it's not about the content per see which is a dim a
| dozen and available for free in trove.
|
| I think there is a darker side there: many of those subscribers
| are minors, who discover this kind of content for the first
| time. That's why OF models stream on Twitch to expand their
| audience, there are plenty of kids who came there for
| Minecraft, but will end up subscribing to OF with mom's credit
| card.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| So we should have a service, instead, that pairs up horny
| teenagers or puts them in group settings where they can
| explore their sexuality in a more directly social way? Or
| what do you suggest, that they don't have an outlet for these
| urges?
| sesm wrote:
| I don't think I have a solution. I'm sure that Twitch is
| fully aware of this and gets their cut from OF
| subscriptions that came from Twitch links.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| I have always advocated for legally regulated sex work
| that is provided to the population for free or a very low
| price through a scheme like national or universal heath
| care, which would immediately solve all problems related
| to sexual frustration and social isolation, but I think
| the christian conservatives would rather have school
| shootings and OnlyFans
| naming_the_user wrote:
| A more accurate description I think is that "we" have
| bifurcated. It's another element of political division.
|
| Almost everyone I know thinks that things like OnlyFans are
| embarrassing at best, and disgusting at worst. Sure, most of us
| look at porn, but admitting that you've paid for it and
| _especially_ admitting that you have a "favourite camgirl" or
| whatever would be properly cringe.
| derdi wrote:
| > [...] for parasocial relationships. Because clearly it's not
| about the content per see which is a dim a dozen and available
| for free in trove.
|
| I think you're making assumptions about people's motivations
| that aren't consistent with evidence.
|
| Pornhub and similar sites are full of content that is a dime a
| dozen and available for free and does not suggest any kind of
| "parasocial" relationship with the viewer. It's just two or
| more people fucking. And it's the same as it was ten years ago.
| And yet... More of that content keeps being made. Porn
| production companies exist. Pornstars making money for fucking
| on camera exist. Clearly there are people willing to pay for
| new porn that will just end up on free-to-view sites anyway.
|
| Your mental model of "it's all about the parasocial
| relationship" doesn't explain these facts. Thus your mental
| model can't be the whole truth. I suspect it's at most a fairly
| small part of the truth.
| marcandre wrote:
| I think OP's point is that people aren't (directly) paying
| for Pornhub, although I realize some people are paying some
| site that make porn, but the amounts remain smaller than what
| people pay directly on OF.
| kreims wrote:
| The disturbing societal implications speak for themselves.
| Personally, I suspect a significant fraction of transactions on
| Only Fans or "influencer" platforms are money laundering or
| social engineering campaigns by deeply resourced actors. There
| may be a large number of clients that are bots making random
| subscriptions to keep the network alive and large enough to
| make moving targeted funds harder to observe.
|
| A plausible scenario might be an FBI agent paying a
| confidential informant without creating an unexplained income
| stream. The FBI and friends disclosed spending around $0.5B on
| informants. The truth could be more. We don't know what other
| agencies around the world spend. I imagine they aren't putting
| cash in brown bags under park benches.
| thefounder wrote:
| You would be surprised how many people pay for OF content.
| The novelty is that the clients are picked using mainstream
| social media. Most actually believe they talk with the
| influencer while in reality the "influencer" doesn't even
| know where its content is distributed(not that she cares).
| Chatters and voice-overs are the norm.
| duckmysick wrote:
| To clarify, in this scenario, the confidential informant
| would be a streamer or an influencer - a person that has a
| sizeable following, operates in public, and creates a lot of
| attention? And that there's a large network of such
| informants and none of them were compromised (had their true
| nature exposed in public)?
| riedel wrote:
| It is equally disturbing if museums see themselves forced to to
| move to forced to only fans in protest because of prudish US
| corps governing the web [0]. I think if there would be more
| middle ground it would be less of a business model.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28887142
| swozey wrote:
| I have an onlyfans and I constantly see people talking about
| this parasocial relationship thing and how people are managing
| accounts. Maybe for the big people but I know a lot of onlyfans
| models by way of working in the industry for 20 years. My first
| sysadmin job was for a porn company where I interacted with
| talent a lot. I don't know anyone amateur with social media
| management.
