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Comment by jbirer | Hacker News Reader

I personally am not against sex work but I am against giving the illusion of a personal intimacy and manipulation of lonely socially unsavvy guys who pay for this. There is nothing wrong with sex work but a lot wrong with emotional exploitation and preying on the vulnerable.

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You're taking about these guys like they're children who are incapable of fending for themselves. They're paying for nudes over the internet, I'm sure most of them know that and are fine with it. If they delude themselves into thinking it's more, maybe they do need someone to watch their wallet for them after all.

This is not treating them like children but more like focusing on the fact that a lot of them are naive and emotionally desperate guys who are not aware that it's all a game and are vulnerable to be preyed on by somebody who is willing to give them fake personal interaction and affection for their cash.

Anyone who thinks they’re getting actual intimacy from some sort of transactional relationship is, to put it bluntly, an idiot. However, I think it reflects more poorly on the people who raised these guys than the guys themselves.

I see how one can come to this point of view, but I think there is a perspective missing here about just how lonely and miserable some people are.

When you have never had a partner, when you have never been hugged and told you're loved, when you may also not even have friends or co-workers, and much more, things... are much different. I've met many males on the Internet where all of this applies, and they have a very easy time getting addicted to things that provide social comfort, whether is is Twitch, OnlyFans, Youtubers, and many other things. They want so badly to feel comfort, friendship, affection, and so on, that it is very easy to be tricked into thinking you're attaining it when you are in fact only attaining many strong correlates of it.

I think a lot of this ends up at it not being socially acceptable for men to show emotion or to seek emotional support. I imagine if that were the case most of these people would realize what they're paying for doesn't even approach being a shadow of the real thing. This is a group that would benefit a lot from some sort of self love/self care messaging but I don't even know what that would look like if it were tailored to this group.

I also kind of feel for all the people who signed up to sell nudes on onlyfans thinking they'd make a quick buck and ended up playing therapist for a bunch of lonely maladjusted dudes.

Sex workers are exploited much more than they exploit their clients. I think most people know what they are getting into.

How so? The way I see it is that they rake in thousands while not giving anything permanently, on the other hand there are people who risk financial and emotional ruin from predatory sex workers (I am not saying all of them are that way, I have met honest ones myself).

If you are talking about pimps, Onlyfans has mostly indepenent workers AFAIK.

They are giving quite a lot permanently. Their images will always be out there on the internet and in the world, and could be used against them when applying for future jobs, etc. The sex worker generally doesn't have XXX footage of their clients. It's the other way around.

Sure, some people give them more than they can afford. Sometimes car dealerships sell people dumb cars they can't afford too.

edit: Regarding pimps, there's plenty of women who are forced by pimps to perform online. It's extremely common. I imagine moreso with COVID.

I would argue that the normalization of virtual sex work is in the process of being socially accepted because a lot of sex workers are forced into it due to unemployment and the current COVID-19 situation, and due to the sheer amount of girls getting into it. It seems quite trivial compared to people losing their wealth and emotional health because they "don't know what the world is really like".

What permanence would you expect from transactional intimacy? It’s like going to the movies, you’re paying someone for a temporary escape from reality.

Permanence would be a sex worker on retainer or a committed partner.

Permanence, as in friendship after the fact. And some people might mistaken transactional intimacy for real friendship.

two wrongs don't make a right.

No, but exploitation of the type of man that thinks the stripper is actually into him is not among the most pressing issues surrounding sex work. It's an extremely strange thing to focus on. It's like focusing on anti-white racism. Sure it exists, and it is bad. But it has nowhere near the consequences of anti-black racism, so there is no equivalence between the problems.

The exploitation of lonely socially disabled men is not something insignificant. It's actually quite big on the severity scale compared to the exposure of the material of the performer as Onlyfans is in the process of being normalized to society.

Is it really?

I don't know, but I have the feeling that "lonely socially disabled men" are just very vocal about it.

Suicide is one of the top causes of death for people under 55. Suicides are overwhelmingly male (4:1). I think exploitation of lonely men absolutely has consequences. None of this downplays the consequences for women in online sex work however

I wouldn’t say it’s extremely strange. For example folks that have been through an issue themselves or know someone that has are likely to be more attuned to it’s effects.

There’s also statistically a rather large reduction in initiation and frequency of sexual activity for young adults in the us, particularly young men. Things like this could be causal factor.

Lastly young adults are killing themselves at record rates and young men 4x as much as young women, again things that feed into depression and detachment are worth considering.

I’d say it’s ok to be concerned about both.

"A hurts me, so it's ok to hurt B" mentality is destructive indeed.

Please exploit me buying from me a $20.00/month subscriptions of my semi-naked pics.

and exploit us of the relentless (and devious) spamming of websites like reddit, dating apps like Tinder, POF, etc.

OnlyFans creators have quickly started to use very underhanded self promotion techniques, and unfortunately many of them are straight up emotional manipulation.

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