Big surprise, on the internet, no one knows you're a dog. I wonder if OnlyFans is training AI on the messages flying back and forth, which will enable them to offer messaging as a service to their on-camera talent (who will soon also face competition from generative-AI-based models, if they don't already).
If subscribers know on the platform the models can be officially faking their conversations, what’s the point of paying to access the models on the platform? Right now it’s just on the model for tricking users like this, and they use these services at their own risk.
OF shipping AI to fake chats would break the trust of paying subscribers and I expect they’d get a lot of backlash over it.
OF could feasibly build a ChatGPT for their customers. Let people chat with literal AI-models and have the models reply with generated pictures. The tech is almost there, OF has the data. It's inevitable and it will end terrible.
I agree they wouldn't want to be known for only having bots/gen-AI models. But they might benefit from having a mix of live models and models who authenticate they are chatting themselves, mixed in with a bunch of non-authenticated chats and AI experiences, which would allow them to serve different market segments at different price points. OnlyFans Pro could be the differentiated, higher-end offering and plain old OnlyFans would be for the customers who don't mind knowing that their experience is not entirely authentic. Perhaps they would sell it as being something that is "designed by models" or "modeled on Celebrity XYZ" to make it more appealing.
We're already seeing the beginning of AI-generated personas for creators, these guys will be out of work within a couple years.
OnlyFans could attempt to take this first party. With enough reference content a creator could generate believable AI images of themselves as well, and may eventually find themselves replaced by virtual models.
> says one of the founders of MGMT LUX, who spoke to VICE anonymously.
I did not like Vice because of that kind of things. That "fresh" aspect on first glance but you realize later that those guys are not real journalists.
The normalization of only fans really started with language. Not commenting on whether it's good or bad. First we began calling it sex work and now we use euphemisms like "content creators". We never stop to question whether this is good and just girl boss praise women's "independence" these "creators" got and provide an indifferent shrug to the consumers. We lost our ability to apply any kind of moral judgement (possibly an overcorrection to an overly prude prior generation)
You saw the same thing with acceptance of gambling. It's not gambling, it's fantast football. Even the large players still have references to fantasy in their names. Similarly "drugs" became substances.
If you were to put someone from 20 years ago today he would be shocked as to how libertine our society has become.
“Prostitution is a new phenomenon that people from earlier ages wouldn’t expect to exist today”?
Regardless, the article’s case pretty clear if you would read it. Mass job losses and from all the COVID fraud lead to folks getting money however possible.
Throw in years of the eduction system telling people a college degree in “whatever you want” is better than tradeschool and that service jobs are the worst thing to possibly end up in, and here we are. People with shattered compasses and mountains of debt trying to make a living in a world that will lie to your face and force you to like it.
It's not so much that people are told that service jobs are the worst to end up in but that we have made that true. They may be better than literal penury but they are as close to it as can be sustained. No paid time off, no consistent schedule to build a life around, no healthcare, very little dignity.
It's no surprise people will seek any alternative and their motivations for doing so are not based on incorrect or fabricated data. Those jobs are truly miserable.
The bubble here is more of a concrete dome sometimes; I wonder how many people on this forum have ever worked a service job? I have and I literally fear what I would do if I had to go back to the jobs I had while in college (which could happen; I've never felt very secure in any job).
I've never worked a service job in my life but I know several people who have - including my own children. OMFG!!! It's inhumane how these people are treated. I've seen office equipment treated better than these flesh-and-blood human beings. The only good thing is it gave my kids a good swift kick in the rear end to go to college, not screw around, and get serious with what they were doing. Despite that upside, I wouldn't wish that on anybody!
Crazy levels of projection here any time a non-white-collar job is mentioned as being passible.
My brother hated college more than life itself. He always looked forward to summers where he’d work service more consistently. Fast-forward, he’s dropped out and now works in food services full time, never been happier.
How's the dental care of your brother's children? When's he thinking he can retire and what will that look like? When was the last time he took a week off?
