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Comment by 650REDHAIR | Hacker News Reader

So our kids are getting older so I've been paying more attention to popular social networks and it's wild how many YouTubers, Twitch'ers, TikTok'ers, Instagram'ers have OF content directly linked from their non-porn bios.

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.

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Have you considered the alternative that this is not an evil which you are unable to control but just another way of living / thinking of sexual content? There is nothing inherently evil about this stuff so why is it terrible that it is becoming more accepted/common?

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?

>> If in 30 years we live in a society where people post nudes like they do facebook posts..

..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.

"..then the calculus will be different."

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.

Well... we get to some sort of "then" regardless. I'm all for challenging norms and striving forward, sexual liberation and such. I just don't think only fans represents that better, more accepting world. Do you?

Seems perfectly reasonable that OP doesn't want his kids engaged in it.

I strongly disagree and would argue that we usually only get to "then" by active struggle, not just by waiting around.

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.

Active struggle to get more people onto OF?

Active struggle to change restrictive norms.

There are more facets than restrictive/nonrestrictive. Culture is textured.

I totally disagree. We've all been teenagers. The content creators posting their OF on TikTok are purposefully targeting teenagers with access to mommy's credit card. I see it a s purely evil and predatory.

In my time it was phone sex. Teenagers with access to parents credit cards will always have things to buy that some will disapprove. Nothing new her. Not even the attempt to make everybody conform the lowest common moral denominator instead of having parents actually supervise their teenagers.

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.

Sounds like you think that TikTok is a platform exclusive to teenagers. 75% of (US) TikTok users are 20 years and older[0].

[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1095186/tiktok-us-users-...

I have nieces and nephews and my friends have preteens and teenage children. Whenever I ask they how they get past age blockers they say they just lie and put whatever age they need to access the content.

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.

and I'm over 100 years old on some sites that demand a birth date to register

Is statista a reputable site? Sources are paywalled, which seems dubious at face value.

In what world do teenagers not just figure out a way to obtain content like this for free on the Internet instead of risking mommy and daddy finding out they watch porn when they check their statement? Like, I get an immediate notification on my phone when a purchase is made, online or offline. The risk is so high I feel like you're inventing a situation so rare it's not worth mentioning.

It's debatable and not as clear cut. Many believe that a "liberation" of sexual content manifests the objectification of women and therefore is a net negative to society and the progress toward equality.

Sexual content and objectification of women have been widely spread on TV since the 70's. The content we consumed as teenagers has always been tinged with an air of exploitation.

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.

Do you think Call of Duty manifests the acceptance of violence and is a net negative to society?

There's nothing that special about sex work. If you are a parent, teach your children to build respectful, healthy relationships.

No, I don't think it's a net negative. I do however think objectification of women is since it amplifies one of the biggest issues of society for very little gain. The small negative impact Call of Duty has (if any) is minuscule in comparison.

> 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.

This is incredibly naïve. Social norms change, often quite quickly and in unexpected ways. You could have a near future where posting nudes is 100% normal, then 10 years after that it becomes quite taboo again. The problem is that the internet never forgets.

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.

> If in 30 years we live in a society where people post nudes like they do facebook posts, is there anything wrong about this?

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.

Sure, but how is that different than any other way someone might trade their labor for money (but wouldn’t if they didn’t need the money)?

Putting a monetary value on an activity that otherwise doesn't have it fundamentally alters how people think about that activity whether they want to or not. The best example is selling items in MMOs versus achieving them in game. If you put a $100 price tag on a weapon that otherwise takes 200 hours to grind it will ruin the satisfaction people that ground for it got from the item.

This happens... subconsciously and, I think, unavoidably. Commodifying core human interactions will affect sellers whether they want to or not.

We already commodify human interactions. Dating for starters (and arranged marriages before that). You could run the gamut of dates on your own or pay a matchmaker to set you up with a guaranteed relationship (or your money back). There's rarely a point to doing something the hard way if a successful shortcut is available, so long as all involved understand what they're getting out of it.

We're discussing "posting nudes like people post FB posts". What about that made it sound like commercial activity to you?

Whether you like it or not, sex has an implicit emotional component that cannot be overlooked. Sex work is not the same as normal work but naked. Posting nudes is not the same as posting normal pictures. There is an amount of soul involved when humans deal with sex, whether the involved parties realize it at the time or not. The more this becomes normalized, the more unhealthy the soul of a society becomes. No, I don't have a peer reviewed study confirming this. My source is art, history, and the human experience.

