7 ms·

Of OnlyFans and Intimacy at Scale?

humblebatfarmer 6y ago
Some interesting interviews with OnlyFans performers - author says they use little Telegram groups to support one another
false_kermit 6y ago
Just want to give a shoutout to the author for giving a fairly unbiased take here. Sex work is stigmatized way more than it should be, and with places like OnlyFans making it a (relatively) safe option there's a lot of people who are able to make money while maintaining autonomy. I've noticed especially among people working in tech there's quite a bit of sex-work shaming that goes on. Hopefully this article helps break some of that programming.
- jbirer 6y ago
  I personally am not against sex work but I am against giving the illusion of a personal intimacy and manipulation of lonely socially unsavvy guys who pay for this. There is nothing wrong with sex work but a lot wrong with emotional exploitation and preying on the vulnerable.
  - cultus 6y ago
    Sex workers are exploited much more than they exploit their clients. I think most people know what they are getting into.
    - jbirer 6y ago
      How so? The way I see it is that they rake in thousands while not giving anything permanently, on the other hand there are people who risk financial and emotional ruin from predatory sex workers (I am not saying all of them are that way, I have met honest ones myself). If you are talking about pimps, Onlyfans has mostly indepenent workers AFAIK.
      - cultus 6y ago
        They are giving quite a lot permanently. Their images will always be out there on the internet and in the world, and could be used against them when applying for future jobs, etc. The sex worker generally doesn't have XXX footage of their clients. It's the other way around. Sure, some people give them more than they can afford. Sometimes car dealerships sell people dumb cars they can't afford too. edit: Regarding pimps, there's plenty of women who are forced by pimps to perform online. It's extremely common. I imagine moreso with COVID.
        jbirer 6y ago
        I would argue that the normalization of virtual sex work is in the process of being socially accepted because a lot of sex workers are forced into it due to unemployment and the current COVID-19 situation, and due to the sheer amount of girls getting into it. It seems quite trivial compared to people losing their wealth and emotional health because they "don't know what the world is really like".
      - toomuchtodo 6y ago
        What permanence would you expect from transactional intimacy? It’s like going to the movies, you’re paying someone for a temporary escape from reality. Permanence would be a sex worker on retainer or a committed partner.
        chii 6y ago
        Permanence, as in friendship after the fact. And some people might mistaken transactional intimacy for real friendship.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - gauravphoenix 6y ago
      two wrongs don't make a right.
      - cultus 6y ago
        No, but exploitation of the type of man that thinks the stripper is actually into him is not among the most pressing issues surrounding sex work. It's an extremely strange thing to focus on. It's like focusing on anti-white racism. Sure it exists, and it is bad. But it has nowhere near the consequences of anti-black racism, so there is no equivalence between the problems.
        jcims 6y ago
        I wouldn’t say it’s extremely strange. For example folks that have been through an issue themselves or know someone that has are likely to be more attuned to it’s effects. There’s also statistically a rather large reduction in initiation and frequency of sexual activity for young adults in the us, particularly young men. Things like this could be causal factor. Lastly young adults are killing themselves at record rates and young men 4x as much as young women, again things that feed into depression and detachment are worth considering. I’d say it’s ok to be concerned about both.
        jbirer 6y ago
        The exploitation of lonely socially disabled men is not something insignificant. It's actually quite big on the severity scale compared to the exposure of the material of the performer as Onlyfans is in the process of being normalized to society.
        k__ 6y ago
        Is it really? I don't know, but I have the feeling that "lonely socially disabled men" are just very vocal about it.
        EricDeb 6y ago
        Suicide is one of the top causes of death for people under 55. Suicides are overwhelmingly male (4:1). I think exploitation of lonely men absolutely has consequences. None of this downplays the consequences for women in online sex work however
    - cambalache 6y ago
      Please exploit me buying from me a $20.00/month subscriptions of my semi-naked pics.