|
| Anyway, a lot of people who have never used the site before
| think it's mostly what you said. It's not. The parasocial stuff
| is tiny unless you're doing specific kinks for people.
|
| What I tell most people not familiar with the industry is that
| it's usually more like seeing someone in real life (NOT a porn
| star, celeb, etc, amateurs only) that you've got a crush on
| naked for only $10/mo. It has the amateur thing a lot of people
| love. Another reddit comment is always "Why pay when porn is
| free?" Have you never had a crush on someone? And amateur porn
| is probably the biggest "kink" I feel weird even calling it a
| kink, I'm practically on the "who doesnt like amateur porn??"
| end.
|
| That's 90% of the customers. Lots of people who think a
| youtuber or instagram or whatever not professionally showing
| themselves off is just hot and want to see them naked.
|
| I've never spoken to a single customer. I'm a straight man and
| most of mine are men and I have no interest or desperation for
| money to do para/kink stuff.
|
| I really don't get why so many people think onlyfans is about
| messaging talent back and forth. It's kind of annoying to
| constantly read because it always comes from non-OF users who
| have this weird morality/ethics problem with sex work. It makes
| no sense if you know anything about porn. Most people jack off
| in silence and close their laptop and there aren't thousands of
| onlyfans models with media managers. Most are 18-25yo women who
| work corporate jobs or bartenders and have their own life to
| live. They treat it like youtube, upload content a few times a
| week and never look at messages.
|
| Don't kink shame, stop with the "I don't know why anyone uses
| this instead of that, you're a loser if you pay for porn"
| thing. You like what you like, other people like what they
| like.
| mcphage wrote:
| > Because clearly it's not about the content per see which is a
| dim a dozen and available for free in trove.
|
| Naked people aren't fungible.
| sharpshadow wrote:
| It's crazy right!? Sex sells everywhere. I've read or listend
| to a idea that because sex is strongly regulated in the US
| there is more happening in the hidden.
|
| Edit: Maybe there is a correlation between Gamers and Porn.
| Rapzid wrote:
| It's particularly bad with Twitch and YouTube streams IMHO. The
| economics and experience of being in a large stream chat is
| depressing.
|
| The entire system is geared around feeling unheard, unseen and
| paying to be heard or seen.
|
| 20k people shouting into a a void. Paying to get a badge
| signaling you subscribed. Paying to highlight messages hoping
| they are read. Hanging on for that hope this popular person
| gives you 10 seconds of attention.
|
| That's the reality of the depressing industry. And that's how
| the streamers and steaming providers like it. Ever wonder why
| the stream chat experience has never been improved? ;)
|
| Oh, and the toxic communities it breeds.
| Muromec wrote:
| So the internet enshittified even the idea of strip clubs.
| Now that's an achievement.
| paxys wrote:
| > The company counted an average of only 42 employees in 2023,
| down from 61 two years earlier. During the year, it generated
| $31MM in net revenue per employee (13-28x that of Amazon, Apple,
| Google, and Microsoft) and $15.5MM in operating profit (27-560x).
|
| This is the wildest part. One company that is proving all the
| "why does <company> need 10000 engineers?" takes true.
| PUSH_AX wrote:
| It's easy to say this without knowing what is suffering as a
| result.
| paxys wrote:
| What is suffering as a result?
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| The all important 99.99% uptime with a P99.9 request
| latency of 10ms globally? As you know, porn sites have a
| strict SLA that not even AWS has to meet.
|
| ...but as others pointed out there I'm sure there is an
| army of contractors that don't factor into any headcount
| figure. Which doesn't at all subtract from the insane
| revenue per employee figure.
