Under the skin of OnlyFans • Hacker News Board

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#421

Post by zorrolovsky » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 3:40 PM UTC

blippage wrote: post #198

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…

> 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…

To me, both statements are true.

Sex work is empowering because it gives opportunities to people that they wouldn't have otherwise.

It's also very exploitative and risky, both for workers and clients.

In an ideal world, we would find a way to make sex work less exploitative and risky. In the real world, prostitution is a complex problem as old as humanity itself...

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#422

Post by bena » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

Is the very concept of the parasocial relationship here the problem?

Previously, only a very select few people would be able to be the subject of such a relationship. So, it's fairly easy to protect them from the pitfalls of it. Bodyguards, gated communities, limited in-person socialization with non-peers, etc. In other words, celebrities. Of any stripe. They've been dealing with this issue for years.

But now, we have YouTube, Twitch, OnlyFans, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and probably dozens more I can't even think of and have never been exposed to.

And someone making rent by slinging nudes on OnlyFans doesn't have enough cash for an entourage. They don't have the lawyers and accountants available to advise them and help them set up companies to make certain transactions to disguise certain facts about themselves. Like where they live. They also don't have anyone who is decent enough at public relations to help them navigate the fine line between seeming personable while not sharing too many facts about themselves.

But they'll have a segment of people completely engaged with them in one of these parasocial relationships. And in a way they do encourage it. And in another real way, it's the job they've chosen. When any of them talk about "building relationships with viewers" and how it's important, that's the kind of relationship they are talking about: a parasocial relationship.

The vast majority of people do not have the means to deal with parasocial relationships that go wrong. And even those with the means sometimes get hit. Ronald Reagan was shot by a man trying to impress Jodie Foster.

And I think those building parasocial relationships that contain sexual intimacy are particularly at risk.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#423

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

emptysongglass wrote: post #183

stared wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are mental health costs that are often not talked about On the contrary, everyone is talking about mental costs, implying that they do not know what they are doing. I know a person who changed her work from being a cashier at a supermarket to a sex worker. Mentally, she benefited a lot. In one job, she felt like an automaton serving people. I other she had personal relationships with her clients. You can gues…

My wife who is a sex worker is in therapy provided by her camsite because the work is so toxic. She was as pro-sex-work as you can be when she first started five years ago. It's majority trauma and I have to hear the stories every day. The men who drive by want to cum as fast as possible with as little damage to their pocketbook as possible. So they drive in, maybe critique her appearance, say, "tits" or "ass" (usual…

> The far left has really hijacked the discourse around sex work and used language of empowerment to encourage young girls to get in and get what's theirs.

No, it hasn't. The far left is anti-capitalist, and includes both pro-and-anti-sex-work factions; the attitude you describe is more that of the pro-sex-work portion of the pro-(possibly somewhat tamed)-capitalism center-to-center-left.

The pro-sex-work portion of the anti-capitalist (including far) left sees sex work largely as just work, and agrees with many of the (not explicitly gender-based) popular arguments about harms associated with sex work as accurate of sex work within a capitalist system, but not as particular too sex work, but rather as endemic to labor within capitalism.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#424

Post by watwut » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

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…

Your description of pre-WWII Germany is overly idyllic. We would not had WWII if pre-WWII Germans were that happy. The Germany was pretty violent, unstable place with serious economical problems including homelessness. The whole phenomenon of young men fighting on the streets with political opponents had a lot to do with them being unhappy about their place and options in society.

Some people and marriages were happy, but definitely not all of them were happy.

The society was changing on all directions leading to conflicts. Young women in particular tended to move away from villages to cities for greater freedom and economic options, followed by backslash over proper female place.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#425

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 3:46 PM UTC

newsclues wrote: post #236

Xylakant wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sorry for your wife. However, I think it’s dangerous to shape the conversation about sex work solely around such cases. A person from my old flat share was a nurse on a terminal cancer ward for mostly children. > 90% of the patients died. They burned out within two years on the job. My aunt had to quit her job as hospital nurse because it physically ruined her body. She’s still suffering from that, decades later.…

Two anecdote from different sides of the spectrum and you feel the one you disagree with is dangerous. Just because normal jobs suck, doesn’t mean sex work is good.