It's not the work itself that is bad but the conditions of it. I loved cooking, I much prefer it to computer work. But allowances for health and family have to be carved out case-by-case depending on your relationship to your bosses.
This isn't necessary and we could change it. But we haven't, and so these jobs suck for reasons that have nothing to do with the work being done.
Great! He’s part of a union and they provide for his benefits. And he’s a good reliable worker (which in massive demand in the industry rn), so if he gives his boss enough notice he’ll allow pretty much anything wrt time off.
> He’s part of a union and they provide for his benefits
Yeah, what we're talking about is not that. Union work is an entirely different beast. I'm talking about people not knowing from one day to the next what their schedule is going to be, informing their supervisor well in advance when they're available to work and still having work scheduled when they're not able to work and then being threatened to be fired if they don't show up. Complete shit show.
Sure, but bad jobs exist in any industry. My claim is that good ones exist in service, which is contrary to what the narrative taught in public schools would have you believe.
We’ve taught people to feel like scum if they’re working in food service and to treat people in food service like scum, then justify the indoctrination by saying it’s “usually true”.
Any cursory examination of other cultures would show it doesn’t have to be this way.
We all certainly agree on that! The fact is though that you will be treated like scum working in food service in a way you usually aren't working in, say, software development. I can confidently say this because I've done both jobs. It's not any more honest or realistic to deny this.
Yes agreed. Also when people did do these jobs it was often quite a while ago without noticing how much worse this work has been made in the last ten or fifteen years. Or they were only doing them briefly during a transition (like college) and haven't really considered the psychological impact of this being the only work you do and ever expect to do for decades straight.
> psychological impact of this being the only work you do and ever expect to do for decades straight
This is exactly the kind of prejudice I detest. Who are you to say that providing folks with good food and pleasant hospitality they want to keep coming back to and enjoying is somehow a psychologically draining career? But putting letters on screens that move boxes around and implement TCP/IP protocols is better?
In fact, in my experience the folks with the absolute most pride in their work and general positive sentiment about their role in the world have been restaurant/bar workers. It’s downright common in places like Spain/Italy/Japan, and I see it in some places in America too. But when you’ve preconditioned folks to believe they’re the scum of the earth, that’s what they’ll believe.
I'm someone who did this work for decades and am speaking from my own experience. You mentioned in another comment that your second-hand experience with this is from someone in a union. Which, sure, if I'd been able to find union cooking work maybe I'd still be happy over there.
As it was I was working 60 hour weeks while my teeth were rotting out of my head and I hadn't had a sunday off to go to church in four years. Regardless of the pride I took in my work I think I'm well positioned to describe it as draining.
Plenty of software jobs might be called draining. For instance the contractors HN loves to pity. But I’m a contractor and I love it, more than my prior FAANG time even.
Still, should we expect public school teachers to deride the idea of being a software engineer because some instances of it are stressful?
> Who are you to say that providing folks with good food and pleasant hospitality they want to keep coming back to and enjoying is somehow a psychologically draining career?
Someone who has experience in those careers, not in Spain/Italy/Japan, but in America. And I've never heard on them being unionized in my particular corner of the country. The only place I've heard of it is in Las Vegas, and yes, the people in those jobs seem to do ok financially and do a good job.
In several of these crap employers I was forced to sit through their anti-union training which I have to was the best proof I ever encountered about how useful a union must be.
It's not just the crap pay, irregular hours and lack of health insurance either. The contempt from customers (I'm sure not you and not all of them) is palpable. Honestly, I'm becoming a bit upset just thinking about it now well over a decade since I last held down a retail counter or slung a burger and fries. I wish all the jobs were as nice as your brother's, but I assure you that the people who work them are unhappy in them for a reason.
I'd rather teach people how to consume alcohol responsibly than use the force of law to ban it outright and preach to you that it's for your own good. Ditto for many other vices. We're better off with a citizenry who's been taught self-control than living in a nanny state.
