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.
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.
> 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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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)
> 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?
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
> 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.
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.
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
> 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'
Honestly, it seems like you're conflating many different things (e.g. the "mileage" thing above, "purity rings," and the pejorative connotation of "sell your body") into a single artificial whole that doesn't actually exist as such. I'd grant the "mileage" thing is probably clearly a part of some "misogynistic ideology," but not the other two. The Wikipedia page on "purity rings" lists examples of male (now) celebrities who once wore them. The idea of "selling your body" being pejorative connects to the idea of commerce being corrupting (which is seen elsewhere, such at the concept of "selling out") and I don't think male prostitutes would be seen any more favorably than female ones.
you have some good points, and i appreciate the exchange
one clarification, though: i wasn't talking about the pejorative connotation of "selling your body", but rather the idea that a prostitution transaction amounts to a sale of a physical good (a body) rather than a rental of the good (and a sale of a service). to be coherent, this entails the premise that the sexual encounter leaves that good seriously and irreversibly damaged—and that the prostitute's client is not similarly damaged. indeed, a weak implication is that he benefits from the transaction
as for male prostitutes, part of the same meme-complex in many cultures is that being penetrated is what damages and degrades you; this is often bound up with ideas of male superiority, because the male role in vanilla penis-in-vagina intercourse is the role of the penetrator. in other cultural contexts, what's considered degrading is sex with men, who are of course almost always the clients of male prostitutes. but i agree that there is a lot of variation
there is also a lot of variation between people, and someone might be fertile ground for the 'purity ring' meme not because they feel that sex degrades women (or penetratees) but because it's just dirty and impure all around. this is the underlying metaphor for idioms like 'taint' (as a synonym for 'genitalia'), 'dirty joke', 'dirty old man', and so on. but you may be aware that boys wearing 'purity rings' is kind of a man-bites-dog phenomenon, rare enough to draw comment. the wikipedia article says that it became the 'focus of media attention' on the jonas brothers (the celebrities you mention)
someone who finds sex repulsive might be relationship material, but not for a conventional allosexual monogamous relationship. they could work well with an asexual partner or a polyamorous partner
It's always fascinating to see the working assumption that women are somehow indifferent to these issues. As though being a sex worker is fine as a man.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
\1 Real life identification via images posted online.
This can happen to anyone and more specifically it has a very high chance of happening to people who use OnlyFans and think they'll remain unknown - which runs counter to the opinion expressed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41529846
[ .. Nobody will know who you are .. ] 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.
\2 Deep faking is increasing in frequency and has yet to be countered.
This offers actual OnlyFans creators an "out" if they wish to have lives seperate to their OF persona's - they can claim anything dug up to be a deepfake (in the absence of any contrary metadata that's definitive).
It's also something that will plague anyone with images online; it's probable that in the future people will pay as little attention to photorealistic videos of Margaret Thatcher blowing Ronald Reagan as they do those of the girl next door getting filthy with a centaur.
Steps are being taken to counter deep fakes, those steps will likely fail to some degree.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In the first case, someone is making decisions in their personal life which do not affect anyone else. They are not asking for special treatment, they are only asking that other people stay out of their private life. They also do not have any authority over other people and are not setting policies.
In the second case, someone is acting publicly to take away freedoms from other people even though their exercise of those freedoms had no impact on them personally. That person is also in a policy-making position over many affected people.
I think it’s reasonable to say that the two cases are different both due to the internal vs. external direction and the distinction and power differential.
>> 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.
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.
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.
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.
That seems like a false claim - that "advantageous" jobs are less likely to care. I'd argue people seeking high-visibility, high-prestige jobs are more at risk from backlash about having made porn. But thanks for playing.
Well there is some wiggle room here, public school teachers have more of these types of expectations than software engineers. It isn't just high-visibility jobs
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.
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
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.
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
> Progressives think you’re a horrible person if you take part in any kind of beauty pageant or other activity which causes objectification.
