9 ms·

The Sugar Babies of Stanford University

44 points by alphabetting 4y ago

moomoo11 4y ago
Proof we are heading towards idiocracy. What a bleak future.
- kleer001 4y ago
  It's okay, the population will crash in the next three generations and only the smartest will survive. /s
- hollerith 4y ago
  I always thought that female sexual selectivity guards against our becoming an idiocracy (since intelligence is hereditable). Help me see your point of view.
  - moomoo11 4y ago
    Have you watched the movie? People surrender themselves to their basic primal desires and that's it. Instead of having relationships, people go for instant gratification trapped to their screens and entertainment. I'm just comparing the scenario here to what was shown in the movie. Sure, we have all these apps these days that allow you to do whatever, but at the cost of everyone having mental issues and anxiety. I don't personally care, I've had my own share of problems that I deal with. My goal is to be in the 20% who won't engage in such behavior, and will be totally fine regardless of what other people do. But that's still 80% who will be wasting their money, potential, resources in these short term flukes and need a bail out from society.
  - im3w1l 4y ago
    Sexual preferences are themselves subject to evolution. If intelligence isn't beneficial, then people will eventually stop selecting intelligent partners.
- nh23423fefe 4y ago
  women have never sold sex until today
  - jnwatson 4y ago
    Exactly. A great number of women paid for college by stripping. This is one of those “…but on the Internet” stories.
    - alphabetting 4y ago
      "...but the internet" scenarios can be greatly different from the past given scale. I thought the culture/pipeline on TikTok was one of the more notable things about piece.
  - MandieD 4y ago
    I think it's the amusement with which the young women are carrying out this work that galls... and that they're keeping most of the money. They're free agents. The very idea of doing anything like this myself makes me shudder, but hey, if they're having fun and not scamming their customers, who cares, except this classmate who has hit upon the surest respectable way for an attractive young woman to get money out of many rich old men: decry, in lurid detail, the whoredom of your fellow young women. She gets bonus points for insinuating that the gains we've made over the past century might not actually be that great, and that we gave something up when we got the legal system and economy to (mostly*) treat us like rational actors. My best childhood friend and I once mused that it's shame that we didn't had had the chutzpah to fall back on our Southern Baptist upbringing to do this when we were pretty young things; once you're over 40, it really doesn't work anymore. The role of "semi-attractive young mom in a moral panic" in that media ecosystem is well-filled. * the unfortunate legal event of this summer excepted, which has already led to both horror stories that you can look up yourselves, and thousands of small tragedies that you'll never hear about. I dread the next few months (at best) for my fellow young American women.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- fknorangesite 4y ago
  > we are heading towards idiocracy This tired kids-these-days complaint was a dead horse before the movie left theatres.
  - moomoo11 4y ago
    Hope I'm not proven right with the way everything is going lol
smoldesu 4y ago
> But both sides, the girls and the men paying them, benefit from the objectification of the other, at least on the surface — the girls, by profiting from the man’s isolation and dire circumstances, and the men, by sexualizing the girls. One perhaps is not worse than the other, but neither is worth celebrating. It's great when you read an article so obviously ill-founded that the author has to admit they're wrong at the end. This is a cycle that has existed for hundreds of years, it's asinine to me that people are still trying to make some kind of 'moral play' here. It's a free country; these free people are creating enterprise based on their likeness. I'm sure that riles up HN users who spend their lives building thankless, exploitative SaaS products that get cursed by their users under their breath, the same as this site seems to hate 'influencer culture' and social media as a whole. At the end of the day, though, they're living a life they're happy with. They can advocate for themselves and aren't being pimped out by someone who doesn't care about their wellbeing. Other jobs and careers are completely attainable still, if not completely possible to have alongside whatever OnlyFans account you run.
- powerslacker 4y ago
  You are equating the happiness of the individuals involved as the basis for determining whether or not the action is moral. Its inherently a hedonistic perspective. Of course you can't make a moral claim that prostitution is wrong if you consider the "happiness" of the pimp, prostitute, and john as the highest good involved. Frankly, I'm not sure how you could make many moral claims considered reasonable based on that kind of criteria. Using the same measure you could justify all sorts of abusive situations so long as the exploited is "happy" with their circumstances.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    I make no moral claim because I don't see a moral axis here. It's equivalent to arguing about the morality of cigarette companies or breweries; our societal precedent for freedom overrides whatever personal harm it might cause. Same goes for selling knives, guns, porno films or sex toys. We can obviously regulate the obscene and dangerous conduct surrounding these things (and we do), but the right to having them is what drives our free market. It's no more exploitative than Apple teasing you with an iPhone 14 event, getting you tech-horny enough to open your wallet come October.
Bostonian 4y ago
