19 ms·

For years, I was profoundly puzzled by people that are willing to give hundreds -- if not thousands -- of dollars to (mostly women) they'll never meet for what'

by dvt 6y ago

For years, I was profoundly puzzled by people that are willing to give hundreds -- if not thousands -- of dollars to (mostly women) they'll never meet for what's basically freely available offline. I saw a very interesting mini-documentary on YouTube[0] not too long ago that kind of opened my eyes. The idea here is that places like Onlyfans, and to a lesser extent Twitch, monetize loneliness via parasocial relationships[1]. This is fundamentally different than being a fan of, say, an actress like Emma Stone, or an athlete like LeBron James. Viewers (the subject) actually believe they have a relationship with the object (be they a pro gamer or scantily-clad model). To most well-adjusted folks with a healthy social circle, this seems kind of nuts, but parasocial relationships have a long and sordid history -- starting with the invention of the "fireside chat" on radio. Loneliness is a powerful motivator and the psychology here is profoundly interesting. At the end of the day, I'd say places like Onlyfans end up being net negatives for both the models as well as the fans. It's a bit sick that the internet -- the very thing which was supposed to bring people together -- ends up cannibalizing its own. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djMojvschs0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djMojvschs0 [1] https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100305809 https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20...

valuearb 6y ago
Aren’t the women on OnlyFans monetizing it in a positive manner? Don’t base your world view on anecdotes from a carefully edited documentary. In reality almost all the customers know it’s a fantasy, so what’s wrong with fantasies?
- dvt 6y ago
  > Don’t base your world view on anecdotes from a carefully edited documentary. In reality almost all the customers know it’s a fantasy, so what’s wrong with fantasies? I'm not sure what you mean. The documentary seemed fairly middle-of-the-road and interviewed both fans as well as models. It's pretty clear that parasocial relationships aren't healthy (whether it's with a game show host or an Onlyfans model), so I would definitely push back against "almost all the customers know it’s a fantasy."
  - valuearb 6y ago
    All documentaries are edited to tell the story the director wants you to hear. You have no idea whether the interviews are with a realistic sample of the customer base. All it takes is focusing on a couple whackos to make the entire customer base look similar. And if you made that documentary, who would you focus on? The normals, or the outliers? If you want the most entertaining product that will make you the most money, you’ll choose the outliers.
    - dvt 6y ago
      > All documentaries are edited to tell the story the director wants you to hear. Not saying this is the case here, but as a documentary nerd, this is absolutely not true. There are plenty of cinéma vérité documentaries out there.
      - Igelau 6y ago
        You know that's not the case here. If it comes down to picking and editing interviews, it would not be possible to do so without bias.
scarmig 6y ago
It seems similar to romance scams, though managing to fall barely on the right side of the law. I honestly think they should be deplatformed, one way or another. Young men in their teens and twenties are psychosocially damaged by this style of money-mediated intimacy, and at best they will play catch up with their peers the rest of their lives, and at worst will be permanently stunted. If I had a son, I'd honestly prefer he end up addicted to nicotine than to OnlyFans. (Older men are also damaged, but they're likely lost causes.) We also need to recognize that men as a class are vulnerable to this kind of illness, and design public health interventions to help divert men from it and pull men out of it if they find themselves trapped by it.
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  can we stop using arbitrary corporate powers to force behavior on people? Everybody is damaged in someone else's mind, how about being tolerant to people's lifestyle choices that have no impact on us > that men as a class are vulnerable to this kind of illness, and design public health interventions to help divert men Interesting. The ancient lawmaker Solon instituted public brothels with a standard fee as a public health measure. But people think that s horrible -- damned if you do, damned if you don't. I guess the suggestion is that people shouldn't have sexuality or desires, they should just cut off their genitals and live as vegetables. O what a world we live in
  - nwienert 6y ago
    This is the standard libertarian reply but it’s not really compelling. Being choosy about your culture and protective of your youth on a societal scale is necessary. Without it, corporations with Billions of dollars will be competing to extract as much value out of children of families with a median net worth of about 40k. And that already massive imbalance is only getting worse and worse, not just through inequality, but through technology where corporations are more and more able to access their entire mind in evermore convincing fashion (VR up next!). So you’ll take base desires that should be met as naturally as possible (sexual desire met with supervised interaction with peers of the same age) and you suddenly have unlimited virtual reality porn with facetuned, hyper optimized algorithm, AI generated responses, and suddenly you have a new generation of “incels” or similar who were so satisfied by their internet porn addiction that they never were forced to grapple with... well, real women, and the fact that they are absolutely not constantly sexually available and hyper optimized for your pleasure. And then you have Big Problems. Listen, these are all, like, opinions, man. But with where we are heading with technology. Having seen TikTok and how it’s radicalizing and dopamine retraining a whole generation... I wish the government would get a whole lot more overbearing with requiring regulation - not to ban it per se, but to ensure platforms that provide it must validate age with more than a checkbox, etc. At least that Apple continues to provide evermore effective parental controls.
aphextron 6y ago
>parasocial relationships have a long and sordid history -- starting with the invention of the "fireside chat" on radio. They don't call it the oldest profession as a joke. Social interaction and validation is the single most valuable thing to human beings, and it always has been. The basic business model of OnlyFans is absolutely no different than what has occured since the beginning of human civilization.
- andromeduck 6y ago
  It's really not to different from a lot of religious behavior either. If people can feel deeply attached after reading a book or hearing a story It really shouldn't be surprising that that others can feel the same via stream or other digital mediums. One can also think of these purchased rewards/interactions as the equivalent of relic collection/worship.
  - mattmanser 6y ago
    I'd hesitate to conflate the two. As someone from a mainly secular country, I have often pondered the loss of a central gathering place the places like a church give to society. A weekly service really helps foster a community. The only other thing that does is schools, but that excludes a huge swathe of people.
    - foxdev 6y ago
      You might be interested in the concept of the third place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
      - abeppu 6y ago
        Bwahahahasob. That's right, in the before-times home and work were separate places.
        TeMPOraL 6y ago
actuator 6y ago
I know of a friend who spends a lot of money on this platform. I was baffled by the amounts he ends up spending, ~5% of his monthly income. He doesn't have that high a disposable income, so it made no sense to me, considering I can't even imagine me spending a single dollar on such stuff. When I asked him about it, he said "the messages are personalised and it doesn't feel artificial. They kind of lead you on to pay more as the interaction goes on". I would be really surprised if it is not bots interacting at this point. The kind of messages he was talking about being "personalised", felt very generic, at least the initial ones and they could reuse the same content over and over again with others.
