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Under the skin of OnlyFans

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Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered the alternative that this is not an evil which you are unable to control but just another way of living / thinking of sexual content? There is nothing inherently evil about this stuff so why is it terrible that it is becoming more accepted/common? If in 30 years we live in a society where people post nudes like they do facebook posts, is there anything wrong about this? Could you describe the harm…

I totally disagree. We've all been teenagers. The content creators posting their OF on TikTok are purposefully targeting teenagers with access to mommy's credit card. I see it a s purely evil and predatory.

Sounds like you think that TikTok is a platform exclusive to teenagers. 75% of (US) TikTok users are 20 years and older[0].

[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1095186/tiktok-us-users-...

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#132
post #122
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of sex workers overtly reinforce social behaviors towards women (sexualization and objectification among other things) in order to appeal to men, which hurts them in the long run. This is something that's really been bugging me when looking at Reddit's porn subs. There has been a really noticeable change in the last 2 years. Back then, a majority of the posters seemed to actually be amateurs getting their kic…

The titles on sites like pornhub are a lot worse. Sometimes I feel like they're automatically generated or something, with weird sexual fantasies that aren't even remotely in the video. It's become a bit of a meme, and it certainly has always been present but for example the incest stuff, it's just disturbing to me to the point where I greatly prefer browsing on Reddit just because the titles are more tame. Another c…

>the titles sound so much more vulgar in Dutch than they do in English to me.

It's the other way around: you're less emotionally connected to your second language. You're not phased by the most scurrilous elements of English, because of a combination of factors (like the way your brain processes a second language, and the fact that you did not grow up in a native English culture). Whereas you have a primary connection to Dutch and its native culture, so you instinctively know what is vulgar or disgusting in a much more direct way.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#133
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered the alternative that this is not an evil which you are unable to control but just another way of living / thinking of sexual content? There is nothing inherently evil about this stuff so why is it terrible that it is becoming more accepted/common? If in 30 years we live in a society where people post nudes like they do facebook posts, is there anything wrong about this? Could you describe the harm…

It's debatable and not as clear cut. Many believe that a "liberation" of sexual content manifests the objectification of women and therefore is a net negative to society and the progress toward equality.

Sexual content and objectification of women have been widely spread on TV since the 70's. The content we consumed as teenagers has always been tinged with an air of exploitation.

Just think of most women's opinion of the majority of pornography, sure they could pick out some they like, but they find a lot of it disgusting. I can't imagine having to grow up with the feeling that the opposite sex is constantly consuming content that's exploitative of your sex.

At least most of these TikTok/OF creators have some level of dignity, and power over their own lives.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#134
post #74

Fire up the throwaway! Not 100% related to the article, but directly related. I worked as developer for a product in the same niche ("democratizing adult content"). I spent almost 2 years working on the frontend, devops, and building out the analytics engine (all pre-covid). Anyway, on to the comment at hand. We had a small number of users compared to OnlyFans (when I left, there were about 20K active content creator…

I think in general there are some pretty big costs that aren't fully understood to doing sex work, even outside of the social stigma of being found out by your friends and family, there are mental health costs that are often not talked about. A lot of sex workers overtly reinforce social behaviors towards women (sexualization and objectification among other things) in order to appeal to men, which hurts them in the l…

> not well understood yet

I would say every culture around the world before the last 20 years or so understands this perfectly well. It's just the conclusions that this vast majority have come to do not agree with the current society.

That leads us now to express misunderstanding and bewilderement.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#135
post #50

The overlap between small-time OnlyFans creators and people hypervigilant about their privacy feels small. Streamers and idols have faced this problem for some time - with cases of people finding out where a streamer lives based on minutiae like reflections - but add porn and inexperience to the equation and it's not at all surprising that stalking behavior can get dangerously extreme. Storytime - a girl at my uni me…

It's like you see a girl you think is hot and you ask people about her and follow her home. Great you know where she lives. You have seen her naked and paid for her pictures. You are worried someone is going be as smart as you but take it a bit too far and go knock on her door? And what.. Ask her for a date? Kill her? I would think if you go to the same school you could follow home anyone. And you have the opportunit…

What you're failing to account for is that online sex work massively increases the number of people paying attention to you in a way that can turn dangerous, and at the same time tends to reinforce dangerous attitudes.

The risk of some bitter, lonely guy living three states away, going off the rails and deciding that you are a bitch who needs to be taught a lesson, after years of having his attitudes messed up by hot women trying to make money by telling him "I need your cock right now!" - that is not a risk you run by hooking up in real life.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#136

So our kids are getting older so I've been paying more attention to popular social networks and it's wild how many YouTubers, Twitch'ers, TikTok'ers, Instagram'ers have OF content directly linked from their non-porn bios. I don't like it, but I'm not sure what a good solution is. I mean, people are free to do what they'd like, but it's hard to police screen time 100% of the time and their peer group has a lot more ac…

>people are free to do what they'd like

Your post seems to suggest you would not be happy for your kids to do what they like when they get older. Often people seem to be happy for other peoples children to do what they like but not theirs. To me this seems like the wrong attitude towards ones neighbours.

There's 2 options therefore, for me, if I am honest with my family: disapprove of porn as a life choice or approve and encourage it including for one's own children.

I think most parents around the world would choose the first option, but the second is gaining in popularity and acceptability especially in the west.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#137

Fire up the throwaway! Not 100% related to the article, but directly related. I worked as developer for a product in the same niche ("democratizing adult content"). I spent almost 2 years working on the frontend, devops, and building out the analytics engine (all pre-covid). Anyway, on to the comment at hand. We had a small number of users compared to OnlyFans (when I left, there were about 20K active content creator…

> there were about 20K active content creators). The average monthly payment was $5000 20k times $5,000 = $100M/month. Still quite impressive.

I'm sure their cut was somewhere in the 10-15%. There's no way there was an OnlyFans competitor a few years ago with a 1.2B USD revenue stream and it went without notice (or purchase).

OnlyFans just broke a 2B USD GMV after the COVID surge; and, at their 20% cut, that's a $400M per annum revenue stream.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#138

Fire up the throwaway! Not 100% related to the article, but directly related. I worked as developer for a product in the same niche ("democratizing adult content"). I spent almost 2 years working on the frontend, devops, and building out the analytics engine (all pre-covid). Anyway, on to the comment at hand. We had a small number of users compared to OnlyFans (when I left, there were about 20K active content creator…

> there were about 20K active content creators). The average monthly payment was $5000 20k times $5,000 = $100M/month. Still quite impressive.

… heavily skewed by the top 5%. So the number is likely way, way lower than $100M (perhaps $8-10M?)

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#139

Being curious about the onboarding, about 2 years ago I signed up and starting doing non-adult content on OF. It's really similar to patreon, substack or bandcamp; optionally paywalled content on a freemium model. The onboarding and experience of OF is somewhat odd in that it didn't ever say "this is for you to post explicit content". It's structured for it sure, but every page is isolated. Even on the splash it just…

[deleted]

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#140
post #96
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that those people are the "whales" for these content creators. Normal people with healthy real-world relationships don't spend hundreds or thousands of dollars a month on online parasocial porn addictions. It's like someone selling crack and complaining about how they have to deal with crack addicts.

Plenty of drug dealers complain about having to deal with addicts, for what its worth. Signed, an ex-addict.

This is also very well-depicted in The Wire, which came from primary journalistic sources. "Dope fiends" are customers, but most dealers actually despise them. They're disrespected and abused constantly, as well a systematically exploited and tricked (at one point diluting doses is discussed, because of supply restrictions, and eventually deemed a good thing because "we will sell twice as many").
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