OnlyFans, influencers, and the politics of selling nudes during a pandemic | Hacker News Reader

OnlyFans, influencers, and the politics of selling nudes during a pandemic

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As I read some women in the article are making as much as a talented ivy league graduate who joins a tech company.

It seems amoral to prevent them from making money, why don't we see it as a talent as we see "tech jobs" as talent?

Can it really do more damage than what tech companies specially one who pedal ads and sell customer data and give people anxiety?

Sex work is work all the same. From a normative standpoint, we ought to support sex workers directly, rather than the studios and production companies that are often exploitative.

OnlyFans seems to get rid of the middlemen in the porn / cam girl industry, I think that's a massive benefit for sex workers today.

My question to most people on this forum are: would you really be ok if your daughter was best friends with a sex worker? Everybody says "of course!" in theory... but in reality I think it falls apart. Lots of blurred moral lines.

Any blurring of moral lines likely comes down to hangups W.R.T Body Autonomy. At the end of the day, if you one believes that everyone is allowed to make their own choices about their body, that would have to include their daughter, their spouse, their mother even.

Exactly! You get it. I find it so hard to believe that there is supposedly zero overlap between HackerNews comment posters claiming "there is nothing morally wrong with sex work" and people who in reality when pressed with the exact situation would say "I am against my little sister performing sexual acts for money"

I think most drugs should be legalized, but I would still be against my little sister doing meth. That's how I see this situation too. People obviously should be allowed to do sex work, but I think that there are hidden costs that are difficult to understand beforehand. I wouldn't bar her from it but I would discourage it.

Sex work is ok if the situation isn't coercive. A situation where the only reasonably available alternative choices are homelessness or starvation is coercive. Sex work is fine but a system that provides it as "last ditch employment" or as a means of survival in absence of alternatives is no different than rape. This applies to a lot more than sex work though :/

Are many of these women coerced into prostituting themselves? Do you have a similar moral problem with people doing other jobs out of desperation, like back breaking labor?

> Are many of these women coerced into prostituting themselves?

We lack studies on this in the US. I'd argue that most people who are involved in an illegal profession (in the US at least) often doing so for lack of viable alternatives.

In other countries where prostitution is legal and regulated, it seems is less likely to be a profession of last resort.

> Do you have a similar moral problem with people doing other jobs out of desperation, like back breaking labor?

Very much so.

And yet, we are not allowed freedom during a coronavirus lockdown.

As much as I would like to believe that Joe McRando is going to keep a six foot distance from me and where a mask, I've seen enough to make me believe he wouldn't.

Therefore, it stands to reason that it be, maybe not illegal, but definitely very heavily encouraged for people to stay home. It's one of the few cases where I am pro-government power (as much as it kills me inside to say).

When the government tries to prevent measures to limit this overreach (as in the LA mayor not allowing petitions to circulate for his recall) then I have to beg to differ.

Obviously limiting free speech is absolutely not okay.

If I came across as overly combative in my last comment I'd like to apologize, that was not my intention.

Yeah I think a lot of people like to pretend on the internet that they're super accepting and liberal, but if their daughter told them she was a whore, they wouldn't be so accepting behind close doors.

>My question to most people on this forum are: would you really be ok if your daughter was best friends with a sex worker? Everybody says "of course!" in theory... but in reality I think it falls apart. Lots of blurred moral lines.

I have more respect for a sex worker than someone who builds unconstitutional mass surveillance tools. At least most sex work is legal.

I think the only "blurred moral line" wrt sex work is that folks who were supportive of gay rights, marijuana legalization, and other individual freedoms then pump the brakes on their social libertarianism as soon as the chance to support a vulnerable population appears that may actually require politely but firmly disagreeing with folks they personally know.

> but firmly disagreeing with folks they personally know.

That's what I'm trying to poke at here in these comments. It's almost as if you do not support sex work/aren't ok with the theory of having it in your household, you're the enemy. You aren't cool, you're behind the curve, and you need to work on yourself to get your views more in line with the rest of the more liberal folk. That's how it reads to me anyway.

Well to be frank, you do seem rigid in your thinking. For example, I pointed you at a noted libertarian think tank earlier in the thread, and you basically ignored my post and continue to describe being for the decriminalization of sex work as a "liberal" mindset.

Most political scientists reject the left right dichotomy altogether and use a "political compass" instead. You seem to be posting from the "authoritarian right" quadrant:

https://www.politicalcompass.org

Maybe if you adjusted your attitudes based on data, rather than insist your views are right because they are your views, you'd feel less uncool or "behind the curve".

I just don't get how you can't abstract away the fact that:

1. the right have their political compass point to Christianity, guns, less government, anti-homosexuality, anti-abortion

2. the left have their compass point to redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor for social programs through taxes, support for transgenders, democratic socialism, etc.

I just feel like the 'compass' thing is saying what is already obvious in a different fashion. Am I missing something?

> why don't we see it as a talent as we see "tech jobs" as talent?

Good damned question. Sex work is work.

I'll bite and talk about the subject, since I've been involved in that community as both a buyer and sort-of-seller (Helped a ManyVids star rise to the top 20 in their category with feedback, strategy and ehem... 'collaborations' but I'll get back to that)

I don't find sex work in and of itself immoral. That is of course an opinion.

On the other hand... It's another subculture in and of itself. And unfortunately, it's a subculture that often rewards immoral behavior and/or pulls people down dark paths.

From the buying side, It's been interesting to see the different ways that sellers behave. The ways some of them cut corners and/or 'lightly cheat' clients is questionable. The worst form I've experienced is when you make a larger services purchase and it become obvious over the session that you just supported some bad chemical habit of theirs. But I've also had sellers try to cheat the clock.

And I've had MULTIPLE sellers violate my consent in hypnosis sessions.

But perhaps worst was initiating a relationship with a seller for 2 years, only to discover that she had a boyfriend (now fiance) out of state in med school. That's the one I collaborated with, turned out that I was really helping someone who lived in a guilded cage buy more toys for her, NOT helping her make ends meet.

And now, I live in constant worry that she'll start distributing the videos we made again. They were made such that they JUST fall out of my state's classification of Revenge porn. Perfect example of an Immoral seller. When COVID broke out she immediately started e-begging, claiming that she couldn't make her car payments (which I knew was a lie on multiple levels.)

And yet, less than a month later she's posting more fancy outfits, gadgets, etc. that she's purchased.

From the seller's perspective:

- You get scammers too.

- You're living on the edge of acceptable behavior. If you're not using a payment service that approves of your work, One properly targeted set of emails from a disgruntled customer could lead to any uncollected money.

- You have to be -very- careful about your online life. Lots of sellers keep their real life online profiles as locked down as possible, lest someone find their real identity via image search algos.

- You get a lot of people who will either waste your time, troll, or outright harass you.

Which, if anything is what concerns me about the business as a whole. Someone else on HN pointed out in another thread that once you perform one bad act, many times you have to perform another bad act to cover up the first.

I've watched sellers go from kind to cruel after going through the industry for a while. It does change people, and not for the better.

> And I've had MULTIPLE sellers violate my consent in hypnosis sessions.

I'm not really familiar with this space, so forgive me if this is a dumb question, but what does this refer to?

Do people buy hypnotism from cam folksover video chat? And if so, what would constitute a breach of consent?

If that's too personal to ask, I apologize and respect your privacy.

I genuinely know nothing about hypnotism, and it's been quite a few years since any of my friends were camming, so I'm genuinely curious.

> Do people buy hypnotism from cam folksover video chat? And if so, what would constitute a breach of consent?

Well it's like anything else in that trade, some people like live, some would rather pre-order custom made content. Hypnosis is a big rabbit hole I'd rather not get too far into and we're already on the fringe of HN's overton window. One example might be trying to implant suggestions to give them more money.

Maybe the best analogy would be that a good hypnotist is a almost like a FAANG in living human form; They're just trying to convince you to do/think something. And, well, there's some things you just don't want to be sold. :)

While I've only been hypnotized for therapeutic reasons, I would have definitely found a new therapist if my session contained any suggestions that would benefit the clinic... That's slimy.

You're a whale getting played repeatedly and what's weirder is that you seem to know it.

Do you think the lack substantive social acceptance for sex work drives this behavior to an extent (you mention "living on the edge of acceptable behavior"), e.g. either side can cheat and leverage the risk of public exposure no matter how small (enough to prevent you from communicating with customer service)

I think it drives some of the behaviors, yes. If more people were okay with sex work, doxing would be less of a fear for both sides.

OTOH, In general, even sex-positive people often (and have a right to) prefer to keep the details of their escapades as to themselves as possible.

I -do- think there's a lot of room here for better platforms for sellers -and- buyers, but it's an industry nobody wants to get into because of all the bookkeeping and risk involved.

The primary argument against legalization (or normalization) of sex work is that it leads to increased human trafficking and organized crime. There actually is some evidence to back this up, but I wouldn't call the debate settled.

The message this sends to girls is that if you’re pretty, this is the easiest way to make a lot of money. It damages the work of people who have spent decades trying to get women to be valued for things other than their bodies.

Men often do physical labor, something which they are on average physiologically better at. We don't discourage them from doing that because we "only value men for their bodies".

Physical labor is very commonly looked down upon.

Not in the way that sex work is.

