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I think that for the journalists in question it's self-evident that this isn't a great path to pursue. It's also self-evident that there's a certain class of people who will be willing to do sex work regardless of the social stigma, and if there's some poor sap willing to pay them thousands of dollars, well, good for them I guess. I'm reminded of a conversation I had over a decade ago with a college girl who worked for me while I was with the Boy Scouts. A couple years later she was still in college and still working summers while I had left but come back for a week to help with training. I was on a canoe trip with just her and who would have been her boss. Someone had told me a couple weeks prior that she was dancing at a local strip club that the more senior staff had visited together a time or two in prior years, and we were discussing trying to go there while she was working just to see how she'd react. It never ended up happening, but on this trip she confirmed that she was working there, though our plan wouldn't have worked because she only worked afternoons.
Anyway, she said that the woman who handled the strippers or whatever told her how she could make even more money, because of course she could. The going rate was less than my salary at the time, but a lot for a broke college student, especially considering that it wasn't a 9 to 5. I told her that if you wanted to be a prostitute you couldn't be too selective about whom you slept with, since she seemed to be under the delusion that her clientele would be the same 30s office workers who stopped by the club after work. I asked her if she'd be willing to sleep with the big boss at the time, who looked like a younger, thinner version of Dr. Phil, and she was appalled at the idea. She told me that she was assured that they wouldn't pressure her into anything she was uncomfortable with, etc., etc., but I tried to explain to her that while that may be true, the ones who were overly selective weren't the ones who made the kind of money she was quoting. I have no idea who she ended up sleeping with or how much money she actually made, just that she was eventually canned from the Boy Scouts after she requested time off to work her "other job" and what must have been the worst kept secret was made abundantly clear to management. Needless to say, I didn't expect to spend that day trying to talk someone out of becoming a prostitute.
That being said, I think that the same thing applies to all of these "professions" that promise a lot of money for what looks like not a lot of work, or at least the kind of work one thinks they'd find fun. A friend on mine who teaches high school in a rural area says half the kids think they have a future as influencers and YouTubers. I'd be surprised if a single student she teaches over the course of her career is able to do it for a living, even for a brief period. Most of the people who blew up on YouTube started making videos for their own personal edification without any intention of quitting their day jobs.
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