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| They employ hundreds of contractors to run the operations.
| preciousoo wrote:
| It could be compliance/moderation efforts, this is not
| specified
| jandrese wrote:
| If that's true then the statement is basically an accounting
| lie.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| It is
| almatabata wrote:
| It does not. These companies do not even work in the same
| problem space. Amazon works in retail, cloud, book publishing,
| etc. Microsoft maintains their own cloud as well and a complete
| operating system.
|
| At least compare it to companies with similar businesses. I
| would argue twitch seems closer. I think they had over 1000
| employees. You would have a better point with that comparison
| if you would want to make that argument.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm going to say more or less the same thing in a different
| way. As you scale up to do more and different things, your
| efficiency at some level is going to go down. Maybe way down.
| xyst wrote:
| OF revolves around a single product
|
| AWS/GCP/Azure manage physical data centers across the globe,
| and includes hundreds of services/offerings on each platform.
|
| Additionally, critical industries (hospitals, banks, airlines)
| often rely on these companies to be available/resilient at all
| times. Thus the need for increased global workforce. OF on the
| other hand, nobody is going to die if they can't access the
| feet pics they bought for a few minutes or days.
|
| You are not comparing the same companies.
| strken wrote:
| > This is the wildest part. One company that is proving all the
| "why does <company> need 10000 engineers?" takes true.
|
| Generally speaking, <company> needs <number> engineers because
| it's rational to keep hiring while each incremental engineer
| generates more value than they cost in salary and overhead,
| even if some of those engineers are at less than 50%
| utilisation and have to generate pointless make-work for
| themselves to get past performance review.
| kragen wrote:
| that sounds like a path to an unsustainable situation where
| your company is run by socially adept fratboys and
| charismatic politicians instead of hackers, with company
| leadership insulated from actual facts on the ground by many
| layers of middle managers with strong incentives to lie? even
| if those incremental engineers are generating more value at
| first, they won't be able to continue doing so when most of
| the company exists to defend their pointless make-work. the
| people who leave first won't be the ones spending their time
| on pointless make-work
| lukas099 wrote:
| I feel a leaner company would better survive a downturn,
| though. Fewer layoffs and disruption.
| michaelt wrote:
| Revenue per employee isn't a useful metric here IMHO.
|
| If Company A sells $100M of televisions which they imported for
| $95M they've made $5M in profit.
|
| If Company B sells $100M of search ads which they served for
| $1M they've made $99M in profit.
|
| From a revenue perspective they're equal - but $1M invested in
| Company A produces a 5% return on investment, while the same
| $1M invested in Company B has a 9900% ROI.
| finnh wrote:
| The quoted section is about net revenue, which in this
| article means total revenue minus the payouts to creators. In
| other worse, revenue minus COGS. It's a valid comparison.
| michaelt wrote:
| Ah, you're right. I confused the quoted section with the
| second paragraph and first two charts of the article, which
| are throwing around billions and comparing to the NBA based
| on gross revenue.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| My gut feeling is this number doesn't match our assumptions.
|
| For instance moderation and community management alone must be
| a huge pool of people. While the content and comments can be
| adult, they'll need to deal with all the payment related back
| and forth, including chargebacks, legal inquiries etc. Same for
| doxxing, underage filtering, spam and so on.
|
| I assume most if not all of it is a different company which
| isn't counted in the 42 employees.
|
| Of course engineering can be treated the same, with sub-
| contracting companies dealing with the actual running of the
| service or part of the developement.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| ...and of course, the actual content isn't being created by
| employees.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Moderation and CM will be contractors.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| The articles say they have 100s of contractors all over. My
| guess is they are not reporting their true "headcount" by
| claiming those are not employees
| jandrese wrote:
| Where labor costs really start to skyrocket is when you start
| trying to moderate content and keep the porn bots from invading
| your site. OF probably spends little in doing this. It is
| remarkable that they've been able to keep their payment
| processors happy despite the distinct possibility that a number
| of the performers are underage and a huge legal liability.
| Clearly with a staff that small they aren't doing the most
| extensive background checks.
| AzzyHN wrote:
| OF makes one product, and that product is maintaining a
| particular platform, that's why they don't need tons of
| engineers. They've just got to be a more attractive platform
| than their competition, and the money keeps coming in.