I once heard something from someone I never want to agree with but it was a decent point. If intelligence is part of the biological lottery and we value it as an employer for all the advantages it could bring your business, then it's fair to think that someone who is attractive has won a similar genetic lottery and it could bring similar benefits to your business.

It's something I want to disagree with, except I can see that there is more truth to it than not, even if it goes against what I believe the world should be.

I think it’s a good point, and not one I’d considered. But there’s a large lead lead time required to hone intelligence in school or by other means that it doesn’t account for.

I think the message of telling a person what is and isn't acceptable behavior based only on their gender / sex does nothing but reinforce harmful stereotypes and expectations

Looking pretty can be a lot of work.

This says more about the relationship between value and money than it does about what is or isn't valuable.

Thats incredibly patronizing

I think the new world of normalized prostitution is going to be great and healthy.

The problem with modern society is everyone's a master of plausible deniability. Our obsession with legalism over plain ol ethics in America has created a culture where everyone's assessing what they can and cannot get away with and going from there, in so many ways and domains.

This is why enough comments in this thread are just circular arguments thinly veiling an opinion that does not want to fully shed itself into the light.

America has thus become such contradictory place that trust between random strangers is null and void, already a Hobbesian game of stalemate.

Progressives aren't any better; they rely on implicit, unwritten rules just as much as any strictly heteronormative conservative and so struggle with ethical nuance just as much.

Until Americans stop trying to game each other for what they can get instead of exposing themselves to one another utterly whenever they have to confront real, indissoluble ethical problems that can't be brute forced by partisanship.

And it's precisely because America really has no culture that it falls on America to face up to this task more than any other country.

Edit: No really, go back and re-read Leviathan, Hobbes doesn't say a state of nature is all-out violence, he specifically says nothing happens ("no industry or culture"); it's a stalemate. Nobody makes a move, so everybody loses

I think this is exhuberated by the this very same lack of culture you are referring. Outting youself and your ethics instantly targets you to the opposing views in ways hard to defend against and enables what the "cancel culture" is good at

"Cancel Culture" is the epitome of American culture, it's truest son precisely because it is its prodigal son, exactly like the plot of King Lear, only America is King Lear, wandering around destitute still thinking its King when it thought it could have its cake and eat it too. Which goes back to my original post above.

I am all for letting people do what they like with their bodies, but if people are trying to makes ends meet and they believe the only way of doing so is via selling pictures of their bodies - I think society has another massive moral failing on its hands

and this probably an unrefined opinion, but I feel like firing a worker for running a NSFW OnlyFans account (or similar) would, if not should, run agrounds for sexual harassment or unlawful termination. or at the very least be should be called out for being rooted in unwarranted social standards and expectations

It's crazy to me how ubiquitous the assumption is that any kind of sex work, even something as tame as nude photography, must be considered an unhappy last resort by any woman engaging in it.

this isn't quite what I was trying to say, I should've been more specific. I was more trying to say that I think bodily autonomy is a such a important part of a person's identity that a person should never feel pressure to unwillingly give up their bodily autonomy

What about picking strawberries? Working in a meat-packing plant with a high risk of catching Covid-19? Especially these days, there's way less bodily autonomy in most "essential" jobs than posing in front of a camera.

We're still in a system where if you don't work, you should expect homelessness and starvation. Until we get beyond this, OnlyFans is among the best of a bunch of bad options for lots of folks.

What? Selling nudes is the epitome of bodily autonomy, if they want to sell nudes, they should be allowed to because they own their own body.

again, that's not what I'm saying. if someone wants to sell nudes, go for it. however I see an issue in having someone who had no desire to do so, but feels compelled to so just to get by

> someone who had no desire to do so, but feels compelled to so just to get by

is the definition of work for most people. How is this different?

Exactly that. It's not like janitorial staff or farm hands or factory line workers or the swaths of other people doing menial, backbreaking or extremely boring jobs by and large chose to do so for any reason other than trying to make ends meet.

Do you feel the same way about bodily autonomy when people choose to do hard labour?

It's a pretty lazy assumption to assume that assumption. Why not set the bar higher for oneself?

You cannot in one breath say you're "all for" something then immediately caveat it. The "moral failing" of society is the inability to provide for those who are hungry, under-housed, sick, not sex work.

People clearly cannot make ends meet due to a global pandemic, massive unemployment, all within a system with increasingly restricted upward mobility.

> The "moral failing" of society is the inability to provide for those who are hungry, under-housed, sick, not sex work.

Is that not exactly what the OP said?

You cannot in one breath be performatively outraged at someone's opinion and then immediately agree with it.

Clearly OP was linking selling photos of one's body to the moral failing. They make no mention of those systemic issues.

"... they believe the only way of doing so is via selling pictures of their bodies - I think society has another massive moral failing on its hands"

I don't agree that the moral failing is that people can earn money this way.

That is not how I read that, at all. My reading is that the moral failing is on society for not providing other options to them. Not that it is a moral issue for them to earn in that manner. If someone, who otherwise would not want to do this work, must because there are no other options to pay the bills it is an issue with society.

Seems to me that selling nudes is a pretty easy way to make a living, compared with other entrepreneurial types of businesses. Could it be that some of the outrage is due to the easy money?

I would say that selling nudes is pretty nice work, compared to farming, fast food or roofing.

If anything real pornstars and prostitutes are leaving their professions, because they make more money as streamers :-))

> I think society has another massive moral failing on its hands

Why? The outlook from the top comments on this thread are basically "all sex work is equal to any other work and sex workers should be held in equal regard to any other employee of any other field"

> I feel like firing a worker for running a NSFW OnlyFans account (or similar) would, if not should, run agrounds for sexual harassment or unlawful termination.

I don't think it should be considered unlawful termination. Someones behaviour outside work definitely has an impact on the business they're a part of. Unfortunately, whether we like it or not, SW has a very real stigma attached to it that could hurt the business reputation. That's a risk the business must take into account. It's like if someone were to attend white supremacist rallies on the weekends. It may not directly affect their ability to perform their role but I suspect we'd agree that it's justified if a business terminated someone for that reason.

Reputation is one aspect, but another aspect from a business perspective that I haven't seen discussed too much is the effect it could have on coworkers' performance. Say a woman has an OnlyFans and somehow her male colleagues find out. It would be at least a little bit distracting for them and could cause their productivity to drop. This is again a liability the business has to consider.

I'm not saying the stigma or termination is _right_ or _just_ in this case but it's just the reality of the world we live in and it will take generations to change that.

EDIT: To add a little bit about the sexual harassment aspect. I'm not sure where I fall on this. Say a woman works a side job as a stripper and one of her colleagues accidentally visits the strip club where she works. I would say it's not sexual harassment to visit the club the first time when they are unaware she works there. However if they were to solicit a private dance from her then I would consider that sexual harassment. I'm not sure exactly how that relates to viewing someones photos online accidentally vs paying for their only fans but I think it's somewhat similar. And what about repeatedly visiting the club/public photos? Visiting the club again probably is harassment depending on whether or not she is working that night but viewing the photos again probably not if she's not aware of it. It's a pretty large grey area with this part and it's difficult to form a solid opinion or even a rule without assessing things case-by-case.

I think your arguments are a little disingenuous, to put it mildly.

1. You compare an adult person selling nude photos of themselves to somebody attending a white supremacist rally....

Surely you can see the difference here?

One is perhaps amoral, by traditional Christian/religious values, but not illegal - just like blasphemy or swearing is no longer illegal in most parts of the world. And religious points aside, an adult selling photos of themselves without clothes on doesn't hurt anybody.

White supremacy on the other hand is closely entwined with racial discrimination - which is illegal, and does hurt people.

2. You say that it could negatively impact coworkers performance, as it might distract them.

Assuming that the videos are made on personal time, and not during work hours or during work time - I fail to see how this is the person's fault.

This is victim blaming - which is a terrible thing.

It's like saying a girl is "asking for it" based on the clothing she wears (which people have used in parts of the world to justify rape) - except in this case, it's what she wears at home, away from you.

3. Sexual harassment

I'm not going to weigh in here - this is a seriously nuanced topic with a lot of emotional content that can trigger people, and I'd make a mess of it.

All this being said - I always find it funny how Americans seem perfectly fine with insane amounts of bloody, gore and violence in television, film and games - but any hint of sexual impropriety or nudity immediately triggers them.

Oh, you can to show somebody getting decapitated, or having their fingernails torn off? Sure, that's fine, that's a normal action film.

Aha, you want to show a nude man from the front? Nope, can't do that. Oh, you want to show a woman's cleavage? Err, you're not going to get a M rating.

From what I've seen, the Europeans don't seem to have the same hangups about nudity or the human form.

I'm not a historian - but I wonder if perhaps it's the American Protestant heritage?

I watched this video recently about OnlyFans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djMojvschs0

It's more than just the content itself. "Becoming a fan" is a simulacra of a relationship, commodified. This already existed with escorts, of course, but never at this scale.

My personality type is probably closer to being a "consumer" than being a "producer" of content on OF. I don't use the site. But if I did, my status as a consumer would totally preclude being in a romantic relationship. Gonna go out on a limb and guess that most consumers and producers are in a similar situation -- if they're on OnlyFans, they're not in a real relationship.

It's only natural that taking genuine human connection, turning it financial, and then using the internet to turn it into a commodity and producing profit would extend to sex. I'm actually surprised it took so long.