No, progressives in general don't. In fact, the assumption on which this attitude rests, that anything, particularly any clothing or activity of the target, causes objectification besides the choice of the objectifier is a conservative, victim-blaming viewpoint that is widely attacked by progressives.
thats what surprised me about the sf bay area’s “inclusion by exclusion” throughout last decade
there were some women that wanted to excise the presence of other women, because they (purportedly) felt that men didnt take them seriously after being around the other women. but thats a problem with the particular men?
it was masqueraded as progressive and was successful, they were the only women in tech representation and people didn't challenge the inconsistency
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.
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.
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.
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.
If transactional sex becomes the norm, while amorous sex becomes scarce, there a few unwanted consequences for the whole society. A few examples: the access to reproduction for the poor is decreased, men in particular feeling unwanted, unable to find a partner and in general feeling uninvested in the common good, which inevitably leads to violence. Yes, it is extreme, but incels in the Western world are a thing and so are 30 million Chinese men who will not have a partner because there are fewer women in that generation.
This is why in general it is frowned upon by "certain members of society" as you call them.
It isn't that sex itself is immoral. Sex work has a lot of different forms
Some forms are a lot more taxing on both mental and physical health (plus STD risk). OF doesn't have this same level of risk but people mentally lump it all together
The morals are there for a reason, they just lack nuance
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.
Are action or horror movies exploitation of the biological adrenaline drive? Every leisure activity is appealing to more than just hyper-rational thought.
>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.
I would find it very interesting if there was a study done on second order impacts of porn producers. I suspect the outcome would be the opposite of the assumed, as in I suspect the average creator has an above average outcome compare to others with similar demographic and social economic status.
I am reminded of the study done on the damaged goods hypothesis, which gave a negative on that hypothesis. Not only did porn actresses not have higher rate of childhood sexual abuse, but they rated higher than the average in terms of self-esteem, positive feelings, and social support. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23167939/)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
Is this non sequitur from a meconium account intended to convey a meaningful response, or is it a baby-bot randomly attaching nonsense to threads to establish a beachhead?
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.
> The prime suspect of the novel is a serial killer who cross-dresses.
And Barry Humphries is a beloved Australian entertainer who cross dresses. Neither are transgender.
Further, the prime suspect of the novel, Dennis Creed, is closely based on real life serial killers such as Angus Sinclair, Jerry Brudos, and Russell Williams who all share victim name details and traits with the fictional Creed, such as messing with bodies, fetishism, etc
None of these real life serial killers were trans gender, at least two cross dressed, and there are very few serial killers that lack a pathology.
There appears to be some in the world who will see a crime genre author write about a serial killer and immediately conclude that killer must be trans and some kind of transphobic stereotype.
I'm not one of those people.
FWiW I did vote for Leigh Varis-Beswick as mayor of Kalgoorlie but that was mainly due to her having some good ideas for change and having been a lifelong friend of my sister.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, but thats the point. How should I know. Its a matter of trust. If you have made decisions like that in the past, why should I trust you to have changed? People are deceptive. Better avoid the drama altogether.
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.
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.
It can only be used against you if people think it can be used against you.
Like, imagine a world where we said, " you flipped burgers in college? Eww gross, you've robbed your life!"
It sounds absurd because we've collectively decided one of those jobs is good and one is bad. We can collectively decide they are both fine, actually.
Also, if you're that model includes "random drug addict who is aware of my wife's porn career notices my wife, then chooses to act on it" I think your threat model may need revising. Yes, I'm sure that happens hundreds of times a year in the US. Driving a car to school seems statistically MUCH more dangerous.
> 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.
That line of reasoning tends to break down pretty quickly. Unless you're truly special, there are probably people out there who've done something so awful that you wouldn't date them despite the fact that they're "a person, same as me".
You missed my point. A lot of guys act like it somehow taints someone for life or repeat all the redpill 'pair bonding' nonsense, and don't judge people on their own merits.
You're not picking out make and model of a car, you're building a relationship with another person.
