OnlyFans Star Aella Talks Sex Work Economics | Hacker News Reader

OnlyFans Star Aella Talks Sex Work Economics

reason.com

35 pointsmhb32 comments

> "I did a survey of a bunch of escorts and found that the amount of bad things they encountered, like sexual assault, or theft, or police, or whatever, was pretty strongly correlated with their price range. Basically, the more money you charge, you're pricing yourself out of more sketchy clientele."

This makes a lot of sense. I mostly go to Target even though Walmart is closer, because it's worth the extra 5% or so for me to avoid the people who shop and work at Walmart. I imagine that sex work is the last field on earth where you would want price yourself in the bottom tier.

I’m curious why this is the result though. I know very very kind wealthy people, but I also know wealthy psychopaths who you would be absolutely charmed by at a cocktail party. What causes how you treat others to be “better” (for lack of a better word) in transactions to skew towards improvement at higher dollar amounts?

(edit: sociopaths-> psychopaths)

What is the overlap of wealthy sociopaths that also would hire an escort instead of charming a victim?

The downside of legal action or reputational damage is higher for wealthier people. Wealthy people also tend to come from higher class families which tend to socialize their children more strictly.

That doesn't mean they can't misbehave, but they're more likely to do so in a socially acceptable or legally permissible way.

I imagine it's a matter of having a lower time preference. Wealthier people tend not to act as much on impulse (or else they would lose their wealth).

> wealthy psychopaths who you would be absolutely charmed by at a cocktail party.

If the psychopath can be superficially kind for a few minutes, to charm me at a cocktail party, then I don't mind being in a store with them. All they have to do is behave in a civil manner when I'm there and not cause a scene. The sort of psycho that bothers me in public is the sort that can't mask themselves. The kind that compulsively pick fights over imagined sleights, or generally cannot control their behavior and act on impulse.

I'd guess that the psychopaths more likely to do reputation damaging actions have been self filtered out of being wealthy.

She also has a very good blog with further data analysis on the subject: https://knowingless.com/old-posts-full-archive/

Is there any public data on the distribution of success on OnlyFans? I have the impression that it mirrors other social media; a very small number of people make a very large amount of money, while the vast majority of people earn scraps at best.

I expected the article to mention something about this, but it only mentions the lopsided customer side of the equation, most of the money coming from a very small number of whales.

The huge elephant in the room for those who are on the other side of the transaction of Aella (and other girls who escort) is that the standard flat fee is an absolute joke.

It cannot be the same for a wrinkly 91 year old and a 19 year old.

Escorts are great, you can land in whatever city in the world, knowing absolutely nobody and you'll get female companionship with dinner date and sex (or even just sex) that same night.

The flat fee has to go though. The only way for the 19 year old not to get absolutely screwed by the flat fee is to befriend the escort and try and get in the "friends with benefit zone" with her.

This is such a weird comment. Seems like you believe that it’s less work to spend an hour with a 19 year old than a 91 year old? A personal trainer doesn’t charge less for a young client vs an old one. A masseuse neither. You may be a great conversationalist, but your taxi driver is charging the same as if you’re dead silent the whole ride.

The implication of your comment is that you'd feel equally comfortable fucking a 19 yo as a 91 yo.

I'm not sure that would be the case for everyone if they were presented with the option.

I’m in a different line of work, so what I’d do isn’t really relevant. But if I try to project myself into that situation, I think once I’m with someone I didn’t choose, how old or attractive they are doesn’t matter all that much. But that’s just me.

Also i’m in my late 30s. I’d feel deeply uncomfortable being with a 19yr old under any circumstances, and in ways that wouldn’t kick in with a 91yr old.

I think the flaw in your line of thinking is that sex workers don't get to choose their clients.

That was exactly my point.

Either way, at this point this is just two non-sex workers (i assume) saying what they think sex work is like, so i don’t think there’s anything more useful to be said without someone with direct experience joining.

Aella's guide to escorting includes a section on screening clients: https://aella.substack.com/p/becoming-a-whorelord-the-overly...

Of course she couldn't choose a client who didn't even want to hire her, but rejecting a client who throws up red flags is certainly possible and advisable.

> Seems like you believe that it’s less work to spend an hour with a 19 year old than a 91 year old?

Of course it is. Every fiber of her body is telling her that the 91 year old is non-viable and repugnant.

Every fiber of her body is telling her that the 19 year old is not only viable but yummy.

The flat fee is basically the 19 year old subsidizing the 91 year old for the immense effort that the escort has to make to override all the red alarms going off in her brain, heart and gut about having sex with a 91 year old.

On the contrary all the indicators are green when she's with the 19 year old but he has to pay the same rate of the 91 year old.