I appreciate your personal opinion and just felt like sharing my own personal counter opinion. Being a gay person in the furry community, posting nudes on IM groups is something that is just done almost like you would post a selfie at the beach. I have seen nudes of most of my friends and even some of my coworkers and the other way around. No one treats it as weird or awkward, its just something you do.

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 don't mean this as a personal insult but if you are a furry you are already so deep in the degeneracy that you wouldn't notice anything of the sort. Like in BNW, it's rare that the people who submerge themselves in the shallows are cogent of what they've done. Most often it manifests as a vague sense of dissatisfaction or unease in the quiet times. I'm not saying you specifically are this way, but furries are not known for being successful, self actualized, confident people outside of their community.

I agree. I've a lot of experience with the furry community and I certainly wouldn't want to live in a society structured like that. You have issues like the extreme focus on sexuality, the constant barrage of extreme sexual content (like non-consent/rape porn) and the tacit tolerance of pedophilia and/or abuse in some furry spaces. I don't think it's healthy for someone to base their identity on a community whose main focus is pornography, and extreme forms of it, at it. It's not an issue with anthropomorphic characters themselves, but the community that formed around them and how it regulates itself. Some people I've seen even developed an exclusive sexual attraction to anthros, which basically kills their chances of having normal sexual and romantic relationships; such extreme cases are pretty rare, though. I'm not too keen on using the term "degeneracy" because it reeks of religious connotations, but I certainly see why people describe the furry fandom like that.

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.

Instant Gratification as a Service gets criticized all the time.

Gender relations becoming gameified and being turned into monetary micro-transactions is not a net win for society. Women debasing themselves and selling their body to appeal to an army of lonely simps that take refuge in a simulated relationship that is emotionally exploitative is not the kind of healthy pair-bonding I wish for my kids. It is socially corrosive.

> 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.

Thee wouldn't be a demise, it would just be a different kind of society. Males are expendable for most of society, in earlier centuries, they would die from warfare, diseases, working in high risk professions and so on. The current society we are in where we expect or desire pair bonding for life with an exclusive mate is rather new and unstable. Lost of women would be quite fine with a harem like system where they share a high quality mate with other women and now that women earn on par with men they are not limited by the male's resources being shared between children by other women.

>it would just be a different kind of society

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.

> Thee wouldn't be a demise, it would just be a different kind of society.

You can argue that about literally anything. Everything is a matter of "a different society" once it's been accepted as the new default

> Thee wouldn't be a demise, it would just be a different kind of society.

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.

What your comment and the other replies are not addressing is whether it’s healthy for kids to be exposed to pornography, which is probably what the parent comment is worried about, and not whether normalizing sex work as something that some adults do is ok.

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.

>There is nothing inherently evil about this stuff so why is it terrible that it is becoming more accepted/common?

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).

> There is nothing inherently evil about this stuff so why is it terrible that it is becoming more accepted/common?

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.

I don't think it will ever happen to be normal if your colleagues find your nude pictures. Or your children for that matter. Or worse, the classmates of your children. This time the "your mom"-jokes might stick.

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.

Sexual saturation nulls intimacy. There will be little drive to explore a personal experience when kids treat their libido as a itch to scratch. Not even historical emperor's children had harems at age 14 - this is training their behaviour for instant reward at high monetary costs - instead of working towards a goal. Instant gratification is unnatural and makes for shallow character.

I can confidently say I would rather not have to view most people's nudes.

We've been doing a decades-long experiment to test whether getting rid of the stigma makes porn harmless.

So far, the results aren't good. But for the sake of science apparently we have to run the experiment to the end.

Results aren't good according to... You?

Lots of porn users are unhappy about their use of porn. Lots of people are unhappy about their partner's use of porn. Lots of therapists are worried about their clients' use of porn. Etc. And these are not issues of stigma; we know that because to be taken seriously in the media everyone talking about their problems has to start with "I'm not against porn per se, but ..."

So according to anecdotes. Gotcha.

I think I sit in the middle on this. I don't think it is evil but if you dig under the surface a little you will find a lot of trauma, anxiety and desperation whether it is narcissistic instagram posts or OF style porn.