I'm not calling for outlawing anything. I'm just noticing that it's sad. If you see an inebriated person sleeping on the sidewalk you can think it's sad and not be in favor for his incarceration.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. Everything is either allowed or disallowed. You can allow something but think it's unfortunate people choose to do those things.
That's not how most people are going to read your statement "We lost our ability to apply any kind of moral judgement".
You're looking at the world through the lens of moral failings rather than taking the hard look at what drives people to this behavior. Why do people self-medicate? Why are people behaving as though their lives were hopeless and full of despair? Why are so many people wanting to watch the world burn? There are answers to these questions, and it's not moral failings, at least not in the way one would think.
These aren't mostly acts of desperation. Those were the cam girls in eastern Europe. This has democratized to middle class American girls. I heard a lot of them speak on Whatever dating podcast. They often leave jobs or college after learning they can earn 5 figures per month on of (of course that's the 0.1% but it lures many more that fail). And men are lurer into unrealistic standards and fake online relationships with call center workers. It's just dishonest
So why do they do that? Because society tells them it's liberating. Back to my comment it starts with language. Media reports on it in sanitized terms where you wouldn't know what it even is that's being sold.
People self medicare with weed because it's legal and now there's no taboo on using it even in dangerous situations like when you're driving. And since it's legal it's fine to be high all waking hours of the day. I've known people like this and honestly thinks it leads to psychosis
People gamble because it's now easier than ever. You can even get lottery tickets from an app, all run by the state with full knowledge it overwhelmingly hits poor people. It's really gross. Did we have to expand to mobile apps for lottery?
Its not clear society can actually function if no one is beholden to any kind of moral judgement in any way. For the slow witted, note that beholden here doesn't have to mean 'coerced under penalty of law' it can simply mean shamed.
Who's to judge and what gives them the authority to judge? We've learned priests adhering to ancient fairy tales don't make for very good judges. Have any other ideas?
You judge according to your hierarchy of values. If you value life, you judge a murderer. If you value individual liberty and agency, you judge a rapist. If you value reason & logic, you judge those who dispense with it.
These are poor counterexamples as murder and rape are two things universally agreed upon as being bad by all societies.
Try something contentious - e.g. homosexuality. Who has the authority to judge that?
While morals can be based on analytic philosophy (which I'm personally a fan of) the fact remains that analytic philosophy may still be susceptible to Gödel's incompleteness and moreover, not everybody agrees with this approach.
> Try something contentious - e.g. homosexuality. Who has the authority to judge that?
Again. YOU do. I'm not saying that I would agree with your individual judgement if you believed that homosexuality was "wrong." But YOU have the individual, personal, moral authority to choose your value system and to judge accordingly.
"Judge" is not a dirty word. You judge potential romantic partners when dating. You judge the place you want to work. You judge the types of products that you like to buy. You do all of this according to your personal values and your sense of reason.
Law and politics is a completely separate matter from "judging." Law does not exist to enforce some socially agreed upon set of moral values and I think that's what you're getting hung up. There, you and I likely find a lot of agreement. Since politics pertains to how people organize socially, there are a lot of valid questions as to what should or should not be allowed/prohibited by "law." And people will and often do bring morality into that discussion, but fundamentally it's different from "morality" since I can think that, for example, abusing heroin is immoral but still think it should be completely legal.
> While morals can be based on analytic philosophy (which I'm personally a fan of) the fact remains that analytic philosophy may still be susceptible to Gödel's incompleteness and moreover, not everybody agrees with this approach.
You lost me here. My personal world view is that morality is a requirement of a rational mind. It is a code of values that guides you, the individual, when faced with alternatives. Should I kill the person I don't like or should I try and live in peace with the world? Should I inject heroin tonight or go for a workout? Should I obtain my wealth through fraud and theft or should I try and exchange value for value?