In some cases the young women involved are exploiting guys who are messed up. It's legal, but I don't think it's moral. "But David worked the night shift at a car manufacturing plant, and he was always broke. He could only pay the girls on Fridays when he got his paycheck. Despite this, he consistently spent quite a bit of money for Lainey to send feet pics (only the bottom of the feet!), and — crucially — to tell him he was a loser, his dick was small, and “send me money.” The mismatch between his income and his spending worried the girls enough that they considered intervening, but ultimately decided there was not much they could do to help."
nh23423fefe 4y ago
author thinks the election was stolen https://stanfordreview.org/stanford-future-gop/ https://stanfordreview.org/stanford-future-gop/ > Then the president began a legal fight for the election. Countless numbers of his supporters have rallied around him, with 70% of Republicans suspecting fraud. But many who claimed to support the President were more than happy to roll over and hand the presidency to Biden without a fight. Since election night, many prominent Republicans have hesitated to support the president. Senator Mitt Romney and former President George W. Bush have even called on Trump to concede the election. Many more, in their silence, have failed to give the President their support in his hour of greatest need.
- powerslacker 4y ago
  What has that got to do with this thread?
  - metadat 4y ago
    It brings into question the author's credibility. At this juncture, claims of 2020 election theft are akin to being a Flat Earther. Do you, dear reader, desire to get advice, a hot take on sugar babies, or have anything to do with such a person? It's at least nice to be aware and have the information.
    - _aavaa_ 4y ago
      They would at worse be arguing in bad faith. But their argument is right or wrong because of its bases and assumptions, not based on who's saying the words
      - nh23423fefe 4y ago
        Sure, you can pretend to have a uniform prior.
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        Their argument is based on opinions of morality and soft-truths, but they're casting it like an objective problem (which it is not). The author even feels the need to admit as much at the end, simply acknowledging that the cycle of sexualization will always continue, regardless of our opinion on it. So, with that being said, I'd say it absolutely compromises their argument here. If the author is gullible enough to fall for garden-variety conspiracy theories, why should I trust their authority on morality? Their rhetorical triangle is broken. They have no credibility, they make no appeals to logic (and contradict themselves) which leaves them only with pathos - the ability to outrage and incense their audience based on emotional appeals.
kelseyfrog 4y ago
Voluntary transactional free association between consenting adults and the author ends with a "yes, but not like that!" > Only this complete upheaval of traditional gender dynamics could allow high-achieving women to “sugar baby” for working class men, and without any tangible consequence to the women. The author advocates a social-regulatory framework to preserve market relations. I can't see how increasing regulation can do anything but distort the market, but I'm willing to be proven wrong. The whole piece comes across as a "I'm more interested in a return to regulatory capture than I am interested in competing in an evolving and dynamic environment." Sorry, but in any market there's winners and losers. What are we going to do, start getting rid of free markets?
- avmich 4y ago
  > I can't see how increasing regulation can do anything but distort the market You're saying it like distorting the market is always wrong. > What are we going to do, start getting rid of free markets? Free market is an abstraction, which doesn't exist in reality.
  - powerslacker 4y ago
    I would like to add that "free market" is a bad description of the state of markets with the United States in general. The government has directly affected the price and legality of many goods including cheese, magnets, corn, houses, education, and more. That's all before we can even start to discuss the systematic effects of fiat money. The idea that we are collectively operating in a free market is a fairly tale.
    - kelseyfrog 4y ago
      What are the regulations distorting the dating market?
      - powerslacker 4y ago
        Calling it a market is a bit odd, but I'll play ball. Marriage. Unequal rules for participants based on financial success would be another. Arbitrary age limits. I am generally a supporter of these concepts and this kind of meddling.
angryasian 4y ago
men love to shame women over sexuality. A man does this, no one blinks an eye. A woman.. oh no
midislack 4y ago
These girls are going to be real put out once they hit Tag The Sponsor. That shits forever.
tinglymintyfrsh 4y ago
I ran into the Stanford law school exotic dancer on CL personals when those existed. She took some startup guy for half his net worth in a divorce. I asked her how he was doing but didn't receive a response back.
Joewashere 4y ago
For pete's sake. Sexting and sending pictures to customers is NOT being a sugar baby. Please stop misusing the terms. A sugar baby is a mistress, which is a girlfriend that is financially supported. A sugar daddy is a rich boyfriend, usually married. The relationship is real. The sex is real. The friendship is real. The laughs are real. The squabbles are real. For most of these couples, they know the relationship will come to an end when it starts, but for that time in their lives, it can be perfect. A young woman who is busy with school or starting her career, doesn't want the drama and endless obligations of a "normal" boyfriend, would like regular intimacy with a regular partner anyway, and could use financial or career help can find having a sugar daddy as a boyfriend can be fantastic.
- samsin 4y ago
  It's not a 'real friendship' if you have to pay the other person to stop them ending the relationship. Sounds more like a contract.
kurupt213 4y ago
The only thing new about this is the label and the digital marketing