I don't know what "redpill 'pair bonding'" means because I'm old, so it's possible that I misunderstood. That said, I don't think it's far-fetched to assume that someone who willingly engages in prostitution (as a seller or a buyer) has a somewhat cynical and transactional relationship with sex, and I understand why many people might not like that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hahaha. For me, its the people that want to hold that information back which are toxic and manipulative like hell. Its simple. If you want to hide it, it was likely very bad and your partner should know. If you manage to hide it, you are the toxic person.
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?
Indeed, I would like to know if you have no problem killing kitten. That attitude is likely going to be an issue further down the road. Better get it settled now then later.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
>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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think you'll find that lots of people in non-sex-work, non-stigmatized, socially respected jobs feel like they were pressured into them and/or currently doing more of the work they are in than they'd like due to economic coercion.
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
> 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).
This is pretty illogical comparison. When we praise soldiers, we do it not for them getting paid for their bodies, but for hard work, and risks they take protecting us.
Considering the risk are bodily harm, there is some similarity to the risks of bodily harm that some sex workers take, and far more frequently, than soldiers. STDs, violent guys, etc etc.
> but for hard work
Do sex workers not work hard (pun potentially intended)? I don't see society praising them for their hard work and the risks they take.
>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.
> 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.
> Imo, money spent on weapons and the military could be better spent to build more social housing, solve healthcare problems, etc.
In an ideal world, 100% yes.
In our world, where every now and again a crazy power-hungry dictator appears and wages a war against a weaker country and is killing civilians - unfortunately it's a comfort we can't afford.
> again a crazy power-hungry dictator appears and wages a war against a weaker country
With the risk of being political, I see nothing "defensive" or moral about the military, even in the most advanced nations that are supposedly paragons of human rights.
Take the "dictator attacks weaker country" narrative. The NATO defensive alliance fits this narrative by providing weapons and military training to weaker Ukraine so it can defend itself against the aggression of bigger Russia. On the other hand, the same defensive alliance has no scruples to providing weapons to Israel so it can wipe out and cause immense suffering and casualties to Palestine, a weaker nation.
Which brings me to my conclusion that there is nothing inherently moral about the army, it's just a blunt instrument to do the government's bidding. Hence, I don't see military as our "protectors", but as the government's institutionalized thugs. I also don't see a reason for them to be lauded for their actions, as their actions are often immoral and sinister. I am talking things like the military secrets Assange unveiled, or the illegal treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo, or the sometimes indiscriminate bombings of civilians to hit 1 potential target.
And since they are not protecting me but the government's interests, I don't see a need to thank them for their service more than I see the need to thank bouncers at a disco I don't own for theirs.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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?
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.
While I agree with you in general, I see no way to actually sensibly enforce this. Whatever activity you take, it can be abused.
For example Google is abusing their position by feeding a stream of right-wing and related stuff to my mother because she clicked a Trump video a friend(?) sent her so that she watches more of this stuff, gets more negative emotions, and continues to spend her time on their site. Trying to regulate these things is terribly hard and whatever idea you come up with, the folks at big tech will find a way to go around them.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
> 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
The GP, trying to show how 'bad' profession A was, was making the argument that the average HN reader would look badly on his progeny participating in profession A. I simply made the argument that the average HN reader would also look badly on his progeny doing profession B. Obviously, my point is not to throw shit on profession B but rather show that GP's argument simply does not work.
The fact that you think profession B > A only reinforces my point and shows, precisely, that GP's argument does not work.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> I would like to see a future where someone doing sex work to make ends meet
It's better to have a future where people don't have to do SW to make ends meet
A future where more people get forced into sex work because of economic reasons is not desirable. Consider the diseases, conflict with cultural norms, potential for rape and abuse
Sex should be freely given. "Free laborers" aren't freely giving their labor, they're forced to for economic reasons
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
> 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).
>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.
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.
> 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!
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.
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).
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
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.
> If you sell your body, most societies will punish you.
No, if you sell sex, lots of societies will punish you. Selling or renting your body otherwise -- which a very large share of jobs involve just as much as sex work does -- is otherwise lauded.