I think you're correct, but I also think that's a property of the human condition and underlies nearly everything humans do for attention (to some extent or another, obviously to a much lesser extent the broader we're talking).

Trauma, anxiety and desperation are so common that I'm not sure what isn't impacted by them, I guess is my meaning.

I don’t know… I think people are cynical these days in large part because the world around us is dominated by this status angst.

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.

Technology has enabled us to feel "close" (or at least simulate closeness) with a larger number of people over greater distances. We just didn't evolve for these large abstract social groups and we're still adapting as a species to it.

We're just like polar bears being confined in a zoo and pacing up and down.

Your description of pre-WWII Germany is overly idyllic. We would not had WWII if pre-WWII Germans were that happy. The Germany was pretty violent, unstable place with serious economical problems including homelessness. The whole phenomenon of young men fighting on the streets with political opponents had a lot to do with them being unhappy about their place and options in society.

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.

Surely, that's why I added "with the exception of the war (a significant exemption, true)". I only describe Germany in this way because it's the country where I have the deepest roots and speak the language. I am sure this sentiment would mirror across most of Europe, absent the many horrors and tragedies of the 20th century.

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.

I was not talking about war. I was talking about period between wars.

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.

Yeah, I also think this is an expression of a natural human feeling that'd exist whether the technology is there or not.

Beer and whiskey both have alcohol in them but try drinking 1 litre of whiskey every day and see where you end up.

Maybe birth rate would drop faster than before?

Do you think children should be spending their allowance money on porn? That's surely helpful for OF's bottom line but I question the ramifications of selling our children's sexuality to a few capitalist coders.

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?

Children can’t spend money on OF. Only adults can. Children can spend their money on the SI Swimsuit issue, though. And the SI Body issue. Do you take issue with that sexualization that benefits the capitalist behemoth that is Disney Corp?

Is that true? I had a credit card when I was a teenager. Is there a way for them to check your age or is it “you have a credit card so we assume you’re 18?”

A very similar comparison would be “thots” on Twitch, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU

One thing you can do is use all these things as teaching moments. Teach your children how to recognize all the ways they’re being manipulated, both by media, and in person by other people.

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/

[6]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

I don't know--as I get older, and see things like this, I can't help but think maybe I'm just turning into an out-of-touch old fart. Maybe norms are simply changing and the next generations are building a better world free of all these stupid taboos and hangups.

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.

I don't think I'm merely being a luddite or overly conservative when I say that the exponential rise of parasocial entertainment worries me greatly. There's a rising loneliness epidemic in much of the developed world, and entire industries that profit from selling a virtual simulacrum of the experience of hanging out with friends (Twitch) or intimacy (OnlyFans).

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 can testify that I went through a lonely period a few years ago, and stumbled upon Twitch, and was immediately weirded out by how much of an effect it had on my emotions. It felt like I could point and click and immediately have the experience of hanging out with someone, belonging, having something that felt anchoring, without making any of the hard social effort that's always been a challenge for me.

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.

One issue with streaming/youtubers in particular is that you can get all of that fun-social-fuzzy feeling without actually participating and forming a real connection, it's different to other online communities in that way. Unless you dive deep into their community you don't actually know the streamers and they don't know you. You come out the other-side of a binge with nothing.

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.

>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.

People you meet in Discords is much closer to a social setting, almost a bar at times. Twitch is a one-to-many relationship and it depends a lot on the channel if you can make connections.

Yes the world is always changing but everything that happened in the history was once also a change and probably progress in the eyes of the people who supported it. Just because the world's changing doesn't mean it's a good thing on its own.

> how we were OK with things like interracial marriage, same sex relationships, drug prohibition, etc

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?

Thanks! Corrected

With this logic the following generations will also be perplexed at a changing world that has lost all barriers and controls.

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!

Things can reverse and move in cycles, society doesn't always move in a progressive direction.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generat...

The world is changing much faster than human psychology can cope with, which is why you're seeing so much of depression and mental health issues everywhere. We would do better to slow down a notch, but that flies against the face of the capitalistic imperative and the atavistic and ridiculous fear that "if we slow down, the bad guy will outrun us", and hence full-steam ahead on every front. If there is collateral damage, even planetary scale, so be it. We'll try to sweep it under the rug as long as we can, and when we can't, we'll let the activists and heroes and do-gooders and scientists work themselves to death solving it for us.

