zlacker

>>mef+(OP)
What I find fascinating/disturbing with OnlyFans and in some way with Twitch and streaming in general is more the client side than the creators. Here are basically people paying, and paying a lot, for parasocial relationships. Because clearly it’s not about the content per see which is a dim a dozen and available for free in trove.

I think it says something quite dark about our society as a whole that we have basically commoditised distress and are encouraging some people often themselves in dire circumstances to prey on others to the benefits of the middle men. I find these new pimps scarier than the old sort in that they pretend to have clean hands.

>>Random+hPb
It's way worse in the case of YouTube/Twitch than OnlyFans IMO. People have been paying for pornography/sex for millennia. It's just part of human nature. On the other hand an 11 year old throwing money at MrBeast...why?

>>paxys+vZb
I'm sure celebrities and socialites and thought leaders and such have existed throughout time ... But we've gotten really good at monetizing it.

>>jayd16+Src
I suspect it was always monetized as well, but the internet allows for both for a massive increase in followers and an increasingly easy path for money to move from the followers’ wallets to the celebrities. It seems new or unprecedented, but similar models have existed on smaller scales for thousands of years at least.

>>steve_+pxc
Think back to ancient philosophers. Who got students to pay for their work or students parents, or just outright donations... And later various artists both those creating works and performing them. Patronage is very old model.

>>Ekaros+vGc
yes, these are perfect examples. I was going to add people like Jordan Peterson here in Canada, but now I’m not sure if he’s entirely different. Maybe he would have qualified as a philosopher worth teaching people 2000 years ago. He’s certainly intelligent. Perhaps his model of gathering attention is the part that’s different, yet even that I’m not entirely sure of… But people like him do seem to be part of that new phenomenon that the internet has enabled.