> Thats fine, societies have all sorts of norms we all need to learn.
Lots of norms that societies have or historically have had would be better eliminated. That something is an existing norm isn't an argument in favor of it being a norm.
> 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
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.
> 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
The mistake you (and a lot of others are making) is that the people who didn’t make it just weren’t skilled enough.
That isn’t true - I think the people who don’t make it are massively skilled. It’s not random in the sense it’s just selecting randomly from the population. It’s random in the sense that there are 100 elite content producers but at any given moment there is only space for 10 of them.
Stephen King has a massive leg up for already having built the inroads for having a successful book. I think if you give any elite, yet unknown writer, the same tools, editor, and publisher they would succeed. But to truly succeed from nothing may just depend on going to school with someone who became an editor, or the editor’s daughter showing them a TikTok. That’s what is meant by it’s largely random.
> 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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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..."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think maybe it's my own personal bias, but it does feel like anyone who pays money for an AI girlfriend really won't want it to disagree with them. I believe they'll want an idyllic and fantasy version of a relationship.
AI girlfriend that always agree with you and never contradict anything you say isn't going to be as addicting as an AI girlfriend who on occasion disagree with you.
While I grant that some and perhaps even most people won't want the AI girlfriend to disagree, there are some out there who treat arguments as a necessary and desirable spice in a relationship.
That said, I can't really think of anything that would be worth arguing with an AI over.
you are saying that the ai gf will not be like a real human female, but you are not making any argument that there is a defect in the bf's attachment to the gf.
I'd say the set of people who want an AI girlfriend and the set of people whose defining trait is a lack of empathy is probably a bigger overlap than you think.
I don't see how this is true. I would expect a man who accepts female rejection and stick with AI to have more empathy than the women who rejected him, because e.g he is ugly.
Harassing men for their lack of dating success and ascribing negative personality traits simply because they are down on their luck makes them more resentful so you should stop doing that. It's called having empathy.
> I'd say the set of people who want an AI girlfriend and the set of people whose defining trait is a lack of empathy is probably a bigger overlap than you think.
The defining trait of people who want an AI girlfriend is ugly, lonely men.
Is lack of empathy the defining characteristic of ugly men?
Or is it simply that people in general hate ugly people and thus ascribe various ills and character faults to them?
I'd say the set of people that disparage undesirable lonely men that desire AI girlfriend are usually those whose defining trait is severe lack of empathy. This is blatantly obvious here.
I know plenty of ugly men in committed, loving relationships. You're the one bringing up looks. I don't think it matters what you look like; if you want to date a computer you have some kind of psychiactric disorder.
Ok, but then there is also the increasing number of women who don't want a boyfriend either because they want a same sex relationship or because they can't find a man on their educational level, since women graduate at a higher rate. The reason is mostly irrelevant, what matters is that supply and demand are imbalanced and one side has to deal with not getting what they want in one way or another.
Education level is less important than equality is.
Marriage is traditionally a terrible bargain for women, but it was the only choice they were allowed to make. Now, they can make their money and buy property and have kids on their own.
A lot of men haven't realized the era of the provider is over and dead, and they're now optional. They have to make women want to be with them, and a lot of women just aren't willing to compromise on equality these days.
It may seem like this makes sense, but in most places it's the opposite. Low income women are single mothers at a higher rate than women with high salaries.
In most western countries, low income women do not become much poorer if they become single mothers. In some places, it increases their living standards. But for upper middle class families, a breakup tends to be costly.
Also, there seems to be shared causal factors that lead to both stable relationships and financial stability. Such as impulse control, mental/physical health and the ability to postpone gratification.
You don't need a house to have kids. Plenty of people don't and they do just fine. And if they're choosing to have a kid on their own, they've planned out finances, too. Fertility treatments aren't cheap.
>lot of men haven't realized the era of the provider is over and dead, and they're now optional.
Cool, child support and alimony optional now. Right? Because it's always easy to be independent with OPM. People forget single moms became far more practiced after the state incentivized breaking up families.
