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Under the skin of OnlyFans

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Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#121

Post by nightcracker »

rafale wrote: post #47
gnull wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument applies to any change. Trivially, not all the changes must be accepted, therefore the argument is flawed. UPD: rafale is right, I misunderstood the parent. It's not about any change, it's about allowing more freedoms.

The way I read it is that each generation is pushing the limit of freedoms. Sounds good if we stop right there... But is it? When does it become bad? Should a parent be accepting that their daughter opens an OF when she turns 18? Should society be accepting of it as a side "gig economy" kind of job? How about the boys who are usually on the consumers/payers end? We are monetizing intimacy and sex at a level like noth…

> The way I read it is that each generation is pushing the limit of freedoms. [..] But is it? When does it become bad?

Every generation since the history of time in this situation has asked this question themselves and has consistently answered wrong. Nothing good has ever come from a previous generation suppressing a later generation's right to self-determination.

> Like the parent said, maybe I am just getting old.

It really is just this. Our formative years are when we are young, and human nature is to simply reject what we're not used to.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#122

Post by tinco »

brazzy wrote: post #117
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…

> 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 kic…

The titles on sites like pornhub are a lot worse. Sometimes I feel like they're automatically generated or something, with weird sexual fantasies that aren't even remotely in the video. It's become a bit of a meme, and it certainly has always been present but for example the incest stuff, it's just disturbing to me to the point where I greatly prefer browsing on Reddit just because the titles are more tame.

Another cultural thing, they've recently started automatically translating the titles to my native language, and I don't know why but the titles sound so much more vulgar in Dutch than they do in English to me. Automatic translation is always annoying but here it's especially jarring.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#123

Post by KirillPanov »

somedude895 wrote: post #80
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…

> The average monthly payment was $5000 (skewed massively by the top 5%). I used to work in the direct carrier billing department of a large telco and I'm still amazed by the phenomenon of whales. We'd get 98% of people spending 20 bucks on Spotify and the odd app here and there, and then there were people who would consistently spend 15k+ on Candy Crush (and pay their bills). Not the same level as what you're talkin…

> people who would consistently spend 15k+ on Candy Crush (and pay their bills).

Sounds like a very successful money laundering operation.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#124

Post by elevenoh »

rorykoehler wrote: post #51
SilverRed wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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.

Yeah, I also think this is an expression of a natural human feeling that'd exist whether the technology is there or not.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#125

Post by kristopolous »

Being curious about the onboarding, about 2 years ago I signed up and starting doing non-adult content on OF. It's really similar to patreon, substack or bandcamp; optionally paywalled content on a freemium model.

The onboarding and experience of OF is somewhat odd in that it didn't ever say "this is for you to post explicit content". It's structured for it sure, but every page is isolated.

Even on the splash it just kinda vaguely suggests it is for pornography. Their blog doesn't really suggest it either: https://blog.onlyfans.com/ In fact they seem to want to get away from it. Aaron Carter, Tyga, Cardi B are on it and earn millions from it. Actress Blac Chyna might be pulling in $20mil from it (https://influencermarketinghub.com/onlyfans-top-earners/)

I wonder how much non-pornography is on there. The tools and structure are generic enough for essentially any kind of content; say meditation, tutoring, someone doing an audiobook. A fitness instructor Jem Wolfie supposedly pulls in around $30,000/day, about 8 million total (https://blog.onlyfans.com/meet-jem-wolfie/). I assume most of the accounts are porno though. All the messages I get are from sex related bots trying to sell me products/services assuming I produce adult content or are looking to consume it.

I wonder if OF just sort of adopted the primary use case like Tumblr unintentionally became one of the biggest porn sites.

It's an interesting platform to answer the problem of trying to monetize an online following.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#127

Post by throwmeawaydddy »

oceanghost wrote: post #111
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 fash…

> 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.

No, it wasn't blackmail. The creator never received any messages from the fan that went nuclear (they only know it was a 'fan' since they had the entire catalogue of pay-per-access content and some had very few purchases).

It seems they just woke up one day and said 'fuck it, time to wreck a life'. They persisted for a few months. From memory, they started with the creators LinkedIn account and then moved to Facebook -> Instagram -> mass emailing the creators 9-5 company.

The creator deleted most online accounts and started using an alias (which sadly the ex-fan also discovered and continued spamming).

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

Yeah, I think you're on the money with your core point. Very few of the creators I interacted with directly seemed to be thriving in other parts of life sadly.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#128

Post by elevenoh »

KirillPanov wrote: post #123
somedude895 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The average monthly payment was $5000 (skewed massively by the top 5%). I used to work in the direct carrier billing department of a large telco and I'm still amazed by the phenomenon of whales. We'd get 98% of people spending 20 bucks on Spotify and the odd app here and there, and then there were people who would consistently spend 15k+ on Candy Crush (and pay their bills). Not the same level as what you're talkin…

> people who would consistently spend 15k+ on Candy Crush (and pay their bills). Sounds like a very successful money laundering operation.

Why tho?

It ain't exactly a dry cleaners

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#129

Post by [deleted] »

recn14b wrote: post #5
girvo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love for you to expand on that opinion. In some ways I think it's a good product that gives some measure of control (and a _lot_ of the money) back to the people who star in and create pornographic content. The existing industry is exploitative and predatory, and from my admittedly not-very-well-versed vantage point, OnlyFans is much less so due to the very nature of its product and who its content creators are.

> OnlyFans is much less so due to the very nature of its product and who its content creators are. This is an extremely generous view. It's well known that cam sites often feature trafficked victims. Why wouldn't you also assume that an OnlyFans is also run by a trafficker? You cited yourself that the industry is predatory and exploitative. Do you honestly believe that most of these woman truly made this choice thems…

[deleted]

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#130

Post by sebmellen »

nightcracker wrote: post #121
rafale wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I read it is that each generation is pushing the limit of freedoms. Sounds good if we stop right there... But is it? When does it become bad? Should a parent be accepting that their daughter opens an OF when she turns 18? Should society be accepting of it as a side "gig economy" kind of job? How about the boys who are usually on the consumers/payers end? We are monetizing intimacy and sex at a level like noth…

> The way I read it is that each generation is pushing the limit of freedoms. [..] But is it? When does it become bad? Every generation since the history of time in this situation has asked this question themselves and has consistently answered wrong. Nothing good has ever come from a previous generation suppressing a later generation's right to self-determination. > Like the parent said, maybe I am just getting old.…

But that’s really a gross view of human behavior. Commodification is what allows us to build functional societies, and I am glad we discovered it, but it is absolutely antithetical to the things which sit at the core of human experience.

Love, joy, excitement, mourning, creating art, singing and dancing… All of these are unconditional, intimate, and creative acts.

When they are turned into slot machines and side hustles they lose their humanity. There is nothing creative about the 50,000th “influencer” joining social media platforms to shill their low-grade reaction videos or porn or other entertainment cruft.

Most of the 60’s era liberation was a matter of being free to create in one’s chosen way, or with one’s desired people. Commodification, OTOH, is about extracting value from lonely people to enrich a vanishingly small minority of platform builders and “content creators”.

Commodification is an extremely alien form of “liberation” when compared with drug legalization or interracial marriage or what have you.

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