Under the skin of OnlyFans • Hacker News Board

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#521

Post by BeFlatXIII » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 7:06 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…

> This is in no way exclusive to porn.

After all, the origin of the term Stan is exactly about this kind of parasocial toxicity.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#522

Post by throwaway6945 » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

ayngg wrote: post #74

throwmeawaydddy wrote: post #33

Fire up the throwaway! Not 100% related to the article, but directly related. I worked as developer for a product in the same niche ("democratizing adult content"). I spent almost 2 years working on the frontend, devops, and building out the analytics engine (all pre-covid). Anyway, on to the comment at hand. We had a small number of users compared to OnlyFans (when I left, there were about 20K active content creator…

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…

"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 long run."

Um, blaming the victim much? Those men have full agency not to be psychotic jerks towards them. No one is forcing them to abuse, harass, and/or threaten sex workers.

But I agree sex workers are being groomed and subsequently exploited by sites like onlyfans with unrealistic promises of quick money for relatively little work. But so are tech workers by sites like this and other VC funds, so should we ban venture capital too? It's once again the inclusion of sex that makes sex work distinct, no?

I wish we had a society that provided better preparation and opportunity to everyone, but we don't right now, and sex work beats living on the street or getting stuck in an abusive household IMO.

"I almost see it as drug dealing, with the drug being intimacy and attention, and by nature it is a transaction where the dealer always uses their own supply."

Which is an entirely new subject wherein societies that experimented with total legalization got a better outcome than societies that hyperfocus on drug wars. Neither choice seems ideal, but one does appear to be unambiguously better given the available data.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chasing_the_Scream

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#523

Post by throwaway6945 » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 7:08 PM UTC

htrp wrote: post #430

flyinglizard wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Did you read that thread about the Nvidia Shield yesterday? Or how about all the controversy over _The Last of Us 2_ having a trans character?

https://collider.com/last-of-us-2-controversy-explained/

Too many people have too much time on their hands.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#524

Post by vagrantJin » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 7:11 PM UTC

brazzy wrote: post #287

vagrantJin wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reinforcing toxic attitudes among the men. Or it could just be normal, expected behaviour.

Expected by whom? I'm really not sure what you're trying to say.

> viewer with things like "Be honest, would you lick it?".

I bet that raises engagement and gets subscriptions, but seems like a really bad idea in terms of, as you wrote, mental health for the women, and reinforcing toxic attitudes among the men.

I believe since this is HN, it isn't a radical claim to suggest reading/ comprehension isn't the problem. But since I can't make guarantees I'll give a succinct answer in the interests of time.

Expected by whom?

The Pope.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#525

Post by jeffreyrogers » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 7:22 PM UTC

edmundsauto wrote: post #507

dragonwriter wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sounds like a utilitarian argument. Unfortunately, that means the weights of the increased harm vs. decreased harm are what determines the morality. And those are arbitrary. Well, yeah and with a deontological argument, chosen moral axioms are what determine the morality, which are equally arbitrary. All arguments of “should” have arbitrary values at their root.

OP was explicitly making a utilitarian argument, one that did not present relative weights or other assumptions about population size. On that, it failed to make its point, which is what my comment was about. If you wish to say that most philosophical arguments are people reinforcing their previously held beliefs, I would not argue with you.

> OP was explicitly making a utilitarian argument

No I wasn't. I was making an HN comment, not engaging in moral philosophy, which I find boring and arbitrary. It's no coincidence that the preferred moral philosophy under any regime is one that is favorable to that regime. Thus the Greeks had virtue ethics, Nazis a bastardized Nietzscheanism, and our contemporary society Rawlsianism.

I actually agree with your criticisms, they were obvious to me when I wrote the comment, but we must ultimately decide what sort of world we want to live in (or have it decided for us), and I would prefer one without OnlyFans, that such a world is a fantasy for the foreseeable future is besides the point.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#526

Post by MauranKilom » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 7:22 PM UTC

leppr wrote: post #330

hnbad wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Can anyone who downvoted comment on the reasons? I actually found this post insightful and particularly level-headed so I'm curious if it's something I've missed.

