The economics of entertainment (and that is what an only-fans account is: entertainment) don't follow this cold calculation of value.

A single ticket to an NBA playoff game ranges from about $150 to over $5,000 (back when you could go).

You can see the game for effectively free at home, with better commentary, exactly the snacks you want and all of that.

A night at the symphony or opera starts--starts--at $50 a ticket, and can go to $1500 easily. After the show is over, it's over, and all you have is a memory.

Good seats at a popular rock concert are easily $250. You can get the mp3 for next to nothing, and it will be a better recording too.

Even just a movie these days starts at almost $20.

And yet people still fork out the money. It isn't just the show itself that they are paying for, it is the entire experience. The interaction, being part of the crowd, a crowd. Many things.

The value captured by an entertainment here isn't just the bits of the picture.

And I say this as someone who would never, ever pay for the content I know of on only fans. But I have sunk a lot of money into the other things on the above list.

> and that is what an only-fans account is: entertainment

While trivially true, this is extremely reductive. People don't attend basketball games, operas, or go eat at Michelin star restaurants because they're lonely. People donate thousands to streamers and models because they are.

> People donate thousands to streamers and models because they are [lonely].

Or because they like the entertainment? Some guy on twitch donated over $20k, over half of it for college students to do push-ups in exchange for free food (about the other half was tips to the workers of the streaming food truck [0]).

A happily married couple both watch a food streamer [1], they donated hundreds of dollar, probably over 1k.

Hell, I donated around $300 between the two mentioned streams, I’m happily married as well.

When people donate to FOSS authors, it’s because they want to support their work, but when they donate to streamers it’s because they are lonely?

Now certainly. There are those, and probably a lot more on streams featuring scantily clad women. But reducing it to that level is just wrong.

[0]: https://www.twitch.tv/grubtruckers

[1]: https://www.twitch.tv/kattskitchen

Underlying this discussion seems to be the free market/free will idea that refuses to judge decisions in a free market, because how could it? If someone spends money, they must get this objective, intangible benefit from it and who are we to judge. "You are not my mom".

Yet there is an objective difference in everything we do. You've listed a few nuances yourself; somethings are better than others. The underlying psychological circumstances are also true: There is a better, healthier way to live, feel and interact and there are many pathological, harmful ways too.

I would approach it like this and ask: "Would you rather play a game with a group of awesome friends (as hard as it may seem to find such a group, and even if that requires some effort and personality development to make such friends), or watch that streamer?"

"Would you rather have a real relationship with another person (as discouraged by the idea you might be right now) than hang out in that chatroom and pay money to a stranger?"

This discussion just cares about the extremes. Maybe there are lonely people that get milked on behalf on parasocial relationships. Maybe there are rich people that like streaming and honor it with money. There are probably a lot people with unknown financial and social status that just lurk on and off (like me). Unless we conduct research that indicates that this is massively negative to the society we should not speculate and try to make up stigmas.

But who is saying it has to be either or? When I have a roleplaying session (roll20 tabletop), I don’t watch streams. Some people like to watch TV by themselves sometimes. It’s simply not that different from any other type of entertainment.

Sure. We do all sorts of things. My point is there is an objective quality to each of it, which could (theoretically, for the point of it) be established by interviewing the individual and having them rank various forms of entertainment, while reflecting on the effect it has on their psyche.

I know very well that for me, jogging, or unwinding with a game is all right but not as good as sailing or mountaineering with a group of cool people or dancing with a skilled partner. Most things even have their place. But there is a real difference that can't be denied. We could even dissect the experience and find the rewarding or unrewarding elements: bonding with a group of people in nature and getting a varied excercise while doing it could rank very high (for many individuals).

If we agree on that, we can go on and see if some activities are bad for many/most people, and label them as such. A low-bandwith interaction with fake-emotion, a simple stimulation in a one-way relationship could then be categorized as Bad.

That's a long way to state the obvious but the sacred idea of the free will made it necessary for me to make this point :)

There is an objective difference, but there is in my opinion not an "objective" better way to live. (There are certainly healthier ways, in the sense that it optimizes the ages at which you die, which is...good ?).

It seems you value a certain psychological state, so, good for you, but this psychological state is not necessarily sought by everyone, and claiming it's better seems a bit rude.

If I'm to play the devil's advocate, I could you're seeking social ephemeral experiences to keep you distracted because you're not able to achieve the better state of being satisfied on your own through the objectively better activity of...meditation ?

I think you can see how obnoxious this is to see your own activities denigrated. And really, I don't think meditating is better than playing a game or than watching a streamer. All of these activities can lead to pathological behaviours (with varied rates I suppose ?), and when they do not they all sound great and all have a purpose.

So, I wouldn't engage in classifying activities as good or bad, but I'd rather have psychological support available to all practicioners.

I appreciate your reply but it blows my mind that the idea of better and worse is routinely rejected. I have to consider that.

This line of thought is however used elsewhere by scammers ("the person bought it at that price so they must like it"), free market absolutists ("the market - the sum of supposedly infallible decisions - made me rich and made you poor") and leads to people playing World of Warcraft 24/7 ("it is my choice, how can you argue that"). Anecdotally I have received good advice from people and when I followed it, it changed things to the better.

I don't deny that there are unhealthy habits (playing WoW 24/7 is most definitely unhealthy for the mind and body). My thought is that at the same time : - No hobby is immune to leading to addictive patterns, (some are definitely more prone than others). - No hobby always lead to addictive patterns

So in my opinion, if you don't engage unhealthily in your hobby, there's really none that is better than an other. So, WoW, climbing, dancing, reading, commenting on HN, whatever is good for you, I don't think one is inherently better.

> I appreciate your reply but it blows my mind that the idea of better and worse is routinely rejected. I have to consider that.

> free market absolutists ("the market - the sum of supposedly infallible decisions - made me rich and made you poor")

Whoa, hey... The market is supposed to be the infallible sum of individual decisions, not the other way around. :-D

Of course, this still ignores truisms like "the market can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent", or the existing exploitation of reliably-bad decision makers such as "whales" in Las Vegas casinos or Zynga games, marketing's "Harbingers of Failure" segment, etc.

Sometimes I would like to play games with my friends, and sometimes I would MUCH prefer just lurking on a stream brain dead. It only harms the discussion to frame it one-dimensionally

> People donate thousands to streamers and models because they are [lonely].

Speaking of being reductive...

Consider the possibility that people also do it because they enjoy the interaction they get out of it, however shallow and/or fleeting.

The same way some people pay top dollar for a "meet and greet" with rock stars or athletes before a show or game, where you get to shake hands, take selfies and trade platitudes with famous people and then they never see you or think of you again.

People donate to streams to hear the streamer thank them or call them out by name or interact with them, in some manner, for some amount of time.

I'm not saying loneliness is not a factor, but it's definitely not the only factor. Like everything else to do with human interactions, it's complicated.

>People donate to streams to hear the streamer thank them or call them out by name or interact with them, in some manner, for some amount of time.

Let's get one more accusation of reductiveness in here.

You are still viewing it through a lens of parasocial behavior. The token thanks isn't the only motivating factor. People don't donate to NPR just to get tote bags. They donate because they recognize the content has both value and costs. Those donations are part of recognizing that value and supporting future content creation. The same applies to streaming. Some donations are a means of thanking the streamer and providing them with both a means and a motivation to continue making content.

The interactive nature of the content on a site like Twitch doesn't necessarily make it any different than non-interactive content you might find on a site like Patreon.

Sure, fair enough, my example was too narrow, and I guess you assumed I meant that was the _only_ reason they donate.

I was comparing the call-out to the shallow "direct" interaction of the meet-and-greet specifically.

But yes you're right, in the broader sense, people donate because they get value out of the content, and they want to support the creator.

Other parasocial factors may or may not be present as well.

> People don't donate to NPR just to get tote bags. [...] The interactive nature of the content on a site like Twitch doesn't necessarily make it any different than non-interactive content you might find on a site like Patreon.

Comparing someone like Pokimane or Amouranth to NPR is laughably disingenuous. There are amazing content creators out there (ranging from math, to dance, to music, to films, to politics) that don't exploit parasocial relationships with their audience. Onlyfans is, arguably, positioned to specifically exploit parasocial relationships.

I'm not comparing their content. I am comparing their business models. I don't see many differences between the business model of NPR and many Twitch streamers. They give their content away for free knowing most people will never pay for it, they ask for donations knowing only a small percentage would be willing to donate, and they give donators a few token gifts as a thank you.

You admit yourself there are "amazing content creators out there... that don't exploit parasocial relationships" so why are you judging everyone by the standards of the worst examples you can find? That is why you were also accused of being reductive.

> You admit yourself there are "amazing content creators out there... that don't exploit parasocial relationships" so why are you judging everyone by the standards of the worst examples you can find? That is why you were also accused of being reductive.