> Just because normal jobs suck, doesn’t mean sex work is good.

Just because sex work sucks doesn't mean that you improve sex workers conditions by criminalizing their work while creating no legal opportunity.

Criminalizing sex work just makes it suck more, and the reduces the best case for people for whom it was their best available option (whether or not it still is.)

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#426

Post by sebmellen » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 3:47 PM UTC

nightcracker wrote: post #243

sebmellen wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that’s really a gross view of human behavior. Commodification is what allows us to build functional societies, and I am glad we discovered it, but it is absolutely antithetical to the things which sit at the core of human experience. Love, joy, excitement, mourning, creating art, singing and dancing… All of these are unconditional, intimate, and creative acts. When they are turned into slot machines and side hust…

Yes, yes, the same old story. The exact same things has been said by the previous generations about books, comic strips, radio, television, computer games, etc...

Ok..? In the case of computer games, I don't think unfettered use is a good thing.

This isn't "juvenoia", I was born in and am living in this generation.

The vast universe of freely available junk and time wasters available now is a radical shift from even my early childhood, when there were distractions, but they were not purposely made addictive by teams of psychologists and programmers to increase the profits of huge corporate advertising behemoths (à la TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc.).

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#427

Post by toast0 » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 3:48 PM UTC

MrFantastic wrote: post #342

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…

I have known a lot of "dancers", I lived in a high rise next to an upscale joint. The biggest problem is that their professional skills are fleecing men out of money. "Who has deep pockets and how can I get the most money out of them?" It's not like you can just turn off that mentality once they quit.

Sounds like training for enterprise sales or class action lawsuits?

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#428

Post by sebmellen » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 3:50 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #211

sebmellen wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then the cycle of stigmatization begins again… Almost as if there is a purpose to it. Is stigmatization always an objectively bad thing? I suppose it depends on your frame of reference. I don’t think any person should be stigmatized for what they do, but certain activities may well deserve it. I suppose that’s also a recurrent theme in the New Testament. One thing I think ought to be stigmatized more is video gam…

Every thing that is used by the lower class to escape reality get stigmatized, and the more effective it is the more problematic society view it. The decline in alcohol addictions is often attributed to gaming, particularly among men. I also personally prefer people who are addicted to games over those addicted to alcohol, and long term it is much safer for everyone involved.

Color me skeptical.

> [0] "Descriptive data showed no general decline in binge drinking across European countries. In contrast to our prediction, the association between binge drinking and computer gaming was not negative [b = 0.26, one-sided 95% confidence interval (−∞, 0.47), P = 0.98, Bayes Factor = 0.21]. We found the same pattern of result in a secondary analysis on six Nordic countries that have experienced declines in adolescent drinking recent years. In analyses with covariates reflecting engagement in other activities, we only observed statistical evidence for an effect of going out."

[0]: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dar.13226?af=R

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#429

Post by imtringued » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 3:52 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #213

blippage wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Is it worse than fast food restaurants, pizza joints, or bars exploiting customers who appear (in retrospect) prone to over-indulge?

This question is interesting because we don't even consider the opinion of the chicken that are being served.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#430

Post by htrp » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 3:52 PM UTC

flyinglizard wrote: post #393

roenxi wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably bad for the mental health of the men too. As the thread ancestor noted - sometimes "'fan[s]' [go] nuclear and was waging all out digital war.". I'm guessing that is just a thing some men do but it is bound to be made worse by women correctly figuring out the high-engagement equilibrium is tantalising without promising. But a lot of them probably aren't going to realise that they're dealing with unexploded or…

This is in no way exclusive to porn. After running a B2C business for a while I realized that if, as an owner, you should be wary of some people, it needs to be your biggest, most vocal fans. They are the most emotionally attached, feeling they’ve personally invested their money, time and faith into your brand and they are the most violent when disappointed. At some point they all expect special treatment, which make…

Your vocal B2C fans go digitally nuclear on you? What B2C industry are you in?