I don't subscribe to "universal" or "collective" morality. People may subscribe to similar codes of values, but they do so individually and independently. That doesn't necessarily mean that morality is "subjective". Values are objective in the sense that you can measure their impact on a person's life. But we are all individuals. We need morality individually because we have reason, and therefore our individual code of morality derives from our application of reason (or lack thereof if you, for example, subscribe to the belief that homosexuality is immoral).
Several of my friends are onlyfans models/photographers and their morals are not only intact, but stronger and more thought out than most peoples... especially those who want to talk down to them about their morale failings.
What do you mean their morals are intact and stronger and more thought out? Is there some moral case for prostitution beyond "I like money and dont mind showing my boobs to people" ?
> We lost our ability to apply any kind of moral judgement
Or maybe "we" did apply a judgement and that judgement was "it's OK because of personal/individual freedom and personal/individual responsibility," or "it's OK because humans shouldn't be bred like animals and should be able to enjoy sex simply for pleasure."
Also sexually graphic art is not the same as prostitution where an actual sex act between a buyer and seller is involved. Falsely equating these is a bad faith argument.
Humans shouldnt breed like animals and today we're much more sexually liberated. All positives. So why practically every measure from happiness surveys, anti depressant prescriptions, self harm, etc all point to a deeply unhappy society?
Or put it another way, if you think everything is morally equal, would you be happy if your sister was on only fans? How about your daughter? Is this really the most someone can offer to society? Pictures of various body parts and a fake relationship with lonely men?
> So why practically every measure from happiness surveys, anti depressant prescriptions, self harm, etc all point to a deeply unhappy society?
Because we're more broke?
> if you think everything is morally equal,
I don't. Deriving that from my previous statement is a non-sequitur.
> would you be happy if your sister was on only fans? How about your daughter?
What if your sister/daughter was forced to have children and be dependent in an abusive relationship? Would you be happy?
> Is this really the most someone can offer to society?
A) I don't accept that you or I can speak for the entirety of society. You may choose to ignore B because of this statement.
B) Society is "owed" what it puts into its people and not much more. Does a society that, for example, doesn't provide childcare, maternal leave, social safety net, deserve one's best?
C) This statement assumes that sex degrades oneself; I don't accept that as true nor support any ideology that does.
I'm saying we should have the concept of moral judgement. Your judgement could apply that of is okay but something else isn't. Or tricking lonely men into thinking they're talking to you is ok, or loot boxes are ok, etc. but we should have those conversations and not pretend just because it's legal (and I believe it should continue to be legal) that something like of is morally equivalent to being an accountant or something
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 96.1 ms ] threadIf subscribers know on the platform the models can be officially faking their conversations, what’s the point of paying to access the models on the platform? Right now it’s just on the model for tricking users like this, and they use these services at their own risk.
OF shipping AI to fake chats would break the trust of paying subscribers and I expect they’d get a lot of backlash over it.
OF could feasibly build a ChatGPT for their customers. Let people chat with literal AI-models and have the models reply with generated pictures. The tech is almost there, OF has the data. It's inevitable and it will end terrible.
OnlyFans could attempt to take this first party. With enough reference content a creator could generate believable AI images of themselves as well, and may eventually find themselves replaced by virtual models.
The film Her (2013) seems rather prescient now.
You can hire escorts avatars to be with you at underground parties.
I did not like Vice because of that kind of things. That "fresh" aspect on first glance but you realize later that those guys are not real journalists.
The normalization of only fans really started with language. Not commenting on whether it's good or bad. First we began calling it sex work and now we use euphemisms like "content creators". We never stop to question whether this is good and just girl boss praise women's "independence" these "creators" got and provide an indifferent shrug to the consumers. We lost our ability to apply any kind of moral judgement (possibly an overcorrection to an overly prude prior generation)
You saw the same thing with acceptance of gambling. It's not gambling, it's fantast football. Even the large players still have references to fantasy in their names. Similarly "drugs" became substances.
If you were to put someone from 20 years ago today he would be shocked as to how libertine our society has become.