Things you're assuming:

1. Consumers use OnlyFans as a poor substitute to an in-person relationship.

2. It's always better to be in a romantic relationship than not.

How is camgirling and pornography so different from other performance? What about comedians? They do the same thing as friends: tell jokes, laugh, entertain. A lot of them explicitly try to connect with the audience by asking questions and having short chats. But most people realize comedians aren't a substitute for friends.

The only real difference is your other assumption:

3. Sexuality outside romantic relationships is immoral.

You can argue that point. Personally, I'd be uncomfortable watching or interacting with a live person this way (I really didn't enjoy my only visit to a strip club). But I'm not going to generalize my psyche across others.

Well, I'm not sure exactly what everyone uses OF for. I'm making the assumption that there is "something more" than just the pictures and videos, because I can search big boob on Google right now and get 2 billion hits.

The "something more" is the interaction -- recognition that you exist from the person you're tipping when you tip. Being a "follower" of an onlyfans girl to me seems much more about intimacy than about pornography.

I do think that in general close relationships, especially core intimate relationships like those with parents and spouses, are the most important things in human life. I guess that's my opinion but I find it hard to believe that anyone would disagree.

My argument really isn't about sexuality at all, because I don't think OF is about sexuality, really. Sex is a part of it but not the core of the platform. And it's not morality. I don't think it's morally wrong to do this, I do think it's depressing. That we feel so disconnected from one another that we are willing to forgo the "real thing" for a simulation.

I'm sure that for all of history there is some baseline level of the population that, for one reason or another, finds it so difficult to connect that they're not willing to enter a "real" relationship at all. What I worry about is if this portion of the population is growing, because there's a profit motive, or a psychological short circuit, or some disconnect caused by modern life.

It's hard to articulate exactly what, here. I just feel that there's something broken about OF or the world we've created that enables it to be so successful.

I think it's fair to assume most people see sexuality as an extension of a relationship (and have for a long time).

I dont think it's a stretch to think this commoditization of more intimate sex work (vs porn) is likely to replace actual relationships for a lot consumers

Remember to read "the manipulated man" by esther vilar.

More power to people selling if it works for them, I'm just concerned they aren't thinking about their futures. As crass as people will say this is, selling your body is selling access to a depreciating asset. While they might be making good money now, eventually these girls will grow up. Slowly they'll see subscribers dip, but only enough for them to think they can adjust their product.

But there will always be someone younger, or just newer, and what they are selling won't be a "hot commodity" any more. At that point to either drop out broke, or creep towards more hardcore offerings.

Eventually they'll be burned out of the system, they'll have burned through their early career, likely with little to show for it, and with no real career skills or plan.

This sounds like most careers, though. Except for the sensational language, how is this different than agism in the software industry, or folks who never become managers? In my (limited) experience, most people don’t climb the ranks or get major pay increases, especially during a pandemic like this.

Agism in the software industry is only a big issue in the "startup scene", in industry its not as big an issue and experience software architects are always in demand, even if they don't become "managers".

And even if you aren't climbing ranks, as long as you keep up your skills you can stay in a job in some places for a long time.

What I am saying is that people who go into "camming" don't have that option. Eventually their audience will go away.

The agism you reference doesn't exist across the software industry as a whole. There's a massive demand for "old" folks who are familiar with technologies that are considered outdated.

I find the whole thing narcissistic, shallow, and distasteful. HOWEVER, that is part of the cost of a free society (as much as we are). People are free to make mistakes.

My problem with this is how it's marketed.

I happen to have found myself single earlier this year... and I would say 80% of the traffic on dating sites is these onlyfans/snapchat folks. The rest of the split is outright scammers and the occasional lonely heart peppered in.

The dating sites have a symbiotic relationship with these folks-- they need someone to draw users/payers in and this is the way to do it with the most plausible deniability.

Some dating sites are way more guilty than others, with a few being outright scams in my opinion (Hily is one that's a scam).

It is surprising as well as depressing that someone can get enough money to buy a house from OnlyFans payout. Goes to say how many people spend money on that kind of stuff. Instagram models living rich lifestyle is different as they endorse products and advertising is involved. This is just people paying to watch someones naked photos.

Why is that in any way depressing? Making others feel better via a personal connection is one of the most noble professions one can pursue.

It’s a lot more important than meaningless “influencer marketing” covert advertising that exists only to make people buy shit they don’t need.

>Why is that in any way depressing?

The connection is fake. The men are desperate. The women are sleazy.

> The connection is fake. The men are desperate. The women are sleazy.

I'm with you on the first two parts but the third one is going to get you slammed here. Women who perform sex work are held in equal/high regard by the members of this community.

it's easy to signal by saying this but how many men who say this would actually want their sister / mom / daughter participating in any sort of sex work? it's both the oldest job and the oldest taboo for a reason

What reason is that?

I'm not a consumer of OF or IG content but I think OF content is more honest and moral.

> the farmer’s market of porn

Now that's an elevator pitch.

Interesting I read yesterday that OnlyFans started banning for nudes and is refunding customers. Some models lost thousands of dollars.

Running porn site requires a lot of paperwork and is relatively risky.

Wasn't that their main cash cow and essentially the only reason for their business to exist? I've never heard of that company in SFW contexts - that's Patreon's territory.

It was originally for cosplayers and models, very very soft-core, not porn.

Platform is liable if it is offering prostitution (google "Craigslist controversy"). Only Fans has zero paperwork for this in their disclaimers. I am not a lawyer, but I think they are in gray area.

Do you have a citation for this?

My SO is a camgirl with an onlyfans. She's transitioned from mostly live streaming on MFC to mostly doing shoots and vids for OnlyFans. OnlyFans has become a substantial part of her income.

Twitter, but will not post links here, should be searchable. I think it will follow Premium Snapchat and similar platforms...

My opinion: Porn is the new drug. Our daughters are the dealers and our sons are the users. Sex addiction fueled by free internet porn has ruined countless lives.

At least OnlyFans is behind a paywall, keeping it out of view of children.

Sex addiction fueled by free internet porn has ruined countless lives.

I would like to see a citation on this.

Moral panics around sexuality are at least a couple centuries old, and technologies that are said to have contributed to or created them include the printing press, radio, the bicycle, the car, TV, movies, magazines, and now the Internet. For many of the earlier technologies, Gay Talese's book Thy Neighbor's Wife has a serviceable overview of the moral panics.

Although i don't have any citations of scientific research, but it shouldn't be hard to find. I am not concerned about moral implications. But it sure is addictive. Head over to r/NoFap on Reddit, you'll find many first hand tales of how Porn has played an important role in ruining their lives.

I'm not making a moral argument. I'm making a "porn is bad for mental health" argument. Plenty of research out there: https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/research/

Nicole Prause is a lucid, pioneering researcher on such issues, and she has spent a lot of time debunking myths like the one GP proposes.

One write-up here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understanding-the-er...

(She has unfortunately become a target of certain right-wing elements, so if you Google her, you will find a lot of non-scientific attacks. You should read her publications directly and form your own opinion.)

And by "form your own opinion" you mean left only.

Nicole Prause did no myth busting, and your blaming of "right-wing elements" on disagreements with her is downright disingeneous.

See https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/relevant-research-and-articl...

I think that the recent scientific articles cited on https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/ and the countless of self-reports by men in various "NoFap" communities make a pretty good case the porn-addiction is not a myth.

Also, see: https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/relevant-research-and-articl...

Please don't break the site guidelines when posting on divisive issues. We don't need this sort of flamewar here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Your comment is exactly what I was expecting when I wrote mine. I'm not surprised to see it or the downvotes.

Your Brain on Porn is written by a non-scientist with an axe to grind.

> countless of self-reports by men in various "NoFap" communities make a pretty good case the porn-addiction is not a myth.

Self-reports and anecdotes are not controlled, blinded studies. They're not scientific. They tell us nothing.

If that kind of data were scientific, then we'd all be 100% certain that drinking certain herbal teas cures 50% of the flu, or that marijuana use has a causal relationship with using cocaine.

Sex and porn addiction may or may not be a myth, but the thing that Prause debunks in her various research is that the availability of porn and sex causes those addictions.

What researchers have found is that excessive, obsessive, and/or life-damaging usage of porn and sex are due to existing mental health issues. You don't have a healthy, happy man in a relationship suddenly see extreme porn for the first time and then stop going to work.

Please follow the site guidelines when posting on divisive issues. There's no need to start with a swipe. The second bit ("non-scientist with an axe to grind") arguably breaks the guideline against name-calling in arguments, too.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Your overall point is taken. Flamewar ended.

As far as name-calling, it was not my intention at all. If you aren't familiar, the creator of YourBrainOnPorn is literally not a scientist (he neither studies nor practices a science) and doesn't claim to be a scientist.

In describing him as I did, I didn't see any distinction from the descriptions on HN about anti-vaxxers or climate-change deniers.

> Your Brain on Porn is written by a non-scientist with an axe to grind.

This is plainly ad-hominem and argument from authority. There are also plenty of scientists who publish junk papers, with poor methodology and/or statistics.

> What researchers have found is that excessive, obsessive, and/or life-damaging usage of porn and sex are due to existing mental health issues. You don't have a healthy, happy man in a relationship suddenly see extreme porn for the first time and then stop going to work.

This is nonsense, and it is quite clear that you have not read much about this. These issues are mainly affecting men who have been watching porn since an early age. Plenty of stories here: https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/rebooting-accounts/

> Self-reports and anecdotes are not controlled, blinded studies. They're not scientific. They tell us nothing.