44 points by alphabetting 4y ago

moomoo11 4y ago

Proof we are heading towards idiocracy. What a bleak future.

kleer001 4y ago
It's okay, the population will crash in the next three generations and only the smartest will survive. /s
hollerith 4y ago
I always thought that female sexual selectivity guards against our becoming an idiocracy (since intelligence is hereditable). Help me see your point of view.
- moomoo11 4y ago
  Have you watched the movie? People surrender themselves to their basic primal desires and that's it. Instead of having relationships, people go for instant gratification trapped to their screens and entertainment. I'm just comparing the scenario here to what was shown in the movie. Sure, we have all these apps these days that allow you to do whatever, but at the cost of everyone having mental issues and anxiety. I don't personally care, I've had my own share of problems that I deal with. My goal is to be in the 20% who won't engage in such behavior, and will be totally fine regardless of what other people do. But that's still 80% who will be wasting their money, potential, resources in these short term flukes and need a bail out from society.
- im3w1l 4y ago
  Sexual preferences are themselves subject to evolution. If intelligence isn't beneficial, then people will eventually stop selecting intelligent partners.
nh23423fefe 4y ago
women have never sold sex until today
- jnwatson 4y ago
  Exactly. A great number of women paid for college by stripping. This is one of those “…but on the Internet” stories.
  - alphabetting 4y ago
    "...but the internet" scenarios can be greatly different from the past given scale. I thought the culture/pipeline on TikTok was one of the more notable things about piece.
- MandieD 4y ago
  I think it's the amusement with which the young women are carrying out this work that galls... and that they're keeping most of the money. They're free agents. The very idea of doing anything like this myself makes me shudder, but hey, if they're having fun and not scamming their customers, who cares, except this classmate who has hit upon the surest respectable way for an attractive young woman to get money out of many rich old men: decry, in lurid detail, the whoredom of your fellow young women. She gets bonus points for insinuating that the gains we've made over the past century might not actually be that great, and that we gave something up when we got the legal system and economy to (mostly*) treat us like rational actors. My best childhood friend and I once mused that it's shame that we didn't had had the chutzpah to fall back on our Southern Baptist upbringing to do this when we were pretty young things; once you're over 40, it really doesn't work anymore. The role of "semi-attractive young mom in a moral panic" in that media ecosystem is well-filled. * the unfortunate legal event of this summer excepted, which has already led to both horror stories that you can look up yourselves, and thousands of small tragedies that you'll never hear about. I dread the next few months (at best) for my fellow young American women.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fknorangesite 4y ago
> we are heading towards idiocracy This tired kids-these-days complaint was a dead horse before the movie left theatres.
- moomoo11 4y ago
  Hope I'm not proven right with the way everything is going lol

smoldesu 4y ago

> But both sides, the girls and the men paying them, benefit from the objectification of the other, at least on the surface — the girls, by profiting from the man’s isolation and dire circumstances, and the men, by sexualizing the girls. One perhaps is not worse than the other, but neither is worth celebrating. It's great when you read an article so obviously ill-founded that the author has to admit they're wrong at the end. This is a cycle that has existed for hundreds of years, it's asinine to me that people are still trying to make some kind of 'moral play' here. It's a free country; these free people are creating enterprise based on their likeness. I'm sure that riles up HN users who spend their lives building thankless, exploitative SaaS products that get cursed by their users under their breath, the same as this site seems to hate 'influencer culture' and social media as a whole. At the end of the day, though, they're living a life they're happy with. They can advocate for themselves and aren't being pimped out by someone who doesn't care about their wellbeing. Other jobs and careers are completely attainable still, if not completely possible to have alongside whatever OnlyFans account you run.

powerslacker 4y ago
You are equating the happiness of the individuals involved as the basis for determining whether or not the action is moral. Its inherently a hedonistic perspective. Of course you can't make a moral claim that prostitution is wrong if you consider the "happiness" of the pimp, prostitute, and john as the highest good involved. Frankly, I'm not sure how you could make many moral claims considered reasonable based on that kind of criteria. Using the same measure you could justify all sorts of abusive situations so long as the exploited is "happy" with their circumstances.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  I make no moral claim because I don't see a moral axis here. It's equivalent to arguing about the morality of cigarette companies or breweries; our societal precedent for freedom overrides whatever personal harm it might cause. Same goes for selling knives, guns, porno films or sex toys. We can obviously regulate the obscene and dangerous conduct surrounding these things (and we do), but the right to having them is what drives our free market. It's no more exploitative than Apple teasing you with an iPhone 14 event, getting you tech-horny enough to open your wallet come October.

