If in 30 years we live in a society where people post nudes like they do facebook posts, is there anything wrong about this? Could you describe the harm caused which doesn't boil down to attitudes of society?
..then the calculus will be different. Current culture is what it is, and we live within it.
Imagine a culture where prostitution is "no big deal." It's acceptable for parents to encourage college kids to take a summer job in a brothel and it affects their life in the same way as a summer job at a car wash. Just because you can imagine such a culture doesn't mean that the same advice applies in our world
Similarly, there are plenty of cultures where premarital sex is totally unacceptable, especially for girls. You might think that's silly, and other cultures do exist that aren't like this. Taking your advice might profoundly affect their life, their ability to marry and live within their culture.
We only get to "then" by challenging the norms we are faced with "now". The question is do we want to move forward to a more accepting world, or settle for the narrow, judgmental mess we've inherited.
Seems perfectly reasonable that OP doesn't want his kids engaged in it.
And yes, I absolutely do think that normalization of sex, both for profit and otherwise, is an indispensable part of a more accepting world. OnlyFans has already helped move that needle considerably.
Personally, I don't see why subscribing to a $9 onlyfans account in order to see some tits is so much worse than buying a game.
[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1095186/tiktok-us-users-...
The smarter one won’t tell me how he installs apps on his iPad after his mom uninstalls it. I suspect he figured out his moms password.
Just think of most women's opinion of the majority of pornography, sure they could pick out some they like, but they find a lot of it disgusting. I can't imagine having to grow up with the feeling that the opposite sex is constantly consuming content that's exploitative of your sex.
At least most of these TikTok/OF creators have some level of dignity, and power over their own lives.
There's nothing that special about sex work. If you are a parent, teach your children to build respectful, healthy relationships.
> If you are a parent, teach your children to build respectful, healthy relationships.
If you actually think it's that easy you're minimizing the fight for equality and rights for all women.
The harm caused is that an action you take that is socially normative, legal, and accepted today, may not be in the future, and if that action is documented online, it will inevitably be judged by an ever-changing set of standards and morals as time marches on.
Well, a main issue is society isn't a monolith. Some people might not want to post nudes (just like some people don't want a FB account) but feel societally pressured to do so. Some people, specifically people hiring or electing, might look down on those posting nudes, making people whose nudes happen to be better known more difficult to get jobs. Some people may post nudes and then regret it later, and combined with pressure could lead to them developing some complexes.
Personally, I wouldn't want to live in that society. I can already get porn when I want, so I don't see a huge upside for me. On the other hand, if you think FB/IG/SC stalking post breakups is insane now, let me introduce you to the future.
This happens... subconsciously and, I think, unavoidably. Commodifying core human interactions will affect sellers whether they want to or not.
It doesn't devalue personal interactions offline or make me feel like a soulless void. I feel like most of the issues that the general public has on this issue is not fundamental parts of humans or society, but simply norms which we have come to embed so deeply they feel fundamental.
I used to think porn is pretty neutral in the terms of the harm it does to the consumer, but over my years in the internet, I encountered many people who invest much of their time into porn, or structure the way they view others (women mostly) based on porn and I've come to the conclusion that consumption of porn, specifically during one's teenage years, is psychologically damaging. It does change the way you view sexuality, what you perceive as attractive and your sexual preferences. I was exposed to porn at a young age and I'm pretty sure it did me no good. I worry that kids who are nowadays exposed at even younger age might develop maladaptive sexual preferences and views.
> Have you considered the alternative that this is not an evil
We have considered it, and came to the conclusion that it is evil. A society that has its morality purely based on "consent" has accepted its own demise.
We are allowed to rank them by our preferences.
I do not wish males to be treated more expendable than necessary. I wish they would live fulfilling life.
Catholic church was around in Europe as a force since early Middle ages. Wouldn't call it new, unless you have sources to contrary.
You can argue that about literally anything. Everything is a matter of "a different society" once it's been accepted as the new default
You mean the kind in which we live right now, and where birth rates are well below replacement values?
> The current society we are in where we expect or desire pair bonding for life with an exclusive mate is rather new and unstable.
This is wrong. Stable pair bonds are a feature of nearly all advanced societies. The reasons are game theoretic.
I’m fine with de-stigmatizing sex work and pornography, but a lot of the content you find online is hyper-stylized and portrays some really unhealthy views on sex and both women and men.
I disagree, I think it's perverse that creators try to create artificial one-way relationships with their viewers, especially for kids, but also for people at large which aren't adapted to deal with these kinds of relationships (which imo is abusive).
They specifically talk about their kids being targeted with porn. Targeting kids with porn is grooming behaviour it results in a lot of evil, not something we want to normalise.
Prostitution is legal in my country and it should remain this way. But there are mechanism to keep it in certain locations. I think that should also apply to adult content on the net.
