$500 a day to pretend to be a model: The big business behind OnlyFans 'chatters'
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I feel like this should be a far more talked about issue than it is. This article is a decent report and touches on the stupidity of it, but I will never ever cave to the “better life” and “i can buy a playstation” argument. Oh hell no.
These people, especially guys, need serious mental help and guidance because this is not normal.
All of this seems significantly more degrading than selling a naked picture of yourself. The OnlyFans models are selling their body, but you are selling your mind. That's what really makes you you!
I don't really feel this bad about work, but at the end of the day, I don't consider myself engaged in a pursuit any more noble than selling my time to the highest bidder. I can see how parasocial relationships seem weird, and personally I have zero interest in them, but it's quite a stretch to brand anyone involved with one as "mentally unstable". What if they're stable and they want to spend their money on that instead of a $1500 phone, or a $60,000 truck, or a $200 dinner with their friends? I'm not sure any of us are all that mentally stable. Rather, we get by.
“Normal” in what sense? In the sense of common, that’s true. But lots of careers are uncommon. In the sense of well-adjusted, I have trouble believing that’s true. Do you have some evidence or data or… I guess anything, really?
Is this copypasta you have prepared for any article about Onlyfans? because your responses dont seem to be about the profession or friction in the article at all
This model fundamentally changes the structure of human society, and the trend will likely accelerate, not decelerate, over the coming years. And yet the conversation usually immediately gets divided into the feminist camps and the conservative Christian/Muslim camps.
I also think the trendiness of the phenomenon makes it seem more widespread than it is, however I've noticed a scary trend in the younger generation of general unsuitability to healthy relationships, and I just recently learned that a friend has an OnlyFans, so the phenomenon is becoming more widespread.
In particular https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Dworkin was opposed to pornography in a way that resonated with conservatives.
Have you thought that this actually could be normal, and that we the "wholesome" people are the outlier? That's what worries me :-)
I really don’t see the difference between this and being an Actor, social media intern, character at Disneyland, Mall Santa etc. An actual 3 year old may be fooled, but sometimes adults want to play pretend as well.
You don’t think you were actually watching Frodo carry the burden of the one ring did you?
I am not being hostile by the way, just saying it how it is.
This is not some “I accidentally scraped your car” issue. Real people are making extremely unhealthy choices that lead to a lot of trauma and mental disorders. In the name of money (women) and false pleasure (men).
None of these girls give a flying fuck of who these guys are. And according to this article, how could they?
I really don’t see why there would be any mental health issues involved?
I know a Hoarder which may be coloring my perception, but underlying mental health issues show up in many different ways.
Would you support your 18 year old child doing onlyfans like you might them working at Disneyland?
Im not personally against Onlyfans but I won't pretend like I wouldn't have serious concerns with a loved one doing this. If for no other reason then the content being scrapped and published for future coworkers, neighbors, etc., to view.
What reason would I have to be less supportive?
I would support them the same way I would support them becoming a stunt actor or performing any other job that comes with significant risks - very hesitantly, while having a conversation about potential downsides and not being super happy about their choice (again, mostly due to risk to themselves), but without thinking that it is inherently some moral crime.
If my 18 kid was pulling in 120k working 6 hours a day like this, I would personally respect the hustle. If nothing else it’s a solid foundation to get a job pretending to be a politician/CEO/actor on social media etc. So there’s both better pay and more upwards mobility than most jobs available at 18.
Honestly, good for these women who figured out a legal, safe way to profit from thirsty men, that is so risk-free it doesn't even involve physical proximity to those men. They seem to have cracked the "scaling" problem too, by hiring help. I'm impressed.
Yes, I agree they are like psychics and palm readers, in that they are mostly emotionally manipulating sad marks for profit (or occasionally just doing harmless entertainment... but often not).
> stage magicians
I've met one person in my entire life who thought magic was real. Granted I try not to hang out with morons, but I have to imagine the percentage is low.
Unless I misunderstood the article, models with OnlyFans account often offer the service of personally chatting with their paying fans, and then essentially hire improv actors to do the actual chatting.
That sounds fraudulent to me.
The degree to which Twitter followers or OnlyFans users actually believe they are talking to the real person is debatable, but they definitely prefer to believe the illusion.
It's more of an interesting disaster to watch from a distance, like a car crash.
So, more of a nomenclature thing than anything else. Like most Internet debates.
Imagine if dating apps paid you to keep your profile active even if you have no interest in meeting anyone. They pay you $5/month per match with a minimum of 5 messages before ghosting. It keeps lonely men on the platform. For some people, OnlyFans chat is no different.
There should be clear disclosures that there is potential the other account is outsourced to a different person, or a LLM.
I'm having trouble finding it now, but I recall there being a rumor that the Bumble CEO was fired for permitting fake accounts to exist, so that usage appeared high. I think it had to do with allowing virtual phone numbers
EDIT: Wow.... there are a lot people in this thread pushing back on the parent comment suggesting outsourced model chats are immoral, or not an ethical way to make a living.
What many dating apps do is very close to this. They encourage fake female accounts to keep men on the platform, and what you are being shown is fake/inactive to a large extent. LLMs are the next step of this, I wouldn't be surprised if there are already tons of them. The dating app business is one of the most scammy businesses that exist.
There are some exceptions to this (mostly specific local apps), but they are far and few between.
I'm happy to tell you that i'm absolutly normal and have a high morals and ethics.
