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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   26869 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 25, 2025

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As a little bit of a palate cleanser for the Annunciation shooting and Scotland All Female Braveheart Remake children-with-knives fracas, I thought we could talk about the financial state of internet whoredom:

Matthew Ball Xwitter Thread on OnlyFans Financials

(Mod question: If linking to a Xwitter thread, are there any standard operating procedures considering some people don't have it?)

Big 3 Takeaways:

  • Subscription revenue is down, but transactional revenue is up 95%. This means that OF "creators" are making their money, now, on actually bartering pseduo-social-sexual relationships with buyers. You can't just blast out nudes and collect rent, you have to engage with the audience. This, to me, seems like an actually defensible moat vis-a-vis AI OF alternatives.
  • Gross creator revenue surpasses the total league payroll of ALL SPORTS LEAGUES EXCEPT THE NFL. Culture War angle: The market value of female sexuality is greater than everything except the most intensively financialized male performance sport.
  • One creator (read: one single internet girl) has certified gross earnings in 2024 of $82 million. This puts her at the same level as the highest paid pro athletes, the managers of the largest hedge funds, banks, and private equity firms. The only people out earning her are founder-shareholders of giant public behemoths (Zuckerburg etc.) and this is through wealth appreciation rather than "straight cash homie!" income.

What actually got me to take the time to write this up was seeing this article on sports betting.

Sports betting, OnlyFans (etc.), and addiction level of marijuana use are, to me, the three horsemen of tolerated social degeneration. That these all disproportionately impact (there, I said it!) young males is all the more revealing -- society is still okay with disposing the disposables and is now more than happy to turn it into a multi-billion dollar industry.

addiction level of marijuana use

If we could 1:1 swap every alcoholic for a marijuana addict, would that be better? I find weed a little more distasteful for some reason but it's hard for me to see it as more harmful than alcohol.

Talk to (literally- no, I am not misusing figuratively)any blue collar boss. Ask if he'd rather an alcoholic or a pot user for a new lower level hire. 100%(I am not exaggerating) will choose the alcoholic.

Talk to any cop- all of them will tell you, marijuana is a bad drug, alcoholics can continue to be functional but potheads? No way.

Pot also has mental health consequences absent from alcohol, particularly for teens.

alcoholics can continue to be functional but potheads? No way.

What?!?!? This is silly

There are very few non-functional alcoholics or potheads.

Also on the scale of shitty behaviors alcoholics have worse outcomes for others and health outcomes for themselves.

I also doubt police opinions on weed smokers is anything more than "I don't care" given the actual drug users they have to interact with. But you're also American so you folk still have ridiculous takes on weed.

I am not blatantly pro weed either, I'm very against teenagers having access to cheap distillate weed pens, etc

While I think OP is overstating the case I find that the majority of people underestimate how bad the weed crisis is, it's not that the majority of people have a bad outcome but culturally it has no immune system, many many people abuse it to an absurd extent and some of the problems (like addiction, hyper-emesis, psychosis) are super under estimated.

The people in society who we are always complaining about are all abusing weed. it might not be the cause of the problems but it is contributory.

I took a visiting friend to a weed store near my house the other day and he stocked up on some products. The store sold weed buds, like straight from the plant, but he bought gummies and a vape pen and a super concentrated weed juice cartridge to slide in.

I took a puff from the vape pen for about 1 whole second and immediately started coughing and then spent the night being fairly dumb and unable to follow conversations and also a bit paranoid over how dumb I was.

I was expecting a very light buzz, not to check out. Stuff is so potent now and it's quite cheap. I'm fairly experienced with drugs but this caught me by surprise.

Incidentally, this weed store near my house is a nuisance because it's like a beacon for strung out people to congregate by in the early morning while they wait for the store to open so they can self-medicate. Which would be fine if they kept to themselves but they shout all morning and wake up the people that live across the street.

I was expecting a very light buzz, not to check out. Stuff is so potent now and it's quite cheap. I'm fairly experienced with drugs but this caught me by surprise.

Just musing: is this a success for capitalism, in the way that the drive for efficiency and efficacy produced aspirin from willow bark? Or a failure, because the new enhanced product isn't actually what the majority of potential customers want, and may taint the old product? Now that the production process for cocaine is known, nobody gets to buy coca leaves to chew for their mild buzz.

nobody gets to buy coca leaves to chew for their mild buzz.

Only tangentially related, but in South America people still chew coca leaves as a home remedy for altitude sickness.

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