Of course there are also repercussion to most forms of intimacy you experience or do not experience later in life. The average 18 year old doesn't pay too much mind to it.
So far, the results aren't good. But for the sake of science apparently we have to run the experiment to the end.
Trauma, anxiety and desperation are so common that I'm not sure what isn't impacted by them, I guess is my meaning.
But it wasn’t always this way. Not even close. I’ve met many people who grew up in pre- and post-WWII Germany, and from how they describe it, the concept of status didn’t really exist then as it does now.
Yes, there were rich and poor. But people fell in love with and married people in their towns and villages, and were not unhappy in doing so. With the exception of the war (a significant exemption, true) people’s lives seemed clear-cut, and no one felt the need to constantly be posting or drip-feeding off of likes or views or even money.
These apps and platforms are recent inventions, and they are dangerous. Status is no longer a local or regional commodity, it is global. And your status is constantly being evaluated against every metric.
Instead of being satisfied with being the best wine-grower in the region, for example, one is now forced to also compare oneself to the best bodybuilders in the world and the richest businesspeople.
Though at times overdramatized, ”The Social Dilemma” is a great documentary on this topic. I would also recommend Tristan Harris’s podcast episode with Joe Rogan.
We're just like polar bears being confined in a zoo and pacing up and down.
Some people and marriages were happy, but definitely not all of them were happy.
The society was changing on all directions leading to conflicts. Young women in particular tended to move away from villages to cities for greater freedom and economic options, followed by backslash over proper female place.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'd like to go back and live in the 20th century, but I do think some ways of life in those times were simpler and better acclimated to human nature.
From after WWI till dictatorship, Germany was violent place with regular street fights and tons on social problems. After Hitler took power, it continued to be violent place, tho in somewhat different way.
Why is it bad? First, teaching children to monetize and sexualize in a capitalistic system, rather than how they evolved which is a more personal and toned down sexual experience. Their psyche is developing, their habits from teenage time will carry forward and affect their only life. It's too risky to gamble on our society's minds by letting any company sell whatever they like to children.
Second, do we want young people wasting their limited money on this content? There's a lot of free things, even if someone is 18, why should they be giving away money for what they can get for free? Is that a sound financial habit?
A very similar comparison would be “thots” on Twitch, though.
Build up their awareness and defenses at an early age, so they’ll be less vulnerable and more prepared when they go out on their own one day. Dark patterns, psychological manipulations, emotions and biases are all things they need to be aware of.
Once people are aware of how they’re being manipulated and can recognize it in real-time they’re less likely to fall victim to it.
Some resources:
[0]:https://www.darkpatterns.org/
[1]:https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49176 (Games People Play)
[2]:https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/133203 (Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defense)
[3]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
[4]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_manipulation
[5]:https://fs.blog/great-talks/psychology-human-misjudgment/
My ol' grandpa looked at my generation and just didn't understand how we were OK with things like interracial marriage, same sex relationships, drug legalization, etc. He resigned himself to the fact that he was just getting old and inflexible and the world was changing out from under him. Maybe the same thing is happening to us, now.
Much like Facebook and social media, these products cannot truly satisfy the interpersonal/social/sexual needs of their users, but they provide enough of an illusion that many people will spend their time, money, and social energy on those sites instead of getting so consciously lonely and bored that they'll undertake the much greater effort to meet real people and form true social/romantic bonds–which comes with many complications, compromises, conflict-resolution needs, and reciprocal dynamics.
I'm not so much outraged that there's sex involved, I'm actually equally concerned about parasocial Twitch streamers/influencers and OnlyFans. Learning what social relationships and hanging out with friends is like from performative ad-supported performers is like learning what sex is like from porn; both are bad influences on (especially but not only) young people that can significantly stunt them.
I couldn't point to any one thing that was wrong about the arrangement... I just had this feeling that it wasn't something I should let myself get too comfy with.
If you've got a robust social network then it's not all that harmful, and if you don't then it's at least something, but you can trick yourself into thinking that something is enough when really it can be quite a shallow and ephemeral social experience.
Doesn't that also apply to any kind of interactions though? Every single group I've ever participated with in my entire life has always been shallow and ephemeral. Especially the in person interactions.
Curious if you meant drug legalization here... or is this in reference to studies about younger generations using fewer recreational drugs than children of the 60s?
Every generation will be forever perplexed as every year the world changes. continuously. The old ways will continuously be outdated. It's literally limitless as limits are removed.
What type of things do you think our kids will be puzzled about in the future? Where is the world headed?
For many people around the world they do not see the world headed in a positive direction as morality goes, and wisdom from past generations is dismissed. For many others they see it as a great thing, a libertarian paradise where anything is possible!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generat...