Bostonian 4y ago

In some cases the young women involved are exploiting guys who are messed up. It's legal, but I don't think it's moral. "But David worked the night shift at a car manufacturing plant, and he was always broke. He could only pay the girls on Fridays when he got his paycheck. Despite this, he consistently spent quite a bit of money for Lainey to send feet pics (only the bottom of the feet!), and — crucially — to tell him he was a loser, his dick was small, and “send me money.” The mismatch between his income and his spending worried the girls enough that they considered intervening, but ultimately decided there was not much they could do to help."

nh23423fefe 4y ago

author thinks the election was stolen https://stanfordreview.org/stanford-future-gop/ https://stanfordreview.org/stanford-future-gop/ > Then the president began a legal fight for the election. Countless numbers of his supporters have rallied around him, with 70% of Republicans suspecting fraud. But many who claimed to support the President were more than happy to roll over and hand the presidency to Biden without a fight. Since election night, many prominent Republicans have hesitated to support the president. Senator Mitt Romney and former President George W. Bush have even called on Trump to concede the election. Many more, in their silence, have failed to give the President their support in his hour of greatest need.

powerslacker 4y ago
What has that got to do with this thread?
- metadat 4y ago
  It brings into question the author's credibility. At this juncture, claims of 2020 election theft are akin to being a Flat Earther. Do you, dear reader, desire to get advice, a hot take on sugar babies, or have anything to do with such a person? It's at least nice to be aware and have the information.
  - _aavaa_ 4y ago
    They would at worse be arguing in bad faith. But their argument is right or wrong because of its bases and assumptions, not based on who's saying the words
    - nh23423fefe 4y ago
      Sure, you can pretend to have a uniform prior.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      Their argument is based on opinions of morality and soft-truths, but they're casting it like an objective problem (which it is not). The author even feels the need to admit as much at the end, simply acknowledging that the cycle of sexualization will always continue, regardless of our opinion on it. So, with that being said, I'd say it absolutely compromises their argument here. If the author is gullible enough to fall for garden-variety conspiracy theories, why should I trust their authority on morality? Their rhetorical triangle is broken. They have no credibility, they make no appeals to logic (and contradict themselves) which leaves them only with pathos - the ability to outrage and incense their audience based on emotional appeals.

kelseyfrog 4y ago

Voluntary transactional free association between consenting adults and the author ends with a "yes, but not like that!" > Only this complete upheaval of traditional gender dynamics could allow high-achieving women to “sugar baby” for working class men, and without any tangible consequence to the women. The author advocates a social-regulatory framework to preserve market relations. I can't see how increasing regulation can do anything but distort the market, but I'm willing to be proven wrong. The whole piece comes across as a "I'm more interested in a return to regulatory capture than I am interested in competing in an evolving and dynamic environment." Sorry, but in any market there's winners and losers. What are we going to do, start getting rid of free markets?

avmich 4y ago
> I can't see how increasing regulation can do anything but distort the market You're saying it like distorting the market is always wrong. > What are we going to do, start getting rid of free markets? Free market is an abstraction, which doesn't exist in reality.
- powerslacker 4y ago
  I would like to add that "free market" is a bad description of the state of markets with the United States in general. The government has directly affected the price and legality of many goods including cheese, magnets, corn, houses, education, and more. That's all before we can even start to discuss the systematic effects of fiat money. The idea that we are collectively operating in a free market is a fairly tale.
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    What are the regulations distorting the dating market?
    - powerslacker 4y ago
      Calling it a market is a bit odd, but I'll play ball. Marriage. Unequal rules for participants based on financial success would be another. Arbitrary age limits. I am generally a supporter of these concepts and this kind of meddling.

angryasian 4y ago

men love to shame women over sexuality. A man does this, no one blinks an eye. A woman.. oh no

midislack 4y ago

These girls are going to be real put out once they hit Tag The Sponsor. That shits forever.

tinglymintyfrsh 4y ago

I ran into the Stanford law school exotic dancer on CL personals when those existed. She took some startup guy for half his net worth in a divorce. I asked her how he was doing but didn't receive a response back.

Joewashere 4y ago

For pete's sake. Sexting and sending pictures to customers is NOT being a sugar baby. Please stop misusing the terms. A sugar baby is a mistress, which is a girlfriend that is financially supported. A sugar daddy is a rich boyfriend, usually married. The relationship is real. The sex is real. The friendship is real. The laughs are real. The squabbles are real. For most of these couples, they know the relationship will come to an end when it starts, but for that time in their lives, it can be perfect. A young woman who is busy with school or starting her career, doesn't want the drama and endless obligations of a "normal" boyfriend, would like regular intimacy with a regular partner anyway, and could use financial or career help can find having a sugar daddy as a boyfriend can be fantastic.

samsin 4y ago
It's not a 'real friendship' if you have to pay the other person to stop them ending the relationship. Sounds more like a contract.

kurupt213 4y ago

The only thing new about this is the label and the digital marketing