Whether they have a marriage certificate might not matter, but the stats are clear that children raised by single moms are correlated with a lot of bad outcomes including far more likely to end up victims of the prison industrial complex. If you only give a shit about yourself and not your offspring, maybe that doesn't matter
Just because "plenty" of ugly men might end up with something, does not pose a contradiction.
Nobody "wants" to be in a romantic relationship with an ugly person or computers.
Now just because some people end up doing that, does not mean that it is what they want.
It might just be the best option available to them.
Given the choice however they would always rather have someone handsome and gorgeous instead.
Looks are supremely crucially important for somebody to seriously crush on you, be genuinely infatuated with you and have a deep burning desire.
An ugly undesirable dude or ugly fat chick is not ever going to experience this, surely they might (or might not) end up with a pleasant relationship of convenience... but it is not what they want. Works of fiction and computers are the only way they can experience a glimpse of desire and infatuation aimed at them.
This really isn't that hard to understand for people who have empathy.
lack of empathy does not stand in the way of forming an attachment. Empathy is a good feature for keeping a partner, but the ai doesn't care about that. It feels like people on your side of the argument are making a sort of moral/judgmental argument, "if you can't hold up your side of the bargain, you don't deserve an ai gf"
If you can only bond with computer software and not other humans, there's something pathological going on there. You definitely have some severe issues that should be worked out in therapy.
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.
> 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
> 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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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".
>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?
> 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 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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 :)
I hate it when a dental hygienist small talks. I'm there to get my teeth done not to talk. If I talk, they can't do their job. Personally I have no need for small talk. So I'm just doing it to please them.
Now, the waiter at our office lunch restaurant that we went to like every 2 or 3 weeks knowing exactly what each of us would order and even the ones that alternated between 2 or 3 dishes he'd ask "oh is it the butter chicken or the chicken tikka today?" makes sense and is impressive and appreciated. He didn't do any non essential small talk instead of doing his job either.
On the other hand you have restaurants where you're a table for two and the guy doesn't remember who had which dish when serving in a basically empty restaurant.
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.
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.
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. :)
I agree with you on everything except the SQL scripts. A world where absolutely nobody has to master SQL or regular expressions is a small step closer to paradise.
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.
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.
His first novel, Player Piano, is about a different, but related theme.
It's about machines replacing human work, but it's not at all about the machines. It's about the people. It's about human dignity. Or, as Vonnegut says, it's about "a problem whose queasy horrors will eventually be made world-wide by the sophistication of machines. The problem is this: How to love people who have no use."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
> 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.
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.
I don't know, quality of modern life degrades after 30 for many of us. After living with chronic diseases for a decade or two, I kinda envy the hunter-gatherers.
Die quickly at 30, with 10 children and some grandchildren even. Sounds like mission accomplished to me.
‘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.’
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.
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".
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> Taylor has always cultivated a parasocial relationship with her fans, and her success is in no small part due to this cultivation. Here are just a few examples besides just her deeply personal and largely autobiographical lyrics:
> 1) Publishing her personal journal pages in the four different versions of the Lover album.
> 2) Inviting fans to her house for Secret Sessions to listen to her albums before release dates.
> 3) This direct quote from the Eras Tour in Tampa: "I'm really loving this tour. It's become my entire personality and I've always loved putting on shows, always loved that connection... Knowing you have felt the same way... I need you guys very much for my well-being."
> 4) The Fearless TV announcement. "This was the musical era in which so many inside jokes were created between us, so many hugs exchanged and hands touched, so many unbreakable bonds formed, so before I say anything else, let me just say that it was a real honor to get to be a teenager alongside you..."
> 5) Leaving secret messages in the liner notes of her physical CDs and the eventual TS culture of Easter Eggs.
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!
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.
> 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.
If OnlyFans is really paying 80% of gross to creators, it seems that any kind of "regular professional status" would be worse for them, at least for the top 10%.