Because the article is about Onlyfans and Bella Thorne: a platform (and a creator) that leverages parasocial interaction. It's not like models make Onlyfans accounts to fund their science and math YouTube channels.

The conversation grew beyond talking specifically about Bella Thorne or Onlyfans in part becomes of comments like yours from a few posts back:

>People donate thousands to streamers and models because they are [lonely].

So once again you are making generalizations about this business model and the people who participate in it because of the worst examples you can find. Maybe that means Onlyfans and other similar services need more moderation, but it doesn't mean this business model is unethical or inherently preys on the lonely.

Also AFAIA the only real difference between Onlyfans and Patreon is that one allows adult content. I am having a hard time understanding why someone would be against one and not the other unless the reason was due to some ingrained prudishness. Is there any difference between the two that I am missing?

> Also AFAIA the only real difference between Onlyfans and Patreon is that one allows adult content. I am having a hard time understanding why someone would be against one and not the other unless the reason was due to some ingrained prudishness. Is there any difference between the two that I am missing?

Yeah, I guess I should've been more clear.

I don't think that the only difference between the two is that Onlyfans merely "allows adult content." Onlyfans is specifically aimed towards monetizing parasocial behavior (why you buy private messaging rights[1], etc.). Patreon is a way meant to support creators. I sub on Patreon to several creators, but there was no parasocial element: I didn't pretend to be someone's friend and no one sold me on that.

[1] https://blog.onlyfans.com/5-content-tips-to-keep-your-fans-h...

From that link:

>3. ENGAGE

>Importantly, as with your existing social platforms, make sure you engage and interact with your fans, as it’s a two way street. Using this to your advantage enables you to create a more personalised experience and strengthen the bond between you and your fans. OnlyFans private messaging facility puts your fans in direct contact with you, and you can ask what they would like to see. This way you can tailor your plan to give fans more of what they want. Asking fans what they most want will help you understand their preferences and you can build the most popular requests into your plan.

I don't think anything listed here is advice that is specific to Onlyfans. Engagement is generally good for all creators.

I have also supported numerous creators on Patreon, mostly podcasters. Not every creator on Patreon follows this advice. There are certainly some that setup a clear one way transactional relationship in which you donate money and they give you content. However I have subscribed to creators that prioritize interacting with their patrons. That has included live interactive patron-only streams, Q&As, as well as fielding requests for specific content. Patreon also does have private messaging, but I have never used that functionality before so I don't know all the details.

I don't get the impression that all engagement is meant to fool me into thinking that the creator is my friend. I don't think that necessarily would change if the content creators were taking off their clothes versus talking into a microphone. It is really all up to how the creator wants to handle their business. Some like Bella Thorne might do so unethically. That doesn't mean every creator will take that approach.

Let's not mince words: the fact that the platform itself supports features like "private messaging" -- when most creators are attractive women in their 20s and most subscribers are men in their 30s and 40s -- is kind of a red flag. The staunch libertarian in me says "who cares, let people do whatever" but I do think it's a net negative overall (not to mention quite sad).

> Also AFAIA the only real difference between Onlyfans and Patreon is that one allows adult content.

I'm afraid you're being disingenuous. Up to this point of the discussion, the whole argument was about how platforms such as OnlyFans and to a lesser extent Twitch monetize loneliness via parasocial relationships. Platforms such as Patreon were not included because they don't focus on monetizing parasocial relationships due to the non-interactive relationship of their content. Your moralist red herring intentionally ignores the entire argument and is uncalled for as a blatant attempt to poison the well.

I just want to say that this is a really fascinating discussion and I want to thank you both for this. You both have really opened my eyes to both sides of this argument.

As you've admitted yourself, this isn't the kind of thing you're into and because of that, I think you're running the risk of demonizing an industry simply because you cannot understand nor relate to it.

Titillation has always been profitable (eg why product advertisements feature attractive models) and it's not always about loneliness (though I'm not going to dispute that it sometimes is). Sometimes it's just about fun or primal desire. I know couples who have been to strip clubs and paid for dances -- happy couples who just enjoy the adult nature of it after a few beers. It's also entirely possible to lust after something without being lonely. Just as it is possible that some people have a comfortable income and feel like they want to pay for the content they consume -- whether that's literature, music, film and TV, or nude selfies. You might intellectualise about which form requires greater creative input but ultimately there's still someone putting themselves out there and trying to pay their bills.

I tend to look at this stuff like fast food. Some people like it, some people hate it. As long as you consume it in moderation -- which most people do -- then it has a right to coexist with fine dining restaurants.

> Onlyfans is, arguably, positioned to specifically exploit parasocial relationships.

i don't see anything wrong with that - it's a need that is being fullfilled. In a sense, it's the same category as prostitution, or gambling.

These are all terrible industries that are literally exploitative. Some in different directions.

This is filling a need like meth cures boredom.

I mean, with onlyfans you are paying for content like anything else, right? Or do you just pay for messaging access? I was under the impression that you were paying for photos and videos and such.

Yes, its pay for content.

> The same way some people pay top dollar for a "meet and greet" with rock stars or athletes before a show or game, where you get to shake hands, take selfies and trade platitudes with famous people and then they never see you or think of you again.

Famous people aren't exempt from fostering parasocial relationships (see Taylor Swift's iPhone app), and Eminem famously wrote/performed "Stan" about a hypothetical overzealous fan that was in a parasocial relationship with him.

I don't think I'm being reductive when I say that I think most Onlyfans subscribers -- especially those that give significant percentages of their income to models for a modicum of attention -- are "stans."

> are "stans"

the new name for this is SIMPs

> Consider the possibility that people also do it because they enjoy the interaction they get out of it, however shallow and/or fleeting.

Uh, how is this different than loneliness?

That's not remotely the same thing. I enjoy talking with other programmers, not because I'm lonely.

In some cases the interaction may have a sexual element that isn't available from friends in real life

I donate to musicians and artists on Patreon and programmers on Github and Ko-fi because I like what they're doing and I want them to keep doing it and getting better. Especially to those just starting in their careers. It's validation that I felt I never had and that I wished for. I hope that I'm paying it forward. It feels more tangible than donating to a giant, faceless charity.

And it feels good. I might be getting music or ML models or whatever out of it, but at the core, it feels like I've made a positive contribution. It's personal, and I can imagine its direct impact in the recipient's life.

In the case of art and music, there's also the touch of living vicariously through other creatives that are building a different skill set than I chose. I picked programming, and though it's too late to go back with all that I've got going on in my life, it's fun to imagine what could have been if I'd practiced sketching every day.

I don't know about Twitch and OnlyFans users, but I can totally imagine donating for motivations other than loneliness. Maybe it's validation. Maybe showing off. Or maybe they're simply saying "I like what you do, please keep it up." And maybe the donors are getting a fun in-game commentary or something else as an added bonus.

Don't decry it. I think these evolutions in patronage are interesting and exciting.

Unrelated but Patreon just raised 100million at 1.2B pre-money. So you're not the only one

I don't know, I bet plenty of people are feeling lonely when they go out for some entertainment and that entertainment makes them feel less lonely. I don't see why that's such a bad thing.

I recently supported the new Patreon page created by a podcast host who I have been listening to for over 10 years. He sent all his supporters a short personalized video, and watching that video gave me the feeling of an authentic personal connection. Of course there's no deception going on here, I do believe that he genuinely appreciates my (very small financial) support, but there's no expectation that we're now "actually friends" in the traditional sense (he has hundreds of supporters). But still, it's a nice feeling of personal connection, and it doesn't feel like an indictment of major social problems plaguing society (other than perhaps the obvious lockdown-associated reduction in human contact).

Of course, in my example there's nothing remotely flirtatious or sexual going on, which as I understand it is common on OnlyFans. Maybe that detail makes it completely unlike my example, but it really doesn't feel that different to me.

>People don't attend basketball games, operas, or go eat at Michelin star restaurants because they're lonely.

I think it's reductive to consider that people are only on OnlyFans because they're lonely. People frequented strip clubs forever but I don't think everyone at a Vegas strip club is there because they are lonely.

Maybe not everyone, but the “going to a strip club out of loneliness” thing is an age-old meme, whereas I’m unaware of any such memes about going to an NBA game out of loneliness.

The idea of someone going to an NBA game by themselves conjures a sad and lonely image.

Strip clubs are social - you go to them with your friends. The performers are paid, of course, just like all professional entertainers.

Cam sites are different. Can you imagine going to a cam site for a bachelor party?

It’s not as far out as it sounds. I spent my bachelor party playing video games and watching Netflix.

There’s certainly some group socializing in adult media, but it’s vastly overshadowed by paradoxical group performers.