I've had a talk with a friend who was about to propose the other day. The elaborate planning that went into a questionable display of extravagance (it involved - amongst other aspects - skydivers and a banner being flown behind them) probably put him into more stress than asking the actual question. And worse: this idea of the extravagant proposal has been hammered into this generation ("If he can't even do this for you, is he worthy?"). In the 1920s, when there was maybe a ring (and not a particularly expensive one, either), and a question, things were easier, and people were less stressed about this.
And it's not "only" attracting and "securing" a life mate, it's every aspect of our live that has been blown out of proportion. We have forgotten about the good things in life, like taking some time to watch a vineyard in early autumn as the colors change. Having time for oneself. Having meaningful communities.
'Change' is not 'Progress' - I think that when we are young we tend to way over conflate those things. Usually there might be some reasonable impetus, I find 'change movements' usually lack nuance.
Marx was dead right in so many of his observations and yet nobody is seriously a Marxist today i.e. 'legit concerns' don't necessarily map to 'good change'.
Though change is inevitable ... the nature of the change is not inevitable.
There is some good to OnlyFans, at least in that 'creators' get paid instead of middle-men, but on the whole, I think it's a bad thing. I just don't think we're going to look back on this as a good idea.
I think impressionable young minds are not going to be able to grasp what it means to have that content 'out there forever' and when they get a little older they'll probably have a significant shift in their view.
UPD: rafale is right, I misunderstood the parent. It's not about any change, it's about allowing more freedoms.
But is it? When does it become bad? Should a parent be accepting that their daughter opens an OF when she turns 18? Should society be accepting of it as a side "gig economy" kind of job? How about the boys who are usually on the consumers/payers end?
We are monetizing intimacy and sex at a level like nothing before. Sure, it's always consenting adults exercising their constitutional rights and freedoms. But it feels wrong. Like the parent said, maybe I am just getting old.
Unpopular view in this day and age but maybe you're getting wise. Whatever the thing you're out of touch with, gig economy prostitution essentially, isn't worth being that in touch with. Maybe I'm just an old man too, but this sort of hyper-commodification of sex mixed with the nightmare that is social media just seems like a dystopic nightmare on so many levels. This sort of thing is not a good direction for society. The obvious emotional emptiness and moral bankruptcy that underlies this is stark.
I remember someone being enthusiastic that "our young are exploring their sexuality". What will happen if they don't? Nothing. They will explore something else and be fine.
Every generation since the history of time in this situation has asked this question themselves and has consistently answered wrong. Nothing good has ever come from a previous generation suppressing a later generation's right to self-determination.
> Like the parent said, maybe I am just getting old.
It really is just this. Our formative years are when we are young, and human nature is to simply reject what we're not used to.
"Consistently" is too strong a word. We have ended up where we are today, but let's not pretend societies didn't explore a lot of dead ends along the way. Sometimes very destructive dead ends, with many dead.
Nor can we state that today is the "best of all possible worlds", and that we wouldn't have ended up somewhere better had the advice of elders been heeded more often.
This is a case of survivorship bias.
Love, joy, excitement, mourning, creating art, singing and dancing… All of these are unconditional, intimate, and creative acts.
When they are turned into slot machines and side hustles they lose their humanity. There is nothing creative about the 50,000th “influencer” joining social media platforms to shill their low-grade reaction videos or porn or other entertainment cruft.
Most of the 60’s era liberation was a matter of being free to create in one’s chosen way, or with one’s desired people. Commodification, OTOH, is about extracting value from lonely people to enrich a vanishingly small minority of platform builders and “content creators”.
Commodification is an extremely alien form of “liberation” when compared with drug legalization or interracial marriage or what have you.
This isn't "juvenoia", I was born in and am living in this generation.
The vast universe of freely available junk and time wasters available now is a radical shift from even my early childhood, when there were distractions, but they were not purposely made addictive by teams of psychologists and programmers to increase the profits of huge corporate advertising behemoths (à la TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc.).
If you were born in and living in this generation, for any living generation younger than maybe the Baby Boomers, that's only even potentially technically true because the teams optimizing stickiness of entertainment of all kinds including youth entertainment, didn't involve programmers (in the computing sense) until fairly recently. But they absolutely have for a long time included psychologists, and the have been serving the intereste of corporate behemoths including in the advertising field.
You can binge watch or binge on social media or binge on anything, with unlimited supply. It's completely unprecedented.
I notice little compulsive ticks in myself now too — they're hard to escape. I have many friends I only contact through WhatsApp or Instagram. That pulls me into my phone and a nightmarish sea of influencer garbage every time I want to talk to someone. It sucks!
No, because in a "good" society, people should be able to find work that they're happy/willing to do that pays well enough that they don't need a "side hustle" to survive.
No, we’re divorcing the monetization of feigned intimacy and sex from pretense into more honest exchange like nothing before, and (arguably) moving it more from a pre-capitalist patron-servant model to a capitalist market exchange model.