I think a good argument can be made for mental health issues being more related to a need to perform ever better, more successful, more efficient, more marketable, demonstrating ever more status rather than being exposed to the availability of sexual content.

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.

You're not getting older, the world is changing, and that it changes doesn't remotely mean 'it's better'.

'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.

This argument applies to any change. Trivially, not all the changes must be accepted, therefore the argument is flawed.

UPD: rafale is right, I misunderstood the parent. It's not about any change, it's about allowing more freedoms.

The way I read it is that each generation is pushing the limit of freedoms. Sounds good if we stop right there...

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.

"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.

For the sake of completeness: there isn't really a big necessity in pushing that limit, it's not that it earns us, the society, something, while its risks are unclear.

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.

> The way I read it is that each generation is pushing the limit of freedoms. [..] But is it? When does it become bad?

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.

> and has consistently answered wrong

"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.

But that’s really a gross view of human behavior. Commodification is what allows us to build functional societies, and I am glad we discovered it, but it is absolutely antithetical to the things which sit at the core of human experience.

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.

Yes, yes, the same old story. The exact same things has been said by the previous generations about books, comic strips, radio, television, computer games, etc...

Ok..? In the case of computer games, I don't think unfettered use is a good thing.

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.).

> 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

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.

The point I'm making is that the scale of this is unprecedented. If you wanted to read comic books or watch TV or smoke cigarettes, there were effective physical limits. Yes, people ruined themselves with addictions then, too. But now, every person I know has a slot machine in their pocket they can pop out and get a dopamine hit by using. And it is never-ending.

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!

> Should society be accepting of it as a side "gig economy" kind of job?

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.

> We are monetizing intimacy and sex at a level like nothing before.

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.

>people are free to do what they'd like

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.

> 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.

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.

> I accept that there are people who have different values and it's OK for me

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.

People make choices I wouldn't recommend all the time.

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.

> 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.

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").

Do you want your neighbors to be winners too?

If it's not a zero-sum game, sure. But there's plenty of different games in life, and humans are inherently social animals — even when we do not compare ourselves with others, others do. So, I don't want my neighbours to starve or die, but I do want my kids to be more successful than they are.

Related, it sucks that so much content nowadays is just a thinly veiled advertisement for OF pages.

This is a result of youtube's policies. You can't run ads because your content is unacceptable but keep uploading videos, build your following and push fans to someone they can make money.

Not just YouTube, but much of Reddit too. I'd hazard to say 50% of all /r/roastme posts are OnlyFans ads, for example.

You can blame OnlyFans themselves. No search. No way to advertise on the platform. No discoverability.

Or for Patreon subs.

I think there are risks to doing porn, but even in this article, the issues are not always related to the porn itself, but bad passwords leading to account compromise, or linking your family identity to your porn identity.

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.

Is it all that much of a change? If it was a few decades back, they'd be watching TV where the commercial breaks had advertisements for "Girls Gone Wild", and MTV had that show Undressed that was often compared to pornography on late at night.

I suppose it's different that "influencers" are pushing it instead of companies, but the basic problems seems fairly similar.

Sex is certainly the most normal thing in the world so I'm not sure we should be fighting against normalizing it. I understand the difference is paid versus non-paid, but in a market-oriented society the realm of "non-paid" is generally very tiny and it's arguable that the two can't really be divided in our current socioeconomic orientation.

This is not new. Internet porn was mainstream when I was in middle/high school in the 00's. Every boy was looking at it and it was way more hard-core than what you see on onlyfans. If anything porn has gotten softer since then.

There is just nothing good to expect from companies that promotes excessive porn, guns, drugs, gambling, meat, soda, … for money.

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.

I'm not there yet but when I am I will use it as an opportunity to explore leverage and how being a porn creator is typically a desperate move by those without leverage (e.g. from the article the woman was sleeping in her car and had no income). Porn needs to be seen through the backstage lens. What you see on camera is not what is really happening. /r/instagramreality on reddit is another good resource.

I think that's clearly nonsense and not a helpful take (if you lie to your kids, unwittingly or not, that will just erode their trust in you). Of course you can find desperate adult actors, just as you can find desperate investment bankers or desperate software engineers who would rather be doing something else. Do you have any evidence that the number of desperate adult actors is especially significant? I think a better angle is to discuss dignity and how porn affects the consumer's own world-view.

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