Regardless, the article’s case pretty clear if you would read it. Mass job losses and from all the COVID fraud lead to folks getting money however possible.
Throw in years of the eduction system telling people a college degree in “whatever you want” is better than tradeschool and that service jobs are the worst thing to possibly end up in, and here we are. People with shattered compasses and mountains of debt trying to make a living in a world that will lie to your face and force you to like it.
It's no surprise people will seek any alternative and their motivations for doing so are not based on incorrect or fabricated data. Those jobs are truly miserable.
My brother hated college more than life itself. He always looked forward to summers where he’d work service more consistently. Fast-forward, he’s dropped out and now works in food services full time, never been happier.
It's not the work itself that is bad but the conditions of it. I loved cooking, I much prefer it to computer work. But allowances for health and family have to be carved out case-by-case depending on your relationship to your bosses.
This isn't necessary and we could change it. But we haven't, and so these jobs suck for reasons that have nothing to do with the work being done.
Yeah, what we're talking about is not that. Union work is an entirely different beast. I'm talking about people not knowing from one day to the next what their schedule is going to be, informing their supervisor well in advance when they're available to work and still having work scheduled when they're not able to work and then being threatened to be fired if they don't show up. Complete shit show.
Any cursory examination of other cultures would show it doesn’t have to be this way.
This is exactly the kind of prejudice I detest. Who are you to say that providing folks with good food and pleasant hospitality they want to keep coming back to and enjoying is somehow a psychologically draining career? But putting letters on screens that move boxes around and implement TCP/IP protocols is better?
In fact, in my experience the folks with the absolute most pride in their work and general positive sentiment about their role in the world have been restaurant/bar workers. It’s downright common in places like Spain/Italy/Japan, and I see it in some places in America too. But when you’ve preconditioned folks to believe they’re the scum of the earth, that’s what they’ll believe.
As it was I was working 60 hour weeks while my teeth were rotting out of my head and I hadn't had a sunday off to go to church in four years. Regardless of the pride I took in my work I think I'm well positioned to describe it as draining.
Plenty of software jobs might be called draining. For instance the contractors HN loves to pity. But I’m a contractor and I love it, more than my prior FAANG time even.
Still, should we expect public school teachers to deride the idea of being a software engineer because some instances of it are stressful?
Someone who has experience in those careers, not in Spain/Italy/Japan, but in America. And I've never heard on them being unionized in my particular corner of the country. The only place I've heard of it is in Las Vegas, and yes, the people in those jobs seem to do ok financially and do a good job.
In several of these crap employers I was forced to sit through their anti-union training which I have to was the best proof I ever encountered about how useful a union must be.
It's not just the crap pay, irregular hours and lack of health insurance either. The contempt from customers (I'm sure not you and not all of them) is palpable. Honestly, I'm becoming a bit upset just thinking about it now well over a decade since I last held down a retail counter or slung a burger and fries. I wish all the jobs were as nice as your brother's, but I assure you that the people who work them are unhappy in them for a reason.
I'd rather teach people how to consume alcohol responsibly than use the force of law to ban it outright and preach to you that it's for your own good. Ditto for many other vices. We're better off with a citizenry who's been taught self-control than living in a nanny state.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. Everything is either allowed or disallowed. You can allow something but think it's unfortunate people choose to do those things.
You're looking at the world through the lens of moral failings rather than taking the hard look at what drives people to this behavior. Why do people self-medicate? Why are people behaving as though their lives were hopeless and full of despair? Why are so many people wanting to watch the world burn? There are answers to these questions, and it's not moral failings, at least not in the way one would think.
So why do they do that? Because society tells them it's liberating. Back to my comment it starts with language. Media reports on it in sanitized terms where you wouldn't know what it even is that's being sold.