| RevEng wrote:
| They mention having hundreds of contractors. Just because
| workers aren't full time employees doesn't mean they don't work
| for the company. Construction and sales are often done by
| "independent contractors". This reduces the requirements for
| the employers, working around many labor laws like overtime and
| paid leave. Google is known for doing this a lot.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > These reports, which have not been independently verified, show
| her lifetime gross billings exceed $70 million, with Bhabie
| collecting $57 million. Over half of revenues were generated via
| paid messages with individual users (which may include custom
| audio-visual content).
|
| I can see how 10's of thousands of people paying $25 a month can
| generate millions but $25M on private messages in a year is over
| $70K a day - how many is she doing or how much do they cost each?
| isolli wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > In many cases, the responses are actually written by a member
| of the creator's extended team - remember, many of these
| creators are now multi-million dollar enterprises, and its
| obviously impossible for creators such as Bhad Bhabie to engage
| in detailed and personalized conversations with their scores of
| VIP subscribers - though this alleged subterfuge has resulted
| in some legal action.
| kragen wrote:
| i don't see why it would be impossible to engage in detailed
| and personalized conversations with scores of subscribers? a
| one-on-one detailed and personalized conversation might
| require half an hour, and if you're an extraverted person you
| can probably spend ten hours a day doing this, which is a
| score of people every day. in a 28-day month you could then
| engage in detailed and personalized conversations with 560
| subscribers, which boosts the number from 'scores' to
| 'hundreds'
|
| if you're talking to them in some kind of textual instant
| messenger, rather than over the phone or video chat, you can
| probably maintain two to four detailed and personalized
| conversations at a time, which would boost that number into
| the low thousands
|
| you're just conversing with people, not fucking them, and
| there are in fact real-life prostitutes who serve scores of
| clients per month
|
| still i'd probably agree if ball had said 'thousands'. but
| 'scores' sounds easy
| qingcharles wrote:
| On OF the creators use private messaging sell what is known as
| PPV (pay-per-view). They upsell things that aren't available
| with the subscription, such as more intimate videos. Often they
| will sell custom created content. I know one woman who charges
| $800 for a single custom photo.
| darepublic wrote:
| > Usually, such a ban would destroy a media platforms' business
| model, but browser-based experiences are fine for viewing photos
| and videos and sending messages (in contrast, most games can't
| even run). And while apps tend to offer better user experiences
| and far simpler payment processes, most OnlyFans customers aren't
| dissuaded by the need to use a browser, nor the extra hoops
| involved in manually entering a credit card number
|
| This is a baffling section where the author goes out of their way
| to bash browsers vs apps. Maybe there are a lot of cons to apps
| that browsers don't have. Basically all of the sleights against
| browsers in this section are not true. When I buy something from
| amazon, from my browser, I definitely do not need to manually
| enter my credit card in every time.
| prox wrote:
| Yeah, browsers to me represent freedom against locked
| in/tracking of apps. I rejoice browsers every day.
| eastbound wrote:
| Browsers are multitasking, phones are slow-loading single
| screens at a time.
|
| For me, iPhone feels like surfing the web with a 46kbauds
| modem. Single page at a time. Want to load two? IT RELOADS.
| beeflet wrote:
| > most games can't even run
|
| Eh, with WebGL and WebRTC maybe. The problem is input
| brikym wrote:
| Android has shown PWAs can work fine for most applications.
| Apps are only a big deal because Apple cripples PWAs.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Websites also never throw up a dialog saying "This app has
| expired. Please update it to continue."
|
| Almost all my apps do this to me about once a month.
|
| [Obviously I don't let Android update my apps automatically in
| the background. That way lies madness.]
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Had a big bank's app force me to update. Ok, updated it.
|
| Ok, looks like a total UI refresh.
|
| Tried to schedule a bill payment (which previous version
| could do, uhh, for 10y+) and threw a dialog saying "coming
| soon".
| bartread wrote:
| I don't know that there are that many downsides to apps _for
| users_. Certainly as an iPhone owner I get little anxiety about
| installing apps from Apple 's app store[0] and, for the most
| part, they offer a good experience - often better than the web.
| The ones that don't, I simply uninstall.
|
| Cost can be a downside, of course.
|
| For vendors the obvious downside is the Apple/Google tax, and
| is something even we need to be wary of at the company I work
| for.