      - jrnichols 6y ago
        and exploit us of the relentless (and devious) spamming of websites like reddit, dating apps like Tinder, POF, etc. OnlyFans creators have quickly started to use very underhanded self promotion techniques, and unfortunately many of them are straight up emotional manipulation.
  - nkrisc 6y ago
    You're taking about these guys like they're children who are incapable of fending for themselves. They're paying for nudes over the internet, I'm sure most of them know that and are fine with it. If they delude themselves into thinking it's more, maybe they do need someone to watch their wallet for them after all.
    - jbirer 6y ago
      This is not treating them like children but more like focusing on the fact that a lot of them are naive and emotionally desperate guys who are not aware that it's all a game and are vulnerable to be preyed on by somebody who is willing to give them fake personal interaction and affection for their cash.
      - twalla 6y ago
        Anyone who thinks they’re getting actual intimacy from some sort of transactional relationship is, to put it bluntly, an idiot. However, I think it reflects more poorly on the people who raised these guys than the guys themselves.
        ve55 6y ago
        I see how one can come to this point of view, but I think there is a perspective missing here about just how lonely and miserable some people are. When you have never had a partner, when you have never been hugged and told you're loved, when you may also not even have friends or co-workers, and much more, things... are much different. I've met many males on the Internet where all of this applies, and they have a very easy time getting addicted to things that provide social comfort, whether is is Twitch, OnlyFans, Youtubers, and many other things. They want so badly to feel comfort, friendship, affection, and so on, that it is very easy to be tricked into thinking you're attaining it when you are in fact only attaining many strong correlates of it.
        twalla 6y ago
        I think a lot of this ends up at it not being socially acceptable for men to show emotion or to seek emotional support. I imagine if that were the case most of these people would realize what they're paying for doesn't even approach being a shadow of the real thing. This is a group that would benefit a lot from some sort of self love/self care messaging but I don't even know what that would look like if it were tailored to this group. I also kind of feel for all the people who signed up to sell nudes on onlyfans thinking they'd make a quick buck and ended up playing therapist for a bunch of lonely maladjusted dudes.
- leftyted 6y ago
  How am I supposed to feel about a sentence like this? > "Like there was one guy who paid me to make a reaction video about his ‘appendage’ and it took me like seven takes to sound like I was excited by it." To me, that's just deeply sad. Paying a woman to act as though she's interested in you is the commoditization of an innate yearning for companionship. It's turning something that poems are written about into mere transaction. And it's baffling to me how people who tend to be "against capitalism" somehow rally to the free market when it comes to selling sex.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > And it's baffling to me how people who tend to be "against capitalism" somehow rally to the free market when it comes to selling sex. People that are against capitalism on the left tend not to be against volintary exchange of labor for money but the power relations between capitalist and laborer in capitalist industry. That's not an issue with individual sales of labor on the marketplace direct to end consumers of a service, which seems to be the issue here. The fact that the kind of service involved is sexual is beside the point.
    - leftyted 6y ago
      Maybe that's true for Marxists but it's not true for "the left" more generally. What bothers people on the left about capitalism is, from the article: > The environment it creates is ruthlessly competitive. Winners win big, losers starve.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Maybe that's true for Marxists but it's not true for "the left" more generally. It's true of a lot of the non-Marxist Left, too. > The environment it creates is ruthlessly competitive. Winners win big, losers starve. Im struggling to see how you imagine a crackdown on voluntary sex work would make that better, except as a way of draining more resources from everyone (itself making more people starve) to guarantee that fewer people could make a living in voluntary exchange (making even more people starve.) Sure, I think with genuinely left policies, there's be less people who felt that sex work that lots of people not doing it find unacceptably degrading was a net win, and so fewer people choosing to voluntarily engage in that; capitalism naturally is economically coercive that way. But there's nothing particular about sex work here, fewer people would accept agricultural field work at current wages, absent economic coercion, too. The fix for the problems capitalism creates index work has everything to do with capitalism and very little to do with sex work.