This is dogmatic and silly. There are various fields where the science is lagging behind and it takes quite a while to catch up. Let me post a quote from Gary Wilson's book (which I highly recommend, despite him not being a scientist):

----------------------

> Quitting internet porn is the equivalent of removing refined sugar or trans-fats from your diet. It is simply the elimination of a form of entertainment that no one had until recently, and everyone got along without. As one porn user said,

> Here is the schema:

> 1. Exciting, but bad-in-long-term behaviour is introduced for money.

> 2. People get hooked.

> 3. Precise, scientifically backed-up research takes decades to kick-in.

> 4. Hooked people start to get educated.

> 5. They start behaviour-elimination.

> > Problem is that this whole cycle is so damaging. Cigarettes were (widely) introduced in the early 20th century and took decades to regulate. We now know that certain types of foods are harmful. Yet, with food we are still in phase 2-3. Guess where we are with pornography? The useful scientific research is not even a few years old.

> A consensus about the risks of high-speed internet porn could be decades off despite the efforts of urologists such as Cornell Medical School professor and author Harry Fisch, MD, who warns that too much porn use can make it ‘significantly more difficult’ to get aroused and stay aroused during real sex.[181] Most of society will need a lot longer to get up to speed.

----------------------

> If that kind of data were scientific, then we'd all be 100% certain that drinking certain herbal teas cures 50% of the flu, or that marijuana use has a causal relationship with using cocaine.

The difference is that stopping using porn and waiting for your symptoms to improve is different from taking supplements. You just eliminate a single variable and watch the results.

> Sex and porn addiction may or may not be a myth, but the thing that Prause debunks in her various research is that the availability of porn and sex causes those addictions.

Sorry, but once again, she did not debunk anything with that 2015 study of hers, in fact its results suggests that porn does affect the brain. I've already linked to criticism of her research, and you have clearly not addressed any of it.

P.S. I'm an atheist and don't have any moral issues with porn, so I have no axe to grind here.

Incidentally, that's exactly the same logic behind gay conversion therapy: "you think this makes you happy, but it's actually a really unhealthy, unnatural lifestyle that will ultimately leave you isolated and alone, and harms society overall to boot".

Watching porn is healthy and normal. Like any form of entertainment it can be abused, but there isn't a moral panic about binge watching Netflix or video gaming. Like anything, it's best in moderation.

Watching porn is healthy and normal.

I'd say pornography has been normalized over time, but I'm not convinced it's inoffensive.

I won't polarize it and say it's bad. It is what it is, but I don't know if it can be categorized as healthy either.

If you think porn is offensive, that's fine. I don't think watching porn should be a public thing. It satiates a human need, just like eating fast food technically makes you full.

But is eating fast food healthy and normal? I think thats what the parent poster meant.

Do people really think that watching other people have sex is "healthy"?

Sure, it's a safe way to explore one's sexuality.

"explore one's sexuality."

That actually means absolutely nothing lmao.

Sexuality, like anything, is a set of preferences. I don't think you've properly explored it if that statement means nothing to you.

How can you claim that porn is safe? You're completely sweeping porn addiction under the rug. Viewing porn itself is not inherently unhealthy, but to make a claim that it's safe is at minimum misleading.

Like anything, it's best in moderation. Is driving a car "safe" by your standard? Porn addiction is real, but often caused by other issues in one's life such as alienation, etc.

What makes you think porn is new?

Porn isn't new, obviously. But there's a big difference between finding a stack of your grandpa's Playboys 30 years ago and having a never-ending stream of high-resolution video. Worlds apart as far as the effects on the brain go. Read the research: https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/research/

I have read that website and the studies on it. I went through it in some detail with a friend who went through a breakup due to her boyfriend's excessive porn use.

The current scientific consensus[1] is the following:

- porn addiction and sex addiction may be real; the issue is still up for debate, although there wasn't enough evidence to consider porn addiction its own disorder yet

- excessive porn or sex are devastatingly harmful to some people, regardless of whether they're technically an addiction or not

- there are different causes for excessive uses of porn, some of which look like compulsive disorders, while others look like "hypersexuality" (abnormally high sex drive)

- there is no evidence that the increase in porn quality or availability are responsible for destructive porn usage

1. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/04/pornography

That site can not be used as a credible source, as it does not list any research contrary to its agenda.

Yes they do? https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/relevant-research-and-articl...

If I understood this page correctly, it is a list of critiques of opposite point studies. Which is better than total lack of references, but still biased on its own.

This was among my first thoughts when the first unemployment report came out. We are sending our daughters to OnlyFans. Still not sure where our sons end up.

With the potential for anonymity and digital-only connections, OnlyFans is a big improvement over prostitution, strip clubs, or crushing poverty.

As always, the core issue is economic insecurity, not human sexuality.

more like economic insecurity combined with moral decrepitude. reduce everything to economic insecurity and you're not left with much

There is nothing inherently immoral about showing people your naked body.

It depends on the context, sort of similar to how there is "nothing inherently immoral about firing a gun."

If you are an adult, showing your naked body to a minor is considered in most western societies to be immoral.

Well, not to strip naked on the internet. There was a great paper that came out recently demonstrating the value of men's sexuality is negative (vs that of women).

Men don't possess anything intrinsically valuable or desirable. There is no fallback. I too wonder what this will mean for (young) men, who have already been pushed down a dark path.

We know already where it heads - to young men being radicalized to hate everyone who isn't like them (i.e. not young, male, angry, usually white, usually straight).

This would’ve been a good comment if you had left out the part in the parentheses.

I’d say it’s more of a class thing. They will be angry at the the ruling class and wealthy. I don’t think they are going to be taking it out on old ladies...

That's what you'd hope for, but in practice that's not what I'm seeing. The anger I see online is directed at politicians in some cases - but usually for said politicians supporting social programs, pro-immigration policies, and anti-gun policies.

In the rest of cases, anger is indeed directed at LGBTQ+ people - especially towards trans people - people of color - especially blacks, and increasingly Asians - and women - especially those who are viewed as "promiscuous".

Eh, I think it's a decent label. Individuals belonging to a social group with a presumption of power (in many western contexts, white men) tend to behave as described above. Individuals belonging to groups with low presumptions of power just tend to be problematic within their own community.

You don't see many long lasting violent weak minority supremacy groups.

I observe this to be a narrative that many are pushing, but I don't see it anywhere IRL or even the proverbial data. I suspect they just fall out of statistics and into depression.

Anecdotally, I see it in lots of places - I was a part of those types of communities when I was younger (I'm better now, and I _think_ I'm reasonably well-adjusted), but I still keep tabs on those corners of the internet so I know what's going on, and can be prepared if/when they bubble over in a meaningful way.

I see lots of hateful activity, from "boogaloo" groups that hide their violence fetish behind euphemisms and jokes about revolution, to "satirical" posts about the value of white identity and culture over other cultures and races.

The other day I came across a website whose purpose was to collect the full names and photographs of (white) women who date outside their race - specifically, women who date black men - and the (white) men who date women like that. Said site has a section dedicated to women who were hurt or killed by their partners, and labels those women those who "paid their toll" for dating outside their race.

I haven't seen any meaningful action by any of these groups except that website I mentioned, but the activity is there if you care to find it. It's something that worries me, specifically for my partner - who is a woman of colour.

If you spend enough time searching for the darkest corners of the deep web, you can find powerless, sad people saying bad things about women and people of color.

You can find roughly the same things being said about white men on the front pages of NY Times, CNN, Huffington Post, Twitter, HN and Reddit and being celebrated as progressive, socially acceptable views to be shared non-anonymously by people in positions of power.

If we’re thinking of the same thing (related to ‘coal’) thats looking like it’s a 4chan troll site.

Yes, we're thinking of the same website.

I've been around on 4chan long enough to know that "troll" most often is equivalent to what the site really feels, or at least some of the people on there. The "troll" or "satire" label is only there to try to evoke plausible deniability - as in the case of "for legal purposes my call for violence against this person is a joke".

i.e. the sorts of people - in general - who browse the more unsavory parts of 4chan/8chan/etc are very fond of their dogwhistles.

The way I read it, 4chan is like a concentrated version of what it was like to be a teenager at the edge of society. You stir the pot and feed off the energy that people respond with.

If you live in a Christian conservative community, you leave pamphlets full of gay porn outside church. In a progressive community, you make racist websites about interracial dating.

They aren’t pro gay porn or pro racism, they’re pro getting a reaction out of people, that they find hilarious. We encourage them with our outrage.

"4chan is like a concentrated version of what it was like to be a teenager at the edge of society"

Which teenagers and which edge of society, I'm fairly certain they're not all the same. Also your post is what every reader of 4chan says when the discussion comes up.

I'm not a reader of 4chan. I just know people that are, and I try to have empathy for other people's situations.

5 males aged 13-15 with basic self-taught networking skillz could wreak a huge amount of havoc such that it would throw off observations that are based on web activity. It is one of the reasons that anecdotal observations of online behaviors I consider to approach zero value, with some exceptions.

And, obviously, a lot of those kids are older and still engaging the same juvenile behaviors.

There's definitely radicalization and rising militancy in boogaloo groups, and I'm fairly confident that this is where alienated young men are increasingly headed.

