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God that's depressing. Even when you _pay_ for human connection you're being fobbed off onto an AI
by vimda 7mo ago
God that's depressing. Even when you _pay_ for human connection you're being fobbed off onto an AI
- PeterStuer 7mo agoBet you had some really deep human connection with that guy chatting to you from the Philippines.
- vimda 7mo agoYou betray your ignorance of how parasocial OnlyFans and their ilk get. Yes, people get real connection out of it, whether its with who they think they're talking to or not. I think that connecting those people into a chat bot instead of a real human is depressing, and a bad thing for society, but you're welcome to disagree with that
- ndriscoll 7mo agoTalking to a real human seems more depressing to me, especially when they're making less than $2/hour doing it, have multiple chats going all trying to hit sales targets, and they feel bad for you in the interaction. Paying for female attention is pretty bad, but not even getting the attention you paid for is just bleak. At that point go with the machine. At least it's not thinking "what the hell am I doing here?" while it's generating messages.
- luckylion 7mo agoWhat's the difference? The users think they talk to some specific person and form a connection with them, and they don't. Whether they get strung along by a human, a chatbot, or a simple cronjob - does it matter?
- nkrisc 7mo agoIt’s not a real connection. It’s completely invented in their mind. Probably more accurate to call it a delusion.
- PeterStuer 7mo agoI'll admit. I' too old to 'get' OF.
- sillyfluke 7mo agoNow that you got the balls rolling in an unwanted direction, I'm sure you're not the only one here with blue jewels.
- superb_dev 7mo agoI don’t think it’s an age thing, I think is desperation. I’m not desperate enough to get it
- sillyfluke 7mo agoI'm also often not desperate for a pun from a stranger, but I think a 'get' it.
- sofixa 7mo agoWhat's there to get? People, overwhemingly men, pay for adult content from performers, majority women. It often involves a supposedly personal touch (like chatting with (someone pretending to be) them, or being able to pay for custom content). Nothing really exceptional in any way other than scale, democratisation (anyone of age can sign up to post content) and the digital transformation. Back in the day people used to buy porn magazines with their niche preferences, and write in letters to share their stories / fantasies and get responses back.
- cess11 7mo agoWhat do you mean by "human connection"?
- steve_adams_86 7mo agoIt appears a lot of people using OF are using it as a parasocial medium, not strictly for porn. They want to believe they're actually in touch with the performer and part of their lives to some degree.
- cess11 7mo agoWhat does "para-" mean? Edit: Right, 'beside', 'outside', like in paranormal. Now, are parasocial relationships "human connection"?
- jihadjihad 7mo agopara- has a variety of meanings [0] depending on which word it’s used to form. Parasocial itself means “one-sided” in a relationship [1]. 0: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/para-#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/para-#English 1: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/parasocial https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/parasocial
- jfengel 7mo agoIt means that it shares some, but not all, aspects of a social relationship. It's often applied to one-sided relationships with celebrities, where you feel a personal connection to them but they literally don't know you exist.
- nine_k 7mo agoTo pay for a human connection, take someone out for a dinner, and foot the bill. At OnlyFans you're paying for a video feed, and computers are pretty good at producing convincing video feeds now.
- localuser13 7mo ago>To pay for a human connection, take someone out for a dinner, and foot the bill. I'm married now, and never used any parasocial platform OnlyFans or another, but trivializing the problem of young adult loneliness is either ignorant or condescending. A large fraction of young males don't have anyone to "take out for a dinner", or at least have no idea how to initiate that. You may scoff at that, but I certainly wouldn't know how to do it, and money was not a problem. Paying for human connection, especially online, was tempting.
- prepend 7mo agoThe solution to loneliness isn’t fake connections. And I think makes it even worse because fake friends don’t act like real people and make it harder to form real relationships with people who have their own desires and needs and aren’t just sycophants receiving pay.
- asdff 7mo agoTaking someone out for a dinner and footing the bill does not require you to be some cassanova. Escort services are a thing and honestly somewhat increasingly normalized. The latest chris hemsworth movie had him using an escort and didn't paint him as weird for it or anything, kind of just seemed like a gym membership or any other service the way it was casually broached (he played a certain healthy/rich/clean cut professional thief/perhaps even autistic character).
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- TheOtherHobbes 7mo agoLA is weird and not everyone wants to live there. Escort services are still a very niche interest in most of the world. And they provide a simulacrum of human connection.
- throwaway5752 7mo agoIt's going to kill the software industry as we know it! We're literally killing our field by making the devices and internet so repulsive that people are actively unplugging. You can't hear about this online because the bot generated content is filling the gap and the people doing it aren't online to tell you about it. Children are getting addicted to everything because the internet has killed any sense of self-stimulation and they are growing up into gamblers with cards, sports, and prediction markets or rage-addicted media consumers. There is plenty of human connection to be had out there, it is free, and all you have to do is put down the phone or computer. It is getting extremely compelling as an alternative for increasing large groups of people. The tech industry is energetically strangling its golden goose.
- SoftTalker 7mo agoThere will be some interesting game theory studies in the aftermath.
- localuser13 7mo agoI think that's just a good old prisoner dilemma. You can't have a free-range golden goose, because if you grow it responsibly, others will abuse it first and you will get out of business. The only way is to be as greedy as legally allowed, because otherwise you're left behind.
- roysting 7mo agoIronically, I was trying to explain to someone I know that was somewhat considering getting into that milieu that what such people are really doing is selling affection to an affection deprived audience. Every person that sells themselves has the same orifices and they more or less all look the same, and everyone has seen thousands of them by now. The differentiation is the connection and being able to identify the particular sad void needing to be fill. AI will make this really bad, because it will surely quickly learn how to tap into your deepest impulses and desires for connection and affection. It sounds weird, but in a way, there is some strong correlation between other forms of fraud, the most obvious being romance cons/frauds; where women are not looking for big rods, but for romance lady boners... yet another form of seeing affection. Some of us harm ourselves for a lack of an affection, others fall prey to it making them vulnerable. I do hope that AI could and will also be used to help people get a semblance of healthy affection, if not maybe even facilitate making real connections that can provide real human affection.