- diffrinse 6y ago
  I dunno about unbiased, seems pretty concerned about 18 year old girls specifically might be "at risk" but then wants to say "well maybe that 18 year old comes from an abusive household and so she could use the money", like come on Women profiting from OF is not some bubble-like behavior that might sabotage American society down the line if we're not 'careful', sex work has existed since the beginning of time and in much much more liberal forums than American society, and will continue to exist to a non-trivial degree wherever urban populations exist. Like no shit, lotta single people stuck in front of their screens so its a gold rush at the moment; who cares. The more concerning problem is the growing puerility of hetero men for lack of a better term and porn trends in America tend to confirm that. These women aren't putting a gun to anyone's head, and Jordan Peterson had a very big audience for a reason
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - oceanghost 6y ago
    This completely... sort of. OF is a cynical take on relationships and love. I don't know how anyone could be taken in by this fantasy. It's a hollow thing. Still, if that's what you want, that's fine. I happen to be single, and I'd say 95% of my interactions on dating sites are these gals who are "selling." This is my main problem with the thing-- I am looking for a wife, and I am bombarded with insincere people on these sites.
    - titanomachy 6y ago
      Damn, that sucks! I think the only non-genuine messages I got on dating apps were from obvious spambots, so it never wasted too much of my time to filter through them. But it's probably gotten worse in the last few years.
- lumberjack 6y ago
  Ah yes, nothing like exploiting teenage girls and pretending to be feminist liberal progressive while doing it! There is no physical pimp in this case, but lots of viral marketing duping immature teenagers into believing they can make it by selling their dignity. I don't care if some 30 year old person wants to make a life out of camming, but don't come here pretending like Onlyfans is some force for good. And then you dare criticize people like me who call a spade a spade, instead of criticizing the people profiting from this scam.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
batt4good 6y ago
OnlyFans is a curious phenomena, it will be curious to see if OnlyFans results in a dilution of the general value of dating women. I support the right for someone to sell images of their body, however it seems idiotic to think that this kind of social acceptance of "being an e-hoe" (in my girlfriends words) won't come with any negative societal effects. And to be clear, I say this as someone who dates an online sex worker. Edit - to be clear, yes, I am currently in a "real" relationship (we share a domicile) with a woman who works a professional job during the day and does part time sex work to supplement her income.
- k__ 6y ago
  How is the value of dating women determined by buying sexy videos/images online?
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    (Please note I am not the GP) Historically, dating involved a man spending money on a woman, nominally for purposes of courtship to prove he was a good provider, but often simply in hopes of sex in the immediate future. As social norms have changed -- such that casual relationships and sex outside of marriage have become more acceptable while women are more able to establish an earned income -- we still tend to default to men paying for dates in hopes of getting laid. So dating has something of a tendency to be a polite form of prostitution where men spend money in a gamble in hopes it leads to sex. If men can legally spend money and state up front they are expecting X, Y or Z and get it, why "date"? Though when the OP says they are dating an online sex worker, I assume they mean they are in a relationship to this person. The word "dating" gets used rather sloppily to mean a variety of things -- which isn't all bad, mind you, but sometimes interferes with clear communication.
    - k__ 6y ago
      Is "the guy paying" still a thing? I mean, I sometimes pay for friends or my partners, but I never spend a dime on a women I was dating/courting and I never had the impression they wanted me to do so. In my experience, women would evaluate me mostly on my character and looks and not so much on my money.