But their composite ideology seems closer to a more nihilistic, violent, class-conscious form of libertarianism than the ethnonationalism-tinged militia movements in the past. Groups seem to go through semiregular cycles of periodic anti-racist meme posting in order to keep their communities relatively clean of white supremacists.

It's fascinating, because historically (since the oughties at least) reactionary movements have emerged as deliberate constructs from the racist fringes of the right-wing, growing to attract dispossessed libertarians/Republicans, only to collapse in relevance as their origins and convictions are laid bare. Conversely, even moreso than the kekistan phenomenon, boogaloo seems to be an emergent initiative manifested through, rather than engineered to take advantage of collective discontent shared by young men ranging from disillusioned Trump voters, to anarchists, to libertarian progressives that feel betrayed by the corrupt appearance of the DNC. Some actors have emerged to take stewardship of segments of the movement's broader community, but none that I've been able to identify can claim ownership of it.

Narrative? Yes yes, because 99.9% of white christian american terrorists are women. /s Were you born today?

If you keep posting like this to HN we will have to ban you again.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

link to paper please if available online?

There was a relatively viral tweet I saw a few weeks ago saying "Gen Z career options: Fulfillment Center worker or OnlyFans" with gendered undertones. For what it's worth, though, while less common, it's not that rare to see men have (and quite successful) OnlyFans. But I agree with the economic sentiment of what you're saying. It's hard not to believe that we're seeing the middle class being completely hollowed out during this pandemic.

Our sons like The Dream, Ansel Elgort, Brian Phillip, all mentioned in the article as having OnlyFans accounts?

> Our sons like The Dream, Ansel Elgort, Brian Phillip, all mentioned in the article?

These seem to be people who were already known personalities.

OnlyFans massive creator growth is likely largely going to be from "normies".

Who would have guessed so many people on HN are against individual freedom? There is absolutely zero ethically or morally wrong with someone selling sex, or buying sex from someone else. Or maybe we should ban pop music stars from revealing too much skin in their music videos? Where do you draw the line between "This is immoral!" and "Wow, what a successful person!" Just ignore it if you don't like it. No one puts a gun to your head to pay someone for sex - so don't point your guns at them for doing so.

> There is absolutely zero ethically or morally wrong with someone selling sex, or buying sex from someone else.

That's an insanely modern/left view with zero consideration to basically all historically socially accepted conservative views of the past.

It's trendy to support sex workers online in 2020 but in the 2000s I'm pretty sure 95% of white suburbia wouldn't have wanted their daughters hanging out with sex workers.

>That's an insanely modern/left view with zero consideration to basically all historically socially accepted conservative views of the past.

No, not every culture in history has been saddled with the Judeo-Christian prejudice against women and their sexuality.

Also, historically socially accepted "conservative" views include slavery, rule by divine right, child labor and trial by combat. A view having been held and taken for granted for a long time doesn't make it correct.

> A view having been held and taken for granted for a long time doesn't make it correct.

The leftist mob of blue Twitter checkmarks has been cancelling people since about... 2012? It's trendy to be pro sex work, anti-corporation in 2020.

The majority of people commenting online about how "pro sex work" they are do not have a sex worker in their life by a longshot. It's all theory/keyboard warrior/armchair activist stuff.

And who are you to gatekeep what causes people can and cannot support without a direct association?

Also, you completely discredited yourself from any sort of worthy debate with "leftist mob".

Calm down neckbeard, back to your Javascript

>That's an insanely modern/left view... It's trendy to support sex workers online in 2020 but in the 2000s I'm pretty sure 95% of white suburbia wouldn't have wanted their daughters hanging out with sex workers.

The Cato Institute has been pretty consistently pro legalization. Are they "leftist"?

This really shouldn't be a left/right issue. As a matter of public health, criminalization and measures like SESTA/FOSTA just lead to more dead sex workers

https://www.engadget.com/2018-04-27-suicide-violence-and-goi...

I agree that on the surface it isn't / shouldn't be "left versus right" but the viewpoint differences seem to align almost 1:1 with "selling yourself sexually is good to with me" (left) and something more conservative (right)

basically all historically socially accepted conservative views

If you need more than 3 qualifiers it's probably BS. You could just post why you think sex work is bad, but your numerous posts on this topic all seem to rely on invoking social sanctions or paranoia, ie making people feel bad about it without saying why you think they should.

Seems kinda like your personal hangup.

I've got no personal hangups with the topic whatsoever. I think it is very fun to poke at the reality of what people online claim. Lots of trendy Miamians will claim it's empowering if somebody is a sex worker, then talk sh*t about them behind their back saying what a hoe they are.

I'm trying to gauge the pulse of what HackerNews thinks.

Yeah yeah, every troll says they're 'conducting a social experiment'.

Can you explain what is morally wrong with buying or selling sex?

I’m not “trendy”, it’s a deeply held philosophical belief about individual freedom.

I don't feel like the average person who says "I'm ok with females selling sex" would actually be ok + proud of their mother / daughter / sister / grandma / cousin if they sold sex for a living.

It doesn't matter what anyone feels "proud" about. I wouldn't be proud of my daughter being a tax accountant, I would rather she was a porn star (I am 100% serious - porn stars add value to society and make people happy).

We live in a free society, and if someone wants to be filmed naked, or paid to have sex, that's their decision to make regardless if it makes you feel icky.

I hope you have spent your whole life abstaining from pornography, because you must feel a great deal of anger at them and shame for what they did.

I would feel icky if all of my female colleagues who got laid off just now were economically compelled to have sex with people they didn't want to have sex with to pay for rent, food, and other debts. Lots of people have pretty shit deals. It's a free society, but they work as meat packers or facebook explicit content moderators. Not that free.

I vastly prefer a system with switching costs (like needing to move somewhere where its legal) than one which puts a social burden on girls to do this when times are tough. "Porn star" sounds sex-positive, lucrative, and happy. Getting fucked by a landlord is a lot more grim.

> compelled to have sex with people they didn't want to have sex with

So we're not talking about OnlyFans anymore are we?

Also what about all the women who enjoy doing online sex work? Are you telling them they shouldn't be allowed to work a job they enjoy?

I would be. And of my father/son/brother/grandpa too.

Do you think you are better/more open-minded than somebody who would not be ok + would look down upon a member of their family performing sex work?

The topic of sex work morality acceptance has a very "me versus them" vibe to it, much like left versus right in the US.

Is there any middle ground of "you can do whatever you want, I am not infringing on your rights, but I personally disagree" that doesn't land the speaker into "time to get cancelled by the leftist mob for being a bigot" territory?

Can I answer your first question with a question: do you think you are better than somebody who performs sex work?

As for middle ground I understand that some people might “personally disagree” and I get that. There are a lot of things in the world that I personally disagree with, too. Like marriage, for example. I wouldn’t be caught dead getting married. But I understand that some people want to and it makes some people happy. And even though I choose not to participate I still support my friends and family who do.

The difference, in my mind, is “X is not right for me” vs “X is not right”. One is about personal opinion and the other is about forcing that opinion onto others who might not share it.

As a guy, I'm cool with this kind of stuff. But what message does this send to girls who are not considered attractive enough or just don't want to do this kind of work? The message is that all the study, work, and effort to work in a meaningful career is a freaking joke, when all it takes is to be born a certain way and make huge amounts of money selling your body.

On the other hand, we have a generation of young males who will be trapped in this vampiric system where their money and time are spent on girls who wouldn't even look at them if they crossed paths on the street, instead of going out there and building real relationships.

I'm just generalizing of course, don't think I'm saying this applies to everyone. But man, we are so fucked.

> The message is that all the study, work, and effort to work in a meaningful career is a freaking joke, when all it takes is to be born a certain way and make huge amounts of money selling your body.

It isn't much different than not being born into wealth, or not being able to marry into wealth because of looks. It exposes an inequity in our society, one that wouldn't be so harsh if people didn't have to sell their body to eat and keep a roof over their head.

Many people are driven by things other than money. There are plenty of people who are good looking, but want nothing to do with making a living from it.

I think this is neglecting that it does take effort to maintain the appearance of being attractive even if there is a genetic lottery component. Additionally it's work that is often ultimately temporary akin to being an NFL player or dancer in which you can only do the thing you've been working at for a relatively short period.

> what message does this send to girls who are not considered attractive enough

Arguably this same message is also being sent to boys, who almost certainly aren't "attractive" enough to be paid in this medium.

Aside from that, who is even paying these people? It's not like there's any dearth of free porn out there (or so I've heard). Unless it's someone rather famous or personally known to you, why bother?

Ersatz desire and relationship. There is a huge market for it.

Why support someone on Patreon? Why tip your waiter?

Well it's not like we have an army of amateur waiters out there waiting to serve you for free.

If there 1000 other waiters who appear to be perfectly thrilled to work without tips, why would I? If someone needs charity, I'd consider it, but I don't care to be "paid" with naked pictures in that case.

But they will work without tips. Nobody is making you tip. Why not just pay for your meal and leave?

For non-US HN readers:

In the US, the IRS assumes you make a certain amount in tips if you work in a job that customarily allows tipping.

So when a customer doesn't tip, the waiter still has to pay taxes on the money you didn't give them.

But wait, it gets worse (this being the US):

Some states allow paying waiters less than minimum wage if tipping is customary. As low as $2/hour.

