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$500 a day to pretend to be a model: The big business behind OnlyFans 'chatters'

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Re: $500 a day to pretend to be a model: The big business behind OnlyFans 'chatters'

#71
post #69
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is seriously tame and hardly an affront to anyone’s dignity. (Edit: For clarity these people are typing in a chat app pretending to be someone else not sharing pictures of themselves online.) I really don’t see the difference between this and being an Actor, social media intern, character at Disneyland, Mall Santa etc. An actual 3 year old may be fooled, but sometimes adults want to play pretend as well. You don…

Actors generally don't claim that they are actually the person they are portraying. Unless I misunderstood the article, models with OnlyFans account often offer the service of personally chatting with their paying fans, and then essentially hire improv actors to do the actual chatting. That sounds fraudulent to me.

Actors, politicians, etc have paid people to pretend to be themselves on social media for years at this point.

The degree to which Twitter followers or OnlyFans users actually believe they are talking to the real person is debatable, but they definitely prefer to believe the illusion.

Re: $500 a day to pretend to be a model: The big business behind OnlyFans 'chatters'

#72
post #18
post #3

> “He believed he was in a relationship with the model. He sent her money to buy dresses and encouraged her to continue posting photos. I don’t know if they’re still together,” she jokes. Emotionally manipulating someone to send money. Hilarious. I just can't stop laughing. OnlyFans is an abusive platform. It's not "just" nodes and porn, it sells "connections", except they're not really connections at all, and then a…

There is a parallel issue in the world of sugar relationships. I know a few "sugar daddies," and one common theme for all of them is the number of "sugar babies" who lead them on and emotionally manipulate them. It's sad that the SDs fall for it, and it's cruel and pathetic that the SBs do it. It's common enough that there's a sort of meme in the gay twink community about it, even.

Real SDs fuck. Anything else and you’re a simp/chump/sucker. Crass but true.

Re: $500 a day to pretend to be a model: The big business behind OnlyFans 'chatters'

#73
post #10
post #3

> “He believed he was in a relationship with the model. He sent her money to buy dresses and encouraged her to continue posting photos. I don’t know if they’re still together,” she jokes. Emotionally manipulating someone to send money. Hilarious. I just can't stop laughing. OnlyFans is an abusive platform. It's not "just" nodes and porn, it sells "connections", except they're not really connections at all, and then a…

They are selling exactly the connection the user is buying. A virtual service is being sold and a recipient is using it. This is not the same level tricking someone to give you money on the internet with a sob email. This is a legitimate business transaction for all parties involved.

Except it's not a real connection. Except it's some guy in the Philippines and it's literally lying through their teeth about who you're forming your "connection" with. Except many regular people spend huge amount of money they wouldn't otherwise spend.

It's the exploitation of (mostly male) loneliness.

Re: $500 a day to pretend to be a model: The big business behind OnlyFans 'chatters'

#74
post #61
post #4

Pretty wild. I have fairly strong opinions on this subject. Neither of the parties (the girl selling and the guy buying) could ever justify it for me. I don’t think it’s possible to go anywhere lower than this, both mentally and spiritually. You have one party sacrificing their morals while the other sacrifices their dignity. And there is no in between. Wow. I feel like this should be a far more talked about issue th…

You're overlooking the long history of sex work in most human civilizations. Fair enough if you morally disagree with it and wish it didn't exist but it's existent and the existence of people who provide and consume it is about as normal as it gets. If you accept that sex work will always exist in some capacity then there are reasonable arguments that the existence of OnlyFans is a good thing, as the OnlyFans model o…

I wouldn't say that sex work is fundamentally immoral, but using deception to manipulate people into giving you money is hard to defend. Of course this occurs in many other industries, too.

Re: $500 a day to pretend to be a model: The big business behind OnlyFans 'chatters'

#75
post #56

I wonder if society should step in to prevent those men from getting hooked. We already step in to prevent people getting hooked on physical drugs because the negative externalities are too bad to accept. But this sounds like people getting hooked mentally will also have pretty bad side-effects for society as a whole. I mean imagine some guy "falling in love" with a model this way. And then after a year and $10k in "…

> I wonder if society should step in to prevent those men from getting hooked. Clear disclosure and consent is required. If the person paying for this feature knew it was just roleplay with a person pretending to be the model, I don't think any reasonable person would have an issue with it.

