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The Internet Is for Porn

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Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#331

Post by k__ »

bawolff wrote: post #300
chaosharmonic wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean. That statement tracks pretty well if you look at our government, where the elderly are represented in elected offices at double or even triple their actual share of the population. According to the 2010 census Americans over 65 make up under 15% of... well, Americans[0], but currently occupy 147 seats in the House (out of a possible 435) and 48 in the Senate (out of 100), along with executive branches in 15 s…

I'd note that its not like these are recent events in canada. Trudeau (the current Prime minister's dad) introduced the bill that semi-legalized abortion (under restricted circumstances) and introduced some gun control, 52 years ago. (Among other things like legalizing homosexuality and contraceptives). Then 20 years later the remaining restrictions on abortion were ruled unconstitutional. All these senior citizen la…

Yes, I don't know either.

In Germany we are ruled by old people and conservatives, but they are nothing compared to the US.

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#332

Post by bsder »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #294
ericbarrett wrote: post #277

Plenty has been written in this thread about the article's take on SV attitudes on sex workers. For the most part, I think the article is right. But there's another reason why tech orgs and banks don't want porn, which it completely ignores: the sheer quantity of bad actors around the industry. Chargebacks, disputes, hacking, spam, money laundering, content theft, stalking, child pornography, and so forth are all end…

While what you say about bad actors is true, I just don't buy your argument. SV prides itself in solving "hard problems" (whether that's actually true is another issue entirely), so are you honestly saying that the issue with high chargeback rates or illegal content is too difficult to solve? I mean, SV can create advanced electric cars, launch rockets into space, serve millions of queries a second, but porn spam is…

> I think the moralistic argument makes much more sense.

I find it absurdly laughable that you think that there is any moralistic response from Silicon Valley VCs who have funded outright theft and lawbreaking--and who also funded YouTube when it was primarily a porn distribution system.

People have made lots of money from porn over the years. The porn tech conference used to occur at the same time as CES--and often it was more technical than CES--things like Laserdics, DVDs, the web, online credit card tech, etc. all were at the porn conference long before the mainstream ones. One could make an uncharitable comment about it being more profitable to sell shovels in the gold rush than to be a miner/performer ...

The big issue with porn sites is that they only scale so far, and then it's a race to the bottom, and when you hit the bottom the law starts knocking on your door. So, you have to switch off porn before the race to the bottom starts if you want to scale further. And if you make make that change at the wrong time or in the wrong way, your site dies.

OnlyFans is in the race to the bottom now. There is always another girl who looks just as good who will do whatever thing you want for 10% less than that other girl. Do you really think that people really care whether they're watching Porn Star A or Porn Star B--or whether they care that Porn Star B is $10 less per ?

Sure, there will be some exceptions where a bunch of people want to see some famous Disney tart's naughty bits. The rest of the performers, however, are in the swamp.

OnlyFans broke the monopoly. Great! But then it will become the monopoly. The wheel simply turns.

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#333

Post by cbozeman »

imbnwa wrote: post #290
_huayra_ wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feminist take was definitely uncalled for in this article. The author's bias about how the women, _who are actually getting monetarily compensated_, are the victims completely misses the costs to the purchasers, who are almost all men, in terms of their money and the neurologic changes that such sex work consumption has. Having the "algorithm" suggesting and enticing these men back to buy more subscriptions / pi…

No one put a gun to that guy's head, society won't even ask him any questions about nor assume what he does in his personal time, whereas that same politeness doesn't extend to sex workers. That's just the tip of the iceberg as far as the difference between these two goes, as I see it

Well if we're going to go this route, no one put a gun to the girl's head either.

She just didn't want to work night shift at 7/11 for $10-$15 an hour. In Fort Worth, I've seen night shift "supervisors" for the convenience store where I usually stop for gas being offered $18-$22, starting salary. With 1 year experience. Yes, that's a shitty job, on a shitty shift, and the pay is nothing to write home about at $36,000 - $44,000 a year, but for someone with nothing more than a high school degree, and clearly a tremendous lack of applicable skills, it isn't terrible.

If these women want to do porn instead of slaving away at Walmart, hey, more power to them. I don't begrudge you your choice, but don't act like there's no alternative. Entirely too many people make the claim that "there are no jobs for me!" when what they mean is, "There aren't any jobs that I want to do, I'm not supposed to be a janitor, I'm supposed to be a TikTok star!!"

That's the big fucking lie our society has told people for the past 40+ years. Most of us, even most of us in high positions in respected companies, are easily replaceable cogs.

A lot of people were very concerned about Apple's future when Steve Jobs died. Looking at the M1 chip, it seems like Tim Cook and Apple will be just fine.