temptemptemp111 6y ago
How is this evil being promoted openly on hacker news? You really want our daughters putting themselves through college through sex work? Evil evil people. You're all jerking off to them yet my comment is the one that will be censored.
thrownqq11 6y ago
White man tells women what to do, part ~
superfrank 6y ago
> One recent estimate suggests a 50th percentile OnlyFans performer takes home a mere $43 a month. I worked for a large cam site (on the tech side of things) a while back and this is something I wish people realized. There really are a some models bringing in tens of thousands of dollars a month, but they are few and far between. Often times these girls (I say girls because I never saw a single male performer come close to that amount) were either super niche or mildly famous before joining the site and in either case they treated camming like a full time job. I've seen people talk about girls on OF making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month and while I'm sure some are, I wish people would understand how few are actually making that amount. In the same way that it's possible to "move to Hollywood and get discovered while working tables", it's technically possible, but it requires a lot of work and even more luck. Also, similar to freelancing sites, you're competing with (and being undercut by) people from around the world. A huge number of the women on our site were from South America or Eastern Europe earning what would be below average wages in the US, but more than enough for them to live off of. Personally, I have zero problem sex work (clearly, based on my work history), but we still live in a time where many people do. I just want people to be aware of what they are getting themselves into. What goes on the internet stays there forever and you are extremely unlikely to make enough money on these sites to never have to work again. I doubt many people on here are planning on getting into sex work, but I think it needs to more publicized how much of pipe dream "earning $10000 a week" is on these sites.
- timw0j 6y ago
  > I've seen people talk about girls on OF making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month and while I'm sure some are, I wish people would understand how few are actually making that amount. I think this is the same result of people who look at Twitch and think they can be the next Ninja or Shroud. Yes, there are people on Twitch that make many thousands of dollars a month. The odds of becoming one of those people is vanishingly low for someone starting out fresh, and it takes many years to build up to that point. These are people who spend 8+ hours in front of a camera interacting with a live audience, 6-7 days a week, not to mention all of the things that happen in the background. Joe Shmoe in his house, streaming a couple hours a night when he gets off work, is likely not going to make it.
brohee 6y ago
TBH the piece felt a bit like humble bragging about being in a relationship with a semi successful onlyfan model, and was pretty short on insight. A number I'd like to see is the evolution of the number of young adults doing sex work. A lot of people having an onlyfan would have been stripping/escorting before, and onlyfans is much safer so a definite progress. But is there that many more that engage in it? Onlyfans doesn't seem to publish model numbers, but I doubt it's remotely enough for it to be considered normalized in any society...
jelliclesfarm 6y ago
I found the title of the blog ‘Our Cyberpunk Now’..interesting. I am a long time collector of Victorian and Edwardian Erotica. There is a sub sub genre of Cyberpunk erotica. I was reminded of this story about a madame who runs a cyberpunk pleasure house with mechanical delights and persons of various genders and combinations thereof and is taken to task by the owner of the already established whorehouse in town. And then they take each other to task and so on. Which makes me wonder when will we have customizable Real Dolls and robot courtesans. Hand to heart, I did ask this question at a TechCrunch disrupt and I think people thought I was being ‘cute’. I wasn’t. Sex robots as an industry is a gold mine. Why aren’t we disrupting it? It will fix the human trafficking issues, mental/physical health issues and not to mention the legal /moral issues related to exploitative prostitution. I feel three areas need disruption: Ag, adult entertainment and geriatric tech and the tech in USA is too lazy for the first, prudish to tackle the sex robots part and apathetic about the last one. This would of course beg the question of what is legal and what isn’t legal when it comes to sex robots. Will we extend our morality code to robots? And then we will enter a very very gray area.

