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Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

matthewball.co

11–20 of 878 posts

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#12
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 parag…

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Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#13
post #5
post #2

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Do you have data or research to back these opinions with?

Their opinion on what constitutes "porn" is probably reductive. It's not a straightforward scale or a solid line.

There's a lot of nuance in how far away nudity is from pure lace, to corset, shoulderless, miniskirt, onesie, all the way to burka.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#14

Seminal article (I guess), https://xsrus.com/the-economics-of-onlyfans > 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 ti…

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.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#17
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.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#18

Seminal article (I guess), https://xsrus.com/the-economics-of-onlyfans > 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 ti…

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 t…

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.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#19
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have data or research to back these opinions with?

Their opinion on what constitutes "porn" is probably reductive. It's not a straightforward scale or a solid line. There's a lot of nuance in how far away nudity is from pure lace, to corset, shoulderless, miniskirt, onesie, all the way to burka.

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