> 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I appreciate your comment and I find your stories interesting. I'm saying this because I'm going to clarify my point in a way that might otherwise come across as dismissive. I know people pay for porn. I was specifically talking about what differentiates OnlyFans from other paid porn sites, and that's the parasocial aspect. It's not just an unhealthy thing that some people do; it's a huge part of how they distinguish themselves from the decades-established online porn industry.
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.
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.
yes, these are perfect examples. I was going to add people like Jordan Peterson here in Canada, but now I’m not sure if he’s entirely different. Maybe he would have qualified as a philosopher worth teaching people 2000 years ago. He’s certainly intelligent. Perhaps his model of gathering attention is the part that’s different, yet even that I’m not entirely sure of… But people like him do seem to be part of that new phenomenon that the internet has enabled.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There’s no neat boundaries - read a Ryan gosling autobiography. How about an autobiography of Einstein. Or a biography? What about watching a film of a historical figure? Do I have a parasocial relationship with Anne Boleyn because I saw Six?
If you’re ignoring the “believe you have a two way relationship” then everything could be defined as parasocial.
Most people who form parasocial relationships don't actually believe it to be two-way.
It feels like it is two-way, in other words, it is an illusion, but just like with optical illusions, you don't have to believe them. For example, mirages may look a lot like water, but people who are familiar with them know it is just a trick of their senses and don't assume there is water there. Same thing for parasocial relationships, even the most intense. Proof is, parasocial relationships with fictional characters is common, and most people who feel a bound with Harry Potter are not crazy enough to believe the feelings are shared, as they are aware that Harry Potter doesn't actually exist.
And yes, I believe that parasocial relationships are extremely common and in most case, positive or at least harmless. I don't believe reading biographies is always parasocial though, it could just be the search for academic knowledge, without any feeling of connection, but done repeatedly, in can become one, which is again, not necessarily a bad thing.
You can absolutely have a parasocial relationship with Anne Boleyn, and I suspect most people who study her in depth do, as picturing oneself with her can help better understand her life and its historical context. It is essentially a mind hack, instead of just using logic, you also use emotions.
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.
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
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.
Characters in a movie only last during the viewing. When following a Twitch streamer, you keep following this person or character over many months or years (since many of them are playing character).
If you feel a strong connection to a character and they barely know anything about you (or barely feel anything towards you), that's not truly social.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Not sure about views, but hours spent might be higher for livestreaming.
Especially I think most people don't know about steaming, never watched a single live streamer, but if we filter them out, then among people who watched a live stream at least once amount of hours spent might be higher.
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.
>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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
If you assume that all of their content is included-with-subscription and not separately-purchased add-ons, sure, but my understanding is that that's not the most common business model on those sites.
> 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.
Or they'd allow creators to remove previous posts, thereby giving them the ability to control whether or not they want posted content to expire, what schedule they want it to expire on, whether they want expiration applied equally to all content, and whether any or all of the expired content would be then made available to purchase as add-on content, and on what terms. (AFAIK, they do, in fact, allow this.)
Hmm.. or "$x per month of backlog" along with each month of new content. So basic tier of $x/mo gets to see content from the previous ~30 days. But if they stay subscribed, they get to see the upcoming month .. and the month from before they subscribed. Hang out another month, get the next month as it happens and the month 2 steps before subscription for a total of 5. That way staying subscribed slowly opens both past and future in lockstep. Pay for the $2x pro plan? Be getting 2 or 3 months of past content with each new month of future content that elapses.
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.
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.
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!
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?
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.
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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
> 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.
> 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".
If OnlyFans is taking a 20% cut and Apple is taking a 30% cut of transactions on their platform, it seems that Apple is 50% more toxic than OnlyFans.
I've never done business with them and am not interested in buying that kind of content, but it certainly seems like an improvement over any more traditional sex-related work for those who are interested in being in that market.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
> 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.").
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
> 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?
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.
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).
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.
> 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.
> [...] 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.
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.
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.