> People frequented strip clubs forever but I don't think everyone at a Vegas strip club is there because they are lonely.

Strip clubs are notorious for monetizing parasocial behavior, being places where men literally throw money to buy some attention and are scolded if they ever think of approaching the same person in other contexts that don't involve monetization of that interaction.

People wear Golden State Warriors gear and party at Oracle after the game because they want to be a part of the crowd. That is exactly a search for connection. The Warriors don't care about you (at least not more than anyone else).

Some people might not be lonely. They might just be horny, and have a fetish to see specific individuals, whose erotic content might not be available elsewhere.

Your model when thinking about this is to assume everyone thinks nude people are fungible, but people used to buy specific gossip magazines at the grocery store to see SPECIFIC celebrities caught in the nude. So this is not something new.

> People donate thousands to streamers and models because they are.

or they view it as another form of entertainment and want to support it.

> People don't attend basketball games, operas, or go eat at Michelin star restaurants because they're lonely.

If you don't think a big part of the appeal of sports fandom is artificial group connection of much the same type as the kinds of artificial individual connection some people seek through the entertainment you are denigrating, I think you are quite mistaken.

But, again just as for sports, just being entertained is a big part of this, too.

I did watched tv and movies because I was lonely, because those contained people speaking and interacting.

I never used OnlyFans, but from my point of view, if those using it are mostly lonely guys, then it does not sound that bad. Had they had girlfriends who would objected, I can see relationship issue there.

But other then that, lonely guy using strip porn made by someone who did porn voluntary does not strikes me as massive problem.

>Good seats at a popular rock concert are easily $250. You can get the mp3 for next to nothing, and it will be a better recording too.

Most musicians sound like shittier versions of themselves live. Some of them have great sound engineering teams and enough vocal talent (Most often its the singer that struggles live) to actually sound as good as they do in a studio. When you have the perfect situation, the overall effect sounds better to me. Only been to a couple Tool concerts. Neither were 250 but tickets can get pretty expensive after something sells out. Another part of it is the experience but for me its mostly the way it sounds when they get it right.

> Most musicians sound like shittier versions of themselves live

Probably genre dependent but I would have to disagree. Live recordings are more raw and less produced - with a band that has their shit together live it's magical because there's an authenticity to the sound and level of immersion that is impossible to get from a recording at home.

If you take another look at the last half of my comment its essentially what you said, when they have their shit together its better live. I don't think most musicians fall into that category. At least most rock/metal/bluegrass performers. Honestly its usually the lead singer that struggles with live performances. Anything completely instrumental like Jazz/Classical has a better chance of being a great performance as long as the sound guys did a good job.

All your examples consist of spending next to nothing for a digital experience compared to a lot of money for a physical experience. But onlyfans is a digital experience.

So the correct analogy would be looking at porn/onlyfans and going to a brothel

"A single ticket to an NBA playoff game ranges from about $150 to over $5,000 (back when you could go).

You can see the game for effectively free at home,"

Being front row to an NBA game or Symphony are is totally incomparable to 'watching at home'.

'To each is own' but one is a commodity, one is not, which guarantees the pricing structure even if we valued them the same.

So these examples won't help us understand I think why people pay sex workers to pay attention to them.

> It isn't just the show itself that they are paying for, it is the entire experience. The interaction, being part of the crowd, a crowd. Many things.

Yes, except with social relationships, exactly the opposite things are of value. You want to be as exclusive as possible with the other person, so that you both have as much of other's attention as possible. Otherwise, what's the point?

The value of being one a part of a crowd at a sporting event versus being part of a crowd on a platform like onlyfans, where the entertainment is social interaction are completely different and the analogy doesn't really hold (for well adjusted people, of course)

That's what makes this phenomenon so striking.

> Yes, except with social relationships, exactly the opposite things are of value. You want to be as exclusive as possible with the other person, so that you both have as much of other's attention as possible. Otherwise, what's the point?

Wait what?

That's definitely not true for non romantic relationships. Even in the context of a traditional monogomous romantic relationships that sounds incredibly unhealthy.

Anyways i disagree generally. People don't spend $$$ on backstage concert tickets because they want to blend into the crowd. I have no idea what goes on at onlyfans, but i doubt people use it as a literal replacement for in person interaction in the same way i doubt strip clubs, brothel's, etc are used by their patrons solely to replace "normal" socisl interaction.

I feel like this metaphor fails at all points.

>That's definitely not true for non romantic relationships.

It is. If you go into a chatroom with 10 active people its easier to form bonds with any particular person in the group than if you have 400 people. A relationship on HN or Facebook is extremely shallow because it is not exclusive. If you were to restrict yourself to bookmarking to 1-5 users and only responding to their comments then you would easily form a relationship with those people. Lots of people put their email address in their profiles so they can have exclusive communication between two parties.

Maybe the social media example is too tech focused. A relationship between parent and child is also exclusive but the exclusivity shrinks as the family size grows. There are extreme families that have 10 children and as a result each child spends very little time with their parents. Instead, the older brothers and sisters take care of a lot of parenting. Children form stronger bonds with their siblings than with their parents.

>Even in the context of a traditional monogamous romantic relationships that sounds incredibly unhealthy.

That sounds to me more like your own preference is to be on a polygamous relationship with several people. There is nothing wrong with that but calling other people's relationships "incredibly unhealthy" is quite rude. It's easier to have a deep relationship with one wife than a series of potential girlfriends who you meet for one date and then never again. Of course you might find the right one and then never marry but from an exclusivity standpoint it is equivalent to a marriage.

Maybe you are reading too much into "have as much of other's attention as possible". Exclusivity is not about how much time you spend with a person. It's about how much you are restricting yourself to a small selection of people. Exclusivity increases the maximum possible time that can be spent on a relationship but it doesn't mean that you actually spend every waking hour with your partner or friend.

Its fine to have exclusive relationships. Its not fine to try to socially isolate your partner so that they have no social contact outside the relationship. I would describe such a relationship as abusive.

I strugle to interpret the grandparent's phrase "You want to be as exclusive as possible with the other person, so that you both have as much of other's attention as possible" in a way that doesn't support socially isolating your partner, which i would consider unhealthy as an ideal, and abusive in practise. All relationships take time and effort, whether that's friends or otherwise. If 100% of your attention (which is the max possible) is focused on your partner, it implies that 0% of your energy is focused on any other friendships/social contact. That is unhealthy. It should not be held as an ideal.

But to be very clear, you can still be in a healthy exclusive romantic healthy monogomous relationship, while still having other friends & acquaintances. Having other platonic friends is not the same as being polygamous/polyamorous/etc.

I'm not saying that the reasons people go to NBA games and the reasons they go to onlyfans are the same, just that the money comes from the same budget--discretionary income for wants.

all of your examples are places you go to. things are happening in front of you. Onlyfans? not so much. You pay for digital entertainment that is the same as any free digital entertainment. It's sad for both parties to be honest.

A better analogy than opera would be the trade in things like illegal drugs, opiate painkillers, or tobacco, etc. Which depend intrinsically on exploiting particular human frailties and vulnerabilities, and which have harmful effects.

>parasocial relationships have a long and sordid history -- starting with the invention of the "fireside chat" on radio.

They don't call it the oldest profession as a joke. Social interaction and validation is the single most valuable thing to human beings, and it always has been. The basic business model of OnlyFans is absolutely no different than what has occured since the beginning of human civilization.

Yeah I rarely watch Twitch but basically do so for two reasons.

The first is to check out games I'm interested in. The streamer is mostly incidental unless they're actually getting in the way of seeing the game. YouTube exists for this too, but I find the spaces in between the highlights that you see in streams to be more interesting than the structured reviews.

The second is to watch them play a game I've already played, usually in the hopes they enjoy it too. It's a form of validation of my own experiences, it's just nice to see someone happy at the same things I guess, and also a way to relive a story I might have mostly forgotten but through a fresh perspective.

> Yeah I rarely watch Twitch but basically do so for two reasons.

I think you may even be in the minority. I would expect most fans of twitch streamers to be an actual fan, not there to merely enjoy the game (even tho the game is actually enjoyable to them as well).

On youtube, it is more likely the opposite - "fans" on youtube enjoy the content, more than the youtuber. This is typically why once a youtuber becomes well-known for one type of content, that they cannot switch away (see the countless minecraft content creators that are somewhat burnt out by minecraft, but continues to make it since it is the majority of their views). Content creators who _are_ personalities and can branch out, have already done so to twitch.

I think it’s hard to outline why people watch twitch. I follow quite a few blood bowl streamers, and use twitch for little else.

I use it like I use sports. Though at first I did learn things, but now it’s solely for watching high end playoff/championship games, sometimes with friends.

I haven’t really donated much outside the thing you get by having an amazon prime subscription. Which is honestly rather silly considering how much money I pay for my NFL subscription.

