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Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

matthewball.co

421–430 of 878 posts

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#421

It does seem like the business preys on, primarily teenage boys, in a way that traditional pornography does not. If you look up the user demographics, you'll notice an obvious problem: The demographics do not include the number of users under 18. https://techreport.com/statistics/software-web/onlyfans-stat... Some may say: well that's because you have to be 18 to use the site. But that's not true. Anyone can signup f…

>preys on

What do you mean by "preys on"? Teenage boys seek out porn, is normal. There's nothing magical about this type of porn. If they are breaking the ToS and committing credit card fraud, who's at fault?

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#422
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People working in the mines, or the military, I wonder why that's a socially acceptable way of "selling" their body, but prostitution is not. Even we, behind a computer screen and getting back pain and wrist RSI, we also "sell" our bodies in a matter of speaking. I can only imagine that the negative perception of prostitution as "selling" your body is coming from mainstream religions which are the great society moral…

>I wonder why that's a socially acceptable way of "selling" their body, but prostitution is not. Probably because its not the same at all. Getting naked and spreading your legs is neither as productive nor difficult as serving your country. Neither should it have the same social status.

> Getting naked and spreading your legs is neither as productive nor difficult as serving your country

We have different moral compasses, I guess. To me, obeying military orders (which often result in killing people) is neither productive, nor difficult (as a big part of thinking/initiative is replaced by blindly following orders). Military personnel basically outsource a large chunk of thinking and assessing good/bad to a "higher power". In a way, that's very easy and comfortable life for a specific type of people: all higher order judgments are deferred to higher ups in the military chain. Besides, I wouldn't say military personnel are "serving" their country more than, say, plumbers, electricians, railway workers, postal service, healthcare workers, or, even sex workers.

> Neither should it have the same social status

I disagree. The fact that somebody who has no other skills and initiative but to be a death machine/robot blindly following orders, doesn't warrant them to be a hero, and sure as hell doesn't qualify them to a high social status in my book. And, at least to me, calling military service "productive" is just plain hypocrisy. Their only function is to either destroy things during war, or sit around looking menacing when there is no war.

Imo, money spent on weapons and the military could be better spent to build more social housing, solve healthcare problems, etc.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true for every part of the human experience. People discriminate because of religion, etc. Sounds like you care too much about what other people think of you. Anyways, my point is this sort of thing is rapidly becoming something nobody cares about, and that's due to feminism and it's a good thing.

> People discriminate because of religion, etc Which is illegal in most places.

Only for certain protected activities like employment or housing, otherwise it's entirely legal to be a bigot.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#424
post #281

> The company counted an average of only 42 employees in 2023, down from 61 two years earlier. During the year, it generated $31MM in net revenue per employee (13-28x that of Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft) and $15.5MM in operating profit (27-560x). This is the wildest part. One company that is proving all the "why does need 10000 engineers?" takes true.

> This is the wildest part. One company that is proving all the "why does need 10000 engineers?" takes true.

Generally speaking, needs engineers because it's rational to keep hiring while each incremental engineer generates more value than they cost in salary and overhead, even if some of those engineers are at less than 50% utilisation and have to generate pointless make-work for themselves to get past performance review.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those rules aren't taken from the thin air though. It's really easy to argue that sexual gedonism is detrimental to society, and its online incarnation is even more so: as any addiction it steals productive time from people's lives, it puts hormones over culture which patently breeds violence, it leads to social atomization, and consequently to mental issues (which means violence again), economically bad on a level c…

> as any addiction it steals productive time from people's lives, it leads to social atomization, and consequently to mental issues (which means violence again), economically bad on a level comparable to fentanyl imports, and the list goes on. Well the same could be said of social media, mobile phones, netflix binge, computer games (although I don't agree with the violence part). So why single out sex then?

You are tying to make an argument for destigmatizing sex work, but for me I think it really points out how we should really increase the stigma towards those working for social media giants, sports gambling sites, and other tech companies whose main operating model is actively getting people addicted to something and then profiting off of it. Social media is one of the worst developments for society in recent history, and the people working for Facebook or TikTok absolutely deserve to be shamed for actively participating for personal gain.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#427
post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People used to say the same about getting divorced or getting a tattoo or having a child "out of wedlock" (even the terminology sound hopelessly outdated). Maybe think about which side of history you prefer to be on.

These things you mentioned are all still looked on negatively by some people. My grandma curses 'bastards' and children 'out of wedlock'. People still lose out on jobs for having face and neck tattoos, its in the media regularly. In exactly the same way as having an OF account, its up to the person doing these things to judge the consequences of whether they are happy with some people in the world looking down on the…

> These things you mentioned are all still looked on negatively by some people.

I don't know anyone who has been denied a job or an opportunity because of those issues. I also don't know anyone who has been denied an opportunity because they made adult content. Does it happen? Absolutley. Is it crippling to the point of ostracization? Not even close.

If anything, being able to filter out people who would look down on those attributes/experiences is increasingly becoming a net positive. I wouldn't wan to associate with someone who disparaged people because they have a piecing or like to take naked photos.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#428

What 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…

The shocking part is how new generation have a fully rational reinterpretation of all this, they call it "ethical sex". It's beautiful to them (probably in contrast to the boat loads of issues IRL social and intimate relationships can bring with them). And anything not aligned with their view causes a lot of angry arguments.

Every new generation is worse than the one before them

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She's a person, same as me. That line of reasoning tends to break down pretty quickly. Unless you're truly special, there are probably people out there who've done something so awful that you wouldn't date them despite the fact that they're "a person, same as me" .

You missed my point. A lot of guys act like it somehow taints someone for life or repeat all the redpill 'pair bonding' nonsense, and don't judge people on their own merits. You're not picking out make and model of a car, you're building a relationship with another person.

I don't know what "redpill 'pair bonding'" means because I'm old, so it's possible that I misunderstood. That said, I don't think it's far-fetched to assume that someone who willingly engages in prostitution (as a seller or a buyer) has a somewhat cynical and transactional relationship with sex, and I understand why many people might not like that.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of these commenters actually use OnlyFans, because there's literally a free tier option to subscribe. You still need a credit card to sign up because they obviously want to reduce the friction for subscribing or paying for extra content. I've seen a lot of models that will use Twitter > Free OF > Paid OF funnel. Twitter is mostly soft-core / flirty, Free OF has some nudity, typically no videos, and the Paid OF i…

> Context: I have a side business deploying chat LLMs for OnlyFans models for fans to "talk" to Seems illegal, or at the very least a violation of OF's Terms of Service.

Their ToS doesn't apply to off site content
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