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Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

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Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

#171

Post by chrisandchris »

a2tech wrote: post #14

This is the reality of building your life around sport—-there’s basically no money in it unless you’re on the extreme edge. I wish people would stop dumping their entire life’s energy into chasing it—-do something more useful like stamping parts out in a factory. Olympic athletes are stunningly focused achievers—I’d love to see that energy and drive applied to something that mattered.

What a depressing comment.

> I'd love to see that energy and drive [...]

I'm a former professional athlete in a marginalized sports. Sadly never made it to Olympia. I learned that energy and drive by doing my sport, and I wasn't "born" with it (well, maybe with the genes, but it's something one has to learn IMHO). I think I am now what I am thanks to doing sports for more than 5 year as my main activity (in terms of invested time) and maybe 10 years as secondary activity.

Money was always tight, and I was happy to leave my sport with a "black zero" on my bank account. I never did it for the money, but I'm happy to not ran into bankrupcty just for my dream. And that's what I hope is the minimum for every athlete.

Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

#172

Post by filoleg »

Tesl wrote: post #130
braza wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know where the argument comes from, but at an extreme watching football with 22 folks running behind a ball in a slow game where 97% of the time nothing happens in terms of scoring, and in terms of tactics, today sounds like a handball game; it's boring (and I say that as a Brazilian and having attended more than 100+ in the stadium and more than 600 on TV). The entertainment in the Olympic games is in the fact tha…

How do you pick a number as specific as 600? I have absolutely no idea how many football games I've ever watched.

Likely just napkin math of “I watch about one game every week, that’s roughly 50 games per year, so over the course of 12 years i should be around 600 games”

Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

#173

Post by apocadam »

Lukas_Skywalker wrote: post #53
rawcal wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't "people with really intense hobbies" how modern olympics started though, going as far as banning professionals in early days?

„Early days“ is until 1990 in that case, which is surprisingly late. Some nations got around the ban by employing the athletes as soldiers and allowing them to prepare almost full time though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Games#Amateurism_and...

Thanks for the link, this made me chuckle:

There was also a prevailing concept of fairness, in which practising or training was considered tantamount to cheating.[176] Those who practised a sport professionally were considered to have an unfair advantage over those who practised it merely as a hobby.[176]

Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

#174

Post by unsupp0rted »

JambalayaJimbo wrote: post #150
unsupp0rted wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I prefer it this way. Children can be the best they can be at something, and have that thing generate no value to anybody else around them. No need to subsidize it.

People very much do care about the olympics… once every 4 years. There is clearly value generated by throwing a disk around, and it’s not being distributed well.

Do they? I can't name a single disc thrower, sabre-master, parallel bar gripper, judo person, or thing-shooter.

Every once in a while a Turkish guy shooting with no equipment becomes a meme, or the greatest swimmer or runner in the history of the world comes onto the scene. Newsmedia goes nuts because this sells advertising.

But then a southern girl in a 5-second viral video does 100x of that in notoriety, with no travel budget and for the production cost of a single Big Mac.

Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

#175

Post by tomjen3 »

AngryData wrote: post #79
a2tech wrote: post #14

This is the reality of building your life around sport—-there’s basically no money in it unless you’re on the extreme edge. I wish people would stop dumping their entire life’s energy into chasing it—-do something more useful like stamping parts out in a factory. Olympic athletes are stunningly focused achievers—I’d love to see that energy and drive applied to something that mattered.

Define "something that mattered", because over half the stuff posted on hackernews is a complete waste of time and effort if your only real metric is profitability. The vast majority of "hacking" in general is of negative financial value.

You're entirely correct. However, most people on Hacker News are also making decent money on the side with their main job.

This is not the case for most Olympians, because even for sports that are not attracting large amounts of visitors and viewers and therefore sponsorships, you still basically need to dedicate your life to it.

You don't need to dedicate your life to writing code unless you are working for an early-stage startup or Elon Musk. So you have spare time which you can use to write code.

Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

#176

Post by tomjen3 »

kgilpin wrote: post #55
a2tech wrote: post #14

This is the reality of building your life around sport—-there’s basically no money in it unless you’re on the extreme edge. I wish people would stop dumping their entire life’s energy into chasing it—-do something more useful like stamping parts out in a factory. Olympic athletes are stunningly focused achievers—I’d love to see that energy and drive applied to something that mattered.

Sports is entertainment. It inspires people and brings joy. It brings people together. It sets positive examples of the rewards that can come from consistent effort and teamwork. Athletes are people making the most of the gifts they’ve been given. This is all laudable.

That can certainly be the case, although usually I find that athletes are not the kind of people who should be considered inspirational.

But on the other hand, if you were to go watch a launch from SpaceX, You will find that there's already a crowd being inspired, experiencing joy, and it absolutely brings people together. So why not work more on that and less on sports?

Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

#177

Post by potato3732842 »

pjc50 wrote: post #119
Boldened15 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm I've never thought of any Olympic victory as being attributed in part to like, the current President, and I'd be surprised if anyone thought that would be the case. But it's not dubious that Americans (including myself) love to see our country winning things, and if we suddenly started tanking at the Olympics most of us would want our country to get our act together. Of all the things the state does having nation…

This is much more an autocratic country thing. Or small countries trying to promote themselves on the world stage, usually by picking a particular event and focusing on it. Everyone's already heard of America, they don't need the marketing.

Jamaican bobsled team is basically the nation state sponsored-ish equivalent of that guy from one of the plains states that won a bunch of medals in downhill skiing a few years back.

Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

#178

Post by tomjen3 »

nothrowaways wrote: post #128

Onlyfans is online prostitution. I wonder how it is legal in countries that criminalize offline prostitution.

Onlyfans market is stupid people who don't know that you can get porn for free on the internet. Usually, more intense than most of the models on Onlyfans are willing to do.

Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

#180

Post by llamaimperative »

tsupiroti wrote: post #166
llamaimperative wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that's because they're wrong. Consider the counterfactual. In order for it to be true that many people are paid for work that isn't valuable, it'd have to be true that many people are willingly parting with their money for no reason at all. That does happen, of course, and it's so special we think highly of people when they do it (it's called charity). Just because people can't reason about the transmission…

"GDP measures everything except that which is worthwhile"

This is irrelevant, I'm not talking about GDP. I'm saying that people generally don't pay money for things they don't value, ergo when people are paid money, it's for things that other people value.
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