There are people in our society who do not think that Sex, Erotic and the body are disgusting or weird or sick but something great.
Apprechiating this through OnlyFans allows the person who provides the service to do so with their rules and the person who consumes it to feel enjoyment.
I, for example like certain things. The girls/woman there provide it freely and get money for it.
I think you are the problem, not OnlyFans, not me and not the girl taking the money.
And as a site note: We as a society decided to allow every person to take part in our society even weird people, arrogant people, assholes etc. by paying for services. Like the person who MAKES you a Coffee for money.
I actually think (i'm not trolling) that this is sick. Us using others to do things we can do ourselves just because we have the money to do so.
If we wouldn't think its normal, the pressure for society to make people actually free through automisation would be much stronger. But no People need to work, what would happen otherwise if richer person couldn't get a service for convinience...
You didn't address anything in the parent comment. You seem to be responding to onlyfans in general, not the fraudulent usage of the chat feature the parent comment is addressing.
Do you think its normal in our society to state publicly that you think onlyfans is okay/good?
Of course not. We are not a open society.
And he clearly doesn't reference the article with the hook 'problem', he keeps it generic: "(the girl selling and the guy buying)"
Onlyfans is obvously satisfying a fantasy. This has very little to do with real life.
And when you actually buy a private video, its not some dude pretending to chat in the name of the woman, its the woman making that video.
They are clearly responding to the article, which is about fraudulent use of the chat feature to extract money from men. It's not about selling pictures or videos.
You seem to be taking all of this as a personal attack on your choice of entertainment, or to create division in the thread.
FWIW, OP posted a comment on a message board for said article. Per my reading, they seem to be talking generally about sex work rather than the specific sex-work-fraud as mentioned in the article. Surely the comment is at least vague enough that it could be taken either way.
If you accept that sex work will always exist in some capacity then there are reasonable arguments that the existence of OnlyFans is a good thing, as the OnlyFans model of sex work is in many ways much better than traditional models for both the sex workers and the consumers. There are of course arguments against that too, but saying sex work is fundamentally immoral and thus OnlyFans should be stopped is naive and more importantly unhelpful when it comes to reducing the potential harm sex work can cause.
I mean imagine some guy "falling in love" with a model this way. And then after a year and $10k in "voluntary gifts", the poor guy figures out that he's the sucker and he has been milked by scammers and he never actually talked to his "girlfriend". Do you expect that person to go back and have a healthy relationship with women afterwards? Or is he going to go off the deep end and become misogynistic? You can't put all the blame only on him after that experience. He might need therapy and rehab afterwards, just like a recovering drug addict.
Clear disclosure and consent is required.
If the person paying for this feature knew it was just roleplay with a person pretending to be the model, I don't think any reasonable person would have an issue with it.
I also think the idea that society steps in to prevent people getting hooked on drugs is hilariously naive.
eventually AI models will disrupt this, then I have no idea what happens next
I think people focus on replicating existing people too much
Completely new personalities and voices are going to be even more broadly accepted, as there is a huge audience that feels like paying a real woman is failure, but I suspect will treat this like buying a hentai manga, since that scene has had Adults Only games and other forms of digital interactive entertainment for 20+ years
I also think these completely fictional creators have a monopoly that hasnt been explored well. Because there is no human to potentially be trafficked, websites wont be worried about taking these content creator’s profiles down. While human sex workers will continue getting banned under SESTA/FOSTA liability that site owners endure.
Emotionally manipulating someone to send money. Hilarious. I just can't stop laughing.
OnlyFans is an abusive platform. It's not "just" nodes and porn, it sells "connections", except they're not really connections at all, and then abuses that to make money. It's just like the old "form a connection, then ask for money"-scam that's been around for ages.
See my write-up of a few years ago: https://tildes.net/~tech/y52/onlyfans_will_prohibit_content_...
It's the exploitation of (mostly male) loneliness.
I mean, why we should decide for someone who use it? What wrong with allowing it?
A common spin is that the consumers are just having fun, but I imagine the stats tell a rather more depressing story.
Deceiving someone is fraud, certainly. But the website makes no pretense that it's a dating site. People go there to simulate emotions. No different from how I go to the movies to simulate risky adventures, or others go to a church to feel what I do at an Arsenal game.
And it is different because everyone understands what a movie or football game is and there is no faux-personal connection or pretence of one, whereas these types of things are much more murky, never mind the outright fraud of "you're talking to someone other than you think".
And of course just saying "X is Y" is not a panic. It's the fact that it's quite wildly popular and very normative to say "X is Y" and to gasp and clutch one's pearls as one does so that makes it a moral panic. I'm sure history will judge me well.
i.e. Did anyone ever actually put a razor blade in an apple on Halloween? Because I suspect that happened approximately never and yet our parents were cutting them open to be safe.
This, on the other hand, is definitely real and documented.
> One of the moral panics associated with the first wave of rock 'n' roll was the fear of race mixing - that young black and white kids would get together over this music that had a rhythmic, primitive, sensuous beat.
I have no doubt that young black and white kids got together to the sound of the beat. I'm sure you can find some documented real cases of people of different races falling in love over their shared love of rock 'n' roll.
Beats driving uber-eats and other shitty gig jobs IMO.
Delivering food is a legitimate, respectable and productive job. Fraudulently deceiving lonely men to coerce them into paying for more fraudulent interactions, less so.
I wonder how long before an article is published about someone committing suicide when they find out they were talking to a man in the Philippines rather than the woman they thought they were talking to.