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Under the skin of OnlyFans

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Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#191

Post by topicseed »

stevoski wrote: post #157
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…

I know more about the online poker industry than I wish I did. This “whale” phenomenon describes exactly why online poker is so profitable for the site operators. The profits don’t come from the masses of people cautiously playing on micro stakes tables, but the whales, who will give the poker rooms thousands each month in rake.

Do poker site operators not entice whales by offering rakeback deals and special discounts?

Poker is weird because the largest chunks of all monies go from one player to the other. But I assume rakes, at higher stakes, do add up really quickly...

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#192

Post by roenxi »

unacc_acc wrote: post #165
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…

We're 100+ comments into the thread and nobody's brought up free speech yet. Not an argument I'd make personally, but it comes up so readily for all other sites. Imagine swapping this comments section for one on the BBC coverage of Parler. You'd get - angry defense of the right of anyone to post anything - repercussions to posting denounced as "cancel culture" - advocacy of censorship-free payment methods - condemnat…

If the topic was different, the comments would be different. The burden is therefore on you to draw the parallels, not on the reader to imagine swapping one for the other while you point out how the conversation would be different.

There are no arguments around free speech that can actually be compressed into a one liner. They all have at least a paragraph of nuance and how edge cases need to be handled.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#193

Post by michaelt »

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…

I interpreted that $5000 "average monthly payment" as what the average performer took home, rather than what the average paying viewer paid.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#194

Post by roca »

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…

We've been doing a decades-long experiment to test whether getting rid of the stigma makes porn harmless.

So far, the results aren't good. But for the sake of science apparently we have to run the experiment to the end.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#195

Post by throw_m239339 »

Bayart wrote: post #190

Who knew a site which thrives on abolishing all personal boundaries in digital prostitution would have problems. You can't expect customers to be courteous and professional with you if the product is sex, all the more so if you're leveraging the illusion of a social relationship. It's a one or the other proposition. There's no in-between, there's no picking both. The entire thing is schizophrenic.

But hey, "sex work is work"! We're not going to solve anything with that kind of simplistic catchphrase that mask all the problems regarding this sort of activity. That has never helped and it's frankly flat out false. Prostitution or porn isn't just work for the majority of the women involved in that 'industry' that victimizes them.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#196

Post by TheGigaChad »

ipaddr wrote: post #50
onlyafan wrote: post #27

The overlap between small-time OnlyFans creators and people hypervigilant about their privacy feels small. Streamers and idols have faced this problem for some time - with cases of people finding out where a streamer lives based on minutiae like reflections - but add porn and inexperience to the equation and it's not at all surprising that stalking behavior can get dangerously extreme. Storytime - a girl at my uni me…

It's like you see a girl you think is hot and you ask people about her and follow her home. Great you know where she lives. You have seen her naked and paid for her pictures. You are worried someone is going be as smart as you but take it a bit too far and go knock on her door? And what.. Ask her for a date? Kill her? I would think if you go to the same school you could follow home anyone. And you have the opportunit…

You are a brain damaged idiot, kill yourself before you procreate.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#197

Post by nly »

sebmellen wrote: post #120
girvo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thei…

Technology has enabled us to feel "close" (or at least simulate closeness) with a larger number of people over greater distances. We just didn't evolve for these large abstract social groups and we're still adapting as a species to it.

We're just like polar bears being confined in a zoo and pacing up and down.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#198

Post by blippage »

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…

> I feel like these dangerous aspects of sex work are often ignored in the current zeitgeist of de-stigmatizing,

I agree entirely. I heard of one young lady who started an OnlyFans, apparently did quite well, but decided to stop it because of the psychic damage.

I'm going to be heavily downvoted for this, but I'm going to say it anyway ...

We need to stop all the bullshit about how it empowers women. Certain sections of the Women's Lib movement are particularly to blame for this, and it is right to heavily censure them.

Sites like OnlyFans exploit lonely young men who are poor at making connections with women. It's morally wrong to engage in exploitative behaviour. Period. I don't care if they're "beta cucks", "incels", "losers", or whatever de-humanising manshaming words one cares to use, exploitative behaviour is still wrong.

Sure, if you bounce your tiddies over on OnlyFans then it doesn't make you literally worse than Hitler, but these people should be discouraged from what they're doing.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#199

Post by throw_m239339 »

superkuh wrote: post #4

The BBC is really digging deep and far away from OnlyFans itself in order to try to generate the moral outrage needed to justify their puritan anti-porn stance. Most of this article seems to be about things that happen outside of the website or instances where users violated the terms of service.

> puritan anti-porn stance

Dismissing people critical of the porn industry as "anti-porn puritans" is certainly not helping your argument nor doing justice to all the people who have to deal with the consequences of the victimization of women in these 'industries', something the clientele never cares about of course.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#200

Post by jokethrowaway »

unacc_acc wrote: post #165
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…

We're 100+ comments into the thread and nobody's brought up free speech yet. Not an argument I'd make personally, but it comes up so readily for all other sites. Imagine swapping this comments section for one on the BBC coverage of Parler. You'd get - angry defense of the right of anyone to post anything - repercussions to posting denounced as "cancel culture" - advocacy of censorship-free payment methods - condemnat…

Nobody is talking about it because there is not much censorship on porn or sex work in the West. I agree I'd prefer there were no rules about it but I don't think it affect that many people on HN.

If you live in many Muslim countries or in a socialist regime like North Korea, China or Cuba, you'll have stronger limits to what you can do.

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