|
| But it's not the only downside.
|
| I work for a company that offers a service via the web but,
| recently, we wanted to prototype some functionality that would
| exclusively be used from mobile and tablet. It uses the camera,
| does some nifty stuff with AI (and, to be clear, no, it's not a
| porn app!), etc., and I thought well, why not prototype it with
| and app? And, furthermore, why not prototype it as a native app
| with Swift? This should be the lowest friction route to
| ddeveloping and deploying an app to iOS, has full access to the
| platform's extensive built-in capabilities, and therefore it
| would offer the best user experience, etc.
|
| And I've always been happy to sacrifice a quantity of developer
| convenience for the sake of offering a better user experience.
| At the end of the day if we, as engineers, wanted easy jobs we
| picked the wrong career: we should be aiming to make the lives
| of our users easier and more productive, and that's often
| really challenging.
|
| And I'll tell you what: as far as it goes, if I didn't need the
| app to interact with anything outside of Apple's platform I
| might still use Swift. It's a nice language, and whilst XCode
| feels a bit like it Deloreaned in from 2005, it isn't
| completely terrible.
|
| But that's not our app. It needs to integrate with a bunch of
| other services and here is where the pain kicked in. Swift and
| iOS are absolutely the poor cousins when it comes to library
| and API support. For so many things I wanted to do libraries
| were incomplete, and documentation was... well, it ranged from
| non-existent to wrong in critical aspects.
|
| And because Swift is niche (relatively speaking) it's very
| evident that it doesn't have the kind of mature ecosystem,
| thought leadership or best practices around it that the likes
| of C++, Java, C#, Python, and others do. I might be speaking
| out of turn here but I also get the vibe that it doesn't
| attract the kind of best of breed practitioners that other more
| niche development platforms have, which yields better library
| and API support for them even though they don't necessarily
| have huge developer bases: think Go, Rust, Flutter, etc.
|
| I don't want to denigrate Swift because, as a language in
| isolation, I liked it (even though it's Objective C
| underpinnings are never far from showing themselves). But as a
| development experience, it was a complete nightmare. Outside of
| functionality that depended only on the device itself I
| struggled to get anything working well.
|
| You could put this down to, well, you're new to the platform,
| what do you expect? But I was able to otherwise be immediately
| productive in Python 18 months ago when I started working with
| it, and didn't run into these kinds of frustrations.
|
| In the end I literally got to the point of, screw this, let's
| just use web, or maybe a hybrid app with the thinnest of thin
| native wrappers, or maybe flutter. But not native, no way.
|
| _[0] I say little anxiety rather than no anxiety because I 'm
| not generally a fan of free apps the serve ads, where you don't
| really know what's on the other end, or how they might be
| tracking you, and often the UX is such that it's made a bit
| easier than one might ideally like to accidentally click an
| ad._
| d_burfoot wrote:
| The widespread impact of the OF economy is obvious to many gym-
| goers. At my local gym you can see the usual assortment of
| bodybuilding guys (same as it's been for decades), and then you
| can see 2-3 girls who are clearly trying to make it into the top
| 0.1% of hotness so they can cash in on OF (or maybe Instagram).
| This latter group is a recent phenomenon.
| malfist wrote:
| Why do you assume women in gyms are trying to make money on
| OnlyFans?
| ronsor wrote:
| There is a new-ish phenomenon of some women going to the gym,
| setting up suspiciously placed cameras, and then uploading to
| TikTok (or Instagram or OF) with complaints that the people
| in the background - who do not want to be recorded - are
| "staring."
|
| It is usually obvious what they're doing. It's not merely
| "there are women in the gym."