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#334

Post by ashconnor »

lasagnaphil wrote: post #258
dragonwriter wrote: post #245

> Why did it take this long? Why would no one else have the courage to address sex work? OnlyFans isn't the only tech attempt to “address sex work”, it's basically a hybrid of the premium user content with centralized content infrastructure model of many recorded-video sites with the patronage / p2p subscription model of Patreon, etc. It may (or may not) be revolutionary in effect, but it's a stepwise change in model…

For a better picture, there were many people back then trying to monetize their adult content on Patreon - well, until Patreon started to ban them aggresively, which eventually gave rise to OnlyFans. It’s right that OnlyFans didn’t do anything substantially innovative, but the main point of the article still stands - tech companies have have failed to provide agency for adult creators for a long time.

Clips4Sale existed long before OnlyFans but doesn’t enjoy the same success. I guess it’s all about the subscription.

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#335

Post by waihtis »

morelisp wrote: post #207
waihtis wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was using Firefox's reader view

Perhaps not a great idea to complain about missing context when using software specifically designed to decontextualize something.

Where am I complaining about it? Nowhere. Just said I missed it and wasnt familiar with said play.

Absolutely no reason for you to be snarky about it.

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#336

Post by cbozeman »

alisonkisk wrote: post #69
burntoutfire wrote: post #43

> [About SV] An observer might note that all of these companies are dominated by men, in an industry dominated by men, tightly interwoven with a venture capital industry that is super-dominated by men. So it’s curious why none of these men have shown any interest in addressing the massive and lucrative sex work industry that overwhelmingly serves, well, men; until you consider who pays the real costs of that industry…

Men are expected to sell their bodies in manual labor. Women are not. Seems a double standard.

I dunno... my Grandma had to pump well water and boil it to wash clothes, prep meals for Grandpa and their 11 children (would have been 13, but one was stillborn and another died as a baby).

She was a tough old bird. Married at 16. First kid at 18. Last child at 44. Grandma didn't get a washing machine until 1970, if I recall. Had she not been there to take care of the kids and the farm, Grandpa couldn't have worked at an industrial bakery from 4 a.m. to noon. Then from noon to around 3, he'd come home and sleep, then take over work in the fields until dusk.

Grandpa sold his body in manual labor, but Grandma was right beside him.

It kind of disgusts me that a lot of modern women look down on someone like my Grandma, who built a happy home, a beautiful family, and fostered literally nothing but warm and special memories for all her kids and grandkids.

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#337

Post by hnick »

> OnlyFans’ 20% cut of its creators’ revenues might be most usefully compared to Patreon’s 10% take-rate.

That sounds much better than the app stores with their 30% (until recently for Apple) and Twitch which takes a whopping 50% of a $5 sub.

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#338

Post by cbozeman »

tomc1985 wrote: post #231
bonoboTP wrote: post #108

"Everything in life is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power." I think the debate is not really about porn, but people's sense of justice, cheating, deserving things or not etc. Some feel like porn gives unearned satisfaction to young men, a virtual substitute they don't have to work for. The bitter other side will say, no shit, I won't slave away to get screwed over, it's much more straightforward business to co…

> That it hollows out the sanctity of this intimate and symbolic act. See that's the problem. We as a society need to stop putting sex on a pedestal. It's just sex. Pleasure is pleasure, why would anyone not want to be pleasured? And why is pleasure something that has to be earned ? It is very simple to give and receive pleasure, why complicate that?

Something given has no value.

The truest line from Starship Troopers.

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#339

Post by Guthur »

klunger wrote: post #227
_huayra_ wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feminist take was definitely uncalled for in this article. The author's bias about how the women, _who are actually getting monetarily compensated_, are the victims completely misses the costs to the purchasers, who are almost all men, in terms of their money and the neurologic changes that such sex work consumption has. Having the "algorithm" suggesting and enticing these men back to buy more subscriptions / pi…

Wow. Are you really saying that the men who consume porn are equally victimized as actual sex workers, because of an algorithm? In the sense that algorithms do nudge our behaviour in insidious ways, addicted consumers of porn can be seen as victims of a sort. But, to suggest that the social stigma associated with porn usage is equal, much less anywhere near approaching, or in the same order of magnitude of the social…

So there is some sort of scale of victimhood, and everyone should measured against it?

Are men victims of their own biology? How come they're the ones that predominately, are they inherently evil and exploitive, is that what we should believe.

Whoa inventing moral codes is hard, i wonder how long it will take us to figure it out again.

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#340

Post by ralph84 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #312
bobthepanda wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, this isn't historically true; women were and are a historically significant part of the industrial labor force, and before that did a good share of agricultural work as well. Certainly industrial labor had gender divides, but it's not a strange fluke that, say, most of the people who died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire were women.

Somewhen in the last two centruries, the general population seems to have internalized the view that making money = work, keeping a house functioning = not work. It's peculiar, if you think about it, given how big a multiplier the latter is to the former. I'm guessing this is one of the early case of society falling victim to metrics - making money is easy to quantify and compare, housekeeping isn't.

Feminism stigmatized keeping a house functioning. “Barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen” became a slur thrown at women who had the nerve to not serve a corporate master.
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