> It's a form of validation of my own experiences,

I think this is an important one. Growing up as kids, we'd often sit next to siblings (or parents) to watch them play games, turning them into a shared experience.

I prefer watching shit on TV with my girlfriend over watching it alone as well; like you said, having someone else react similarly validates your experience.

Man I barely even want to watch the cut scenes once.

It's really not to different from a lot of religious behavior either. If people can feel deeply attached after reading a book or hearing a story It really shouldn't be surprising that that others can feel the same via stream or other digital mediums. One can also think of these purchased rewards/interactions as the equivalent of relic collection/worship.

I'd hesitate to conflate the two.

As someone from a mainly secular country, I have often pondered the loss of a central gathering place the places like a church give to society.

A weekly service really helps foster a community. The only other thing that does is schools, but that excludes a huge swathe of people.

You might be interested in the concept of the third place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

Bwahahahasob. That's right, in the before-times home and work were separate places.

Only in last couple centuries; before, when most people lived in villages, your home was your workplace.

It is very interesting, especially the sociological demographic data showing what is happening in response to the decline of church attendance.

In a nut-shell, communities that stop going to ‘church’ don’t produce enough offspring to be long term (centuries) stable, but those that do are long term stable.

That's fascinating! I've wondered about that anecdotally for some time. Do you have links to more in-depth reading?

There is a lot from Pew’s data:

https://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-reli...

Japan has a related IRL version[1]. In this case it's mostly lonely women, strangely enough, who go to 'host' clubs where young men feign interest in them, and will give them more time if the jane pays more. At first blush it seems ridiculous, but there you have it. As you point out, these subjects on certain level believe they have a kind of romantic relationship with these young men.

Obviously Japan is also known for hostess clubs where men pay for attention as well as regular old Soapland stuff.

[1]https://lifestyle.inquirer.net/255090/japan-lonely-women-pay...

IIRC on HN itself there was an article about a service where you could just hire someone to (pretend to be) your friend / significant other, to pretend to your families you're not some lonely shut-in and you're doing all right. The requests were quite varied.

It's dystopian as fuck but it fulfills a need, apparently.

The Netflix miniseries Maniac has something similar, a company called Friend Proxy where you can hire someone to act like a friend of yours. It's a really interesting take on the cyberpunk genre, it's worth watching.

I observed the same in China, however it's mostly men paying for female company in clubs.

I know of a friend who spends a lot of money on this platform. I was baffled by the amounts he ends up spending, ~5% of his monthly income. He doesn't have that high a disposable income, so it made no sense to me, considering I can't even imagine me spending a single dollar on such stuff.

When I asked him about it, he said "the messages are personalised and it doesn't feel artificial. They kind of lead you on to pay more as the interaction goes on".

I would be really surprised if it is not bots interacting at this point. The kind of messages he was talking about being "personalised", felt very generic, at least the initial ones and they could reuse the same content over and over again with others.

It gets me to wondering: how hard would it be to create computer generated OnlyFans models (actors? performers?) and set up some chat bots to interact with fans?

Even if the chat bot would lack verisimilitude, I can imagine outsourcing the messages to developing countries and adding some tools to let them make quick, cash-generating responses more efficiently.

>>>It gets me to wondering: how hard would it be to create computer generated OnlyFans models (actors? performers?) and set up some chat bots to interact with fans?

Arguably, this has been attempted already with Projekt Melody.

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

Twitch suspended the account, and a bunch of biological female streamers were pissed that a computer-generated female was cutting into their market.

While I don't know why Projekt Melody got banned, on the YouTube side, VTubers are already a thing, the largest one I know of is kizuna ai with 2.8M subscribers

> [...] new guidelines for acceptable levels of clothing coverage that everyone on the website is required to follow, including digital characters like Melody.

Given that their experiment was quite successful and already had a few sponsors ... couldn't they just add some clothing to avoid being banned?

it was a temporary ban.

It's an open question if Twitch gets anything out of non-pro-gaming streamers.

Ultimately those dollars come at the expense of others, there is limited attention and money, it really isn't something that would just exist elsewhere.

For example people also spend a lot of money on virtual slot machine games, so much so they were usually one out of every 11 apps in Apple's top grossing, back when they reported this list. It couldn't possibly be healthy for the app ecosystem, it sucks the air out of the room for other developers making creative or useful stuff. Sure it makes money, but a lot of things make money, it's stupid to reduce the effect of virtual slot machine games down to, "Well its users wouldn't spend the dollars elsewhere, and the more money to Apple the better, so it helps everyone."

The success of virtual slot machines has hurt video game developers, because financiers expect you to reproduce their mechanics, even though their expectation that it's all about mechanics is wrong. Hence many games with pointless slot machine mechanics.

Nobody needs OnlyFans. OnlyFans harms earnest creators, it ghettoizes earnest female creators especially because your agent, your manager, your friends, your family, your viewers - they will now expect that the surest way to make money is selling your body, and not by having any real talent or skills. OnlyFans and its porn stars have completely co-opted well-meaning people with this talk about sex work, COVID, it sucks to live in Bulgaria and whatever. Bella Thorne is of course a huge hack, it is preposterous she is repeatedly being given a platform by the media where the net result will be, more people will stop trying hard and gamble on being nude online.

They're not the only platform. TikTok is full of talentless hacks too, who simply win a random Internet lottery and are completely and utterly distorting earnest creativity and opportunities for hard working people. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube also reward SEO / ripping off other people's stuff much more than creating something original. This "well it makes money" bullshit has to end.

> It's an open question if Twitch gets anything out of non-pro-gaming streamers.

> Ultimately those dollars come at the expense of others, there is limited attention and money,

What? There are huge untapped markets for live streams of "things" outside pro-gaming. I have zero interest in gaming but watch streams of people doing various projects (mostly on Youtube, but this is just showing there is a market).

> people also spend a lot of money on virtual slot machine games... it sucks the air out of the room for other developers making creative or useful stuff.

This seems an incredibly zero-sum way of looking at it. Maybe there is some cross-over between some zero-effort casual gaming and gambling, but that is a long way from "useful stuff".

> the surest way to make money is selling your body, and not by having any real talent or skills

oh here we go again. Explain to me how OnlyFans models sell their bodies, but countless actresses who play shitty parts in shitty movies, for peanuts, do not, just because they don't show their tits?

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projekt_Melody

Man, that's an awfully written Wikipedia article.

I like how they avoided uncanny valley by using stylized model.

There's a whole genre of virtual girlfriend apps. It's almost mainstream in Japan. The next thing is augmented reality virtual girlfriends.

Unethical but I won't be surprised if that is exactly what's happening. Once you have the media, you just need a person to chat up and insert that media. For all we know, that can be a dude.

For content as well, you can scrape other platforms and create a new identity.

Wasn't it disclosed through the Ashley Madison hack that they were employing bots (and real people) to keep the clients busy and lure them into buying more "chatting privileges" (number of messages etc.?

So this has already happened to some degree. As AI (aka humans teaching computers) to make for better "hungrier" chatboxes, with the escalation (buy more messages, send client to next tier), sell a "more personalized package" (to use the parent comment of his friend).

This could do a nice Black Mirror episode. Like the one where she lost her husband, her friend registered for the Tier1 service and it went on from that..

You've reinvented half of the scams that are run out of business buildings in nigeria

So basically what Kizuna Ai pretends to be but for real?

Pretty sure the term you're looking for is e-whoring and it's a thing.

In addition to being a total scumbag move, using the face of a real identifiable person would be criminal in many jurisdictions even if the photos/videos were computer generated.

Just don’t conduct operations in those jurisdictions then.

Should simps be protected from themselves? This is borderline abusing men with profound psychological issues.

But then it's like, should we protect people from anti-vaccine messages or other misinformation? Is the only way to prevent societal collapse to have a higher authority step in and protect people who cannot resist temptation from themselves?

I don't know who I would trust to enforce that kind of thing.

A lot of times I do end up wishing there was someone who would set me straight every time I attempted to eat unhealthy or not exercise. But it seems like the imperative in modern society is that you're just going to have to learn to resist temptation on your own, or you're done for - good luck. I don't really understand this, because I can say that I want to improve myself all the time and be fully aware of my mild desire to do so, and be willing to have someone put me on the right path, and simply never get around to it all until it's too late.

And then there's climate change, where I have accepted that trying to convince people to change is hopeless on a large scale. Who is going to be trusted to make the decisions "for our own good," without another yellow vests movement springing out in opposition?

> But then it's like, should we protect people from anti-vaccine messages or other misinformation? Is the only way to prevent societal collapse to have a higher authority step in and protect people who cannot resist temptation from themselves?