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? ;)
> I find these new pimps scarier than the old sort in that they pretend to have clean hands
The old one does. And I disagree this is worse, as it’s probably just you never encounter the old model yourself or not knowing the history enough to do the comparison. From the book I read, across cultures and societies, old model of pimping is very brutal, on both the client and the server sides.
You could say that about anything related to the internet. But yes when shown extreme examples it’s obvious how unokay it is.
As a person who tried to start a startup but had been hacked and assaulted by the organizations who seem to maintain their monopoly by whatever methods they can use it’s more like a mob of pimps than a single pimp.
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.
> 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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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?
That depends on if you think your dignity is predicated on not having a buttplug in your ass, or not doing acts for money, or some combination of both. At the end (ha) of the day, a job is a job. You get to decide if you think it's demeaning or not.
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.
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)?
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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”.
> 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.
> 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)
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
People are always so defensive of this stuff but the metrics at any company will show you users are more engaged and convert better in apps than on web by a lot. While the individual claims might not be true for an individual browser experience, the average brings down the whole and users still hold the perception that apps are easier to use. It is why companies continue to invest despite mobile being a PITA.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
> 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?
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.
> 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.
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
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.
> 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?
I don't really understand this. Digital art on Instagram is generally unique, but porn is not. Sure, there are some onlyfans models that cater to a very niche kink - I get why people would pay for that. But most of them just post regular naked photos/videos of themselves.
What is the value proposition here? You probably wouldn't pay for a Patreon of an artist that draws those generic boring corporate illustrations that every company uses, even though they have a use and still take effort to create. So why would you support a specific person that makes content which is not in any way different from any other person like that?
> content which is not in any way different from any other person like that?
Because their content is different enough. Getting back to the art example: everyone’s art is unique BUT you can still find other artists that are similar. Sure there will exist other models who look very nearly the same at first glance, but everybody is, in fact, unique! And even two people with nearly identical physiques may create different material. The differences may be subtle to some but very distinguishable to others.
I might just have an eye for the small differences too. I am friends with several people who take lascivious photos of themselves for fun and/or profit. I get to talk with them about it - context, lighting, angles, etc. I just dang ol’ appreciate the craft! It’s not always an attraction thing or arousal thing: the human form is gorgeous and beautiful and utterly divine and manifests in so many different shapes and sizes! And taking well-crafted photographs of any subject is an art!
And maybe that’s why I gravitate towards it - so much pornography is like junk food, but not all adult content has to be! Some of it is like a well crafted meal, featuring quality ingredients prepared well by a skilled cook :)
Thank you! I appreciate the write up. Do I understand correctly that you do not get a companionship aspect from it? I guess I think of OF as being where you go beyond porn to forming some sort of relationship with the porn star themselves.
Correct, no companionship for me — I understand this is a business and any connection is as deep as a “customer service” role at most. The relationship part is weird to me. I’m just paying because I want to see more of that person’s content specifically, and You Gotta Support The Troops™ (and by troops in this context I mean sex workers).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
> 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The only thing I can think of is the states that have legalized Marijuana. It's federally illegal, but the states simply have chosen to not prosecute.
That being said, if you are pulled over by a federal agent in a legal state, if you meet the federal requirements you can still be prosecuted for possession of marijuana at the felony level, that being said, unless you were doing something super sketchy like having a full pound of weed split into little baggies or something, that is unlikely to stick.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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
Yeah, it sounds like nothing they did was really new (though maybe packaged and marketed in fresh ways), but did manage to line up with the zeitgeist - perhaps including the Pandemic - in ways other companies didn't.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
Porn is fine. Sex has been a part of our social fabric for longer than we've been human.
Obviously, there exists a lot of exploitation in porn, but performers who enjoy doing it and can support themselves with it on a platform like of? More power to them.
Taking a wild guess, I'd say binary132's main concern was the lasting effect on the consumers, not the producers.
Girls' broken self-image, male porn addiction, substituting real intimacy, proliferating bad sex practises just to name a few.