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| I'm sure that is a trend that came and went though. You can
| only manufacture so much of the same rage bait before it
| loses its potency. I'm sure this group of people moved into
| suspiciously placed cameras in the produce isle or maybe
| gas station or something.
| jeffhuys wrote:
| You're sure... well... not sure enough I guess. It still
| happens a lot, at least where I go
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Sure, but that doesn't inform you of what percent of women
| in the gym filming themselves are doing it for rage bait.
|
| Some might just want to check out their form. Or upload an
| inspirational workout video.
| codingdave wrote:
| I'm not sure what gyms you frequent, but I've always seen more
| women in the gym than men, and we're talking since the 80s.
| Women in gyms is not the slightest bit a new thing.
| Mashimo wrote:
| Wat?
|
| I know girls who go the the gym. They work in IT and are not OF
| girls. They just want to stay healthy. People also don't smoke
| any more as much, and gen z drinks less alcohol then the other
| generations.
| rybosworld wrote:
| It does seem like the business preys on, primarily teenage boys,
| in a way that traditional pornography does not.
|
| If you look up the user demographics, you'll notice an obvious
| problem: The demographics do not include the number of users
| under 18.
|
| https://techreport.com/statistics/software-web/onlyfans-stat...
|
| Some may say: well that's because you have to be 18 to use the
| site. But that's not true. Anyone can signup for onlyfans without
| entering their age. Onlyfans only does age verification for
| creators.
|
| If you think this site isn't primarily being used by teenagers,
| then I have a bridge to sell you.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _preys on_
|
| What do you mean by "preys on"? Teenage boys seek out porn, is
| normal. There's nothing magical about _this_ type of porn. If
| they are breaking the ToS and committing credit card fraud, who
| 's at fault?
| rybosworld wrote:
| The preying on part, is imo, the para-social relationships
| that creators form with users.
|
| Society figured out a long time ago that teenagers are
| susceptible to being taken advantage of by adults. It's why
| every modern nation has age of consent laws.
|
| But onlyfans circumvents that. Creators interact with users,
| and the users, mostly teenagers, can interact back. This
| happens on twitch as well, and twitch is used as a funnel for
| onlyfans.
|
| I think it's hard to argue that there isn't a fundamental
| difference between:
|
| - watching recorded porn
|
| - a social media platform that allows pornstars to chat with
| and perform private shows for users, who have a high chance
| of being under 18
| neilv wrote:
| Interesting. I wouldn't have guessed teens would have the
| money. I'd have guessed the cash cows would be adult, well-
| employed.
|
| But if it's a common scenario for an adult OF creator to be
| sexually interacting with an underage teenager online (and,
| really, "grooming" them), are we going to start seeing life-
| ruining prosecutions of creators?
|
| Incidentally including subpoenas of lists of creators and
| consumers, for additional chilling effect on both?
|
| If so, could that kill OF's business, at least for Western
| creators, as well as for some consumers?
|
| And if OF ends up with creators mostly in non-Western
| countries, with a reputation for preying upon UK/US/etc. teens
| (and maybe even reports of human trafficking, and/or funding
| sanctioned parties), will OF be banned in many Western
| countries? Maybe the most lucrative ones?
|
| Separate from serious questions about what's ethical and
| healthy for everyone, given that the topic is OF's economics, I
| wonder whether they're making so much money because they're too
| close to the line of what's legally sustainable.
| rybosworld wrote:
| Teens will always find a way to spend money, with or without
| their parents knowing. I can remember when it was possible to
| rent adult videos on HBO. It would charge to your parents
| credit card but that only matters if they check their bill
| and many people do not.
|
| I wouldn't venture to say what percentage of the income is
| coming from users are the under age of 18, beyond that is
| certainly a number larger than $0.
|
| > But if it's a common scenario for an adult OF creator to be
| sexually interacting with an underage teenager online (and,
| really, "grooming" them), are we going to start seeing life-
| ruining prosecutions of creators?
|
| This more or less happens on twitch.tv with alarming
| frequency. The hot tub streams are not much different than
| soft core imo. And users will get shoutouts and prizes (in
| the form of writing the users name on the streamers body) for
| sending money. It's all done in a way that's nearly
| impossible to attribute wrong doing to creators, though.
| tonymet wrote:
| i appreciate your raising awareness here. this is one of many
| harms
| luizfzs wrote:
| I know it is pedantic, but could someone please enlighten me as
| to where does MM means millions?
|
| It's so easy to stick to international units, folks. Please.
| PLEASE!
