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Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

matthewball.co

721–730 of 878 posts

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every new generation is worse than the one before them

Dtaisk Afai. Cof Lemma, 19:1, 2, 549-552 / https://www.jstor.org/stable/25414613 Let me first give you four quotations. Firstly: “Our youth loves luxury, has bad manners, disregards authority, and has no respect whatsoever for age. Our children today are tyrants; they do not get up when an elderly man enters the room—they talk back to their parents—they are just very bad.” Secondly: “I no longer have any hope for the…

On the matter of holistic degradation with each generation I always think about american presidential debates from several decades ago which, to me, offer irrefutable evidence of an older society with greater command of speech, wit, rationality, temper, etc. What do you think?

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The circle of life. People said the same thing about Playboy when it first came out, about Internet porn when it first came out… People have been “falling in love” with strippers for as long as strippers have existed. In many ways OF feels like a positive step because it allows the removal of toxic middlemen that stand between the model and their customer. To my mind the bigger issue is how much of it is a total scam…

I've explored using LLMs for this exact purpose, and there's a huge problem. Onlyfans rules very strictly forbid incest and other kinds of icky content, and Onlyfans sexters are very, very aware of this. If you break the rules, Onlyfans is very eager with permabans, and getting your account banned effectively destroys your whole business.

When it's that easy to screw up, it's easier and cheaper to pay real humans $1k a month for sexting than to build an LLM-based system that never makes mistakes and is 100% secured against prompt injection.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#723
post #118

Not a moralistic take, but one issue that interests me is the second-order impacts associated with the long tail of producers in OF who do not make a career from it. With traditional adult entertainment, creators are aware of the social ramifications (e.g., social stigma, familial ostracism, difficulty dealing with the future, and so on), and there is a decent theoretical economic framework to measure that. I am not…

If people are aware that more people are doing it surely the stigma is lessened as the practice is more normalized. For instance homosexuality is not a big deal now because it's seen as more common and therefore more normal. Certainly at high levels of revenue most people would consider it a financial success and a sign of status to be that beautiful.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that particularly different from, say, concerts? The social aspects are what drives value.

People go to concerts to socialize with the crowd, not with the artist.

Maybe a parasocial with the crowd then. Small venues are better for social life but bigger venues create more revenue. So we get less social life.

People build connections whatever they do, we have had phone sex for a long time. Now you need a camera and take some clothes off to do it. It is obvious that the people who manage to earn a lot streaming are mass producing content. There are ones who strive for a social connection and the creators who give that are never going to be big earners. Same as small venues.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#725
post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OF models [...] using AI for [answering DM responses] This seems like OF's Etsy trap moment. On the one hand, scaling creator:individual_fan multiples via AI assisted messaging = $$$ (to creators and OF) On the other hand, it canabalizes their core business value tenet -- authenticity. It'll be curious to see which path they choose, and if it ends up playing out similar to Etsy. I.e. temporarily increasing their re…

Embracing gen AI is absolutely the wrong move for a content creators. People are not paying for visuals and conversations. They are paying for a genuine human to human interaction. If you take away that part, you’re left with worthless pixels on a screen

It's a weird set of game outcomes though.

If it's not done, then creators have a fundamental time cap to the amount of personalized content they can create.

If it's done, but users don't know about it, then creators increase their revenue several times.

If it's done, but users do know about it, then creators lose several multiples of revenue.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first time my dental hygienist asked a small talk question referencing something I said last visit, I was impressed by their memory/vaguely flattered . The second time it happened I was pretty sure they're just writing notes about what to say in my record. Especially when the new hygienist did the same trick :)

I worked in the pizza business before there are some regular customers that you pretty much would call friends. similar to work friends.

Any pub landlord will have regulars

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#728
post #300

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…

We’re the cohort putting our hand on the stove to remember you get burned. Vices like gambling, obscenity, prostitution, drugs, etc are banned or heavily controlled societies over because they have significant negative cultural effects. “Why do YOU care what other people do in their private lives?” was always a stupid justification: if everyone in your community is addicted to vices, that DOES affect me.

> Vices like gambling, obscenity, prostitution, drugs, etc are banned or heavily controlled societies over because they have significant negative cultural effects

Do they? Citation needed. So far it seems that marijuana consumption leads to far less violence than alcohol, and proliferation of porn leads to much lower rates of sexual violence.

> if everyone in your community is addicted to vices, that DOES affect me

Then choose and manage your own community, but don't push this view on the whole country. Dozens of millions of people (I don't know what country do you live in, so not sure about the population) are not a "community" that you can put under the same norms. If you think that porn is bad, it's your right to do so, and to find likeminded people to build a community that shares these values. But why would you want to force it on other people?

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#729

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…

It’s crazy right!? Sex sells everywhere. I’ve read or listend to a idea that because sex is strongly regulated in the US there is more happening in the hidden.

Edit: Maybe there is a correlation between Gamers and Porn.

Re: Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics

#730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote in a couple of places about how recording and mass reproduction destroyed the social (and monetary) value of small-time creative or artistic-expression talent, like knowing how to play the piano OK or being a pretty-good singer or dancing decently well, or being a quite good (but not top 0.1% good) storyteller, or being fairly good at sketching people. Took social, and perhaps making-a-living valu…

Really thoughtful comment. (An upvote was not enough :-)

Haha, the thoughtful parts are Vonnegut’s.

I found an abbreviated quote from the bit I’m thinking of in Bluebeard. Loses some of it, but gets his point across:

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/277466-simply-moderate-gift...

But I am quite sure I saw similar sentiments at least one other place in his work, and I think a couple places—years and years ago I read most of his novels, plus most of the collected short fiction and short stories, but it’s all pretty fuzzy now.

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