Some interesting interviews with OnlyFans performers - author says they use little Telegram groups to support one another

false_kermit 6y ago

Just want to give a shoutout to the author for giving a fairly unbiased take here. Sex work is stigmatized way more than it should be, and with places like OnlyFans making it a (relatively) safe option there's a lot of people who are able to make money while maintaining autonomy. I've noticed especially among people working in tech there's quite a bit of sex-work shaming that goes on. Hopefully this article helps break some of that programming.

jbirer 6y ago
I personally am not against sex work but I am against giving the illusion of a personal intimacy and manipulation of lonely socially unsavvy guys who pay for this. There is nothing wrong with sex work but a lot wrong with emotional exploitation and preying on the vulnerable.
- cultus 6y ago
  Sex workers are exploited much more than they exploit their clients. I think most people know what they are getting into.
  - jbirer 6y ago
    How so? The way I see it is that they rake in thousands while not giving anything permanently, on the other hand there are people who risk financial and emotional ruin from predatory sex workers (I am not saying all of them are that way, I have met honest ones myself). If you are talking about pimps, Onlyfans has mostly indepenent workers AFAIK.
    - cultus 6y ago
      They are giving quite a lot permanently. Their images will always be out there on the internet and in the world, and could be used against them when applying for future jobs, etc. The sex worker generally doesn't have XXX footage of their clients. It's the other way around. Sure, some people give them more than they can afford. Sometimes car dealerships sell people dumb cars they can't afford too. edit: Regarding pimps, there's plenty of women who are forced by pimps to perform online. It's extremely common. I imagine moreso with COVID.
      - jbirer 6y ago
        I would argue that the normalization of virtual sex work is in the process of being socially accepted because a lot of sex workers are forced into it due to unemployment and the current COVID-19 situation, and due to the sheer amount of girls getting into it. It seems quite trivial compared to people losing their wealth and emotional health because they "don't know what the world is really like".
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      What permanence would you expect from transactional intimacy? It’s like going to the movies, you’re paying someone for a temporary escape from reality. Permanence would be a sex worker on retainer or a committed partner.
      - chii 6y ago
        Permanence, as in friendship after the fact. And some people might mistaken transactional intimacy for real friendship.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - gauravphoenix 6y ago
    two wrongs don't make a right.
    - cultus 6y ago
      No, but exploitation of the type of man that thinks the stripper is actually into him is not among the most pressing issues surrounding sex work. It's an extremely strange thing to focus on. It's like focusing on anti-white racism. Sure it exists, and it is bad. But it has nowhere near the consequences of anti-black racism, so there is no equivalence between the problems.
      - jcims 6y ago
        I wouldn’t say it’s extremely strange. For example folks that have been through an issue themselves or know someone that has are likely to be more attuned to it’s effects. There’s also statistically a rather large reduction in initiation and frequency of sexual activity for young adults in the us, particularly young men. Things like this could be causal factor. Lastly young adults are killing themselves at record rates and young men 4x as much as young women, again things that feed into depression and detachment are worth considering. I’d say it’s ok to be concerned about both.
      - jbirer 6y ago
        The exploitation of lonely socially disabled men is not something insignificant. It's actually quite big on the severity scale compared to the exposure of the material of the performer as Onlyfans is in the process of being normalized to society.
        k__ 6y ago
        Is it really? I don't know, but I have the feeling that "lonely socially disabled men" are just very vocal about it.
      - EricDeb 6y ago
        Suicide is one of the top causes of death for people under 55. Suicides are overwhelmingly male (4:1). I think exploitation of lonely men absolutely has consequences. None of this downplays the consequences for women in online sex work however
  - cambalache 6y ago
    Please exploit me buying from me a $20.00/month subscriptions of my semi-naked pics.
    - jrnichols 6y ago
      and exploit us of the relentless (and devious) spamming of websites like reddit, dating apps like Tinder, POF, etc. OnlyFans creators have quickly started to use very underhanded self promotion techniques, and unfortunately many of them are straight up emotional manipulation.
- nkrisc 6y ago
  You're taking about these guys like they're children who are incapable of fending for themselves. They're paying for nudes over the internet, I'm sure most of them know that and are fine with it. If they delude themselves into thinking it's more, maybe they do need someone to watch their wallet for them after all.
  - jbirer 6y ago
    This is not treating them like children but more like focusing on the fact that a lot of them are naive and emotionally desperate guys who are not aware that it's all a game and are vulnerable to be preyed on by somebody who is willing to give them fake personal interaction and affection for their cash.
    - twalla 6y ago
      Anyone who thinks they’re getting actual intimacy from some sort of transactional relationship is, to put it bluntly, an idiot. However, I think it reflects more poorly on the people who raised these guys than the guys themselves.
      - ve55 6y ago
