OnlyFans ghostwriters, who say their job includes catfishing paying fans | Hacker News Reader

OnlyFans ghostwriters, who say their job includes catfishing paying fans

businessinsider.com

39 pointsharambae16 comments

Reminds me of Asian shops employing old ladies spraying fish oil on panties for specific niche of Japanese market.

OnlyFans seems like such a late stage capitalism type creation. Our society has such high friction to new interactions, that the only way to chat with the opposite gender is through an elaborate service in which you only interact digitally. I wonder if OnlyFans would still exist with legal prostitution and more casual bars.

In what world is this the "only way to chat with the opposite gender"

I'm not sure what 'more casual bars' are, but probably you can find an answer by looking at OF usage in some other countries.

Good point! In my opinion more casual bars are like England's "Neighborhood Pub", somewhere for communities to socialize within walking distance of many residencies.

I wondered if you were thinking of pubs. 'England' then? (Prostitution, just not brothels or pimping or other 'organisation' is legal here.) OnlyFans is, afaik, 'a thing' here.

(But I don't use it or Instagram so I'm only really aware of it from non-UK specific stuff online. But then, if I am so are others, and some percentage of us that are aware of it presumably end up using it?)

Is such data available? Would be interesting to look at.

Don't forget about your garden-variety strip club, thousands of which still exist across the US. There's no, ahem, friction, to interacting with someone new there, well, unless there is.

That, and the on-going economic meltdown that's been going on since 2008. Desperate to make money? Look decent? Pull out your iPhone, take your clothes off, and kaching!

I guess in well-off countries like Finland, less girls are taking their clothes off and putting their bits online. Maybe I'm just not looking...

But yeah, it's an incredible confluence. Investment banks becoming unregulated, super big, and crashing the world economy, depressing the job market for a decade plus. Reality TV, social media, and "talent" shows promoting the "Get rich quick through fame" lifestyle. The broadcast camera and studio that fits in your pocket (thanks Steve). Everyone making some fortune out of the crypto-scam. A pandemic, lockdown and bailout money making a lot of horny guys with cash to spend: OnlyFans!

Feels like the Black Mirror episode "Fifteen Million Merits" (where everyone was trying to get into a talent show).

It's twitch.tv for sex workers. It's not a replacement for chatting with random people of the opposite sex.

The problems with chatting with the opposite gender are a) finding a suitably gendered language (I understand that Chinese won't work), and b) lining up the nouns you need.

Chatting with members of the opposite sex does not strike me as especially difficult. There are co-workers, there are neighbors, acquaintances from various activities, a spouse. If you mean chats leading quickly to sexual relations, well, that's another matter.

Calling the oldest trade in the world “late stage capitalism” seems kind of humorous. There’s nothing fundamentally new with OF, except scaling, and it’s not dead in the many places that have both legal prostitution and casual bars are everywhere.

To be fair trading money for sex is what the world's oldest trade is, whereas trading money simply for conversation is somewhat different. It fulfills a different need, one that would traditionally be filled by marriage and family. With those less popular(or accessible) than ever, prostitution ends up fulfilling that niche instead

OnlyFans' niche isn't "late stage", it's commonly referred to as "the oldest profession".

How is identity hysteria an attribute of late stage capitalism?

I wonder how automatable this is, such that you could train an NLP model to respond like how the creator is, and skip the ghost writers?

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