- scarmig 6y ago
  It gets me to wondering: how hard would it be to create computer generated OnlyFans models (actors? performers?) and set up some chat bots to interact with fans? Even if the chat bot would lack verisimilitude, I can imagine outsourcing the messages to developing countries and adding some tools to let them make quick, cash-generating responses more efficiently.
  - mrguyorama 6y ago
    You've reinvented half of the scams that are run out of business buildings in nigeria
  - actuator 6y ago
    Unethical but I won't be surprised if that is exactly what's happening. Once you have the media, you just need a person to chat up and insert that media. For all we know, that can be a dude. For content as well, you can scrape other platforms and create a new identity.
    - HenryBemis 6y ago
      Wasn't it disclosed through the Ashley Madison hack that they were employing bots (and real people) to keep the clients busy and lure them into buying more "chatting privileges" (number of messages etc.? So this has already happened to some degree. As AI (aka humans teaching computers) to make for better "hungrier" chatboxes, with the escalation (buy more messages, send client to next tier), sell a "more personalized package" (to use the parent comment of his friend). This could do a nice Black Mirror episode. Like the one where she lost her husband, her friend registered for the Tier1 service and it went on from that..
9HZZRfNlpR 6y ago
They are just taking advantage of lonely men, this idea is predatory in nature and shouldn't be celebrated.
- hackinthebochs 6y ago
  Are the men becoming less lonely from the interaction? Then they are getting their money's worth for a service.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    Do they stay on the system and continue to pay? Then I'd argue they're not becoming less lonely. It looks more like regular addiction, money buys you a hit, but you'll soon be back to craving more, especially when your general (social) life isn't providing a lot of positivity.
    - hackinthebochs 6y ago
      Most things people enjoy in life you would be hard pressed to find a distinction between it an addiction.
    - austhrow743 6y ago
      What your describing as regular addiction sounds a lot like any and every service anyone pays for. You're not getting a thing as is, you pay for thing, you get thing, if you stop paying for thing it goes away. You could slap any service in there.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        Yes, sure, "we're all addicted to oxygen" etc. When you stop paying for Netflix, you're usually not feeling it emotionally. You might be a bit more bored at night, but that's about it. It seems different when you're paying for pseudo relationships.
  - zo1 6y ago
OneLeggedCat 6y ago
> end up being net negatives for ... the models I'm not understanding what you mean there? Aren't they making a lot of money for only a little work?
- dvt 6y ago
  > I'm not understanding what you mean there? Aren't they making a lot of money for only a little work? Some are, but at the cost of privacy, having weirdos stalk you online, potential future job prospects, etc. Not to mention the time and money that goes into actually taking photos, curating, responding to messages, etc. It's not as easy as it might seem.
  - delecti 6y ago
    The time and money that goes into it is what makes it a job. That's a bit different from the privacy/weirdos/career effects.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    It's not as easy as it seems, I'm sure. But it's extremely compensated well for what is essentially unskilled labor. Sure, it has some disadvantages, but I'm fairly certain that for most people the advantages far outweigh them.
    - notyourday 6y ago
      > It's not as easy as it seems, I'm sure. But it's extremely compensated well for what is essentially unskilled labor. This is a fundamental mistake that people make when discussing this. As in any content market the money is in the head. Both tail and the long tail could do 2x the work of the head and receive nearly no compensation.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        Are they staying in the market? If you're doing it for 50 hours a week for barely any compensation, isn't it more of a hobby. I'm not saying that every cam girl is getting mega rich from it, but they're making good money in relation to the effort required. There's not zero effort but it's also not something you need to go to uni for three years and then spend time as a junior cam girl getting experience. Which is fine, btw, I don't mind it, but I always find it weird when the image is presented blurry as in "we can't really tell whether it's a professional<=>customer relationships or just two people interacting socially", because I think we generally can tell very well.
cblconfederate 6y ago
How sure are we that these fans are not getting more benefit than we think? Maybe they are paying for the privilige of having an "a la carte" relationship that is impossible in real life. I d really like to see a survey about how these things work, because i doubt it's just neediness - there s probably benefits that justify the amounts spent. It would take more than "documentaries", which AFAIK are always going for sensational, but false conclusions.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > How sure are we that these fans are not getting more benefit than we think? Good question. Similar question: how sure are we that the whales in mobiles games or Casinos are not getting more benefit than we think? The amounts spent are often quite substantial on the fan's side, while they are one among many viewed from the streamer's side. I don't think there's reciprocity.
  - cblconfederate 6y ago
    I would like to see pharmaceuticals coming up with drugs that specifically target addictive reward circuits. then we can get rid of judgmental laws against addictions that some ppl consider "harmful" and instead prescribe antiaddiction medication. If people still like to gamble, then we must accept it s their choice and they need no "help" from us
    - luckylion 6y ago
      Once we have those kinds of meds, I'm fairly sure that you see the gambling industry implode. They are hyper-optimizing targeting exactly those reward circuits for a reason. There's not just the question whether the individual needs to be saved from themselves, there's also the question whether we let the predators roam free. If someone believed they could cross the Atlantic ocean wearing nothing but shorts and flippers, you get to a difficult decision rather quickly. But if they're drunk and somebody is trying to guide them into a dark alley where you know three of their friends are waiting to rob the person, there's a good moral argument for a) saving that person from their fate and b) disposing of those four who are a net negative contribution to humanity.
TigeriusKirk 6y ago
To go off on a tangent, this gives me a new perspective on the success of Trump. Perhaps his tweets, clearly written by the man himself in the moment, contribute to a sort of parasocial relationship with his "fans." Certainly in comparison to the professional pr-speak of most other politicians. AOC, among a very few others, seems to have tapped into something similar.
- httpsterio 6y ago
  Yeah, I'm sure of it. People aren't defending his policies because they've given it enough thought and arrived at the same conclusions. You can see it on how clueless many are and how they end up defending him despite many of Trump's acts they themselves know are wrong. His most enthusiastic fans defend him because they feel a connection to him. Like he cares or wants what's best for them and that he's approachable.
  - rufusroflpunch 6y ago
    You’ve just described every likable politician ever.
  - zo1 6y ago
    That's a lot of generalizations about a large group of people.
- chillwaves 6y ago
