Live data from Hacker News

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

english.elpais.com

81–90 of 95 posts

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

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't think your opinions are strong. The vast majority of people intuitively feel this way, they wouldn't willingly date a former prostitute or porn star, they'd be upset if their spouse or child were involved, etc. It's more of an interesting disaster to watch from a distance, like a car crash.

However, the criteria for mental illness isn't "it's unpopular".

That primarily depends on whether you consider things like attachment disorders to be mental illnesses.

So, more of a nomenclature thing than anything else. Like most Internet debates.

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

#82
post #73
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Its not a real connection" - and if its not, so what? Why we should decide what connection is real and what is not? Why its matter?

I mean, why we should decide for someone who use it? What wrong with allowing it?

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

#83

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.

They could be doing the society a service in a roundabout Darwinian fashion.

I have rarely seen such heartless victim blaming on hackernews...

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

#84
post #11
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are strong opinions! We all await your definition of “normal” to reinforce your principled stance.

They are in fact strong opinions. Normal people don’t take their clothe off to sell images of their vagina to people who are mentally unstable. Not sure how much more principled you want to go about it.

> Normal people don’t take their clothe off to sell images of their vagina to people who are mentally unstable.

“Normal” in what sense? In the sense of common, that’s true. But lots of careers are uncommon. In the sense of well-adjusted, I have trouble believing that’s true. Do you have some evidence or data or… I guess anything, really?

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

#85
post #11
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are strong opinions! We all await your definition of “normal” to reinforce your principled stance.

They are in fact strong opinions. Normal people don’t take their clothe off to sell images of their vagina to people who are mentally unstable. Not sure how much more principled you want to go about it.

This is an article about ghost writers?

Is this copypasta you have prepared for any article about Onlyfans? because your responses dont seem to be about the profession or friction in the article at all

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

#86
It does seem sad that men resort to these services in a way that likely harms them. Does anyone have any statistics that breaks down content-creator income by user spendage? A priori my assumption is that (as I understand it) similarly to the liquor and gambling industry most of the income probably comes from "whale"-like users who spend unhealthy amounts of time and money on the service in a deeply unhealthy way.

A common spin is that the consumers are just having fun, but I imagine the stats tell a rather more depressing story.

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

#87
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…

Or like psychics and palm readers, or even stage magicians. There doesn't seem to be any coercion involved here, one side is paying for entertainment, and in return they are getting entertainment. Honestly, good for these women who figured out a legal, safe way to profit from thirsty men, that is so risk-free it doesn't even involve physical proximity to those men. They seem to have cracked the "scaling" problem too,…

> Or like psychics and palm readers

Yes, I agree they are like psychics and palm readers, in that they are mostly emotionally manipulating sad marks for profit (or occasionally just doing harmless entertainment... but often not).

> stage magicians

I've met one person in my entire life who thought magic was real. Granted I try not to hang out with morons, but I have to imagine the percentage is low.

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

#88

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.

I don't know the exact definition but certainly associate "moral panic" with something that may or may not have ever existed or never existed to any meaningful extent.

i.e. Did anyone ever actually put a razor blade in an apple on Halloween? Because I suspect that happened approximately never and yet our parents were cutting them open to be safe.

This, on the other hand, is definitely real and documented.

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

#89

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.

I don't know the exact definition but certainly associate "moral panic" with something that may or may not have ever existed or never existed to any meaningful extent. i.e. Did anyone ever actually put a razor blade in an apple on Halloween? Because I suspect that happened approximately never and yet our parents were cutting them open to be safe. This, on the other hand, is definitely real and documented.

No, that's an "urban myth". Here is an article which describes some of the past https://www.usi.edu/news/releases/2017/02/rock-n-roll-and-mo...

> One of the moral panics associated with the first wave of rock 'n' roll was the fear of race mixing - that young black and white kids would get together over this music that had a rhythmic, primitive, sensuous beat.

I have no doubt that young black and white kids got together to the sound of the beat. I'm sure you can find some documented real cases of people of different races falling in love over their shared love of rock 'n' roll.

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

#90
post #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".

To reiterate, non-participatory deception is fraud. But participatory deception isn't. When I go watch a movie, I choose to believe that there is this magician who would kill clones of himself to be the best magician alive. They're "lying" to me. What was on screen never happened. They're depicting a fictional scene. But that's what I'm going there for. The deception. So their giving it to me isn't some sort of crime.

And of course just saying "X is Y" is not a panic. It's the fact that it's quite wildly popular and very normative to say "X is Y" and to gasp and clutch one's pearls as one does so that makes it a moral panic. I'm sure history will judge me well.

Post reply on HN