Few people would pay for that though, which is why it's not disclosed. This entire "business model" is based on deception. That it: it's fraud.

Re: $500 a day to pretend to be a model: The big business behind OnlyFans 'chatters'

#76
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats odd about it? Do you think its normal in our society to state publicly that you think onlyfans is okay/good? Of course not. We are not a open society. And he clearly doesn't reference the article with the hook 'problem', he keeps it generic: "(the girl selling and the guy buying)" Onlyfans is obvously satisfying a fantasy. This has very little to do with real life. And when you actually buy a private video, its…

> And he clearly doesn't reference the article with the hook 'problem', he keeps it generic: "(the girl selling and the guy buying)" They are clearly responding to the article, which is about fraudulent use of the chat feature to extract money from men. It's not about selling pictures or videos. You seem to be taking all of this as a personal attack on your choice of entertainment, or to create division in the thread…

> They are clearly responding to the article

FWIW, OP posted a comment on a message board for said article. Per my reading, they seem to be talking generally about sex work rather than the specific sex-work-fraud as mentioned in the article. Surely the comment is at least vague enough that it could be taken either way.

Re: $500 a day to pretend to be a model: The big business behind OnlyFans 'chatters'

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the completely unethical, perhaps. Delivering food is a legitimate, respectable and productive job. Fraudulently deceiving lonely men to coerce them into paying for more fraudulent interactions, less so. I wonder how long before an article is published about someone committing suicide when they find out they were talking to a man in the Philippines rather than the woman they thought they were talking to.

People manipulating and pretending to be someone they are not has been going on since the internet has been a thing and provided the ability to be anon. "Nobody knows you are a dog on the internet" is like 1996.

And theft murder has been a thing for as long as there have been people, as have all sorts of bad things. So what? We can just do anything?

Re: $500 a day to pretend to be a model: The big business behind OnlyFans 'chatters'

#78

Every generation has their moral panic. This is just the latest. Deceiving someone is fraud, certainly. But the website makes no pretense that it's a dating site. People go there to simulate emotions. No different from how I go to the movies to simulate risky adventures, or others go to a church to feel what I do at an Arsenal game.

Saying "X is bad because Y" is not a "panic". You can disagree with that, but that doesn't make it a "panic".

And it is different because everyone understands what a movie or football game is and there is no faux-personal connection or pretence of one, whereas these types of things are much more murky, never mind the outright fraud of "you're talking to someone other than you think".

Re: $500 a day to pretend to be a model: The big business behind OnlyFans 'chatters'

#79
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhh, this is a guy or girl pretending to be a hot girl online. That’s some on thing millions of people do everyday for the lulz without being paid for it. I really don’t see why there would be any mental health issues involved?

I believe they're making an allusion to the commonality of loneliness among many of today's young men. Such loneliness is likely only to be exacerbated by habits that are enabled by this work.

Parasitical relationships are common enough I don’t think such spending represents mental illness anymore than other types of frivolous spending like buying action figures. Rather, people taking things to extremes is a general symptom of mental illness and shows up wherever that’s possible.

I know a Hoarder which may be coloring my perception, but underlying mental health issues show up in many different ways.

Re: $500 a day to pretend to be a model: The big business behind OnlyFans 'chatters'

#80
post #18
post #3

> “He believed he was in a relationship with the model. He sent her money to buy dresses and encouraged her to continue posting photos. I don’t know if they’re still together,” she jokes. Emotionally manipulating someone to send money. Hilarious. I just can't stop laughing. OnlyFans is an abusive platform. It's not "just" nodes and porn, it sells "connections", except they're not really connections at all, and then a…

There is a parallel issue in the world of sugar relationships. I know a few "sugar daddies," and one common theme for all of them is the number of "sugar babies" who lead them on and emotionally manipulate them. It's sad that the SDs fall for it, and it's cruel and pathetic that the SBs do it. It's common enough that there's a sort of meme in the gay twink community about it, even.

The sugar baby/sugar daddy dynamic is entirely transactional. Why would the older person think the younger person is actually attracted to them?
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