  AOC also goes live on Instagram pretty often. It's much more personal, free form and natural way to talk to her fans. Real time is also nice.
- oars 6y ago
  Fantastic point, and note that his supporters can also feed off this together (come together as a community), making it even more rewarding.
nsajko 6y ago
Related Reddit commenter's post (regarding the "bathwater" a prominent similar model was selling successfully on the Web and why someone would buy that): https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ca0gm6/people_who_ordered_belle_delphines_bathwater_why/et5pesf/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ca0gm6/people_wh...
timwaagh 6y ago
Right now you and I are having a parasocial relationship. Or what else would you call internet forums? Theirs just pays better.
- dvt 6y ago
  > Right now you and I are having a parasocial relationship. Or what else would you call internet forums? Theirs just pays better. We aren't. Parasocial relationships are characterized by being unilateral (i.e. subject → object) and idealized (where there's an illusory personal connection). I doubt either of us feels that way :)
  - bawolff 6y ago
    Sometimes famous tech people comment on hn. That makes me feel like im rubbing shoulders with giants in the field, while in practice its a unilateral and illusory connection.
    - chii 6y ago
      In a sense yes. But the main difference here is that on HN, the tech celebrity does not specifically target themselves to people who would like to be rubbing virtual shoulders with celebrities.
      - bawolff 6y ago
        Maybe not, but pretty much every /IAMA foo AMA/ thread on reddit meets your criteria
    - polytely 6y ago
      This, posting on this site lets me interact with people who would probably never give me the time of day in real life. It feels like being a handyman who gets to hang around engineers. It's like getting a little taste of what being successful in this field feels like.
  - timwaagh 6y ago
notyourday 6y ago
> This is fundamentally different than being a fan of, say, an actress like Emma Stone, or an athlete like LeBron James. That's because neither Emma Stone nor LeBron James figured out how to enter into micro transaction relationship with the fan base. Bella Thorne did. The rest will now either have to flip into that mode or lose their celebrity status.
- lostgame 6y ago
  No, because this kind of thing is intentionally exploitve and these models make money by exploiting mental illness, particularly loneliness. Even in the case of mobile apps and micro transactions. I have shamefully worked (for a short time) for a company that used to have serious meetings about how to exploit these types of people. I've had a lot of friends into camming, and tbh it kinda sucks to watch some of them bend their morals and who they are more and more as it becomes harder and harder to ignore the money that comes with it. LeBron James licensed the shit out of himself for video games, action figures, commercials, etc - and I'd argue other than the commercials, which are exploitve by nature, none of this is specifically exploiting anyone. It's entertainment. I'm asexual, but I have absolutely nothing wrong with pornography on principle. I still have friends who cam ethically. Unfortunately in the past performers more often than not ended up exploited. Now the tables are turning and some performers like Bella just end up exploiting their viewers, and that's just sad. I mean Bella literally bailed on $200 pay per view stuff and essentially exploited her past as a Disney star, of all things, to draw attention to herself, and as a result has single-handedly irreversibly screwed over the lives of every other performer on the site by forcing monthly instead of weekly payments. Bella Thorne didn't figure out how do to micro transactions. She thought she could take advantage of her micro celebrity status to give herself an advantage over others, exploited hundreds, and screwed over hundreds, probably thousands of performers. I have a lot of friends in the sex industry and camgirl industry as the queer communities which I am a part of often are supportive to these folks, and it's awesome that the people who choose to do this non exploitavely can do it. I don't think it's that different in that case from being any other kind of celebrity, except I do believe it is obviously objectively riskier.
  - notyourday 6y ago
compiler-guy 6y ago
The economics of entertainment (and that is what an only-fans account is: entertainment) don't follow this cold calculation of value. A single ticket to an NBA playoff game ranges from about $150 to over $5,000 (back when you could go). You can see the game for effectively free at home, with better commentary, exactly the snacks you want and all of that. A night at the symphony or opera starts--starts--at $50 a ticket, and can go to $1500 easily. After the show is over, it's over, and all you have is a memory. Good seats at a popular rock concert are easily $250. You can get the mp3 for next to nothing, and it will be a better recording too. Even just a movie these days starts at almost $20. And yet people still fork out the money. It isn't just the show itself that they are paying for, it is the entire experience. The interaction, being part of the crowd, a crowd. Many things. The value captured by an entertainment here isn't just the bits of the picture. And I say this as someone who would never, ever pay for the content I know of on only fans. But I have sunk a lot of money into the other things on the above list.
- dvt 6y ago
  > and that is what an only-fans account is: entertainment While trivially true, this is extremely reductive. People don't attend basketball games, operas, or go eat at Michelin star restaurants because they're lonely. People donate thousands to streamers and models because they are.
  - compiler-guy 6y ago
    People wear Golden State Warriors gear and party at Oracle after the game because they want to be a part of the crowd. That is exactly a search for connection. The Warriors don't care about you (at least not more than anyone else).
  - sbarre 6y ago
    > People donate thousands to streamers and models because they are [lonely]. Speaking of being reductive... Consider the possibility that people also do it because they enjoy the interaction they get out of it, however shallow and/or fleeting. The same way some people pay top dollar for a "meet and greet" with rock stars or athletes before a show or game, where you get to shake hands, take selfies and trade platitudes with famous people and then they never see you or think of you again. People donate to streams to hear the streamer thank them or call them out by name or interact with them, in some manner, for some amount of time. I'm not saying loneliness is not a factor, but it's definitely not the only factor. Like everything else to do with human interactions, it's complicated.
thescriptkiddie 6y ago
Philosophy Tube made a better video about parasocial relationships (skip to 23:47 if you're in a hurry): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IG0Y63LkDM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IG0Y63LkDM
- dvt 6y ago
  An excellent video that I've also seen! What I found most interesting about my original video is how Onlyfans and Twitch fills that perfect niche to monetize the parasocial relationship.
racl101 6y ago
Does the "para" stand for parasitic? lol
- prvc 6y ago
  No.
- Jaruzel 6y ago
  In this instance, 'para-' is being used to mean: abnormal/ incorrect. ref: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/para-#Prefix https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/para-#Prefix
tmpz22 6y ago
Check this reddit thread out [1]. A very toxic streamer going on complete tirades with his teammates playing Among Us, and all the comments are people playing down the vitriol of the streamer with phrases like "I love him", "He's really funny", etc. What's equally sad is the special moderation privileges given to large streamers by Twitch. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/ikce21/xqc_goes_way_too_far_heated_about_among_us/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/ikce21/xqc_...
krrrh 6y ago