So a waiter could actually end up owing more money in taxes than what they made that day. All this, and no health or dental insurance, or pension.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Actually, I will go on. Since most states are at-will, you can be fired for any or no reason at any time.

But just as common, the restaurant manager will threaten you with reduced hours if you call in sick, or get a customer complaint (ie. "My spaghetti wasn't al dente. What's wrong with that waiter today.") Or if you don't do the manager "favors" (see the Chipotle scandal.)

BTW, a couple days ago I was wondering how esperate people would make a living during the extended lockdown. Then I saw the HN submission for OnlyFans ...

Welcome to the USA!

Hold up, if a waiter makes less than minimum wage after tips, the company has to make up the difference. This is a federal labour law, and if treated otherwise, is completely illegal.

Does your average waiter have the time and energy to devote to suing the local restaurant when it doesn't pay? Most of the time, and as they should, they just go find another job. I would hate to become known as the employee who sues my employer if they don't pay me.

Is that really your defense for posting 100% false information? Seriously? Owing more money to the irs than you make, because they "assume" you made minimum wage? You're a dumbass, straight up.

This is completely crazy. Its just one of these absurd Americanisms that we should take a look at during COVID and not continue.

To be honest this is how it should be. I am customer of the restaurant and waiter is employee of same restaurant. I am not paying tip to clerk in bank, nor to the hairdressers, etc. In Japan tip is not only discouraged but waiters wouldn't even accept one. Why they can do it and we don't?

What message do professional athletes send to boys who are not athletic enough or don't want to play sports? The answer is the same as the answer to your question. None. Life is unfair and little boys and girls that don't yet grasp this concept need better parents and teachers. That's all.

> all it takes is to be born a certain way

Couldn't the same be said about intelligence?

It's absolutley arrogant and dishonest to think your intelligence is inherited instead of developed,unless you are an exception. Unintelligent people have hard working kids that grow up to be extremely intelligent,intelligent people give birth to children that end up idiots with negative contribution to society and themselves.

> It's absolutley arrogant and dishonest to think your intelligence is inherited instead of developed,unless you are an exception.

I think it is more arrogant to assume your intelligence were due to your hard work and everyone else just being too lazy to achieve the same things.

Why do you think that, in every aspect of human acheivement a person can simply learn and practice. Various factors weigh in but you will be dumb as a rock if you choose to not pursue intellectual achievments regardless of your biology.

False

>Twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73% with the most recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80% and 86%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

Please read the caveat section on that page:

"Some have gone further, and used height as an example in order to argue that "even highly heritable traits can be strongly manipulated by the environment, so heritability has little if anything to do with controllability.""

Regardless of this, this is a measure if IQ, they control for a similar environment but they don't control for similar upbringing and individual's interests and pursuits.

IQ isn't static, there maybe a static ceiling that differs between individuals but the choices made by parents,individuals and environment affect how much developmental effort is focused on specific IQ traits.

As Einstein put it,you shouldn't measure a fish on it's ability to climb a tree.

Even if it weren't hereditary (although I believe that it's well accepted and uncontroversial that it is), it's still pretty clear that it's innate. Even if intelligence is randomly distributed, I've never heard anybody suggest that intelligence isn't something you're just "born with" whether you got it from your parents or just got really lucky.

Well you just heard me say it. Your thinking capacity is limited and inherited but just like physical muscle devlopment, you can develop it. Women basically have to work out 10x men to have similar muscle development (hormones) but they can develop it. Similarly,you don't just grow muscle because your ancestors had a lot of muscle,you still have to work out. All that I have read about intelligence leads me to believe that while hereditary ceiling differences exist for certain "mental muscles", it is something you develop starting from early stages of life.

Ha! Just wait till VR catches on and FB pours all its resources into sucking people into its ecosystem, nay econosphere. Then we will truly be effed beyond belief. Just wait till they leverage all their psychological tricks in the VR world. Goodbye reality.

But what message does this send to girls

I think the larger problem is the degree to which men refuse to engage women in a substantive intellectual fashion.

I appear to be the highest ranked woman on HN. I've been here over a decade. It continues to be the case that most men don't really want to talk much with me unless they are hitting on me.

This has proven to be a huge barrier to effective networking and a huge barrier to turning my participation into an adequate income, something men seem to have no trouble doing here if they so desire.

I am not against sex work. But I have a very big problem with the degree to which other earning opportunities are lacking for women because of this dynamic where simply being female means no one wants to take your work seriously.

I don't think it helps to put a stop to sex work. All that does is make women prisoners of their men because then earning it on your back by "marrying well" becomes the only really viable means to have an adequate income for a woman when so many career doors that aren't sex work are so hard to force open if you are female and sex work is vilified as immoral and often is made illegal as well.

I have been talking for many years on HN about my desire to establish an adequate earned income via the internet because of my medical situation. I was homeless for nearly six years of that and I have had people tell me I was "panhandling the internet" and things like that.

I was told for years "Get a real job" when men here who are trying to make money online don't get told the same thing.

I get treated like I'm just a whiner, not someone with a legitimate complaint or legitimate social observation, etc ad nauseum.

If you really are concerned about the status of women, you should be much more concerned about the myriad social factors that make sex work one of the few ways women can reliably make a good income.

Because stamping out sex work doesn't magically open other doors. If it did, I would be fabulously wealthy because I have been celibate for medical reasons for fifteen years. If this were not true, I likely would have moved to Nevada, where sex work is legal, and made a killing to pay off my debts and come up with enough money to pay cash for a house or at least a down payment on a house.

Sex work is not a viable option for me and I'm no longer amenable to the idea for various reasons. But solving my financial problems shouldn't be this hard. I have six years of college and yadda. But I can't make the same connections men make and that's a huge barrier to trying to establish an adequate income.

This is true whether we ban sex work or not. Focusing on "But what is the message to girls here..." is the wrong focus. It doesn't solve the real problem women have.

> I think the larger problem is the degree to which men refuse to engage women in a substantive intellectual fashion.

First statement is a generalization across 50% of the population.

> I appear to be the highest ranked woman on HN. I've been here over a decade. It continues to be the case that most men don't really want to talk much with me unless they are hitting on me.

Second comment is decrying the fact that the population broadly smeared in the first comment does not want to engage with you.

I can only speak for myself, but the only times that I’ve ever been aware of the gender of a commenter are incredibly rare and only when I recognize the username as that of a personal friend of mine. In general, I’m pretty confident that the gender of a commenter on HN has no effect on how I reply to them for the simple reason that I’m almost always ignorant of it.

In your case, its possible that the mindset expressed in your first sentence contributes to the phenomenon or perception of the phenomenon in the second.

edit before anyone turns this into career suicide for me, I’m not saying that there is a link. I’m just observing the possibility

In general, I’m pretty confident that the gender of a commenter on HN has no effect on how I reply to them

You and I are talking about two different things.

But I said I was stepping away from this conversation, so I will leave it that.

I don't mean to be personal or rude - I only say this because someone said it to me once and it helped me.

Your experiences in comment threads are often a reflection of what YOU write. Hostile people get hostility, humble people often get humbleness in return. Looking at this comment thread, some of the problems you mention in this comment have come up and perhaps it's worth considering whether that is due to how you write your comments.

I've spent a lot of time in therapy. If it were somehow the way I write, I would be thrilled to pieces to learn that fact and correct it.

After nearly 11 years of being told things like "On the internet, no one knows you're a dog if you don't tell them" and having it suggested to me that if my gender is an issue, I should simply hide that fact, I'm pretty darn sure it's not the way I write. It's the way the world reacts to women.

I wouldn't even know you are a woman unless you told me. I personally don't keep track of who says what (with exception of a few famous people). On HN, I feel at home in that what is said is viewed as important, logical reasoning and reproducible process are valued from what I have seen.

My observation as an AMAB person: you are absolutely 100% correct in your overall assessment, but I think your perception of relative ease for men has a filter of survivorship bias. Women aren't given much chance in the first place, but men have to walk a narrow line to access those chances and stay in once they get there. That's if they can walk the line in the first place.

The whole thing is a mess for everyone in an assortment of uniquely horrible ways across every intersection.

but I think your perception of relative ease for men has a filter of survivorship bias

Please don't put words in my mouth. My life is hard enough without that.

I never expected anything to be easy. Just possible.

My Patreon sits at around $150/month and I get the occasional tip while I get accused of being a beggar for expecting pay for my writing at all when all other doors are effectively closed to me for various reasons.

I recently quit my local volunteer work in meat space because that, also, wasn't leading to an adequate income. It's a long, sordid tale, but boils down to the same problem dynamics I have everywhere: People value my work but don't want to pay me for it.

They end up thinking I do it because I "care" and and they are actively affronted by the idea that I want to make money at it. I get read as very motherly and all this shit and people want me to do things for them out of "love." Meanwhile, no one "loves" me enough to give a damn about the fact that I have literally gone hungry at times and literally had no housing for years. No one is doing a fundraiser for me out of compassion. Etc ad nauseum.

I don't think it's easy for me. But I do know it is possible for men and I'm just as competent as any man here and can't get the right doors open that lead to an adequate income while I am given a zillion excuses, which boils down to people justifying the awful way in which this community has treated me for more than a decade.

I know of a MtF trans youth who had no trouble whatsoever opening doors and getting money out of people here. I can't do the same and I am treated with enormous suspicion and contempt for even trying to figure it out.