There’s a lot of assumptions baked into what you said. Your own repulsion towards age, and sexualizing older people. Your own desire for youth. Lots of other stuff too (perhaps a fantasy of being an exception for any sex worker you’re with? The use of the word “viable” suggests some biological essentialism at play)

I’m not saying you’re wrong 100% of the time, but I’d be willing to bet a significant portion of sex workers wouldn’t see things that way at all.

> Your own repulsion towards age

It's not me, it's Nature has a repulsion towards age, especially as it relates to sex and sex appeal. That's why people lose sex drive and attractiveness as they age, both men and women. Civilians and Sex workers alike.

> perhaps a fantasy of being an exception for any sex worker you’re with?

I just don't want to subsidize horny grandpa. Trying to be the exception and becoming friends with benefit as of today is the only rational way to go about it given the flat fee

I edited my comment before I saw this, but I was definitely right about biological essentialism.

Nature may make a framework for things, but our brains can work us out of that framework very easily. Not to mention you’re just wrong - plenty of older people (mostly women) would describe their sex drive as higher than ever.

The initial escorting fee isn’t the entirety of what someone will pay over the lifetime of their client/provider relationship.

To put it simply it’s like the initial consultation at a lawyers office. That fee is low, just to get a feel for the clients situation before talking about more. Young people have less lifetime value as customers because specifically they want high value things like sex.

Old guys are okay with mere companionship.

“Dubai oil magnates vs. Boomers, who’s more gross?” is an interesting debate. But if you seriously believe that “the elephant in the room” with sex work is you wanting to haggle your prostitutes for lower prices, then I highly doubt they’re finding you as “yummy” as you think, lol.

> is an interesting debate

Indeed. What's not a debate is 19 y/o vs 91 y/o.

I did not mention race, political stance, skin color, language spoken or country of birth or any of those things. It's you who did that.

Ha, that's the part that stuck?

There's one other difference between the 19 and 91 year olds that you are overlooking. It's quite obvious and straightforward why the 91-year old is hiring a sex worker. However, unless he has 24 hours of shore leave before the Navy makes him get back on the boat, the 19-year old is inherently far more sketchy.

He's in the prime years of his life for casual sex, and attracting mates. Why does he not have any friends with benefits? Why does he not have any exes, who departed on good enough terms for occasional hook-ups? Why does he not simply have a girlfriend?

The old guy is a known commodity. The young incel is a walking red flag, who even in the best-case scenario is comparatively poor and apparently wants to haggle you on your rates. I suspect that for the sex worker it all balances out well enough.

Stay yummy.

> However, unless he has 24 hours of shore leave before the Navy makes him get back on the boat, the 19-year old is inherently far more sketchy. He's in the prime years of his life for casual sex, and attracting mates. Why does he not have any friends with benefits? Why does he not have any exes, who departed on good enough terms for occasional hook-ups? Why does he not simply have a girlfriend?

People want to both travel the world/live the digital nomad lifestyle AND be able to be in bed with a 10/10 the night they land in Rio or Barcelona when they don't know anybody yet.

Escorts and sex workers provide a service that enables guys to do just that and get the best of both worlds, but the person who is getting the best of all worlds is the pensioneer who travels the world and has his quota subsidized by young clients.

I think your “not a debate” issue might also be not -real-.

According to this: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Demographic-characterist...

The median age of sex workers clients is 42yrs old, and the standard deviation is 10 years. If I’m doing my basic stats right that means that 99% of clients are under the age of 65, and 99.9% are under the age of 73. Which means that the 19yr old and about 1000 other clients are subsidizing the over 73yr old clients. Idk what the going rate is but if it’s $200 that’s $0.20 each if the over 71yr old paid $0.

I don’t think you’re getting ripped off, my guy.

Edit: fixed an early rounding error. 99.9% is under 73 not 71.

What standard flat fees are you talking about? Escorts don't have standard flat fees, different escorts charge different amounts.

It's a flat fee when the escort charges the same identical fee whether you are a 91 year old or a 19 year old.

Oh. I'm sure some do that, and I'm sure some don't. It's a generally unregulated business, the workers charge as they see fit. If that's the way they want to do business, then so what? If those terms aren't acceptable to you, then walk away.

This comment makes no sense.

There are no regulations requiring a hooker to charge a flat fee. They charge what they want and Johns either pay it or they don't.

What an odd take.

She's popular among the Si Valley Twitter crowd (in the sense that I follow many and they retweet her etc). She seems like a smart person but the tweets are quite standard - observations about customers being better at higher prices etc that are pretty non-novel.

However, considering she was making some 2m/year on Only Fans, there must be something unique about her. I wish the article captured that instead. Instead it ended rather quickly.

However, I'd guess that it has something to do with the mix of sex work and being articulate and intelligent. It's possible that itself is rare. Anyway, maybe more college students should do this sort of thing.

>there must be something unique about her.

Well, years ago she was doing sexy mime routines on cam, so that was pretty unusual.

I have encountered her writtings time to time and they usually are interesting read.

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