So many podcasts operate parasocially as well. Especially during COVID and negative polarization there is a high demand to be able to participate in interesting conversations. For lots of current events podcasts that have a paid tier, the member-only episodes tend to be a lot more social and personal than the main feeds, to say nothing of the zoom calls many of them do.
konjin 6y ago
There's also the fact that for a small minority of people spending $200 on photos is basically nothing. I like my money too much to part with it, but realistically if I were to value my time rationally paying $100 for takeout would be a worth while trade when I look at how long cooking takes. Then if I am willing to spend $100 on food, why not on something else I might enjoy? As I said, I don't, but that feels more like a character preference for investment/hoarding instead of any rational cost/benefit analysis.
wesleywt 6y ago
The same could be said about celebrity. Fans of actresses and actors believe they have a relationship with them. That is why they get so invested in their love lives. A whole industry of gossip and paparazzi has been built to follow the ins and outs of your favourite celebrity. What is the difference between that and your favourite cam girl or twitch streamer?
asdasfasdfasdf 6y ago
Maybe I'm in the minority... but I use OnlyFans for the same reason I enjoy Bandcamp. I can send money directly to the people whose content I enjoy. Most porn is circulated and pirated non-stop and the original participants often end up not seeing nearly as much money as they should for it. I will always choose the platform that empowers the creators and reduces their overhead as much as possible.
shirro 6y ago
They have monetized stalking. How could that go wrong?
mc32 6y ago
Japan has a related IRL version[1]. In this case it's mostly lonely women, strangely enough, who go to 'host' clubs where young men feign interest in them, and will give them more time if the jane pays more. At first blush it seems ridiculous, but there you have it. As you point out, these subjects on certain level believe they have a kind of romantic relationship with these young men. Obviously Japan is also known for hostess clubs where men pay for attention as well as regular old Soapland stuff. [1]https://lifestyle.inquirer.net/255090/japan-lonely-women-pay-big-time-lotharios/ https://lifestyle.inquirer.net/255090/japan-lonely-women-pay...
- Haemm0r 6y ago
  I observed the same in China, however it's mostly men paying for female company in clubs.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  IIRC on HN itself there was an article about a service where you could just hire someone to (pretend to be) your friend / significant other, to pretend to your families you're not some lonely shut-in and you're doing all right. The requests were quite varied. It's dystopian as fuck but it fulfills a need, apparently. The Netflix miniseries Maniac has something similar, a company called Friend Proxy where you can hire someone to act like a friend of yours. It's a really interesting take on the cyberpunk genre, it's worth watching.
drdeadringer 6y ago
I am aware of some porn actors promoting "Ethical Porn" whereas paying for porn promotes the creation of this ethical porn. For example, the porn star Jiz Lee has spoken out about it [1] and yes -- Jiz Lee is on OnlyFans. That said, people will pay for what they want whilst others will pirate for their favorite given reason(s) be it porn, movies, books, audiobooks, &c. Similar for not contributing via Patreon; maybe they'd rather some ads and half the content to not spend a few bucks a month, for example. Reasons abound. [1] https://jizlee.com/ethical-porn-consumption-pay-for-porn-anti-piracy/ https://jizlee.com/ethical-porn-consumption-pay-for-porn-ant...
pyuser583 6y ago
My understanding from third party sources (ahem) is that most cam sites are for people who want specific content. Or get off on the power of bossing someone sexually. The actual lonely hearts are rare and far between.
on_and_off 6y ago
>This is fundamentally different than being a fan of, say, an actress like Emma Stone, or an athlete like LeBron James. dunno about these 2 but it is not _fundamentally_ different from how many stars build and maintain their "brands" these days. People like e.g. Jack Black have a youtube channel or at least an instagram feed and share "slices of life" (edited or not) with their fans. That's also a parasocial relationship.
Ansil849 6y ago
> for what's basically freely available offline Offline relationships cost a lot of money, as well.
anonytrary 6y ago
> I'd say places like Onlyfans end up being net negatives for both the models as well as the fans. Someone could argue the opposite: It's a net positive for a model who is able to separate herself from the work and use it as a means to earn money, and it could be a sufficient honeypot for men who would have otherwise become predators. Personally, I would call it an unhealthy relationship. I think it's vastly in favor of the models because they're making money at the expense of extremely desperate older (i.e. wealthy) men. It's sort of a creepy-man trap, shepherding these men towards the models (remote/safe) and away from potential victims.
- Magodo 6y ago
  The misandry in your comment is unreal
- hackinthebochs 6y ago
  Can you at all justify the all the moralizing and value-claims in this comment?
lmm 6y ago
You're posting a lot of judgement and not a lot of evidence. You're asserting that this is always driven by loneliness, always harmful, always fundamentally different from things people might spend money on; do you have any basis for that beyond personal incredulity?
Pamar 6y ago
I suggest reading this essay for some insight on the topic: https://knowingless.com/2018/11/19/maximizing-your-slut-impact-an-overly-analytical-guide-to-camgirling/ https://knowingless.com/2018/11/19/maximizing-your-slut-impa...
snarf21 6y ago
I think you are missing something. It isn't about seeing a picture. It is about a fantasy. It is a daydream. The more they "know" and view one person, the deeper that fantasy can become. People are able to delude themselves into a mindset of "if I keep interacting with her, what if she realized how cool I am and we actually got together" or similar. This gets into what is real and the power of anticipation. There have been a lot of studies that show the biggest endorphin bump for a vacation is in the planning, not actually going and experiencing the locale. This is going to really change as VR matures. People will be having lots of experiences at home in a very immersive way. This includes front row at a concert, walking tours of a far off city or attraction, and obviously VR porn integrated with mechanicals. We have vivid dreams all the time and they are not "real", I think these things will feel even more real for the immersion.
didntknowyou 6y ago
i was surprised when i found out quite a few people i know paid for dating apps like tinder. loneliness is horrible and people are willing to pay for a fix/solution.
dwild 6y ago
> For years, I was profoundly puzzled by people that are willing to give hundreds -- if not thousands -- of dollars to (mostly women) they'll never meet for what's basically freely available offline. That's because you seems to misunderstands theirs needs and misunderstands the cost of what you consider "freely available offline". I recently saw a tiktok of a girl crying because she fake one, well they are just putting a price over that effort. > It's a bit sick that the internet -- the very thing which was supposed to bring people together -- ends up cannibalizing its own. Yeah, it's something that I realize day after day. In the past it wasn't like this, I've seen so many people make real connections, but since a few years, maybe a decade, making friendship over the internet seemed to have changed (maybe it's just me though). I feel like you got something with theses fake relationship. They are so much easier to maintains, they are easy source of dopamine and they still "feel" like real ones, but they aren't. Some pay for them sure, but Youtube videos are another cheap ones, mostly the vlog format, are most probably source of many of them.

