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Comment by vsareto | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad that monetized platforms like Twitch and OnlyFans exist. It's an accessible way for the younger generations to make ludicrous amounts of money for not too much up-front investment. There's definitely work and downsides involved, just not like some lesser paid, more credentialed professions. Hopefully this puts pressure on the essential jobs in society to actually raise compensation in comparison.

The rest of us boring, unattractive folks will just have to settle for desk jobs.

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I think it's better than the alternative, as it eliminates the middle man and the performers own the content. But I imagine it will end up like most platforms for content, yielding to superstar economics and a race to the bottom for everyone else whose work has become commoditized and faces unyielding competition for attention. The vast majority of creators on OnlyFans will likely not be able to support themselves I'd guess, or if they will it will only be as supplemental income (I'm saying based on looking at no data).

> But I imagine it will end up like most platforms for content, yielding to superstar economics and a race to the bottom for everyone else whose work has become commoditized and faces unyielding competition for attention.

With 700k creators earning a cumulative total of 700m, and a few of them earning hundreds of thousands or even millions, it sounds like it already has.

OnlyDeskJobs is my next startup, funding at eleven!

I'd subscribe to "Lisp tricks" by Lars Ingebrigtsen or Rainer Joswig.

By "the younger generations" you mean "the younger generations of women", since I can't imagine many men making as much money.

Is this really progress towards equality, or a generation of women self-objectifying themselves.

The men are making their money on twitch/youtube

as pornstars?

> The rest of us boring, unattractive folks

The battle cry of the can't be arsed. The difference between them and you is you applied for the desk job.

>The battle cry of the can't be arsed.

Can't be arsed to do what?

I misread a bias into your comment, my apologies

The only investment being that they're selling their body for money, and generating a negative presence online that doesn't help their future career aspirations. I don't think this is a good thing to encourage young people to do.

They are selling pictures of their body. The body gets nearly no wear and tear for the work.

There's only negative presence in the sense of haters. Would you also encourage young people to avoid being Black, or Muslim, because that's a "negative presence"?

I would discourage young people from getting face tattoos. I think that's a better analogy.

Facial tattoos are a traditional practice for many ethnic groups. Many modern practitioners feel that they're reclaiming a practice that was persecuted under American Puritanism.

It's not that there can't be reasonable appearance standards; however, it would be incredibly disingenuous to claim that those standards are established within a neutral cultural atmosphere. I personally find white dudes with short or no hair (the skinhead/cop cut) threatening, but no one's ever going to make that disqualifying.

> Facial tattoos are a traditional practice for many ethnic groups. Many modern practitioners feel that they're reclaiming a practice that was persecuted under American Puritanism.

I'm curious about this: is there any record of actual Puritans persecuting someone explicitly for having a facial tattoo? (It is true, of course, that Puritans in England and the colonies did not have a modern perspective about the separation of church and state and persecuted minorities like the Quakers. A revulsion to their sense of justice is also pretty understandable, but justice was pretty rough back then, too.)

> I'm curious about this: is there any record of actual Puritans persecuting someone explicitly for having a facial tattoo?

Like “fundamentalism”, “Puritanism” is probably more commonly (outside of specific technical discussions of sectarian history or theology) used in a sense which does not refer specifically to the theological group the term technically denotes but a broader (but overlapping, not a superset) group defined largely by a set of traits stereotypical of the group designated by the technical term.

Correct, as to my intent (I probably should not have capitalized the P). The taboo nature of facial tattoos is simply the evolution of a revulsion towards tattoos in general among "polite" American society. Until very recently, visible tattoos (and before that, tattoos of any kind) could be disqualifying for public-facing positions.

> Correct, as to my intent (I probably should not have capitalized the P). The taboo nature of facial tattoos is simply the evolution of a revulsion towards tattoos in general among "polite" American society. Until very recently, visible tattoos (and before that, tattoos of any kind) could be disqualifying for public-facing positions.

Thanks for clarifying; appreciated!

I'm confused as to why being black or muslim would be a "negative presence"...

In the context of

> doesn't help their future career aspirations

it fits perfectly (unfortunately).

> doesn't help their future career aspirations

only if you confuse causation. If most black dudes have poorer career prospects, it doesn't mean it's only because they are black, there are a load of other correlating factors.

If women as a group did worse as a group because some do porn, you wouldn't say "Don't be a woman", you'd be more specific: "If you are a woman, don't do porn".

What you do online has consequences. Not everyone is going to agree with your worldview.

Becoming a sex object is not a noble thing, and something you have full control over. You pulling race into this is completely irrelevant and a desperate grasping for straws. Race is not something you can control, and you subconsciously equating this to "negative presence" projects something on your behalf that I don't think helps you here.

I wonder if the transactional nature of the work has an impact on the workers' relationships with people.

there's always a cost.

Do you ask the same thing about waitressing and front of house retail work? Forced to put on a smile, be submissive and obedient and make a pretend connection to the customer purely to ease a transaction and get a larger tip? Does that have an impact on relationships with people?

yeah, those professions probably have a negative impact on relationships, too.

Being a mob hit-man will attract haters too.

If the moneys good, would you disregard that?

There's way more work that goes into making and maintaining that presence than just showing up with a body or personality. A lot is marketing, but it's not like traditional marketing you'd be taught at a university. They're figuring a lot of it out by trial and error, which is some amount of risk of getting it wrong. And popularity can swing quickly and dramatically so you can get fired by the internet mobs (more risk).

Not sure why it's a negative presence, either. Anyone who thinks it was a negative presence is not really someone you'd want a job from after making $10,000 - $100,000 a month.

Read about discrimination and hostility former sex workers face. It is very real and can be pretty ugly.

Many employers won't hire you and will fire you if they find out - regardless how great worker you at. Plenty of prospective partners take issue with it or can't deal with feelings of resentment, jealousy etc.

It’s a negative presence because it presents the moral degeneration of society.

Do we really want to hold sex work in the same regard as being an entrepreneur or doctor? What kind of signal do you think that sends?

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