I have a buddy how likes to tell how he "had the idea for Onlyfans first" but I advised him not to pursue it. The reality is that OnlyFans wasn't the first to try this model. You have to give them credit for successfully building the business, especially with several close calls between them and government regulations.
This is relevant: https://x.com/cyantist/status/1832921451986632777 A similar app creator talks about her experience and why it failed.
Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics
271–280 of 878 posts
Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even coming from mainstream religions, that's annoyingly knee-jerk. Sure, prostitution is shameful and sinful and whatnot, but what about maliciously lying to your neighbor, trying to get rich off their misfortune? Even from a mainstream religious perspective, marketing gives prostitution a run for its money, and outside that framework, arguably it's less shameful to do OF than to be a "regular" influencer, or go int…
> At least with this kind of sex work, all parties to transaction tend to benefit, and all are in it voluntarily. Haven't some OF creators come out admitting they were pressured into it, or at least doing it more than they'd like.
I can believe it. Sex work in general is fraught with various degrees of abuse. However, it's also clear that there is a large class of workers that's doing this work voluntarily, under no pressure (at least not beyond the pressures every employee in any field experiences); my comparison would apply to them.
Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
But you can't compare with top performers in a power law / winner-takes-all setting. Comparing random youtubers or OF-ers to PewDiePie is like comparing the guy owning a fruit stand down the street to Jeff Bezos. Owns business, owns business; the same thing, right?
I agree that power laws are in play, but 1000 subs paying $10 a month is already a six figure income and 1000 users isn't a big number on the internet, especially when as TFA mentions you can go on reddit and advertise cosplays on subs that have audiences in the millions
1000 users isn't a big number. 1000 paying users is.
Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I would be in a relationship even with a current OF-girl. Not because "feminism told me so", but because I don't see anything wrong with it. Would you not have a relationship with someone you like and likes you back? Because patriarchy told you so?
Patriarchy explicitly tells us so.
Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics
#275Seminal 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…
Just don't tell the consumer that it's Gen AI
Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see discussions on Reddit periodically where it makes long term relationships complicated. I’m an old married guy, but I can’t imagine dating and then finding out that the person you were involved with was doing that type of thing. In a friend group I wouldn’t even blink. Based on the conversations I see, this seems to be a common experience.
Welcome to millennial reality, we don't begrudge anything non-harmful that people had to do to make ends meet. I know too many people with masters degrees and student loans working food service to not think OF is smart if you can find your niche.
There are plenty of millennials who have conservative views about something, and don’t forget that the damage is done regardless of the motivation. From the perspective of the victim, it doesn’t matter whether the person who just sent their boss the link to their OF is a zealous right-wing Christian or an incel bitter about being turned down. Millennials are more accepting about sexuality on average but a double digit percentage of that large a cohort is millions of people.
Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics
#277Not a moralistic take, but one issue that interests me is the second-order impacts associated with the long tail of producers in OF who do not make a career from it. With traditional adult entertainment, creators are aware of the social ramifications (e.g., social stigma, familial ostracism, difficulty dealing with the future, and so on), and there is a decent theoretical economic framework to measure that. I am not…
The problem here is that ceratain members of our society think sexuality is immoral and that sex performers deserve ostracism.
The idea that someone shouldn't be hired for a job because they have/had an OF is puritanism plain and simple.
I expect that fewer people actually care about the "morality" and simply want to use morals as a weapon against women in the workplace.
Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's fine because otherwise we'd evolve into the social structure of Bonobo monkeys, where every problem is solved with sex.
> where every problem is solved with sex. Would it be a problem?
Yes. Till this day Bonobo has no invention.
Do you like this kind of society?
Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's wrong with asking that? I thought it's all about people being open.
being open about your own past != having to know/ask everything about your partner's past
I guess I fail to see why one should be open in the first place if this isn't going to be reciprocated by your partner.
Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics
#280What I find fascinating/disturbing with OnlyFans and in some way with Twitch and streaming in general is more the client side than the creators. Here are basically people paying, and paying a lot, for parasocial relationships. Because clearly it’s not about the content per see which is a dim a dozen and available for free in trove. I think it says something quite dark about our society as a whole that we have basical…
> Because clearly it’s not about the content per see which is a dim a dozen and available for free in trove.
I think you should step back and look at it with a bit of distance. Is the content they're paying for really the same as you think is available for free, and do they even get it under the same conditions, in morality and circumstance.
Not knowing your life, it feels like you could have said the same towards people buying pricy concert tickets when there's royalty free music abundantly available.
> commoditised distress [...] often in dire situations
The first step to alleviate these specific situations could be to stop marginalizing this kind of content and give them a regular professional status, instead of systematicly pigeon hole it.