by dvt 6y ago

valuearb 6y ago

Aren’t the women on OnlyFans monetizing it in a positive manner? Don’t base your world view on anecdotes from a carefully edited documentary. In reality almost all the customers know it’s a fantasy, so what’s wrong with fantasies?

dvt 6y ago
> Don’t base your world view on anecdotes from a carefully edited documentary. In reality almost all the customers know it’s a fantasy, so what’s wrong with fantasies? I'm not sure what you mean. The documentary seemed fairly middle-of-the-road and interviewed both fans as well as models. It's pretty clear that parasocial relationships aren't healthy (whether it's with a game show host or an Onlyfans model), so I would definitely push back against "almost all the customers know it’s a fantasy."
- valuearb 6y ago
  All documentaries are edited to tell the story the director wants you to hear. You have no idea whether the interviews are with a realistic sample of the customer base. All it takes is focusing on a couple whackos to make the entire customer base look similar. And if you made that documentary, who would you focus on? The normals, or the outliers? If you want the most entertaining product that will make you the most money, you’ll choose the outliers.
  - dvt 6y ago
    > All documentaries are edited to tell the story the director wants you to hear. Not saying this is the case here, but as a documentary nerd, this is absolutely not true. There are plenty of cinéma vérité documentaries out there.
    - Igelau 6y ago
      You know that's not the case here. If it comes down to picking and editing interviews, it would not be possible to do so without bias.

scarmig 6y ago

It seems similar to romance scams, though managing to fall barely on the right side of the law. I honestly think they should be deplatformed, one way or another. Young men in their teens and twenties are psychosocially damaged by this style of money-mediated intimacy, and at best they will play catch up with their peers the rest of their lives, and at worst will be permanently stunted. If I had a son, I'd honestly prefer he end up addicted to nicotine than to OnlyFans. (Older men are also damaged, but they're likely lost causes.) We also need to recognize that men as a class are vulnerable to this kind of illness, and design public health interventions to help divert men from it and pull men out of it if they find themselves trapped by it.

cblconfederate 6y ago
can we stop using arbitrary corporate powers to force behavior on people? Everybody is damaged in someone else's mind, how about being tolerant to people's lifestyle choices that have no impact on us > that men as a class are vulnerable to this kind of illness, and design public health interventions to help divert men Interesting. The ancient lawmaker Solon instituted public brothels with a standard fee as a public health measure. But people think that s horrible -- damned if you do, damned if you don't. I guess the suggestion is that people shouldn't have sexuality or desires, they should just cut off their genitals and live as vegetables. O what a world we live in
- nwienert 6y ago
  This is the standard libertarian reply but it’s not really compelling. Being choosy about your culture and protective of your youth on a societal scale is necessary. Without it, corporations with Billions of dollars will be competing to extract as much value out of children of families with a median net worth of about 40k. And that already massive imbalance is only getting worse and worse, not just through inequality, but through technology where corporations are more and more able to access their entire mind in evermore convincing fashion (VR up next!). So you’ll take base desires that should be met as naturally as possible (sexual desire met with supervised interaction with peers of the same age) and you suddenly have unlimited virtual reality porn with facetuned, hyper optimized algorithm, AI generated responses, and suddenly you have a new generation of “incels” or similar who were so satisfied by their internet porn addiction that they never were forced to grapple with... well, real women, and the fact that they are absolutely not constantly sexually available and hyper optimized for your pleasure. And then you have Big Problems. Listen, these are all, like, opinions, man. But with where we are heading with technology. Having seen TikTok and how it’s radicalizing and dopamine retraining a whole generation... I wish the government would get a whole lot more overbearing with requiring regulation - not to ban it per se, but to ensure platforms that provide it must validate age with more than a checkbox, etc. At least that Apple continues to provide evermore effective parental controls.

aphextron 6y ago

>parasocial relationships have a long and sordid history -- starting with the invention of the "fireside chat" on radio. They don't call it the oldest profession as a joke. Social interaction and validation is the single most valuable thing to human beings, and it always has been. The basic business model of OnlyFans is absolutely no different than what has occured since the beginning of human civilization.

andromeduck 6y ago
It's really not to different from a lot of religious behavior either. If people can feel deeply attached after reading a book or hearing a story It really shouldn't be surprising that that others can feel the same via stream or other digital mediums. One can also think of these purchased rewards/interactions as the equivalent of relic collection/worship.
- mattmanser 6y ago
  I'd hesitate to conflate the two. As someone from a mainly secular country, I have often pondered the loss of a central gathering place the places like a church give to society. A weekly service really helps foster a community. The only other thing that does is schools, but that excludes a huge swathe of people.
  - foxdev 6y ago
    You might be interested in the concept of the third place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
    - abeppu 6y ago
      Bwahahahasob. That's right, in the before-times home and work were separate places.
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago

actuator 6y ago

I know of a friend who spends a lot of money on this platform. I was baffled by the amounts he ends up spending, ~5% of his monthly income. He doesn't have that high a disposable income, so it made no sense to me, considering I can't even imagine me spending a single dollar on such stuff. When I asked him about it, he said "the messages are personalised and it doesn't feel artificial. They kind of lead you on to pay more as the interaction goes on". I would be really surprised if it is not bots interacting at this point. The kind of messages he was talking about being "personalised", felt very generic, at least the initial ones and they could reuse the same content over and over again with others.

scarmig 6y ago
It gets me to wondering: how hard would it be to create computer generated OnlyFans models (actors? performers?) and set up some chat bots to interact with fans? Even if the chat bot would lack verisimilitude, I can imagine outsourcing the messages to developing countries and adding some tools to let them make quick, cash-generating responses more efficiently.
- mrguyorama 6y ago
  You've reinvented half of the scams that are run out of business buildings in nigeria
- actuator 6y ago
  Unethical but I won't be surprised if that is exactly what's happening. Once you have the media, you just need a person to chat up and insert that media. For all we know, that can be a dude. For content as well, you can scrape other platforms and create a new identity.
  - HenryBemis 6y ago
    Wasn't it disclosed through the Ashley Madison hack that they were employing bots (and real people) to keep the clients busy and lure them into buying more "chatting privileges" (number of messages etc.? So this has already happened to some degree. As AI (aka humans teaching computers) to make for better "hungrier" chatboxes, with the escalation (buy more messages, send client to next tier), sell a "more personalized package" (to use the parent comment of his friend). This could do a nice Black Mirror episode. Like the one where she lost her husband, her friend registered for the Tier1 service and it went on from that..