I understand, I think, that life has certainly been unkind in many areas for you.

I know this is going to sound mean, given your context, but that is anecdotal.

I know (personally) women who have doors flung open for them for the fact that they are women. I don’t tend to agree with it, but I won’t judge those who take advantage.

I know at least one person who uses her femininity very effectively to fund her passion projects. She doesn’t sell her looks or body, she sells “feminity”, as in “an empathetic, sustainable approach to x”. It’s very effective for her at least.

With that in mind, I think the parent was being earnest.

Hardships happen, sadly what you’ve experienced is also experienced by many people, mostly men. Unfortunately they don’t have much of a voice.

Trading personality for employing unearned traits to get through life sounds like a bad deal. I can perform masculinity to top standards and bullshit my way through life, but then I'd lose myself. I doubt it's any different for AFAB people who lucked into good looks and wished they could thrive on merit.

Thank you for commenting.

I was quite beautiful when I was younger. I was also molested and raped and told it was my fault for being too beautiful to resist.

I considered becoming a model at one time.

I also was one of the top students of my graduating class, won a National Merit Scholarship to one of the two most prestigious universities in my home state and had other academic accolades.

My beauty seems to have been more downside than up. It is actively problematic for trying to pursue a serious career that doesn't in some way trade on your sexuality.

Most very successful female singers, actors, etc are beautiful and sexy. The top paid ones don't hesitate to pose nude and trade on their sexuality.

Men don't have to trade on their sexuality to get to the top of their field and men have many fields outside of entertainment open to them where they can make good money.

In fact, it boils down to this: being successful in a career is what makes a man desirable. But a woman is asked to choose to either be serious or be desirable.

I have found my looks and gender to actively be a problem in getting good constructive feedback. I suspect this dynamic is part of why Theranos was valued at $10 billion before being uncovered as a fraud: It was led by a pretty young woman.

I suspect Theranos would have deflated as the hot air balloon it was well before it hit $10 billion in valuation if it had been led by a man.

I have zero interest in using my looks, sexuality or femininity to open doors for me because I have no desire to follow in the foot steps of Theranos. That company has already done plenty of harm to the status and perception of women.

Did Holmes use her sexuality to bring Theranos to a $10B valuation? I thought she actively fought to remove her femininity to be able to prop it up as a founder.

Well, she secretly slept with and lived with one of her investors who also had some important position within the company. So there's that.

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/03/227176/elizabeth-ho...

You're contributing to a stereotype that if a woman is having a relationship with someone at work that it must be to get ahead.

Holmes was absolutely not succeeding on merit. She was so very not succeeding on merit that there is a criminal case charging her with fraud.

I don't think it helps to turn a blind eye to the issue that women can sleep their way into positions, careerwise, and men typically cannot. We have expressions like the casting couch for a reason.

I've spent a lot of years trying to analyze this problem space and find a viable path forward based on actual merit. I'm not going to refrain from criticizing the likes of Holmes. She has done enormous harm to the status of women by her actions, which include sleeping with an investor to get money for a project that had no real merit because it was straight up fraud. So she probably wouldn't have been funded at all if she were male.

> which include sleeping with an investor to get money

Again, unless this came forward in legal proceedings, you're making an assumption.

> We have expressions like the casting couch for a reason.

It's not an expression, it's a literal thing in porn.

I'm not making an assumption. I'm making an inference.

I'm not backing down from my view that Theranos was valued at $10 billion largely because it was headed by an attractive young woman and it would have never been that overvalued and gone in one day from that valuation to zero if the head of the company had been male.

I have suggested on more than one occasion that she may have slept her way into power. She was in her twenties and publicly claiming to be celibate because she was so devoted to her company and then it later came out she was secretly living with Balwani.

I think the media has really treated her with kid gloves because of this fear of being accused of being mean or unfair or something because she's a woman.

I have done my damnedest to tread lightly on this topic over the years because I know it's a hot button topic. But I am in no way surprised to learn that she was secretly living with an investor while claiming to be celibate.

I was mostly privately speculating for years that she was probably sleeping with some of these rich and powerful men who helped make her company a success.

I'm a woman. I have zero problem getting sexual interest from wealthy, powerful men. I have enormous difficulty getting them to take my work seriously and get constructive feedback on my projects.

The Theranos story is one I have paid a fair amount of attention to because it hits a nerve for me. I have a form of cystic fibrosis and I have been getting healthier for 19 years while the world calls me crazy and acts like I'm making that up. There are no wealthy, powerful men expressing interest in the potentially world-changing medical crap my head contains.

I can fairly confidently estimate the personal value to me of that knowledge at about $9.5 million dollars (and counting) cuz reasons. So I have no doubt it's potentially worth billions if not trillions if I can figure out how to disseminate it. (At least in terms of impact on the world. Not necessarily profit per se.)

And I may die in obscurity because while there is no shortage of men who would love to sleep with me, there are no men interested at all in what I know about medical subjects.

So I'm not backing down on my view here. I'm still waiting to hear that Balwani wasn't the only one and she basically fucked her way to power every step of the way.

I'm not going to continue this discussion. I have no doubt this comment will be downvoted to hell. The world has a huge problem with the idea that I know anything medically useful and a huge problem with the fact that a woman who spent nearly six years homeless still has self esteem.

Have a good evening, or whatever time of the day or night it is where you are.

I understand, I think, that life has certainly been unkind in many areas for you.

This is another bs dismissal of my criticisms.

I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leader board. Between my two handles, I have over 50k karma, which would put me respectably high on the leader board if it were one handle.

You are "anecdotally" acting like this is some personal problem for me as an individual. If I'm just some loser that life has kicked in the teeth having nothing to do with my gender, where are the many other openly female members who are on the leader board and/or obviously making bank through their participation here?

Men face the same difficulties you describe when starting a career and getting paid for the value they provide. Simply because 1% of men do not face that due to networking or luck does not mean that the vast majority are in some privileged position.

To be succinct, the main issue I have with HN is that when I try to network and say things like "Email me about that. Let's discuss that issue privately." it typically turns into roughly "Honey, can I get your phone number? Can we have a coffee date (for romantic reasons and not business reasons)?"

I strongly suspect this is not a huge issue for men.

My experience has led me to believe (as a not famous, not attractive, not well connected man) that I would not get an email back in the first place. I have no idea whether or not that is problematic, but that's my perception: that I wouldn't even get the opportunity to prove myself.

On the upside, that at least saves the time and energy of trying to figure out how to reply to someone in a way that moves things in the right direction and wondering if you are just crazy and reading in problem behavior when there is none and so forth.

I was strung along for months by someone who was married and not telling me that until he finally told me one day that he was married, his marriage was in the toilet and he needed "a friend." I wouldn't have fallen for that if it was clearer to me what actual successful networking looks like.

When two hetero men network, saying "Hey, let's have coffee" is a clear and unambiguously platonic proposal. This is not true in my case and it leaves me with serious challenges in figuring out just how on earth you do this.

It's only very recently that I have figured out how to get someone to discuss my work with me because those initial inquiries are so often ambiguous. Networking looks not dissimilar to dating in the initial phases and that means I waste a lot of time trying to make a business connection that will never happen because business is not his goal and will never be on the table, no matter how I handle things.

That's a terrible experience, and one of the many reasons networking is hard.

I suppose my perspective is that the grass is always greener. I have always assumed that I'd prefer the opportunity to pitch at a higher rate, versus a better qualified opportunity at a much lower rate. But that's probably a fallacy.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I still don't feel bad for attractive people, since the outcome measurements clearly show it's advantageous, but the experience isn't something I'd considered prior to your comment.

I suppose my perspective is that the grass is always greener.

Sometimes the grass is greener because of all the manure in the yard.

I try hard to "count my blessings" and to figure out what's good about my situation. But the reality is I'm frequently broke, often to the point of going hungry, so I very much need to solve some questions concerning "How on Earth do you make money instead of being treated like slave labor?" (Because I get feedback that people benefit tremendously from information I share and things I do and they "value" it, they just don't want to pay me for it.)

In my experience successful networking happens when you work on some minor project together successfully.

Thank you.

I didn't realize you were talking about HN instead of in general. It's weird and fickle. One day you promote collective action on big problems and get lots of upvotes, the next you're run out as a traitor to capitalism. It sounds like you get all of the latter and none of the former.

I am talking about HN and in general. I had a corporate job for five years as well and I did mention, above, my failure to make sufficient in roads in meat space since getting back into housing.

I don't bitch more about HN because while it is infuriating and upsetting I remain dirt poor, HN is generally less bad about most things than most places, so it's all kinds of problematic to harp too much on it here. It amounts to being abusive to some of the better people on the planet.

But it's equally problematic to not harp on it. That doesn't solve my problem here either.

So even the best of the best that I can find are still failing to go "I know! If we care about the status of women, we should figure out some kind of path forward on helping this very talented, intelligent, educated and persistent woman in our midst who has spent over a decade proving she's absolutely not some kind of man-hating feminazi."

I don't think it would be unreasonable at this point for me to just lose my shit and go completely postal over this garbage. I'm not, cuz reasons, but this is pretty goddamned ridiculously extreme stuff that any idiot should be able to see "That ain't right."

But what is the real problem that women have? Is it about the lack of fairness in the society they live in? Is it a problem world-wide?

