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OnlyFans, influencers, and the politics of selling nudes during a pandemic

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Re: OnlyFans, influencers, and the politics of selling nudes during a pandemic

#41
post #24
post #20

As I read some women in the article are making as much as a talented ivy league graduate who joins a tech company. It seems amoral to prevent them from making money, why don't we see it as a talent as we see "tech jobs" as talent? Can it really do more damage than what tech companies specially one who pedal ads and sell customer data and give people anxiety?

The message this sends to girls is that if you’re pretty, this is the easiest way to make a lot of money. It damages the work of people who have spent decades trying to get women to be valued for things other than their bodies.

Thats incredibly patronizing

Re: OnlyFans, influencers, and the politics of selling nudes during a pandemic

#42
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sex addiction fueled by free internet porn has ruined countless lives. I would like to see a citation on this. Moral panics around sexuality are at least a couple centuries old, and technologies that are said to have contributed to or created them include the printing press, radio, the bicycle, the car, TV, movies, magazines, and now the Internet. For many of the earlier technologies, Gay Talese's book Thy Neighbor's…

Nicole Prause is a lucid, pioneering researcher on such issues, and she has spent a lot of time debunking myths like the one GP proposes. One write-up here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understanding-the-er... (She has unfortunately become a target of certain right-wing elements, so if you Google her, you will find a lot of non-scientific attacks. You should read her publications directly and form your own…

Nicole Prause did no myth busting, and your blaming of "right-wing elements" on disagreements with her is downright disingeneous.

See https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/relevant-research-and-articl...

I think that the recent scientific articles cited on https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/ and the countless of self-reports by men in various "NoFap" communities make a pretty good case the porn-addiction is not a myth.

Also, see: https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/relevant-research-and-articl...

Re: OnlyFans, influencers, and the politics of selling nudes during a pandemic

#43
post #20

As I read some women in the article are making as much as a talented ivy league graduate who joins a tech company. It seems amoral to prevent them from making money, why don't we see it as a talent as we see "tech jobs" as talent? Can it really do more damage than what tech companies specially one who pedal ads and sell customer data and give people anxiety?

> why don't we see it as a talent as we see "tech jobs" as talent?

Good damned question. Sex work is work.

Re: OnlyFans, influencers, and the politics of selling nudes during a pandemic

#44
post #37
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we're thinking of the same website. I've been around on 4chan long enough to know that "troll" most often is equivalent to what the site really feels, or at least some of the people on there. The "troll" or "satire" label is only there to try to evoke plausible deniability - as in the case of "for legal purposes my call for violence against this person is a joke". i.e. the sorts of people - in general - who brow…

The way I read it, 4chan is like a concentrated version of what it was like to be a teenager at the edge of society. You stir the pot and feed off the energy that people respond with. If you live in a Christian conservative community, you leave pamphlets full of gay porn outside church. In a progressive community, you make racist websites about interracial dating. They aren’t pro gay porn or pro racism, they’re pro g…

5 males aged 13-15 with basic self-taught networking skillz could wreak a huge amount of havoc such that it would throw off observations that are based on web activity. It is one of the reasons that anecdotal observations of online behaviors I consider to approach zero value, with some exceptions.

And, obviously, a lot of those kids are older and still engaging the same juvenile behaviors.

Re: OnlyFans, influencers, and the politics of selling nudes during a pandemic

#45

My opinion: Porn is the new drug. Our daughters are the dealers and our sons are the users. Sex addiction fueled by free internet porn has ruined countless lives. At least OnlyFans is behind a paywall, keeping it out of view of children.

Watching porn is healthy and normal. Like any form of entertainment it can be abused, but there isn't a moral panic about binge watching Netflix or video gaming. Like anything, it's best in moderation.

Do people really think that watching other people have sex is "healthy"?

Re: OnlyFans, influencers, and the politics of selling nudes during a pandemic

#46
post #20

As I read some women in the article are making as much as a talented ivy league graduate who joins a tech company. It seems amoral to prevent them from making money, why don't we see it as a talent as we see "tech jobs" as talent? Can it really do more damage than what tech companies specially one who pedal ads and sell customer data and give people anxiety?

I think the new world of normalized prostitution is going to be great and healthy.

[deleted]

Re: OnlyFans, influencers, and the politics of selling nudes during a pandemic

#47
post #20

As I read some women in the article are making as much as a talented ivy league graduate who joins a tech company. It seems amoral to prevent them from making money, why don't we see it as a talent as we see "tech jobs" as talent? Can it really do more damage than what tech companies specially one who pedal ads and sell customer data and give people anxiety?