9HZZRfNlpR 6y ago

They are just taking advantage of lonely men, this idea is predatory in nature and shouldn't be celebrated.

hackinthebochs 6y ago
Are the men becoming less lonely from the interaction? Then they are getting their money's worth for a service.
- luckylion 6y ago
  Do they stay on the system and continue to pay? Then I'd argue they're not becoming less lonely. It looks more like regular addiction, money buys you a hit, but you'll soon be back to craving more, especially when your general (social) life isn't providing a lot of positivity.
  - hackinthebochs 6y ago
    Most things people enjoy in life you would be hard pressed to find a distinction between it an addiction.
  - austhrow743 6y ago
    What your describing as regular addiction sounds a lot like any and every service anyone pays for. You're not getting a thing as is, you pay for thing, you get thing, if you stop paying for thing it goes away. You could slap any service in there.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      Yes, sure, "we're all addicted to oxygen" etc. When you stop paying for Netflix, you're usually not feeling it emotionally. You might be a bit more bored at night, but that's about it. It seems different when you're paying for pseudo relationships.
- zo1 6y ago

OneLeggedCat 6y ago

> end up being net negatives for ... the models I'm not understanding what you mean there? Aren't they making a lot of money for only a little work?

dvt 6y ago
> I'm not understanding what you mean there? Aren't they making a lot of money for only a little work? Some are, but at the cost of privacy, having weirdos stalk you online, potential future job prospects, etc. Not to mention the time and money that goes into actually taking photos, curating, responding to messages, etc. It's not as easy as it might seem.
- delecti 6y ago
  The time and money that goes into it is what makes it a job. That's a bit different from the privacy/weirdos/career effects.
- luckylion 6y ago
  It's not as easy as it seems, I'm sure. But it's extremely compensated well for what is essentially unskilled labor. Sure, it has some disadvantages, but I'm fairly certain that for most people the advantages far outweigh them.
  - notyourday 6y ago
    > It's not as easy as it seems, I'm sure. But it's extremely compensated well for what is essentially unskilled labor. This is a fundamental mistake that people make when discussing this. As in any content market the money is in the head. Both tail and the long tail could do 2x the work of the head and receive nearly no compensation.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      Are they staying in the market? If you're doing it for 50 hours a week for barely any compensation, isn't it more of a hobby. I'm not saying that every cam girl is getting mega rich from it, but they're making good money in relation to the effort required. There's not zero effort but it's also not something you need to go to uni for three years and then spend time as a junior cam girl getting experience. Which is fine, btw, I don't mind it, but I always find it weird when the image is presented blurry as in "we can't really tell whether it's a professional<=>customer relationships or just two people interacting socially", because I think we generally can tell very well.

cblconfederate 6y ago

How sure are we that these fans are not getting more benefit than we think? Maybe they are paying for the privilige of having an "a la carte" relationship that is impossible in real life. I d really like to see a survey about how these things work, because i doubt it's just neediness - there s probably benefits that justify the amounts spent. It would take more than "documentaries", which AFAIK are always going for sensational, but false conclusions.

luckylion 6y ago
> How sure are we that these fans are not getting more benefit than we think? Good question. Similar question: how sure are we that the whales in mobiles games or Casinos are not getting more benefit than we think? The amounts spent are often quite substantial on the fan's side, while they are one among many viewed from the streamer's side. I don't think there's reciprocity.
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  I would like to see pharmaceuticals coming up with drugs that specifically target addictive reward circuits. then we can get rid of judgmental laws against addictions that some ppl consider "harmful" and instead prescribe antiaddiction medication. If people still like to gamble, then we must accept it s their choice and they need no "help" from us
  - luckylion 6y ago
    Once we have those kinds of meds, I'm fairly sure that you see the gambling industry implode. They are hyper-optimizing targeting exactly those reward circuits for a reason. There's not just the question whether the individual needs to be saved from themselves, there's also the question whether we let the predators roam free. If someone believed they could cross the Atlantic ocean wearing nothing but shorts and flippers, you get to a difficult decision rather quickly. But if they're drunk and somebody is trying to guide them into a dark alley where you know three of their friends are waiting to rob the person, there's a good moral argument for a) saving that person from their fate and b) disposing of those four who are a net negative contribution to humanity.

TigeriusKirk 6y ago

To go off on a tangent, this gives me a new perspective on the success of Trump. Perhaps his tweets, clearly written by the man himself in the moment, contribute to a sort of parasocial relationship with his "fans." Certainly in comparison to the professional pr-speak of most other politicians. AOC, among a very few others, seems to have tapped into something similar.

httpsterio 6y ago
Yeah, I'm sure of it. People aren't defending his policies because they've given it enough thought and arrived at the same conclusions. You can see it on how clueless many are and how they end up defending him despite many of Trump's acts they themselves know are wrong. His most enthusiastic fans defend him because they feel a connection to him. Like he cares or wants what's best for them and that he's approachable.
- rufusroflpunch 6y ago
  You’ve just described every likable politician ever.
- zo1 6y ago
  That's a lot of generalizations about a large group of people.
chillwaves 6y ago
AOC also goes live on Instagram pretty often. It's much more personal, free form and natural way to talk to her fans. Real time is also nice.
oars 6y ago
Fantastic point, and note that his supporters can also feed off this together (come together as a community), making it even more rewarding.

nsajko 6y ago

Related Reddit commenter's post (regarding the "bathwater" a prominent similar model was selling successfully on the Web and why someone would buy that): https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ca0gm6/people_who_ordered_belle_delphines_bathwater_why/et5pesf/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ca0gm6/people_wh...

