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So onlyfans owner has died of cancer.
Which means that in the next 72 hours we will hear a lot of hot takes about onlyfans. Then it will be Trump all over again.
One of the things I noticed when trawling reddit was absolute lack of sympathy from anyone. The guy may have been the most exposed to culture war dude in the world - some hate him because of onlyfans, some hate him because he is jewish and aipac donor.
For onlyfans - I don't think this is boon for humanity. And I think in a way it is just Sports Betting but for women. Mild to severe ruin of your life for the slim chance to make it big. There could be such things as too many creators, too many influences, too many habibis living in Dubai and Bali.
I can never particularly get worked up over OF. With the proliferation of AI image and video gen, there's already a race to the bottom and drastically reduced profits (and costs). There's also a massive skew towards the top few performers raking in most of the money, and the average creator makes a trivial sum.
Not that I'd care much either way, if a woman has an OF, I would consider that a red flag that significantly reduces or eliminates my desire for a longterm relationship, but I respect their right to do it anyway. God knows nobody is likely to pay much for pictures of my bussy, and I'm not sure how much of that is attractiveness or the sheer abundance of free options. I can say I have never, ever, in a quadrillion years been tempted to pay for the stuff, most of the time the free alternatives are fine or leaks are easily available.
Rare case I directly disagree with you, even though I sort of accept:
I can't help but think that they're not really giving 'informed consent' to the activity if they can't really grasp the real odds involved (they overestimate their chances of success, nobody dissuades them of this) and the first order harmful effects, much less the second order ones, that can result.
I would never hold a gun to a woman's head to prevent her from prostituting herself (although, if it were my own daughter, I might take several less drastic but still severe measures), but I think the legality of the choice doesn't really absolve the morality of it.
Its one of a pretty long laundry list of things that I expect many women will enthusiastically hop into if enticed, yet come to regret later and be very angry that someone didn't dissuade them at the time.
Look, I think that a society that only allows people to make good choices is tyrannical, even if it's benevolent tyranny. I am not maximally libertarian, but someone selling pictures of them riding a dildo does not rise to the level of harm where I will tolerate (if not endorse) governmental intervention.
I think you have every right to personally disapprove. I do and would disapprove too, if my daughter contemplated something like that, I'd be immensely disappointed, assuming that society and cultural mores around sex stayed much the same as it currently is today. But if it was entirely normalized? I wouldn't forbid her, even if my own upbringing made me queasy. In a similar vein, I don't think there's anything wrong with working as a janitor, but I don't want my kids to become janitors.
If we apply the standard that people who aren't maximally rational and numerate can't do certain risky things, then we would very quickly find ourselves in a situation where the average person can't drink, gamble or smoke or drive large SUVs. I don't drink (much), gamble (at all) or smoke (barring vapes, which are far less harmful) but I am also opposed to a blanket ban. If they're old enough to vote and not obviously retarded, they can do what they want with their own bodies. I don't see it as my business or that of the state.
If I could sell pictures of my body for monetary gain and without repercussion?
self_made_human_nudes_uncensored_gone_wild.jpg
If hot women lined up to fuck me for money? Brother, I'd do it for free.
I already sell my body in a very real sense, since my mind is attached to it and so are my hands. That is what working for a wage means. I don't see anything qualitatively or morally wrong about sex work in a vacuum, the problem is the lack of vacuum. The kind of woman who is willing to prostitute herself is highly likely to be immensely unsuitable for me. That's just basic priors IMO. But history has no end of examples of respected courtesans or temple priestesses who were gussied up prostitutes. And society was fine with it, at the time.
Besides, I do occasionally watch porn, and I'm not a hypocrite to the degree that I would try to ban pornstars while jerking off to them.
I hope it is clear that I am willing to tolerate, if not endorse, many things that I disagree with or disapprove of. I ask only for the same charity in return. If OF caused giga-AIDs and the imminent extinction of the human race, I'd look the other way. It's not that bad.
There's gotta be a line somewhere though, right?
If your child is reaching towards boiling water on the hot stovetop, you'd probably grab their hand to stop them, even though they might not be too badly burned, its not something you want them to risk, and a bad injury will very likely vastly diminish their quality of life in ways they can't easily predict.
So if you see your freshly 18-year-old daughter reaching towards the high-quality webcam and setting up an Amazon wishlist, especially if you notice a skeevy dude with tattoos and a pornstache whispering in her ear, you might feel some obligation to snatch her metaphorical hand away before she takes a step that is likely to diminish her quality of life in ways she can't easily predict.
SEE ALSO: STUDENT LOAN DEBT
I'm coming around to a social order that's like this. Ties into my musings on 'age of consent' discourse.
I don't think we need to prevent all harms everywhere. But if we're not going to go full Darwinian and let God sort things out, then the guardrails we do set up could be contoured much more wisely than they currently are, ESPECIALLY if we want to try and optimize around humanity's long term survival and (a value I have) expansion into space.
Same.
I just have lived long enough now to see that certain decisions people make can cause irreversible harm, and it would genuinely be a net good to divert them from those decisions long enough for them to actually become productive and self-assured before they actually accept the full risk of the behavior.
And I'm a radical individualist and anti-federalist! I'm not asking for there to be some big central bureau intervening in everyone's individual decisions! That has its own major problems.
Just a system that insures against the fat-tailed harms as best we can.
IF NOTHING ELSE, we need to be internalizing the externalities so the costs fall specifically on those who create the harms or indulge the vices, rather than the rest of us. Cue my other favorite rant.
But that's not the dilemma. Either you believe the state has a serious role to play in harm reduction, or it doesn't. All societies solve this problem differently and these things exist in some balance. A lot of people engage in high risk activity because 1) they don't think it'll happen to them or 2) someone else will foot the cost of their bad decisions. Adults especially are fully aware of consequences when they forecast their bad decisions. When the COVID lockdowns were in effect, I remember getting into a conversation with a guy who didn't want to take the jab. But he of course was perfectly fine with going to the hospital for whatever else he needed to get checked. Now on an individual level, if someone doesn't want to get the vaccine, that's perfectly fine with me. But you do have to die out on the street when you get sick.
Through direct intervention, I think it doesn't.
Through maintaining general social order, perhaps it might.
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