        I see how one can come to this point of view, but I think there is a perspective missing here about just how lonely and miserable some people are. When you have never had a partner, when you have never been hugged and told you're loved, when you may also not even have friends or co-workers, and much more, things... are much different. I've met many males on the Internet where all of this applies, and they have a very easy time getting addicted to things that provide social comfort, whether is is Twitch, OnlyFans, Youtubers, and many other things. They want so badly to feel comfort, friendship, affection, and so on, that it is very easy to be tricked into thinking you're attaining it when you are in fact only attaining many strong correlates of it.
        twalla 6y ago
        I think a lot of this ends up at it not being socially acceptable for men to show emotion or to seek emotional support. I imagine if that were the case most of these people would realize what they're paying for doesn't even approach being a shadow of the real thing. This is a group that would benefit a lot from some sort of self love/self care messaging but I don't even know what that would look like if it were tailored to this group. I also kind of feel for all the people who signed up to sell nudes on onlyfans thinking they'd make a quick buck and ended up playing therapist for a bunch of lonely maladjusted dudes.
leftyted 6y ago
How am I supposed to feel about a sentence like this? > "Like there was one guy who paid me to make a reaction video about his ‘appendage’ and it took me like seven takes to sound like I was excited by it." To me, that's just deeply sad. Paying a woman to act as though she's interested in you is the commoditization of an innate yearning for companionship. It's turning something that poems are written about into mere transaction. And it's baffling to me how people who tend to be "against capitalism" somehow rally to the free market when it comes to selling sex.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > And it's baffling to me how people who tend to be "against capitalism" somehow rally to the free market when it comes to selling sex. People that are against capitalism on the left tend not to be against volintary exchange of labor for money but the power relations between capitalist and laborer in capitalist industry. That's not an issue with individual sales of labor on the marketplace direct to end consumers of a service, which seems to be the issue here. The fact that the kind of service involved is sexual is beside the point.
  - leftyted 6y ago
    Maybe that's true for Marxists but it's not true for "the left" more generally. What bothers people on the left about capitalism is, from the article: > The environment it creates is ruthlessly competitive. Winners win big, losers starve.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Maybe that's true for Marxists but it's not true for "the left" more generally. It's true of a lot of the non-Marxist Left, too. > The environment it creates is ruthlessly competitive. Winners win big, losers starve. Im struggling to see how you imagine a crackdown on voluntary sex work would make that better, except as a way of draining more resources from everyone (itself making more people starve) to guarantee that fewer people could make a living in voluntary exchange (making even more people starve.) Sure, I think with genuinely left policies, there's be less people who felt that sex work that lots of people not doing it find unacceptably degrading was a net win, and so fewer people choosing to voluntarily engage in that; capitalism naturally is economically coercive that way. But there's nothing particular about sex work here, fewer people would accept agricultural field work at current wages, absent economic coercion, too. The fix for the problems capitalism creates index work has everything to do with capitalism and very little to do with sex work.
diffrinse 6y ago
I dunno about unbiased, seems pretty concerned about 18 year old girls specifically might be "at risk" but then wants to say "well maybe that 18 year old comes from an abusive household and so she could use the money", like come on Women profiting from OF is not some bubble-like behavior that might sabotage American society down the line if we're not 'careful', sex work has existed since the beginning of time and in much much more liberal forums than American society, and will continue to exist to a non-trivial degree wherever urban populations exist. Like no shit, lotta single people stuck in front of their screens so its a gold rush at the moment; who cares. The more concerning problem is the growing puerility of hetero men for lack of a better term and porn trends in America tend to confirm that. These women aren't putting a gun to anyone's head, and Jordan Peterson had a very big audience for a reason
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- oceanghost 6y ago
  This completely... sort of. OF is a cynical take on relationships and love. I don't know how anyone could be taken in by this fantasy. It's a hollow thing. Still, if that's what you want, that's fine. I happen to be single, and I'd say 95% of my interactions on dating sites are these gals who are "selling." This is my main problem with the thing-- I am looking for a wife, and I am bombarded with insincere people on these sites.
  - titanomachy 6y ago
    Damn, that sucks! I think the only non-genuine messages I got on dating apps were from obvious spambots, so it never wasted too much of my time to filter through them. But it's probably gotten worse in the last few years.
lumberjack 6y ago
Ah yes, nothing like exploiting teenage girls and pretending to be feminist liberal progressive while doing it! There is no physical pimp in this case, but lots of viral marketing duping immature teenagers into believing they can make it by selling their dignity. I don't care if some 30 year old person wants to make a life out of camming, but don't come here pretending like Onlyfans is some force for good. And then you dare criticize people like me who call a spade a spade, instead of criticizing the people profiting from this scam.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