timwaagh 6y ago

Right now you and I are having a parasocial relationship. Or what else would you call internet forums? Theirs just pays better.

dvt 6y ago
> Right now you and I are having a parasocial relationship. Or what else would you call internet forums? Theirs just pays better. We aren't. Parasocial relationships are characterized by being unilateral (i.e. subject → object) and idealized (where there's an illusory personal connection). I doubt either of us feels that way :)
- bawolff 6y ago
  Sometimes famous tech people comment on hn. That makes me feel like im rubbing shoulders with giants in the field, while in practice its a unilateral and illusory connection.
  - chii 6y ago
    In a sense yes. But the main difference here is that on HN, the tech celebrity does not specifically target themselves to people who would like to be rubbing virtual shoulders with celebrities.
    - bawolff 6y ago
      Maybe not, but pretty much every /IAMA foo AMA/ thread on reddit meets your criteria
  - polytely 6y ago
    This, posting on this site lets me interact with people who would probably never give me the time of day in real life. It feels like being a handyman who gets to hang around engineers. It's like getting a little taste of what being successful in this field feels like.
- timwaagh 6y ago

notyourday 6y ago

> This is fundamentally different than being a fan of, say, an actress like Emma Stone, or an athlete like LeBron James. That's because neither Emma Stone nor LeBron James figured out how to enter into micro transaction relationship with the fan base. Bella Thorne did. The rest will now either have to flip into that mode or lose their celebrity status.

lostgame 6y ago
No, because this kind of thing is intentionally exploitve and these models make money by exploiting mental illness, particularly loneliness. Even in the case of mobile apps and micro transactions. I have shamefully worked (for a short time) for a company that used to have serious meetings about how to exploit these types of people. I've had a lot of friends into camming, and tbh it kinda sucks to watch some of them bend their morals and who they are more and more as it becomes harder and harder to ignore the money that comes with it. LeBron James licensed the shit out of himself for video games, action figures, commercials, etc - and I'd argue other than the commercials, which are exploitve by nature, none of this is specifically exploiting anyone. It's entertainment. I'm asexual, but I have absolutely nothing wrong with pornography on principle. I still have friends who cam ethically. Unfortunately in the past performers more often than not ended up exploited. Now the tables are turning and some performers like Bella just end up exploiting their viewers, and that's just sad. I mean Bella literally bailed on $200 pay per view stuff and essentially exploited her past as a Disney star, of all things, to draw attention to herself, and as a result has single-handedly irreversibly screwed over the lives of every other performer on the site by forcing monthly instead of weekly payments. Bella Thorne didn't figure out how do to micro transactions. She thought she could take advantage of her micro celebrity status to give herself an advantage over others, exploited hundreds, and screwed over hundreds, probably thousands of performers. I have a lot of friends in the sex industry and camgirl industry as the queer communities which I am a part of often are supportive to these folks, and it's awesome that the people who choose to do this non exploitavely can do it. I don't think it's that different in that case from being any other kind of celebrity, except I do believe it is obviously objectively riskier.
- notyourday 6y ago

compiler-guy 6y ago

The economics of entertainment (and that is what an only-fans account is: entertainment) don't follow this cold calculation of value. A single ticket to an NBA playoff game ranges from about $150 to over $5,000 (back when you could go). You can see the game for effectively free at home, with better commentary, exactly the snacks you want and all of that. A night at the symphony or opera starts--starts--at $50 a ticket, and can go to $1500 easily. After the show is over, it's over, and all you have is a memory. Good seats at a popular rock concert are easily $250. You can get the mp3 for next to nothing, and it will be a better recording too. Even just a movie these days starts at almost $20. And yet people still fork out the money. It isn't just the show itself that they are paying for, it is the entire experience. The interaction, being part of the crowd, a crowd. Many things. The value captured by an entertainment here isn't just the bits of the picture. And I say this as someone who would never, ever pay for the content I know of on only fans. But I have sunk a lot of money into the other things on the above list.

dvt 6y ago
> and that is what an only-fans account is: entertainment While trivially true, this is extremely reductive. People don't attend basketball games, operas, or go eat at Michelin star restaurants because they're lonely. People donate thousands to streamers and models because they are.
- compiler-guy 6y ago
  People wear Golden State Warriors gear and party at Oracle after the game because they want to be a part of the crowd. That is exactly a search for connection. The Warriors don't care about you (at least not more than anyone else).
- sbarre 6y ago
  > People donate thousands to streamers and models because they are [lonely]. Speaking of being reductive... Consider the possibility that people also do it because they enjoy the interaction they get out of it, however shallow and/or fleeting. The same way some people pay top dollar for a "meet and greet" with rock stars or athletes before a show or game, where you get to shake hands, take selfies and trade platitudes with famous people and then they never see you or think of you again. People donate to streams to hear the streamer thank them or call them out by name or interact with them, in some manner, for some amount of time. I'm not saying loneliness is not a factor, but it's definitely not the only factor. Like everything else to do with human interactions, it's complicated.

thescriptkiddie 6y ago

Philosophy Tube made a better video about parasocial relationships (skip to 23:47 if you're in a hurry): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IG0Y63LkDM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IG0Y63LkDM

dvt 6y ago
An excellent video that I've also seen! What I found most interesting about my original video is how Onlyfans and Twitch fills that perfect niche to monetize the parasocial relationship.

racl101 6y ago

Does the "para" stand for parasitic? lol

prvc 6y ago
No.
Jaruzel 6y ago
In this instance, 'para-' is being used to mean: abnormal/ incorrect. ref: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/para-#Prefix https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/para-#Prefix

tmpz22 6y ago

Check this reddit thread out [1]. A very toxic streamer going on complete tirades with his teammates playing Among Us, and all the comments are people playing down the vitriol of the streamer with phrases like "I love him", "He's really funny", etc. What's equally sad is the special moderation privileges given to large streamers by Twitch. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/ikce21/xqc_goes_way_too_far_heated_about_among_us/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/ikce21/xqc_...

krrrh 6y ago

So many podcasts operate parasocially as well. Especially during COVID and negative polarization there is a high demand to be able to participate in interesting conversations. For lots of current events podcasts that have a paid tier, the member-only episodes tend to be a lot more social and personal than the main feeds, to say nothing of the zoom calls many of them do.

