Under the skin of OnlyFans • Hacker News Board

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#111

Post by oceanghost » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 6:39 AM UTC

throwmeawaydddy wrote: post #33

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…

Very interesting. There are so many things Id like to say.

c) Was this done as blackmail? There is a somewhat common dating site scam where someone gets you to friend them on FB, and then to sext with them-- then they threaten to send the material to your FB friends. I'd imagine OF girls would almost be a captive audience for this.

--- While I find OF personally distasteful, I realize that I paid for sex the old fashioned way, "With a wedding ring, a house, a child and half the stuff when you leave." I can't help but see this as an acceleration of that. I know plenty of people in miserable marriages.

Women have always traded beauty for money. Just before it was through marriage.

---

and lastly... I think we're ignoring the elephant in the room.

I'd wager that a much higher percentage than average of OF girls have likely been abuse victims at some point in their lives. There's this paradoxical thing where, yes, they're adults they have every right to sell pictures, but often what leads them to this is... abuse, which makes the whole thing very murky.

Source? Anecdotal-- having dated a cam girl, and my SO works with girls who have been abused and it's just depressing. I have very causal interactions with this girls, but, they'll either be afraid of you because you're a man, or recklessly flirt because you're a man, or in the case of neglect/absentee fathers-- cast you in the role of the male role-model they need. I have about 6 girls who call me "dad." :-/

One girl here actually gave someone a blowjob for a Lunchables snack pack (worth $2.99).

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#112

Post by henrikschroder » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 6:39 AM UTC

happyweasel wrote: post #86

Aren't OnlyFans (and similar companies) another way to launder money?

If you have an internet service where you pay out money to users, you are required to have a plan for how to prevent money laundering. The SEC does not fuck around when it comes to that, and if you fuck up, your payment processors will drop you immediately.

Also, only accepting credit card payments to move money into the system goes a long way to protect you from money laundering.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#113

Post by sebmellen » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 6:39 AM UTC

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #83

ayngg wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

All valid points. I guess it’s difficult to simultaneously de-stigmatize and urge caution. Instead what happens is we encourage new people to try it, and then some of the people who have tried it share their experiences with the community. That’s how people end up learning about problems with it. Since it is an experimental phase there are more failures (went poorly for some folks). We might say the same thing happen…

And then the cycle of stigmatization begins again… Almost as if there is a purpose to it.

Is stigmatization always an objectively bad thing? I suppose it depends on your frame of reference. I don’t think any person should be stigmatized for what they do, but certain activities may well deserve it. I suppose that’s also a recurrent theme in the New Testament.

One thing I think ought to be stigmatized more is video game usage. I know many people (mostly men) my age (late adolescence) whose lives have been/were destroyed by chronic video game addiction. Similar with porn and “sex-work adjacent” things (on the consumer side).

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#114

Post by viraptor » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 6:40 AM UTC

google234123 wrote: post #108

ramraj07 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why you should always report both mean and median!

Even if there is a large skew, the mean and median will be often still be pretty close together. Especially with a large sample size.

That's not how it works... The larger the skew, the farther away they are. If your median goes up significantly because of whales, that means they're not really "whales" as usually understood.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#115

Post by Dma54rhs » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 6:41 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #28

650REDHAIR wrote: post #20

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…

I don't know--as I get older, and see things like this, I can't help but think maybe I'm just turning into an out-of-touch old fart. Maybe norms are simply changing and the next generations are building a better world free of all these stupid taboos and hangups. My ol' grandpa looked at my generation and just didn't understand how we were OK with things like interracial marriage, same sex relationships, drug legaliza…

Yes the world is always changing but everything that happened in the history was once also a change and probably progress in the eyes of the people who supported it. Just because the world's changing doesn't mean it's a good thing on its own.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#116

Post by alpaca128 » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 6:42 AM UTC

shadilay wrote: post #93

mkl95 wrote: post #79

No piece of software can magically prevent its content from being shared. People were divulging private conversations and other stuff on Twitter years before OnlyFans was a thing.

That's why you need hardware. eg Pluton

No hardware or software can prevent copying of content. If something is visible on a screen or audible on a speaker you can copy and redistribute it without restrictions.

It's only a bit trickier with video games because those actually need to stay in their original format to be useful, and may use DRM, but so far that didn't stop people either.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#117

Post by brazzy » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 6:43 AM UTC

ayngg wrote: post #74

throwmeawaydddy wrote: post #33

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…

> 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 kicks from online exhibitionism. Now it's 99% OnlyFans advertising. I guess that professionalization was bound to happen.

But what bugs me are the titles: they used to be descriptions of the content, sometimes addressing the audience as a whole. But now, most titles personally address the viewer with things like "Be honest, would you lick it?".

I bet that raises engagement and gets subscriptions, but seems like a really bad idea in terms of, as you wrote, mental health for the women, and reinforcing toxic attitudes among the men.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#118

Post by Semaphor » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 6:49 AM UTC

pcbro141 wrote: post #72

jollybean wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a neat idea, but hugely speculative. But also possibly be besides the point: the internet doesn't keep secrets. A choice to put content out there in public form, is de-facto a choice to make it available to anyone. Whether they paid the $10 or not. That's a reality that has to be contended with wherever someone sits on the fence about the morality of it all.

Not speculating, the group I'm referring to openly stated they thought it was unfair how much power women wield in the sexual marketplace and how they can be allowed to make money off their sex appeal. I totally agree the content creators should assume the content will remain public forever and they will be doxxed at some point.

For anyone who wants proof, you only need to watch the twitch videos of some big gaming streamers. Trainwrecks is a perfect example of what pcbro141 just described. Kotaku has an article about the incidence [0].

[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/16/16654800/twitch-gaming-t...

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#119

Post by curiousgal » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 6:54 AM UTC

SilverRed wrote: post #45

650REDHAIR wrote: post #20

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…

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.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#120

Post by sebmellen » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 6:56 AM UTC

girvo wrote: post #99

rorykoehler wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I sit in the middle on this. I don't think it is evil but if you dig under the surface a little you will find a lot of trauma, anxiety and desperation whether it is narcissistic instagram posts or OF style porn.

I think you're correct, but I also think that's a property of the human condition and underlies nearly everything humans do for attention (to some extent or another, obviously to a much lesser extent the broader we're talking). Trauma, anxiety and desperation are so common that I'm not sure what isn't impacted by them, I guess is my meaning.

I don’t know… I think people are cynical these days in large part because the world around us is dominated by this status angst.

But it wasn’t always this way. Not even close. I’ve met many people who grew up in pre- and post-WWII Germany, and from how they describe it, the concept of status didn’t really exist then as it does now.

Yes, there were rich and poor. But people fell in love with and married people in their towns and villages, and were not unhappy in doing so. With the exception of the war (a significant exemption, true) people’s lives seemed clear-cut, and no one felt the need to constantly be posting or drip-feeding off of likes or views or even money.

These apps and platforms are recent inventions, and they are dangerous. Status is no longer a local or regional commodity, it is global. And your status is constantly being evaluated against every metric.

Instead of being satisfied with being the best wine-grower in the region, for example, one is now forced to also compare oneself to the best bodybuilders in the world and the richest businesspeople.

Though at times overdramatized, ”The Social Dilemma” is a great documentary on this topic. I would also recommend Tristan Harris’s podcast episode with Joe Rogan.