I am still amazed that prostitution is legal when done online, and these teenage sex workers are allowed to continue selling themselves.
Life as an OnlyFans 'chatter'
41–50 of 293 posts
Re: Life as an OnlyFans 'chatter'
#42Related: in Germany, there currently is a huge scandal surrounding the company "Fanblast", where you could purchase the supposed "whatsapp phone number" of various "celebrities" and, allegedly, the chats were also run by random freelancers [1].
[1] https://www.comicschau.de/news/fanblast-aloa-me-klengan-krit...
Re: Life as an OnlyFans 'chatter'
#43I am still amazed that prostitution is legal when done online, and these teenage sex workers are allowed to continue selling themselves.
(a) It's not prostitution, and (b) while prostitution is illegal in the US it's perfectly legal in the UK and many other countries.
Re: Life as an OnlyFans 'chatter'
#44Re: Life as an OnlyFans 'chatter'
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
It appears a lot of people using OF are using it as a parasocial medium, not strictly for porn. They want to believe they're actually in touch with the performer and part of their lives to some degree.
What does "para-" mean? Edit: Right, 'beside', 'outside', like in paranormal. Now, are parasocial relationships "human connection"?
para- has a variety of meanings [0] depending on which word it’s used to form.
Parasocial itself means “one-sided” in a relationship [1].
Re: Life as an OnlyFans 'chatter'
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you mean by "human connection"?
It appears a lot of people using OF are using it as a parasocial medium, not strictly for porn. They want to believe they're actually in touch with the performer and part of their lives to some degree.
Yes, and it's sad.
I wish someone would create a business that profits from people forming actual connections with each other, but every opportunity has been displaced.
Dating sites replaces meeting IRL, and foster superficial relationships anyway. Bars are passé. Social clubs, golf clubs, etc, seem to belong to a past generation. Social media killed the social part. The damage to society is real.
Re: Life as an OnlyFans 'chatter'
#47How is this not fraud, or at least false advertising? If I'm paying money to chat with a specific sex worker how is it even legal to let some random dude in a third world country pretend to be the person I'm supposed to be talking to? I've never personally engaged in these types of systems, but I don't think there's a problem with them as long as they are run honestly. It sounds like Onlyfans is exploiting workers an…
It is fraud. However, one thing has become crystal clear lately is that laws are only as good as we have systems in place that are willing and able to enforce them.
And further, scamming people in the context of sex has always been easy because of the shame in admitting you fell for it.
Imagine filing a report that you spent thousands of dollars chatting with some random person, having the chat logs submitted as evidence, etc. it’s similar to why all types of sexual assault are rarely reported
Re: Life as an OnlyFans 'chatter'
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
It appears a lot of people using OF are using it as a parasocial medium, not strictly for porn. They want to believe they're actually in touch with the performer and part of their lives to some degree.
What does "para-" mean? Edit: Right, 'beside', 'outside', like in paranormal. Now, are parasocial relationships "human connection"?
It means that it shares some, but not all, aspects of a social relationship.
It's often applied to one-sided relationships with celebrities, where you feel a personal connection to them but they literally don't know you exist.
Re: Life as an OnlyFans 'chatter'
#49Somewhat unrelated but I won’t be surprised if we eventually find out a lot of OnlyFans revenue is money laundering.
Re: Life as an OnlyFans 'chatter'
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
It appears a lot of people using OF are using it as a parasocial medium, not strictly for porn. They want to believe they're actually in touch with the performer and part of their lives to some degree.
What does "para-" mean? Edit: Right, 'beside', 'outside', like in paranormal. Now, are parasocial relationships "human connection"?
“Para-“ tends to mean “around” or “beside,” kind of in the sense of “close to" or "almost”--paraprofessional teachers or lawyers, paramilitary groups, parallel lines, parasitic symbiotes. In this specific context, American sociologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl (1956) [0] coined the notion of “para-social" relations, in order to describe audience members’ intensifying, one-sided sensations-of-relationships with media characters as American-style mass media came into its own:
> The most remote and illustrious men are met as if they were in the circle of one's peers; the same is true of a character in a story who comes to life in these media in an especially vivid and arresting way. We propose to call this seeming face-to-face relationship between spectator and performer a para-social relationship.
They contrast para-social relations with face-to-face ones, which they call ortho-social:
> The crucial difference in experience obviously lies in the lack of effective reciprocity [...] To be sure, the audience is free to choose among the relationships offered, but it cannot create new ones. Whoever finds the experience unsatisfying has only the option to withdraw.
> ...the media present opportunities for the playing of roles to which the spectator has–or feels he has–a legitimate claim, but for which he finds no opportunity in his social environment. This function of the para-social then can properly be called compensatory, inasmuch as it provides the socially and psychologically isolated with a chance to enjoy the elixir of sociability.
It's a brisk accessible read, and spookily still relevant. Thanks for the impetus to dust it off :)
Anyway—in the 2010s, social scientists began to use the idea to think about the emerging class of even-more-intimate, confessional celebrities—like the Kardashians—as those celebrities started to use the socials ‘round the clock and to broadcast seemingly intimate, unguarded moments [1]. “Healthy” doesn’t seem to be the word the researchers and clinicians tend to choose...
[0] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00332747.1956.11...
[1] e.g. https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research_all/7/