Your post seems to suggest you would not be happy for your kids to do what they like when they get older. Often people seem to be happy for other peoples children to do what they like but not theirs. To me this seems like the wrong attitude towards ones neighbours.
There's 2 options therefore, for me, if I am honest with my family: disapprove of porn as a life choice or approve and encourage it including for one's own children.
I think most parents around the world would choose the first option, but the second is gaining in popularity and acceptability especially in the west.
I think you miss the important concept, that people can have different world views and different things might be acceptable to them. So I may not approve my kids/family/myself doing something, living some kind of lifestyle, but I accept that there are people who have different values and it's OK for me (as long as it doesn't infringe my freedom, of course).
Otherwise, we have religious fundamentalism.
Your children do not grow up in a vacuum. You as parents have limited influence, the society they grow up in is having at least an equal impact. You cannot successfully transmit values such as "porn is bad" if everyone around you, the media and the teacher in school is telling your kids the opposite. Humans to not get raised and live in isolation or a vacuum, society matters. A lot.
> Otherwise, we have religious fundamentalism.
If you extrapolate your point of view, hopefully finding that is destined to fail, you will have made the first step in realising why religions exist.
I don't recommend becoming a single parent at 16 and dropping out of school. But I can respect the strength, determination and shouldering of responsibilities.
I don't recommend joining the army and getting shot at in some afghan village at some septuagenarian senator's say-so. But I can respect people who choose to serve.
I don't recommend taking on a lifetime of debt to get the absolute best education in poetry. But I can respect someone who's dedicated their life to mastering an art, and honed their skills far beyond anything I could achieve.
Such an arrogant comment. Not only did you completely miss the point of the GP's post, but you're showcasing a bunch of disdain for people simply making mistakes and fixing them.
I have no words. None that abide by the guidelines, at least.
It's not an arrogant comment, it's common sense. It's much better not to do dumb things than to do dumb things and then try to fix it. Yes, it's good to fix one's mistakes, but that doesn't mean we should be celebrating those mistakes.
It reminds me of George W. Bush bragging about the success of the "surge" many years into the Iraq war, and I remember thinking, "What a man-child, this guy wants a prize for making a disastrous decision that a bunch of people specifically warned him not to make, and then taking steps to make it slightly less of a hot mess".
But nobody was celebrating the mistake. The comment was literally commending someone's resolution of that mistake.
The assertion you're making/supporting is incredibly arrogant because it implies that living a life without mistakes is possible. As cliche as it sounds, nobody is perfect. It is not possible to live life without error.
In other words "Just don't make mistakes" is not advice: it is ego-tripping.
That strikes me as odd. There are some areas of life that have competition on them. I accept the fact that there are "losers" in life, but I want my kids to be "winners". I love my kids more than I love others, and want better things for them — who wouldn't?
(I specifically don't mention porn here, because I don't make a point about porn, but rather about being happy for other children to do something but not mine. Also, I put "winners" and "losers" in quotes because obviously it's a very primitive description of reality, and I actually don't think of sex workers as "losers").
Understand that "I don't like it" is not a convincing argument to anyone but yourself. Be aware of the consequences, but don't over dramatize it. If you only share the worst case examples, your kids will understand that you are using scare tactics and what you are saying is unlikely. They live in this world and will know plenty of counter examples where nothing bad happened to the person in question.
So, be informed, and be reasonable. Express caution, and concern around linking porn to your "real" identity, and the trouble that this causes people. Discuss things protecting your privacy by avoiding showing your face, house, etc. Don't re-use usernames. A person who is informed on the real dangers of how people get found, will be more likely to think twice before posting a nude.
And if your children are of the female persuasion, it's worth pointing out that women tend to get the brunt of "punishment", while men often are not really affected. Maybe if your children are male, you might not want to mention that, but it's probably good for you to be aware of it.
I suppose it's different that "influencers" are pushing it instead of companies, but the basic problems seems fairly similar.
I am far from religious or straight edge, but the ways of debauchery are nothing new or surprising. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that these are just … debauchery.
To me it’s no different than guessing who was approached about joining a sorority
Or who orders pumpkin spice lattes
In this reality it doesnt preclude them from doing anything else professionally, simultaneously or in the future. It is true that some people will try to exclude them, it is also true that it becomes more benign the more that other people have potentially revealing content out there
I find that reconcilable, and reinforcing that any performer or consumer affects from this kind of labor should be addressed as any other kind of labor
I don't like it, but I'm not sure what a good solution is. I mean, people are free to do what they'd like, but it's hard to police screen time 100% of the time and their peer group has a lot more access than they do so even if I can block it 100$ they'll be exposed to it somewhere else. We've talked about it and I feel like that's all I can do now. I just hate how normalized it feels when many of their social media "role models' turn to porn.