Society is comprised of people, and some members of society are indeed vulnerable and susceptible to abuse. Society is expected to step up to stop and punish abuse directed at vulnerable members of society, like how the police intervenes in domestic violence cases, and how social services intervenes in at-risk families.

I don't see the point of arguing against protecting the most vulnerable members of society. There is zero to be gained with Spartan approaches to it's weakest and most vulnerable members.

What's the alternative? I mean loneliness is a huge problem in a lot of societies, and the 'rona has only made it worse.

It's monetising incels.

I'm pretty sure they're still personalized, but they're "stock" messages because these people deal with dozens of requests a day. Very lucrative, I'm sure.

Reminds me of the virtual YouTubers.

They are sort of like streamers with webcams, but they do not expose their real image. Instead they make up a fictional backstory and have an artist create a visual representation of them that gets motion/face tracked. It feels like an offshoot of traditional Japanese idols, with the same merchandising and live events, but with a totally different distribution method.

Personally, as someone that doesn't understand the appeal of real-life idols, I end up watching a lot of the virtual people because even though I understand there is a system behind it, it does fill in the desires that stem from being lonely. Yes, it is not a substitute for human contact, and I am fully cognizant of this every time I watch, but the most interesting parts for me come from the interaction between the different streamers instead of the streamers with the audience anyways. They frequently do collaborations, and eventually there comes a weird sort of mythology that emerges where you and the other streamers gradually understand the most memorable qualities of each (one is perverted, one is the most "idol-like", one is a fluent speaker of English and has knowledge of American meme culture, and so on). Sometimes they also exude a form of the "heel and face" aspects of professional wrestling. Thus when you come back for more you see the same group of characters in new situations, and the backstory you have previously built up in your mind increases your interest in what happens. It feels kind of like a long running soap opera, or indeed professional wrestling, except with much more emphasis on personalized interaction and a lot of people yelping at each other in a foreign language. That's another thing. The fact that most of the members do not speak English and there are no official translations of most of the content gives the experience an odd foreign quality where the streamers will desperately try to translate things or greet people in broken English, which they promptly forget, in order to "summon the foreigner people". That in itself becomes a meme that the group capitalizes on heavily.

I think the fact that you do not see a real person sets your expectations that you are watching someone with a fictional backstory better, and even so you can still enjoy the things they talk about. Unlike actors, they frequently talk about things like going to the convenience store to buy snacks or cook things or discuss that one time that one member paid for the bill for another and then forgot to leave enough for the subway home, in the context of the actual people going incognito and doing things off-stream. Even supposing it was scripted, it does not feel like it at all, more like they were given a general list of topics and free reign to more or less day what they want. It gives it a very human quality that static television or movies or idol concerts do not usually provide, and I think that is the key thing that people (me included) keep coming back for. The virtualness also implies that you do not necessarily have to "sell your body" to make it big as an entertainer, which I think is a relatively recent innovation.

Then there are things that happen like a steamer sneezing triggering a flood of donations, some over $100. The donators are very concious of the image of their kind that gets posted on the Internet. In fact some of the streamers themselves go to great length to satirize the donation culture, the CEO of the talent company that manages them, and "real" idol groups that existed before, also categorizing each character by different dimensions (most to least pure, etc.). It is a very integrated system, and I can easily underand how it can suck people in, having been sucked in myself for a while.

That does not change the fact that a system still exists however. Recently there was a very high profile "graduation" of a member who hadn't even been streaming for two weeks over a doxing scandal, which was really a cover for "firing to save face." It really does remind you that it's just the entertainment business in a different manifestation.

7 out of the 10 steamers with the highest donation amount on YouTube are virtual YouTubers. There is clearly a market being tapped here. Whether or not people should or ought to, if they are "slaves to loneliness," is a different question I don't really want to pursue.

Check this reddit thread out [1]. A very toxic streamer going on complete tirades with his teammates playing Among Us, and all the comments are people playing down the vitriol of the streamer with phrases like "I love him", "He's really funny", etc.

What's equally sad is the special moderation privileges given to large streamers by Twitch.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/ikce21/xqc_...

>This is fundamentally different than being a fan of, say, an actress like Emma Stone, or an athlete like LeBron James.

dunno about these 2 but it is not _fundamentally_ different from how many stars build and maintain their "brands" these days.

People like e.g. Jack Black have a youtube channel or at least an instagram feed and share "slices of life" (edited or not) with their fans.

That's also a parasocial relationship.

> end up being net negatives for ... the models

I'm not understanding what you mean there? Aren't they making a lot of money for only a little work?

> I'm not understanding what you mean there? Aren't they making a lot of money for only a little work?

Some are, but at the cost of privacy, having weirdos stalk you online, potential future job prospects, etc. Not to mention the time and money that goes into actually taking photos, curating, responding to messages, etc. It's not as easy as it might seem.

That's the trade off for being any type of celebrity. I don't think selling lewd photos of oneself is something I'd judge a person about and for all I care, it should be normalized even. I mean, thousands of people have their nudes leaked by people whom they trust and accounts get hacked (The Fappening for example). I don't think ha ind your nudes out in the wild should ruin you in any way in this day and age.

And about the privacy, I think online models like Belle Delphine and the likes still have a far greater possibility to appear anonymously outdoors than Hollywood actresses or even state level politicians. In reality, they're not getting paid for supplying photos, appearing in movies or singing into a microphone, they're getting paid for letting the common folk have a voyeuristic view into their private life.

>>>they're getting paid for letting the common folk have a voyeuristic view into their private life.

Many of them aren't doing that honestly: that's why Twitch streamers such as Pokimane and Amouranth have words like "boyfriend" and "husband" banned from their chats. Every time their subscribers find out there's actually another man fucking them in real-life, and the subs have no chance in Hell of being that man, they lose fans.

https://vt.co/entertainment/celebrity/streamer-and-cosplayer...

This is not unique to Twitch.

https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3050211...

All entertainment is selling an illusion.

> that's why Twitch streamers such as Pokimane and Amouranth have words like "boyfriend" and "husband" banned from their chats

I think it is actually much more likely that they have those things banned, because misogynists individuals, such as yourself, constantly bring that narrative up to attack them over that, and make accusations similar to the ones that you just did.

It is kind of similar to how when a women talks on voice chat in a video game, will get stupid comments about them being a woman on the internet.

Sure, it might not be a big deal when it happens the first couple times, but when it happens every single day of their life, it gets old.

Accusations and harassment, such as what you just did, belongs in a similar category of low level attacks, that don't seem like a big deal in a vacuum, but can actually get pretty annoying when hundreds of harassers message you about it, every single day of your life.

True.

This reminds of porn, whereby, once you're out there, then you're out there. Good luck working with kids or anything involving kids. Even females aren't exempt from the scrutiny.

Or any job where guys recognize you, now you're screwed if you have any aspirations to remain anonymous or even lead a normal life. You'll need a community of people supporting you.

It seems like an endeavour where the potential for regrets is high. Look up most pornstar bios and they usually end up with them having a hard time readjusting to the regular world and few ever manage to move past their old life that they end up going back to porn cause it's the only family that accepts them, but at the cost of exploiting them more.

This might not carry necessarily the same stigma, but the fact that many people treat it the same is problematic.

For everyone who's a pornstar there's another dozen people who used the money to go to college (or whatever their exit is) and start a career.

> For everyone who's a pornstar there's another dozen people who used the money to go to college (or whatever their exit is) and start a career.

Source showing that happens with that frequency? While I'm sure there there exists someone who did porn and used the money to springboard to achieve some happy goal, the idea that's the usual outcome seems like a guilt-alleviating fiction. I don't think it even passes smell test, because my understanding is porn doesn't even pay that well [1].

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/16/mia-khali...

The time and money that goes into it is what makes it a job. That's a bit different from the privacy/weirdos/career effects.

It's not as easy as it seems, I'm sure. But it's extremely compensated well for what is essentially unskilled labor.

Sure, it has some disadvantages, but I'm fairly certain that for most people the advantages far outweigh them.

It's not as unskilled as you might think it is. Professionals here put in a lot of thought and effort to their promoting their specific niche, brand, etc. Many of them have a solid understanding of lighting and photography and employ that knowledge to improve their work.

This is about as insulting as saying photography is "unskilled labor". Sure, anyone can take a photograph. But the people who are at the top are generally there because of hard work and business smarts.

Can you articulate how this particular Twitch streamer is employing deep knowledge and thought to improve her work? To the tune of $250k+ compensation? Can't anyone hire someone with experience in theater/film lighting to setup their stream studio with a day's labor?

https://twitter.com/gundamishere/status/1106672499796951040?...

Here's a detailed writeup from a successful camgirl. It's way more than lighting.

https://knowingless.com/2018/11/19/maximizing-your-slut-impa...