I don't think women have any real barrier in getting jobs nowdays, in fact, I think we are at a time where women are more advantaged than men. They graduate college in greater numbers, the dating market is easy (endless validation on dating apps and social networks), and since in general they aren't held up to the standards that men are they can play it both ways and win - either don't work hard and find a "rich" husband, or work hard and stay single while enjoying easy sex from dating apps.

A man, on the other hand, has to work hard and earn a good living, otherwise he's a "loser", he also has to have social calibration and be able to be interesting and good looking to find a decent looking woman.

But what is the real problem that women have?

Probably best explained here:

https://witnesstodestruction.blogspot.com/p/the-gray-zone.ht...

>Because stamping out sex work doesn't magically open other doors. If it did, I would be fabulously wealthy because I have been celibate for medical reasons for fifteen years.

>Focusing on "But what is the message to girls here..." is the wrong focus. It doesn't solve the real problem women have.

Given the former statement, it is the right focus.

I have no idea what you are trying to say with that. Perhaps you could try to clarify so I can try to better communicate what my point of view is here.

Does the normalization of women getting rich and living lavish, bourgeoise lifestyles from selling their bodies help or hurt the perception of women?

Even before OnlyFans blew up, people(both men and women) already looked down on women who did sex work for a living. What do you think happens from here when every girl and their grandmother's has an OnlyFans? That's something every guy will probably be thinking about now when they are considering a girl to date. That is now something for employers to consider when hiring a woman. I'm not saying that's okay either, by the way. I'm just suggesting that that's what will happen.

I'm not calling for a ban on sex work anyhow. Never did. I'm only voicing my concerns.

I'm only voicing my concerns.

And I'm doing my best to address those concerns. In a nutshell, I'm saying it's sort of neither here nor there whether we normalize the practice of women getting rich via selling their bodies.

The general narrative goes something like this:

"It's bad for women to make good money off of sex. We should stamp out this practice because it is immoral."

Then I say "But how else can they make good money?" and I get told that's somehow beside the point.

It's not beside the point. It is the point.

If you want to empower women, worry about what is keeping them out of the C Suites of corporations and things like that. Don't worry about sex work. Worry about why trading on their looks or sexuality via sex work or in the course of being entertainers seems to be the only really good way for women to get rich on their own efforts.

Women often turn to sex work because it's the only way they can make adequate money. This is why you see so many single moms working as exotic dancers and the like.

Some of those women would do other things if it wasn't such a huge uphill battle.

That's all I'm trying to say.

Sorry, there's really not much I can do to get women into C Suites of corporations and things like that. Poor and unemployed due to a pandemic and that kind of stuff.

For guys like me, it's great that we get to have this huge abundance of porn from all kinds of girls who would've never done it before. I just feel very sad for the girls and boys who never consented or signed up for this fucked up clown world we've got now. That's all I wanted to say. I am not calling for a ban. I'm just pointing out that this does not help women and in fact only hurts women in the long game.

Sorry, there's really not much I can do

I don't think this is true. I think ordinary guys have access to knowledge that most women lack and just talking with women and taking their issues seriously makes a real and meaningful difference.

So thank you for conversing with me (as opposed to pissing all over me or just being blatantly dismissive).

I am not calling for a ban.

I'm sorry that you feel accused. I'm not trying to accuse you. But the logical outcome of your objections is a ban, if everyone agrees that you are right.

I'm just pointing out that this does not help women and in fact only hurts women in the long game.

I don't believe this is true. I believe this framing is rooted in broader cultural practices where a woman's sexuality doesn't really belong to her. It's a double standard that needs to be stamped out.

But I've had enough of sounding fighty on the internet for one day. So I will likely bow out of this conversation at this point.

Have a good day.

The logical outcome of my objections is not a ban. I don't know why that has to be the case. Like you say, if we did more for women, they wouldn't have to do sex work. Then there would only be a small amount of women who do sex work purely because of passion, not because they were broken and grinded down by a profoundly sick society.

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> they don't have a real job and want to get rewarded for minimal effort

Most people on OnlyFans have a “real” job and are using the platform to supplement their income. Not unlike people who drive for Uber on nights/weekends.

I feel the same about those Twitch streamers. I really dislike opportunistic people trying to cash in on something they wouldn't be interested in if not for money. It cheapens the thing that is supposed to be a passion for others. Too many Twitch streamers and Youtubers who don't provide much value other than being a pretty face. The idea of Twitch was supposed to be rewarding gamers for their hard work and passion doing something that at first wasn't profitable at all to do full time until their efforts proved that a market was there. Now it's a glorified camwhore site.

> Glorified camwhore site Pretty much it, the jokes of Twitch being Chaturbate Lite are all too true. Worse is that they push the "Just Chatting" section too since they know it draws in a lot of viewers.

Society already sends girls the message that their greatest asset is their looks, and their value in society is their ability to attract a man. That beautiful women don't have to work hard to make money or succeed in society isn't exactly a revelation to anyone.

Society already also sends boys the message that their greatest value lies in their sexual exploits, and that as long as they have money and power and are aggressive enough, sex with beautiful women is their just and deserved reward.

Both of these signals are primarily sent through popular media, and their purpose is to reinforce outdated notions of both masculinity and femininity, and superficial and exploitative ideals of relationships and sex which lend themselves more readily to consumerism and commercial exploitation.

None of this is in any way new.

I doubt that good looking women have such an easy life as you seem to think. Being attractive goes along with sexual harassment from the early teens onwards - stares, commdnts, unwanted touching, .. This doesn't stop until they turn 40+. I've seen 12(ish) year olds or moms with small children getting lewd comments.

In later years attractive women struggle exactly because of the trope you describe - all their achievements are doubted because others think those are just due to their looks and genetic lottery. And they can never be sure whether a male offer of support is genuine kindness or collegiality or an attempt to get in their pants.

Another example: I travel 2x/month for work. When I do I go for runs, roam late around the neighbourhoods of unknown areas to take photos, grab a beer and chat with locals, etc. I dont have to fear too much harm beyond a robbery. My female colleagues all have a very similar travel schedule but they don't see or experience nearly as much of the cities they travel to, simply because as a woman you have to fear much more for your bodily integrity than us men.

Not saying anyone is really at fault here (except our fellow men that don't respect boundaries/common decency) or that being unattractive is better (especially for women that has its own downsides) but it definitely is not all rainbow and sunshine just because a woman has good looks. Be kind to all, whether beautiful or not.

Of course, being attractive has downsides. So does being tall and also being intelligent. So does being rich. You'll get harrased, you car scratched, become a target for kidnapping and everyone will doubt your achievements as well. A rich person probably can't enter many neighborhoods as well, without a bodyguard.

Being attractive, woman or not, has so many hidden benefits it's impossible to add them all up. You'll be perceived as more intelligent, you'll get more opportunities to be promoted and of course, mating, one of the most important aspects for humans, becomes immeasurably easier. It's probably one of the greatest inequalities there is, along with intelligence and wealth. There are many studies that indicate that subjective well-being correlates with attractiveness. And yet, people seem to be a lot more eager to defend the beautiful, rather than the wealthy. Also note that attractivness is massively important for men as well; note that 80% of all CEOs are above 6 ft tall.

But just because it's not new doesn't mean we should accept it or cheer it on as it continues in new forms. I'd argue a lot of the movement in culture over the last 20 years especially has been trying to move away from those trends and messages, even if it's not all fully successful.

there is also the law of escalation to consider, to get more hits, to stand out above others, these people will perform increasingly more debase or dangerous actions and poses.

I'm not for wholesale censorship but somehow we need to find a way to stop the pressure of anonymous crowd escalation pressure.

>But what message does this send to girls who are not considered attractive enough or just don't want to do this kind of work?

Here's where the real damage gets done - women flock to onlyfans as they find it to be an easy way to sell their looks / body for money. They initially get interest and some (or a lot) of money. More beautiful girls join onlyfans, subscribers change and now you're left with yesterday's onlyfan star, having gained "worth" from her looks/body, now watching that "worth" dissipate.

Not to mention those images are now online forever.

>The message is that all the study, work, and effort to work in a meaningful career is a freaking joke, when all it takes is to be born a certain way and make huge amounts of money selling your body.

This already existed. Ugly rich/famous/powerful men don't get beautiful wives due to their glowing personality.

>But man, we are so fucked.

We are, from virtually every angle. Still, at least it's interesting.

> Not to mention those images are now online _forever_.

Online forever and owned by, or granted a license in perpetuity to, an entity that isn't you.

>More beautiful girls join onlyfans, subscribers change and now you're left with yesterday's onlyfan star, having gained "worth" from her looks/body, now watching that "worth" dissipate.

Ah, the sadness of aging, decline, and death. Better get used to it because it's the one guarantee of life

Imagine being a kid today and school bullies finding your mother's old OnlyFans pictures.

Or, flip that script. Which _is_ happening. People are buying OnlyFans, tracking down their parents, and sending them the pictures.

Imagine going to summer camp on money your mom raised from sexwork!

Could be worse, at least she made a buck off it. Think of the children of the people flooding Reddit with porn content of themselves, in which they're easily identifiable, for free.

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There's nothing inherently exploitive/evil about being a hikkikomori. It's not like they are getting paid and living large off being one. Those are legitimately mentally ill people often times.

To people coming in to read these comments - are you surprised?

Me neither.

I'm surprised and disappointed with myself for expecting more. Selling nudes is great... Until it isn't.

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