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Comment by Khaine | Hacker News Reader

I’m not anti-sex or anti-sex work, but I think onlyfans is evil. They have a business model, that is perfected to extract as much money from whales as possible. Performers appear to have ‘relationships’ with their subscribers, encourage them to tip, buy ‘customs’, and ‘engage’ with them.

These sad lonely sexless men spend all their money on this shit. It consumes them, until they are out of money, then it destroys them. It warps their expectations of relationships further impacting their datability, driving them even more towards onlyfans.

Now, this is only a minority of their users, but makes a large proportion of their revenue. For healthy people, only fans can be great.

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I wholeheartedly agree with you, but unfortunately onlyfans is certainly not unique when it comes to whales. Mobile gaming is the classic example, and that is arguably worse in that it often targets children.

It is really a symptom of a wider problem where years of sophisticated A/B testing and social manipulation in businesses has been honed to such an extent that small pockets of the population find it impossible to resist the dopamine hit, be that some porn or an item in a game.

I really don't know what the solution is, regulation I guess? I'm not sure in what form that would look like though.

> These sad lonely sexless men spend all their money on this shit. It consumes them, until they are out of money, then it destroys them. It warps their expectations of relationships further impacting their datability, driving them even more towards onlyfans.

You're casting this as a situation where sex workers are preying on people, when I think it's equally true that sex workers are helping people cope (in a way that can be mal-adaptive).

There is nothing wrong with enjoying buying content from sex workers. There's nothing wrong with selling it. The people who spend in ways that are unhealthy for them (which is common across many industries) were not put into that mindset by the sex work industry. The industry just doesn't have that much power.

The official definition for substance use disorder is when use starts to damage other parts of the patients' life. In situations where there are some users of substances who lead happy lives, blaming the substance alone is desceptive - it's the combination of factors that have led a particular person to use it in an unhealthy way. It is common for people to act in even less healthy ways if you abruptly cut them off from their mal-adaptive coping mechanism.

I hope that you do not just direct this critique towards the marginalized group of people that provides a relationship-like service, but also towards the far-more-powerful forces that grind people down to the point that they cannot turn away from parasocial relationships.

I'm sure there are some people who match the description you offer, but what evidence do we have that "It consumes them, until they are out of money, then it destroys them" or that they make up "a large proportion of their revenue" to the degree that the business model would fail without them?

And could you not paint an equally disturbing picture about other industries and interests? Like gambling, drinking or people who eat bugs competitively? And should the presence of deeply troubled people scattered about different hobbies cause us to determine that businesses engaging with those hobbies are "evil"?

I seriously do not think so.

Here's me thinking one of the reasons OFs is so successful is the rock bottom subscription fees when compared to other adult sites.

IF I’d be that desperate I’d rather stick to a prostitute. Regular uploads aren’t even guaranteed. You could be paying something where you don’t even know the value of.

I hate this world of, everything needs to be a subscription…

On another note, I’m also glad that I’m in a healthy and happy relationship in my late 20’s because tinder in my area is 90% Instagram and OnlyFans ads.

These people want a relationship, and intimacy. They want the feeling of being loved more than sex. That’s why its a para-social relationship. These people believe that the performer thinks they are special, that they have a different and special relationship with the performer. The performer truely understands them, and they understand the performer.

They twist and warp anything so that its fits that worldview. Maybe they buy a video, and in it the performer says, “this is just for you”. Now, they may say that any lots of videos as part of the role play or whatever. But to these people, thats a sign of their special relationship.

That’s why they can be dangerous. If that spell is ever broken for example they find out the performer has a boyfriend. They can lash out violently, or look to humiliate the performer by sending their work to friends and relatives.

While I agree that OnlyFans and their creators are certainly abusing this, people need to be educated. We can’t be talking about toxic masculinity, predators and other very valid issues, without naming and shaming the enablers and abusers of these issues. And those creators are certainly abusing it, while OnlyFans is enabling them to.

I agree that what they do is economically genius and legit; but it’s morally dark grey and adds fuel to the fire.

They have monetised incels.

Hmm... I'm looking for a cofounder for a (stealth) teledildonics hardware/VR/SaaS subscription platform.

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