I think the new world of normalized prostitution is going to be great and healthy.

It's been normalized a long time ago. For women, using dating apps like Tinder is akin to a guy browsing through an escort service website, choosing the hottest escort he can find... with the only difference that the guy ends up paying (in both cases!). And in our "modern" and "progressive" culture I guess it's empowering for a woman to sleep with hundreds of men until she decides to settle down with some simp.

Re: OnlyFans, influencers, and the politics of selling nudes during a pandemic

#48
post #31

I am all for letting people do what they like with their bodies, but if people are trying to makes ends meet and they believe the only way of doing so is via selling pictures of their bodies - I think society has another massive moral failing on its hands and this probably an unrefined opinion, but I feel like firing a worker for running a NSFW OnlyFans account (or similar) would, if not should, run agrounds for sexu…

It's crazy to me how ubiquitous the assumption is that any kind of sex work, even something as tame as nude photography, must be considered an unhappy last resort by any woman engaging in it.

Re: OnlyFans, influencers, and the politics of selling nudes during a pandemic

#49
post #20

As I read some women in the article are making as much as a talented ivy league graduate who joins a tech company. It seems amoral to prevent them from making money, why don't we see it as a talent as we see "tech jobs" as talent? Can it really do more damage than what tech companies specially one who pedal ads and sell customer data and give people anxiety?

I'll bite and talk about the subject, since I've been involved in that community as both a buyer and sort-of-seller (Helped a ManyVids star rise to the top 20 in their category with feedback, strategy and ehem... 'collaborations' but I'll get back to that)

I don't find sex work in and of itself immoral. That is of course an opinion.

On the other hand... It's another subculture in and of itself. And unfortunately, it's a subculture that often rewards immoral behavior and/or pulls people down dark paths.

From the buying side, It's been interesting to see the different ways that sellers behave. The ways some of them cut corners and/or 'lightly cheat' clients is questionable. The worst form I've experienced is when you make a larger services purchase and it become obvious over the session that you just supported some bad chemical habit of theirs. But I've also had sellers try to cheat the clock.

And I've had MULTIPLE sellers violate my consent in hypnosis sessions.

But perhaps worst was initiating a relationship with a seller for 2 years, only to discover that she had a boyfriend (now fiance) out of state in med school. That's the one I collaborated with, turned out that I was really helping someone who lived in a guilded cage buy more toys for her, NOT helping her make ends meet.

And now, I live in constant worry that she'll start distributing the videos we made again. They were made such that they JUST fall out of my state's classification of Revenge porn. Perfect example of an Immoral seller. When COVID broke out she immediately started e-begging, claiming that she couldn't make her car payments (which I knew was a lie on multiple levels.)

And yet, less than a month later she's posting more fancy outfits, gadgets, etc. that she's purchased.

From the seller's perspective:

- You get scammers too.

- You're living on the edge of acceptable behavior. If you're not using a payment service that approves of your work, One properly targeted set of emails from a disgruntled customer could lead to any uncollected money.

- You have to be -very- careful about your online life. Lots of sellers keep their real life online profiles as locked down as possible, lest someone find their real identity via image search algos.

- You get a lot of people who will either waste your time, troll, or outright harass you.

Which, if anything is what concerns me about the business as a whole. Someone else on HN pointed out in another thread that once you perform one bad act, many times you have to perform another bad act to cover up the first.

I've watched sellers go from kind to cruel after going through the industry for a while. It does change people, and not for the better.

Re: OnlyFans, influencers, and the politics of selling nudes during a pandemic

#50
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I observe this to be a narrative that many are pushing, but I don't see it anywhere IRL or even the proverbial data. I suspect they just fall out of statistics and into depression.

Anecdotally, I see it in lots of places - I was a part of those types of communities when I was younger (I'm better now, and I _think_ I'm reasonably well-adjusted), but I still keep tabs on those corners of the internet so I know what's going on, and can be prepared if/when they bubble over in a meaningful way. I see lots of hateful activity, from "boogaloo" groups that hide their violence fetish behind euphemisms a…

If you spend enough time searching for the darkest corners of the deep web, you can find powerless, sad people saying bad things about women and people of color.

You can find roughly the same things being said about white men on the front pages of NY Times, CNN, Huffington Post, Twitter, HN and Reddit and being celebrated as progressive, socially acceptable views to be shared non-anonymously by people in positions of power.

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