konjin 6y ago

There's also the fact that for a small minority of people spending $200 on photos is basically nothing. I like my money too much to part with it, but realistically if I were to value my time rationally paying $100 for takeout would be a worth while trade when I look at how long cooking takes. Then if I am willing to spend $100 on food, why not on something else I might enjoy? As I said, I don't, but that feels more like a character preference for investment/hoarding instead of any rational cost/benefit analysis.

wesleywt 6y ago

The same could be said about celebrity. Fans of actresses and actors believe they have a relationship with them. That is why they get so invested in their love lives. A whole industry of gossip and paparazzi has been built to follow the ins and outs of your favourite celebrity. What is the difference between that and your favourite cam girl or twitch streamer?

asdasfasdfasdf 6y ago

Maybe I'm in the minority... but I use OnlyFans for the same reason I enjoy Bandcamp. I can send money directly to the people whose content I enjoy. Most porn is circulated and pirated non-stop and the original participants often end up not seeing nearly as much money as they should for it. I will always choose the platform that empowers the creators and reduces their overhead as much as possible.

shirro 6y ago

They have monetized stalking. How could that go wrong?

mc32 6y ago

Japan has a related IRL version[1]. In this case it's mostly lonely women, strangely enough, who go to 'host' clubs where young men feign interest in them, and will give them more time if the jane pays more. At first blush it seems ridiculous, but there you have it. As you point out, these subjects on certain level believe they have a kind of romantic relationship with these young men. Obviously Japan is also known for hostess clubs where men pay for attention as well as regular old Soapland stuff. [1]https://lifestyle.inquirer.net/255090/japan-lonely-women-pay-big-time-lotharios/ https://lifestyle.inquirer.net/255090/japan-lonely-women-pay...

Haemm0r 6y ago
I observed the same in China, however it's mostly men paying for female company in clubs.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
IIRC on HN itself there was an article about a service where you could just hire someone to (pretend to be) your friend / significant other, to pretend to your families you're not some lonely shut-in and you're doing all right. The requests were quite varied. It's dystopian as fuck but it fulfills a need, apparently. The Netflix miniseries Maniac has something similar, a company called Friend Proxy where you can hire someone to act like a friend of yours. It's a really interesting take on the cyberpunk genre, it's worth watching.

drdeadringer 6y ago

I am aware of some porn actors promoting "Ethical Porn" whereas paying for porn promotes the creation of this ethical porn. For example, the porn star Jiz Lee has spoken out about it [1] and yes -- Jiz Lee is on OnlyFans. That said, people will pay for what they want whilst others will pirate for their favorite given reason(s) be it porn, movies, books, audiobooks, &c. Similar for not contributing via Patreon; maybe they'd rather some ads and half the content to not spend a few bucks a month, for example. Reasons abound. [1] https://jizlee.com/ethical-porn-consumption-pay-for-porn-anti-piracy/ https://jizlee.com/ethical-porn-consumption-pay-for-porn-ant...

pyuser583 6y ago

My understanding from third party sources (ahem) is that most cam sites are for people who want specific content. Or get off on the power of bossing someone sexually. The actual lonely hearts are rare and far between.

on_and_off 6y ago

>This is fundamentally different than being a fan of, say, an actress like Emma Stone, or an athlete like LeBron James. dunno about these 2 but it is not _fundamentally_ different from how many stars build and maintain their "brands" these days. People like e.g. Jack Black have a youtube channel or at least an instagram feed and share "slices of life" (edited or not) with their fans. That's also a parasocial relationship.

Ansil849 6y ago

> for what's basically freely available offline Offline relationships cost a lot of money, as well.

anonytrary 6y ago

> I'd say places like Onlyfans end up being net negatives for both the models as well as the fans. Someone could argue the opposite: It's a net positive for a model who is able to separate herself from the work and use it as a means to earn money, and it could be a sufficient honeypot for men who would have otherwise become predators. Personally, I would call it an unhealthy relationship. I think it's vastly in favor of the models because they're making money at the expense of extremely desperate older (i.e. wealthy) men. It's sort of a creepy-man trap, shepherding these men towards the models (remote/safe) and away from potential victims.

Magodo 6y ago
The misandry in your comment is unreal
hackinthebochs 6y ago
Can you at all justify the all the moralizing and value-claims in this comment?

lmm 6y ago

You're posting a lot of judgement and not a lot of evidence. You're asserting that this is always driven by loneliness, always harmful, always fundamentally different from things people might spend money on; do you have any basis for that beyond personal incredulity?

Pamar 6y ago

I suggest reading this essay for some insight on the topic: https://knowingless.com/2018/11/19/maximizing-your-slut-impact-an-overly-analytical-guide-to-camgirling/ https://knowingless.com/2018/11/19/maximizing-your-slut-impa...

snarf21 6y ago

I think you are missing something. It isn't about seeing a picture. It is about a fantasy. It is a daydream. The more they "know" and view one person, the deeper that fantasy can become. People are able to delude themselves into a mindset of "if I keep interacting with her, what if she realized how cool I am and we actually got together" or similar. This gets into what is real and the power of anticipation. There have been a lot of studies that show the biggest endorphin bump for a vacation is in the planning, not actually going and experiencing the locale. This is going to really change as VR matures. People will be having lots of experiences at home in a very immersive way. This includes front row at a concert, walking tours of a far off city or attraction, and obviously VR porn integrated with mechanicals. We have vivid dreams all the time and they are not "real", I think these things will feel even more real for the immersion.

didntknowyou 6y ago

i was surprised when i found out quite a few people i know paid for dating apps like tinder. loneliness is horrible and people are willing to pay for a fix/solution.

dwild 6y ago

> For years, I was profoundly puzzled by people that are willing to give hundreds -- if not thousands -- of dollars to (mostly women) they'll never meet for what's basically freely available offline. That's because you seems to misunderstands theirs needs and misunderstands the cost of what you consider "freely available offline". I recently saw a tiktok of a girl crying because she fake one, well they are just putting a price over that effort. > It's a bit sick that the internet -- the very thing which was supposed to bring people together -- ends up cannibalizing its own. Yeah, it's something that I realize day after day. In the past it wasn't like this, I've seen so many people make real connections, but since a few years, maybe a decade, making friendship over the internet seemed to have changed (maybe it's just me though). I feel like you got something with theses fake relationship. They are so much easier to maintains, they are easy source of dopamine and they still "feel" like real ones, but they aren't. Some pay for them sure, but Youtube videos are another cheap ones, mostly the vlog format, are most probably source of many of them.