batt4good 6y ago

OnlyFans is a curious phenomena, it will be curious to see if OnlyFans results in a dilution of the general value of dating women. I support the right for someone to sell images of their body, however it seems idiotic to think that this kind of social acceptance of "being an e-hoe" (in my girlfriends words) won't come with any negative societal effects. And to be clear, I say this as someone who dates an online sex worker. Edit - to be clear, yes, I am currently in a "real" relationship (we share a domicile) with a woman who works a professional job during the day and does part time sex work to supplement her income.

k__ 6y ago
How is the value of dating women determined by buying sexy videos/images online?
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  (Please note I am not the GP) Historically, dating involved a man spending money on a woman, nominally for purposes of courtship to prove he was a good provider, but often simply in hopes of sex in the immediate future. As social norms have changed -- such that casual relationships and sex outside of marriage have become more acceptable while women are more able to establish an earned income -- we still tend to default to men paying for dates in hopes of getting laid. So dating has something of a tendency to be a polite form of prostitution where men spend money in a gamble in hopes it leads to sex. If men can legally spend money and state up front they are expecting X, Y or Z and get it, why "date"? Though when the OP says they are dating an online sex worker, I assume they mean they are in a relationship to this person. The word "dating" gets used rather sloppily to mean a variety of things -- which isn't all bad, mind you, but sometimes interferes with clear communication.
  - k__ 6y ago
    Is "the guy paying" still a thing? I mean, I sometimes pay for friends or my partners, but I never spend a dime on a women I was dating/courting and I never had the impression they wanted me to do so. In my experience, women would evaluate me mostly on my character and looks and not so much on my money.

temptemptemp111 6y ago

How is this evil being promoted openly on hacker news? You really want our daughters putting themselves through college through sex work? Evil evil people. You're all jerking off to them yet my comment is the one that will be censored.

thrownqq11 6y ago

White man tells women what to do, part ~

superfrank 6y ago

> One recent estimate suggests a 50th percentile OnlyFans performer takes home a mere $43 a month. I worked for a large cam site (on the tech side of things) a while back and this is something I wish people realized. There really are a some models bringing in tens of thousands of dollars a month, but they are few and far between. Often times these girls (I say girls because I never saw a single male performer come close to that amount) were either super niche or mildly famous before joining the site and in either case they treated camming like a full time job. I've seen people talk about girls on OF making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month and while I'm sure some are, I wish people would understand how few are actually making that amount. In the same way that it's possible to "move to Hollywood and get discovered while working tables", it's technically possible, but it requires a lot of work and even more luck. Also, similar to freelancing sites, you're competing with (and being undercut by) people from around the world. A huge number of the women on our site were from South America or Eastern Europe earning what would be below average wages in the US, but more than enough for them to live off of. Personally, I have zero problem sex work (clearly, based on my work history), but we still live in a time where many people do. I just want people to be aware of what they are getting themselves into. What goes on the internet stays there forever and you are extremely unlikely to make enough money on these sites to never have to work again. I doubt many people on here are planning on getting into sex work, but I think it needs to more publicized how much of pipe dream "earning $10000 a week" is on these sites.

timw0j 6y ago
> I've seen people talk about girls on OF making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month and while I'm sure some are, I wish people would understand how few are actually making that amount. I think this is the same result of people who look at Twitch and think they can be the next Ninja or Shroud. Yes, there are people on Twitch that make many thousands of dollars a month. The odds of becoming one of those people is vanishingly low for someone starting out fresh, and it takes many years to build up to that point. These are people who spend 8+ hours in front of a camera interacting with a live audience, 6-7 days a week, not to mention all of the things that happen in the background. Joe Shmoe in his house, streaming a couple hours a night when he gets off work, is likely not going to make it.

brohee 6y ago

TBH the piece felt a bit like humble bragging about being in a relationship with a semi successful onlyfan model, and was pretty short on insight. A number I'd like to see is the evolution of the number of young adults doing sex work. A lot of people having an onlyfan would have been stripping/escorting before, and onlyfans is much safer so a definite progress. But is there that many more that engage in it? Onlyfans doesn't seem to publish model numbers, but I doubt it's remotely enough for it to be considered normalized in any society...

jelliclesfarm 6y ago

I found the title of the blog ‘Our Cyberpunk Now’..interesting. I am a long time collector of Victorian and Edwardian Erotica. There is a sub sub genre of Cyberpunk erotica. I was reminded of this story about a madame who runs a cyberpunk pleasure house with mechanical delights and persons of various genders and combinations thereof and is taken to task by the owner of the already established whorehouse in town. And then they take each other to task and so on. Which makes me wonder when will we have customizable Real Dolls and robot courtesans. Hand to heart, I did ask this question at a TechCrunch disrupt and I think people thought I was being ‘cute’. I wasn’t. Sex robots as an industry is a gold mine. Why aren’t we disrupting it? It will fix the human trafficking issues, mental/physical health issues and not to mention the legal /moral issues related to exploitative prostitution. I feel three areas need disruption: Ag, adult entertainment and geriatric tech and the tech in USA is too lazy for the first, prudish to tackle the sex robots part and apathetic about the last one. This would of course beg the question of what is legal and what isn’t legal when it comes to sex robots. Will we extend our morality code to robots? And then we will enter a very very gray area.