> "The ‘control show’ I mentioned above plays into this. Give men a way to fight against each other, with tokens. A common tactic is to have guys buy into “teams”, and whichever team tips the most, wins ..."

Did I just learn something about two-party politics?

And party donations.

So are you saying just because she is pretty she can pull in those $$?

Because there are a lot of pretty women in the world and I would say 99% aren't 1% as successful.

There is definitely skill and knowledge involved.

>>Because there are a lot of pretty women in the world and I would say 99% aren't 1% as successful.

99% of the pretty women aren't leveraging a tech platform to directly extract resources from lonely dudes across the entire planet. It's more due to ignorance of their options for monetizing their sexuality than it is well-developed and unique skillsets. I've actually been debating starting a CamStudio with a friend of mine, as I've met more than a few cute women who don't grasp the concept of "You can make more money by just sitting your butt in front of a computer monitor all day in makeup and a low-cut top". Anyone who has worked in a cabaret, a "girls bar/snack bar", or a strip club understands the basics of talking to the Johns, and appearance-enhancing makeup and outfits. Camming/streaming just combines their social skills with IT/technical support to expand their potential client base. They won't become Belle Delphine overnight but there's a lot of room for low-effort revenue growth with a bit of management and guidance, IMO.

Is pouring concrete unskilled labor?

At some point yes you need the business side of things under control and yes there are many finer points to it but that stuff scales very well and most of the actual work is done by people who are nothing more than able bodied and capable of following instructions.

> It's not as easy as it seems, I'm sure. But it's extremely compensated well for what is essentially unskilled labor.

This is a fundamental mistake that people make when discussing this. As in any content market the money is in the head. Both tail and the long tail could do 2x the work of the head and receive nearly no compensation.

Are they staying in the market? If you're doing it for 50 hours a week for barely any compensation, isn't it more of a hobby.

I'm not saying that every cam girl is getting mega rich from it, but they're making good money in relation to the effort required. There's not zero effort but it's also not something you need to go to uni for three years and then spend time as a junior cam girl getting experience. Which is fine, btw, I don't mind it, but I always find it weird when the image is presented blurry as in "we can't really tell whether it's a professional<=>customer relationships or just two people interacting socially", because I think we generally can tell very well.

> Are they staying in the market? If you're doing it for 50 hours a week for barely any compensation, isn't it more of a hobby.

Because they read that it is easy money. It is repeated time and time again by the cam work is work crowd.

> If you're doing it for 50 hours a week for barely any compensation, isn't it more of a hobby.

By that argument cleaning hotel rooms is a hobby.

If you have alternatives to cleaning hotel rooms, it would be. There aren't any for most that work there though. If they didn't make money on Only Fans, normal jobs are still available, and if you make next to nothing, even cleaning hotel rooms might be a step up.

My impression is that many of those that make very little (on the platform, in relation to the top stars) make enough in relation to their time input that it beats cleaning hotel rooms or waitressing.

> But it's extremely compensated well for what is essentially unskilled labor.

skill doesn't determine compensation - supply and demand does. If an action is unskilled, but has high demand and low supply, then said action will fetch a much higher price than another action which requires much skill, but has high supply.

And being on onlyfans is not unskilled - you need skill. Natural born skill is still considered a skill, and you will also need to be photogenic (or video-genic?). Being entertaining is also a skill, tho not always required.

Most of these come along with being a professional athlete, and yet few seem to have the same level of concern.

The difference is that being an athlete isn't considered taboo.

Sure it is. Sometimes I feel guilty watching football and hockey players get their brains knocked around and getting seriously injured. Especially the younger or the less well-known players who presumably aren’t making as much money. But I assume if they’re on the field it’s because they understand the risks and they’ve decided that they’re compensated for those risks through some combination of their paycheck, potential fame, and love of the game.

And the same is true for women on OnlyFans.

You have a very different understanding of the word "taboo" than I do. There is no[1] societal shaming of sports stars.

[1] OK, there's some. But very very little - and, usually, due to judgement (deserved or not) about how they employ their wealth, not about _the profession of_ being a sports star.

Friend, the amount of work that the modal model does is _far_ more than that. Unless you mean the amount of work OF is doing?

It depends a lot on the model, but some are probably making way more than they'd make elsewhere.

I am aware of some porn actors promoting "Ethical Porn" whereas paying for porn promotes the creation of this ethical porn. For example, the porn star Jiz Lee has spoken out about it [1] and yes -- Jiz Lee is on OnlyFans.

That said, people will pay for what they want whilst others will pirate for their favorite given reason(s) be it porn, movies, books, audiobooks, &c. Similar for not contributing via Patreon; maybe they'd rather some ads and half the content to not spend a few bucks a month, for example.

Reasons abound.

[1] https://jizlee.com/ethical-porn-consumption-pay-for-porn-ant...

So many podcasts operate parasocially as well. Especially during COVID and negative polarization there is a high demand to be able to participate in interesting conversations. For lots of current events podcasts that have a paid tier, the member-only episodes tend to be a lot more social and personal than the main feeds, to say nothing of the zoom calls many of them do.

Philosophy Tube made a better video about parasocial relationships (skip to 23:47 if you're in a hurry):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IG0Y63LkDM

An excellent video that I've also seen! What I found most interesting about my original video is how Onlyfans and Twitch fills that perfect niche to monetize the parasocial relationship.

There's also the fact that for a small minority of people spending $200 on photos is basically nothing.

I like my money too much to part with it, but realistically if I were to value my time rationally paying $100 for takeout would be a worth while trade when I look at how long cooking takes. Then if I am willing to spend $100 on food, why not on something else I might enjoy?

As I said, I don't, but that feels more like a character preference for investment/hoarding instead of any rational cost/benefit analysis.

You're posting a lot of judgement and not a lot of evidence. You're asserting that this is always driven by loneliness, always harmful, always fundamentally different from things people might spend money on; do you have any basis for that beyond personal incredulity?

I think you are missing something. It isn't about seeing a picture. It is about a fantasy. It is a daydream. The more they "know" and view one person, the deeper that fantasy can become. People are able to delude themselves into a mindset of "if I keep interacting with her, what if she realized how cool I am and we actually got together" or similar.

This gets into what is real and the power of anticipation. There have been a lot of studies that show the biggest endorphin bump for a vacation is in the planning, not actually going and experiencing the locale. This is going to really change as VR matures. People will be having lots of experiences at home in a very immersive way. This includes front row at a concert, walking tours of a far off city or attraction, and obviously VR porn integrated with mechanicals. We have vivid dreams all the time and they are not "real", I think these things will feel even more real for the immersion.

Right now you and I are having a parasocial relationship. Or what else would you call internet forums? Theirs just pays better.

> Right now you and I are having a parasocial relationship. Or what else would you call internet forums? Theirs just pays better.

We aren't. Parasocial relationships are characterized by being unilateral (i.e. subject → object) and idealized (where there's an illusory personal connection). I doubt either of us feels that way :)

Sometimes famous tech people comment on hn. That makes me feel like im rubbing shoulders with giants in the field, while in practice its a unilateral and illusory connection.

This, posting on this site lets me interact with people who would probably never give me the time of day in real life. It feels like being a handyman who gets to hang around engineers. It's like getting a little taste of what being successful in this field feels like.

In a sense yes. But the main difference here is that on HN, the tech celebrity does not specifically target themselves to people who would like to be rubbing virtual shoulders with celebrities.

Maybe not, but pretty much every /IAMA foo AMA/ thread on reddit meets your criteria

Although the term parasocial relationship originally refered to people viewing mass media, this does not strictly seem to be the case for onlyfans. So we're stretching the definition in any case. Although onlyfans is a little bit more of a one way street. What I meant is internet forums fill a similar need for illusory interaction. My relationship to HN is definitely of the illusory personal connection type. I can fool myself into believing that my words actually matter. Yet the hivemind does not even register what I write. Your experience might be entirely different. But if you don't have any type of emotional investment into this, why do you write?

Related Reddit commenter's post (regarding the "bathwater" a prominent similar model was selling successfully on the Web and why someone would buy that): https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ca0gm6/people_wh...

> For years, I was profoundly puzzled by people that are willing to give hundreds -- if not thousands -- of dollars to (mostly women) they'll never meet for what's basically freely available offline.

That's because you seems to misunderstands theirs needs and misunderstands the cost of what you consider "freely available offline". I recently saw a tiktok of a girl crying because she fake one, well they are just putting a price over that effort.

> It's a bit sick that the internet -- the very thing which was supposed to bring people together -- ends up cannibalizing its own.

Yeah, it's something that I realize day after day. In the past it wasn't like this, I've seen so many people make real connections, but since a few years, maybe a decade, making friendship over the internet seemed to have changed (maybe it's just me though).