Have not actually read the comment yet (and also not voted, of course), but the name of the commenter appears to intentionally provide for certain priors.

Edit: After reading, I agree with your assessment of the post though!

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#527

Post by FabHK » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #420

throwawayboise wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coal mining and sex work are hardly representative examples of "all work." We all lose our youth and our health, it's inevitable whether we work or not. Yes ultimately your employer feels that they are getting more value from your work than it is costing them, otherwise there would be no point in employing you. It's a real stretch to argue that is exploitative even in most cases (to say nothing of all work).

Most work in the world is closer to Coal Mining I'm afraid. Losing your health by working 40+ hours a week is much worse than the baseline. As far as the extraction of value not being exploitative, this argument simply applies to literally every condition of exploitation, and it is very possible to be employed without having a dominant superior. It would be good for you to arrive to a better definition of exploitatio…

> plainly most relationships of employment do involve some sort of exploitation

Well, that's already a much more defensible statement than "All work under capitalism is exploitative".

But I'd want to add that not all relationships (and that includes work relationships) fall neatly into a oppressor vs. oppressed or exploitative "dominant superior" vs. exploited worker scheme. (Who'd have thought that you find me deconstructing binaries, but here we are...)

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#528

Post by MauranKilom » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #510

ramraj07 wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s somewhat Gaussian or normal sure. But if it’s a different distribution then this isn’t true at all.

What use is median in a Pareto distribution (which this phenomenon falls under)? From what I can tell median is useless, I can't think of a use case, and the internet fails to give me one. Average gives you an expected value to work with. Median though, can be worthless in a pareto distribution where the 90% of the value is in the top 10% of the distribution. I feel like people have this default reaction to assert th…

Mean and median give you strictly greater information than just mean (or just median).

Given assumptions about the distribution, you may even be able to fit (or at least narrow down) the exact shape based on these two values.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#529

Post by edmundsauto » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 7:34 PM UTC

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #525

edmundsauto wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP was explicitly making a utilitarian argument, one that did not present relative weights or other assumptions about population size. On that, it failed to make its point, which is what my comment was about. If you wish to say that most philosophical arguments are people reinforcing their previously held beliefs, I would not argue with you.

> OP was explicitly making a utilitarian argument No I wasn't. I was making an HN comment, not engaging in moral philosophy, which I find boring and arbitrary. It's no coincidence that the preferred moral philosophy under any regime is one that is favorable to that regime. Thus the Greeks had virtue ethics, Nazis a bastardized Nietzscheanism, and our contemporary society Rawlsianism. I actually agree with your critic…

You may find the formalization boring and arbitrary, but independent of that, your argument was one of utility.

An alternative argument, if you wanted to avoid such droll dry topics, would have been to say "I don't want OnlyFans to be a thing." Instead, you made an argument based on moral philosophy to support your opinion. That's totally fine! It also doesn't change the fact that your comment evaluated the moral utility of whether our world is better or worse for existing.

Re: Under the skin of OnlyFans

#530

Post by ipaddr » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

brazzy wrote: post #135

ipaddr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like you see a girl you think is hot and you ask people about her and follow her home. Great you know where she lives. You have seen her naked and paid for her pictures. You are worried someone is going be as smart as you but take it a bit too far and go knock on her door? And what.. Ask her for a date? Kill her? I would think if you go to the same school you could follow home anyone. And you have the opportunit…

What you're failing to account for is that online sex work massively increases the number of people paying attention to you in a way that can turn dangerous, and at the same time tends to reinforce dangerous attitudes. The risk of some bitter, lonely guy living three states away, going off the rails and deciding that you are a bitch who needs to be taught a lesson, after years of having his attitudes messed up by hot…

Isn't that person as likely to assault a neighbour.

Most channels are not pushing messages with 'I need your cock now' and if they are they are probably run by a professional operator.

A lot of channels aren't about sex. A lot of channels have males.

If all of your fears were valid I would recommend getting off instagram, facebook, etc because someone could find a photo clothed or not from those sources. It could lead to..