| foobarian wrote:
| Wait until we need to talk about billions!
| quectophoton wrote:
| How to forget one of the holy wars of natural languages, with
| half the world using it to mean "one million million", and
| the other half using it to mean "one thousand million".
|
| Still less confusing than "mph" (I _always_ read it as
| "meters per hour" and have to go back to correct myself).
| quectophoton wrote:
| > It's so easy to stick to international units, folks.
|
| It's not as easy as you might think, given how many places I've
| seen that measure weight in Kelvin-grams (Kg).
| CryptoBanker wrote:
| M is 1,000 in Roman numerals. MM is short for M*M, so 1,000 *
| 1,000 = 1,000,000 or MM.
|
| The M lives on in languages like Spanish where the word mil
| means one thousand.
| luizfzs wrote:
| This somewhat misses the point of my comment, tough. The post
| was written in English, so one should stick to how English
| represents millions.
|
| Based on that, I can say `1.000.000` is equal to MM because
| Brazil uses `.` to separate groups of 3 digits, and `,` to
| separate integer and decimal parts.
|
| My point is to stick to using the units the language you're
| writing on uses.
|
| Btw, thanks for explaining the origin of MM! I definitely
| didn't know that.
| luizfzs wrote:
| I'm amending this because I've found that MM is commonly used
| in finance, so it's not like the author chose to go rogue.
|
| Also
|
| > It's so easy to stick to international units, folks. Please.
| PLEASE!
|
| should be to stick to the language's usage of units. Not
| necessarily international units.
|
| Even though the comment doesn't exactly apply now that I know
| MM can be used in finance, but I wanted to correct it to have a
| broader coverage.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| _As an aside: OnlyFans 80% revenue share rate is practical only
| because it does not offer App Store-based billing (which would
| take 15-30% of revenue off the top). In fact, neither iOS App
| Store nor Google's Play Store even allow for pornographic apps.
| Usually, such a ban would destroy a media platforms' business
| model, but browser-based experiences are fine for viewing photos
| and videos and sending messages (in contrast, most games can't
| even run). And while apps tend to offer better user experiences
| and far simpler payment processes, most OnlyFans customers aren't
| dissuaded by the need to use a browser, nor the extra hoops
| involved in manually entering a credit card number (again, this
| is less true for casual games or ecommerce)._
|
| IMO the lede is a bit buried within the article. The idea that a
| non-app could survive this well within the strangling iOS system
| should come as a revelation to the greater iOS community.
| Animats wrote:
| So this is a VC writing, observing that they have a stable,
| profitable business model. Creators get 80% of revenue, which is
| pretty good. It creates a moat - nobody taking a bigger cut is
| likely to get the desirable talent. Most of the creators don't
| make much, which is normal for creative industries. Music and
| books work that way.
|
| OnlyFans has only about 42 employees. They didn't hire a bloated
| staff. That's impressive considering the sheer volume of content
| that passes through their servers.
|
| It looks like OnlyFans has figured out how to do the porno
| business in a more or less legit way. So what's the problem?
| kragen wrote:
| problem? ball seems to approve, terming it 'stunning',
| 'probably the most successful uk company founded since
| deepmind', 'the most significant media platform founded since
| tiktok', and says that on onlyfans 'creators and pornstars
| alike can make more money, in a safer way, while having greater
| autonomy and offering audiences experiences that feel more
| authentic, differentiated, and valuable'
|
| were you replying to someone else making a comment attacking
| onlyfans?
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| reading this thread, I am once again reminded that analogies are
| bad and that we should stop using them
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| My intuition makes me suspect that some money laundering must be
| taking place via OnlyFans donations.
| tonymet wrote:
| Hackernews must have a low moral bar. All it takes is a flashy
| financial statement and tech company image to absolve OF . Either
| the forum lacks any ethical standards, or the people here are so
| porn addicted they've lost critical reasoning.
|
| It's one thing to shill for tech propaganda and surveillance apps
| because the pay is good. In this case Hackernews community is
| shilling for e-pimping.com . Disgusting.
| tstrimple wrote:
| We just don't find your moralizing to be useful or interesting.
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