I feel like you got something with theses fake relationship. They are so much easier to maintains, they are easy source of dopamine and they still "feel" like real ones, but they aren't. Some pay for them sure, but Youtube videos are another cheap ones, mostly the vlog format, are most probably source of many of them.

The same could be said about celebrity. Fans of actresses and actors believe they have a relationship with them. That is why they get so invested in their love lives. A whole industry of gossip and paparazzi has been built to follow the ins and outs of your favourite celebrity. What is the difference between that and your favourite cam girl or twitch streamer?

Does the "para" stand for parasitic? lol

In this instance, 'para-' is being used to mean: abnormal/ incorrect.

ref: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/para-#Prefix

No.

I suggest reading this essay for some insight on the topic: https://knowingless.com/2018/11/19/maximizing-your-slut-impa...

My understanding from third party sources (ahem) is that most cam sites are for people who want specific content. Or get off on the power of bossing someone sexually.

The actual lonely hearts are rare and far between.

To go off on a tangent, this gives me a new perspective on the success of Trump. Perhaps his tweets, clearly written by the man himself in the moment, contribute to a sort of parasocial relationship with his "fans."

Certainly in comparison to the professional pr-speak of most other politicians.

AOC, among a very few others, seems to have tapped into something similar.

AOC also goes live on Instagram pretty often. It's much more personal, free form and natural way to talk to her fans.

Real time is also nice.

Fantastic point, and note that his supporters can also feed off this together (come together as a community), making it even more rewarding.

Yeah, I'm sure of it. People aren't defending his policies because they've given it enough thought and arrived at the same conclusions. You can see it on how clueless many are and how they end up defending him despite many of Trump's acts they themselves know are wrong.

His most enthusiastic fans defend him because they feel a connection to him. Like he cares or wants what's best for them and that he's approachable.

You’ve just described every likable politician ever.

That's a lot of generalizations about a large group of people.

> for what's basically freely available offline

Offline relationships cost a lot of money, as well.

i was surprised when i found out quite a few people i know paid for dating apps like tinder. loneliness is horrible and people are willing to pay for a fix/solution.

Aren’t the women on OnlyFans monetizing it in a positive manner?

Don’t base your world view on anecdotes from a carefully edited documentary. In reality almost all the customers know it’s a fantasy, so what’s wrong with fantasies?

> Don’t base your world view on anecdotes from a carefully edited documentary. In reality almost all the customers know it’s a fantasy, so what’s wrong with fantasies?

I'm not sure what you mean. The documentary seemed fairly middle-of-the-road and interviewed both fans as well as models. It's pretty clear that parasocial relationships aren't healthy (whether it's with a game show host or an Onlyfans model), so I would definitely push back against "almost all the customers know it’s a fantasy."

All documentaries are edited to tell the story the director wants you to hear.

You have no idea whether the interviews are with a realistic sample of the customer base. All it takes is focusing on a couple whackos to make the entire customer base look similar.

And if you made that documentary, who would you focus on? The normals, or the outliers? If you want the most entertaining product that will make you the most money, you’ll choose the outliers.

> All documentaries are edited to tell the story the director wants you to hear.

Not saying this is the case here, but as a documentary nerd, this is absolutely not true. There are plenty of cinéma vérité documentaries out there.

You know that's not the case here. If it comes down to picking and editing interviews, it would not be possible to do so without bias.

They have monetized stalking. How could that go wrong?

They are just taking advantage of lonely men, this idea is predatory in nature and shouldn't be celebrated.

Are the men becoming less lonely from the interaction? Then they are getting their money's worth for a service.

You could argue the same about Gambling, and yet we as a Society have put measures in to place to prevent such brain-mechanisms from being exploited and abused for monetary gain... despite the individuals feeling like they are "getting their money's worth". Also, see Loot Boxes, same thing.

The difference is that gambling or loot boxes aren't fulfilling a human need. Human connection is a human need. Unless you're offering a solution to the problem that these services are addressing, you're not creating net good in the world, you're just eliminating an accessible way these people have to met a human need.

Loot boxes and gambling could arguably be fulfilling a human need as well. Just depends on your definition of human need. Happiness is a human need and loot-boxes and gambling definitely give that to people on some level.

Further, we need not go into "human need" territory at all. We as a society have also put measures in to place to prevent the vulnerable from being exploited despite their objections (e.g. age of consent / alcohol and smoking age consumption laws).

My take on it, despite being libertarian-minded, is that we should ban/regulate these sorts of things that can have detrimental, generational-impacts on the viability of our society. These individuals should be going out, socializing, eventually fulfilling someone else's need for companionship at the same time as their own, and then procreating to further society. As much as it fulfills their immediate needs, it's a patch that is arguably non-viable in the long term for them and the wider society.

>Loot boxes and gambling could arguably be fulfilling a human need as well.

No. There is a categorical difference between a first-order human need and an nth-order need.

>we should ban/regulate these sorts of things that can have detrimental, generational-impacts on the viability of our society.

This is absurdly paternalistic. This new moralism is frightening. There was a time when religious moralizing dominated society. We finally broke free from that and now the left is replacing it with secular moralizing. Some people seem to have an intrinsic need to control the behavior of others, the justification is mostly ad-hoc.

I am immediately suspicious of any offered moral precept that has zero cost to the advocate. For someone with no problem socializing or finding new friends, I'm sure it seems like a great idea to you.

It turns out few people actually believe in freedom, they just want freedom from other people's arbitrary rules.

Do they stay on the system and continue to pay? Then I'd argue they're not becoming less lonely. It looks more like regular addiction, money buys you a hit, but you'll soon be back to craving more, especially when your general (social) life isn't providing a lot of positivity.

What your describing as regular addiction sounds a lot like any and every service anyone pays for.

You're not getting a thing as is, you pay for thing, you get thing, if you stop paying for thing it goes away.

You could slap any service in there.

Yes, sure, "we're all addicted to oxygen" etc. When you stop paying for Netflix, you're usually not feeling it emotionally. You might be a bit more bored at night, but that's about it. It seems different when you're paying for pseudo relationships.

Most things people enjoy in life you would be hard pressed to find a distinction between it an addiction.

Are the men underaged? Mentally incompetent? Is there some other reason that hapless men must be protected from these temptations, but selling them, say, netflix is ok?

Is netflix okay? How many times have you heard the word 'binge' to describe Netflix consumption habits? The language of addiction being used in such a carefree manner as though there's nothing wrong with it makes me uncomfortable and is one of the reasons I cancelled my account.

> This is fundamentally different than being a fan of, say, an actress like Emma Stone, or an athlete like LeBron James.

That's because neither Emma Stone nor LeBron James figured out how to enter into micro transaction relationship with the fan base. Bella Thorne did. The rest will now either have to flip into that mode or lose their celebrity status.

Emma Stone and Lebron don't deal with monetizing micro-transactions with their fan base because they already make so much money that would be a time wasting side-show for the amount of work it would be.

LeBron made only $89 million dollars in 2018, of which 59 million was from his salary, which means his total endorsement deals were only $30 million

Paris Hilton made between $250,000 to $750,000 to walk into a club for one hour.

Mainstream celebrities aren't going to lose their status because they don't sell suggestive pictures of themselves for small dollar figures.

Social media has created a new type/class of celebrity but it isn't replacing the old ones.

> Social media has created a new type/class of celebrity but it isn't replacing the old ones.

That's no longer the case. Social media celebrities who have not broken into the mainstream celebrity class are on downward trajectory as the social media has been democratized.

No, because this kind of thing is intentionally exploitve and these models make money by exploiting mental illness, particularly loneliness. Even in the case of mobile apps and micro transactions.

I have shamefully worked (for a short time) for a company that used to have serious meetings about how to exploit these types of people.

I've had a lot of friends into camming, and tbh it kinda sucks to watch some of them bend their morals and who they are more and more as it becomes harder and harder to ignore the money that comes with it.

LeBron James licensed the shit out of himself for video games, action figures, commercials, etc - and I'd argue other than the commercials, which are exploitve by nature, none of this is specifically exploiting anyone. It's entertainment.

I'm asexual, but I have absolutely nothing wrong with pornography on principle. I still have friends who cam ethically.

Unfortunately in the past performers more often than not ended up exploited. Now the tables are turning and some performers like Bella just end up exploiting their viewers, and that's just sad.

I mean Bella literally bailed on $200 pay per view stuff and essentially exploited her past as a Disney star, of all things, to draw attention to herself, and as a result has single-handedly irreversibly screwed over the lives of every other performer on the site by forcing monthly instead of weekly payments.

Bella Thorne didn't figure out how do to micro transactions. She thought she could take advantage of her micro celebrity status to give herself an advantage over others, exploited hundreds, and screwed over hundreds, probably thousands of performers.