It’s definitely not good for producers either. But yeah, the broader cultural impact is on the scale of many millions of people, some of whom develop debilitating addictions, including many kids. “Sex work” has always and probably will always exist, but it’s never been a publicly consumed service at this scale.
Doesn't that put it in the same realm as alcohol? Best enjoyed in moderation and all that. Those concerns are valid, but not necessarily solved by shunning porn. Besides, where do you draw the line?
I can go on any known porn site right now in Incognito and the front page is full of cuck, incest and trans. We aren't just talking about intercourse we are talking about certain acts of depravity being pushed into the collective conscious.
Trans people having sex is not an act of depravity, lol.
Trans people are people, and deserve sex just as much as anyone else.
Cuck porn is extremely not my thing, but strikes me as a pretty tame fetish if all parties consent. Playing with power dynamics can be a lot of fun and very strengthening for a relationship. (Good BDSM practitioners are often very consent focused and amazing listeners.)
The incest stuff is gross though. I'll shake hands with you on that.
For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am about to deliver you into the hands of those you hate, to those you turned away from in disgust. 29 They will deal with you in hatred and take away everything you have worked for. They will leave you stark naked, and the shame of your prostitution will be exposed. Your lewdness and promiscuity 30 have brought this on you, because you lusted after the nations and defiled yourself with their idols. 31 You have gone the way of your sister; so I will put her cup into your hand.
I know a few people that ‘do’ OnlyFans (…and yes, I don’t know them through via their job). The money they’re making ranges from ‘fairly ok supplementary income’ to ‘more than satisfies their financial needs’.
None have been involved with these ‘online pimps’ as you put it.
I’m not saying that what you’re saying doesn’t happen. I’m aware that you said “a huge segment”. But you’re showing your hand in your final paragraph. If one has a moral etc view to cut this issue one way or another, there’s sufficient anecdata to do so. The reality is that the adult entertainment industry is large and heterogenous.
guess they're referring to Andrew Tate and his network, the prosecutors allege that they were behind at least six women, controlling them (including violence) and taking half of their OF income [1]. They themselves claim they have 75 women netting them 600k a month on OF alone, so assuming the prosecutor's claims of them taking 50% hold up it's like 1.2 million a month.
I'm torn a bit here as I happen to know people actually active on their own on OF, but it's on the other side not much of a stretch to assume that the Tate brothers are the only abusive pimps in the game. 600k a month is a ton of money, for a very low effort and low-risk (as long as you don't brag that you bought off police forces) operation.
You broke the site guidelines repeatedly in this thread. That's not cool. We have to ban accounts that post this way.
I'm not going to ban you this time because you've also posted good things and I didn't see a pattern of it in your account history. But please don't do it again.
(I'm not commenting on your views about porn or anything else. We don't care about that. But we care a lot about you following the rules, just as with any other commenter.)
It's not safer in any way, at all.
The prostitutes are not transitioning to OF. They are using it as a promotional mechanism. So you have not really eliminated the risk for them.
In addition to that you have young people who would have never dared to do porn, and you lower the bar enough for them, so that they are now tempted to ruin their dignity.
And finally, the human traffickers like Andrew Tate now have a new platform that allows them to practice their human trafficking from the relative safety of countries like Romania or Ukraine, where the chance that they will be caught and prosecuted is quite low. There have already been cases where multiple OF creators were found to be human trafficking victims working for a pimp.
Don't believe the whole pinkwashing narrative. OF is twice the pimping, making is safer for human traffickers to enslave and profit off women than ever before.
I'm shocked this is downvoted. I guess there are so many porn addicts here that they prefer to cope and ignore all of the abuses that OF is facilitating . What's worse is that the OF financial statement seems to absolve them of responsibility . Vile
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.
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).
Unless you plan on keeping your kids on a leash 24/7, best you can hope for is they won't get curious and their friends won't pressure them into it.
There's a reason regulation exists, it's to stop morally bankrupt people from exploiting people. Unfortunately it doesn't go far enough, like with the existence of OF.
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.
> 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?
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.