People self medicare with weed because it's legal and now there's no taboo on using it even in dangerous situations like when you're driving. And since it's legal it's fine to be high all waking hours of the day. I've known people like this and honestly thinks it leads to psychosis
People gamble because it's now easier than ever. You can even get lottery tickets from an app, all run by the state with full knowledge it overwhelmingly hits poor people. It's really gross. Did we have to expand to mobile apps for lottery?
You are.
> what gives them the authority to judge?
Reason.
You judge according to your hierarchy of values. If you value life, you judge a murderer. If you value individual liberty and agency, you judge a rapist. If you value reason & logic, you judge those who dispense with it.
Try something contentious - e.g. homosexuality. Who has the authority to judge that?
While morals can be based on analytic philosophy (which I'm personally a fan of) the fact remains that analytic philosophy may still be susceptible to Gödel's incompleteness and moreover, not everybody agrees with this approach.
> Try something contentious - e.g. homosexuality. Who has the authority to judge that?
Again. YOU do. I'm not saying that I would agree with your individual judgement if you believed that homosexuality was "wrong." But YOU have the individual, personal, moral authority to choose your value system and to judge accordingly.
"Judge" is not a dirty word. You judge potential romantic partners when dating. You judge the place you want to work. You judge the types of products that you like to buy. You do all of this according to your personal values and your sense of reason.
Law and politics is a completely separate matter from "judging." Law does not exist to enforce some socially agreed upon set of moral values and I think that's what you're getting hung up. There, you and I likely find a lot of agreement. Since politics pertains to how people organize socially, there are a lot of valid questions as to what should or should not be allowed/prohibited by "law." And people will and often do bring morality into that discussion, but fundamentally it's different from "morality" since I can think that, for example, abusing heroin is immoral but still think it should be completely legal.
> While morals can be based on analytic philosophy (which I'm personally a fan of) the fact remains that analytic philosophy may still be susceptible to Gödel's incompleteness and moreover, not everybody agrees with this approach.
You lost me here. My personal world view is that morality is a requirement of a rational mind. It is a code of values that guides you, the individual, when faced with alternatives. Should I kill the person I don't like or should I try and live in peace with the world? Should I inject heroin tonight or go for a workout? Should I obtain my wealth through fraud and theft or should I try and exchange value for value?
I don't subscribe to "universal" or "collective" morality. People may subscribe to similar codes of values, but they do so individually and independently. That doesn't necessarily mean that morality is "subjective". Values are objective in the sense that you can measure their impact on a person's life. But we are all individuals. We need morality individually because we have reason, and therefore our individual code of morality derives from our application of reason (or lack thereof if you, for example, subscribe to the belief that homosexuality is immoral).
Or maybe "we" did apply a judgement and that judgement was "it's OK because of personal/individual freedom and personal/individual responsibility," or "it's OK because humans shouldn't be bred like animals and should be able to enjoy sex simply for pleasure."
Also sexually graphic art is not the same as prostitution where an actual sex act between a buyer and seller is involved. Falsely equating these is a bad faith argument.
Or put it another way, if you think everything is morally equal, would you be happy if your sister was on only fans? How about your daughter? Is this really the most someone can offer to society? Pictures of various body parts and a fake relationship with lonely men?
https://www.businessinsider.com/antidepressants-usage-quadru...
Because we're more broke?
> if you think everything is morally equal,
I don't. Deriving that from my previous statement is a non-sequitur.
> would you be happy if your sister was on only fans? How about your daughter?
What if your sister/daughter was forced to have children and be dependent in an abusive relationship? Would you be happy?
> Is this really the most someone can offer to society?
A) I don't accept that you or I can speak for the entirety of society. You may choose to ignore B because of this statement.
B) Society is "owed" what it puts into its people and not much more. Does a society that, for example, doesn't provide childcare, maternal leave, social safety net, deserve one's best?
C) This statement assumes that sex degrades oneself; I don't accept that as true nor support any ideology that does.
You say you're not commenting whether it's good or bad but your whole comment reads as you applying moral judgement.
They are scamming people on an online prostitution platform and this is ok?