I have a lot of friends in the sex industry and camgirl industry as the queer communities which I am a part of often are supportive to these folks, and it's awesome that the people who choose to do this non exploitavely can do it. I don't think it's that different in that case from being any other kind of celebrity, except I do believe it is obviously objectively riskier.

> screwed over the lives of every other performer on the site

I don't think what Bella did was right, but in my personal opinion, charging $200 to view some images and soliciting "donations" of over $100 a pop is extremely exploitative, so I'm sorry, but I don't have much sympathy here.

> I mean Bella literally bailed on $200 pay per view stuff and essentially exploited her past as a Disney star, of all things, to draw attention to herself, and as a result has single-handedly irreversibly screwed over the lives of every other performer on the site by forcing monthly instead of weekly payments.

I disagree. She screwed over lives of every other performer on a platform by showing up and running the numbers. Her being a former Disney star was immaterial - she happened to be someone that people fantasize about seeing naked or barely dressed hundreds if not thousands times more than they fantasize about seeing other camgirls, etc. Some of those people were willing to pull out their credit card. The response would have been the same if it were one of the Hadid sisters or the likes of Emma Watson.

> Bella Thorne didn't figure out how do to micro transactions. She thought she could take advantage of her micro celebrity status to give herself an advantage over others, exploited hundreds, and screwed over hundreds, probably thousands of performers.

Either her or someone in her camp convinced her that by doing what she did she would make a massive amount of money based on micro transactions as opposite to getting $20,000-$50,000 appearance fees or $200,000-$2,000,000 deals.

It is no different from celebrity influencers pushing out the micro-influencers by consuming the available market. Those with millions of followers will command more attention and hence more money than those with thousands.

> I have a lot of friends in the sex industry and camgirl industry as the queer communities which I am a part of often are supportive to these folks, and it's awesome that the people who choose to do this non exploitavely can do it. I don't think it's that different in that case from being any other kind of celebrity, except I do believe it is obviously objectively riskier.

The celebrity is measured by the amount of money these people can make via fees. Clearly Bella can make orders of magnitude more than the others which is why we are talking about her and not about a cam girl with 450 paying followers.

Lebron exploiting someone desire for entertainment, bella exploiting someone loneliness. Its no different.

> I'd say places like Onlyfans end up being net negatives for both the models as well as the fans.

Someone could argue the opposite: It's a net positive for a model who is able to separate herself from the work and use it as a means to earn money, and it could be a sufficient honeypot for men who would have otherwise become predators.

Personally, I would call it an unhealthy relationship. I think it's vastly in favor of the models because they're making money at the expense of extremely desperate older (i.e. wealthy) men. It's sort of a creepy-man trap, shepherding these men towards the models (remote/safe) and away from potential victims.

Can you at all justify the all the moralizing and value-claims in this comment?

How sure are we that these fans are not getting more benefit than we think? Maybe they are paying for the privilige of having an "a la carte" relationship that is impossible in real life. I d really like to see a survey about how these things work, because i doubt it's just neediness - there s probably benefits that justify the amounts spent.

It would take more than "documentaries", which AFAIK are always going for sensational, but false conclusions.

> How sure are we that these fans are not getting more benefit than we think?

Good question. Similar question: how sure are we that the whales in mobiles games or Casinos are not getting more benefit than we think?

The amounts spent are often quite substantial on the fan's side, while they are one among many viewed from the streamer's side. I don't think there's reciprocity.

I would like to see pharmaceuticals coming up with drugs that specifically target addictive reward circuits. then we can get rid of judgmental laws against addictions that some ppl consider "harmful" and instead prescribe antiaddiction medication. If people still like to gamble, then we must accept it s their choice and they need no "help" from us

Once we have those kinds of meds, I'm fairly sure that you see the gambling industry implode. They are hyper-optimizing targeting exactly those reward circuits for a reason.

There's not just the question whether the individual needs to be saved from themselves, there's also the question whether we let the predators roam free.

If someone believed they could cross the Atlantic ocean wearing nothing but shorts and flippers, you get to a difficult decision rather quickly. But if they're drunk and somebody is trying to guide them into a dark alley where you know three of their friends are waiting to rob the person, there's a good moral argument for a) saving that person from their fate and b) disposing of those four who are a net negative contribution to humanity.

It seems similar to romance scams, though managing to fall barely on the right side of the law.

I honestly think they should be deplatformed, one way or another. Young men in their teens and twenties are psychosocially damaged by this style of money-mediated intimacy, and at best they will play catch up with their peers the rest of their lives, and at worst will be permanently stunted. If I had a son, I'd honestly prefer he end up addicted to nicotine than to OnlyFans. (Older men are also damaged, but they're likely lost causes.)

We also need to recognize that men as a class are vulnerable to this kind of illness, and design public health interventions to help divert men from it and pull men out of it if they find themselves trapped by it.

Most users of platforms like Onlyfans are men over 30.

> Older men are also damaged, but they're likely lost causes

That's quite rude, particularly when you basically say the opposite in the following paragraphs.

> men as a class are vulnerable to this kind of illness

Men as a class are vulnerable to a lot of things, but they are a hard demographic to reach and, fundamentally, very few people care about their mental health.

Just today, BBC Radio 4 passed a news headline about UK suicide numbers being at their highest in 20 years, with 3/4 of them being men and mostly between 45 and 50 years old. The headline before (risk of quarantine for UK tourists in Portugal) and the one after (Facebook vs Australia on news links) were longer and both had a relevant expert interviewed, but not the suicides one.

can we stop using arbitrary corporate powers to force behavior on people? Everybody is damaged in someone else's mind, how about being tolerant to people's lifestyle choices that have no impact on us

> that men as a class are vulnerable to this kind of illness, and design public health interventions to help divert men

Interesting. The ancient lawmaker Solon instituted public brothels with a standard fee as a public health measure. But people think that s horrible -- damned if you do, damned if you don't. I guess the suggestion is that people shouldn't have sexuality or desires, they should just cut off their genitals and live as vegetables. O what a world we live in

Presumably whorehouse physical contact is psychologically healthier for the client than being addicted to text-mode OnlyFans-like intimacy.

That assumption might not always true.

This is the standard libertarian reply but it’s not really compelling.

Being choosy about your culture and protective of your youth on a societal scale is necessary. Without it, corporations with Billions of dollars will be competing to extract as much value out of children of families with a median net worth of about 40k. And that already massive imbalance is only getting worse and worse, not just through inequality, but through technology where corporations are more and more able to access their entire mind in evermore convincing fashion (VR up next!).

So you’ll take base desires that should be met as naturally as possible (sexual desire met with supervised interaction with peers of the same age) and you suddenly have unlimited virtual reality porn with facetuned, hyper optimized algorithm, AI generated responses, and suddenly you have a new generation of “incels” or similar who were so satisfied by their internet porn addiction that they never were forced to grapple with... well, real women, and the fact that they are absolutely not constantly sexually available and hyper optimized for your pleasure. And then you have Big Problems.

Listen, these are all, like, opinions, man. But with where we are heading with technology. Having seen TikTok and how it’s radicalizing and dopamine retraining a whole generation... I wish the government would get a whole lot more overbearing with requiring regulation - not to ban it per se, but to ensure platforms that provide it must validate age with more than a checkbox, etc. At least that Apple continues to provide evermore effective parental controls.

I think you should consider the extent to which the "normal" culture you are advocating is actually "real" or manufactured via the mass media and hollywood. There are so many ways in which american culture (and its inherent, persistent puritanism) is un-natural to people from so many different countries around the world. Technology is an enabler or a megaphone for our desires, but it doesn't create them.

Then there's the issue of helicopter-like supervision of children. This is a very recent phenomenon and has deprived the latest generations of any 'risky' and unrestricted encounters. I can understand why they feel the need to escape from it, because it really acts like a prison wall. If anything, their online escapades probably help them to grow and discover their own personality.

I didn’t specify normal culture, but I would include media portrayals of normal as included in dangerous and would encourage people to find normality through ancient cultural traditions and religions, not media.

Although Puritan culture is certainly not enhanced by media much at all, if anything the exact opposite.

And helicopter parenting is a totally different thing which I don’t like either.

As long as the incentives are there, the business and technology will follow.

Do you have the same strong feelings about other addictions, like social media in general or gaming? These are industries designed around creating psychological hooks at the expense of their user (some are worse than others).

I don’t find slippery slopes to be more reason to encourage skiing.

But the lost causes seem to have a lot of cash if you look into the amount that is spend. Why learn anything or put effort in anything if you just can show your tits for a time and rake in millions?

Should we be surprised people spend that much on porn? I certainly am, especially with its presence almost everywhere today. So there has to be another factor that draws people in. Maybe they have just fun and this is over-analyzing things.

I would generally agree with this, having spent about ~$10k on similar services for each of the last 4 or so years.