I read that there is pressure on boys to appear nonthreatening for as long as possible. They benefit when the growth spurt from aw cute to damn hot is quick.
> My partner, a journalist, has gotten death threats
Sorry that happened to your partner.
I am surprised that death threats are still around. Is it not actually a crime or is anonymity so good that law enforcement can't trace them or do the recipients or police just not bother following up?
> businesses like PornHub and MasterCard are terrified of brand association with child porn and sex trafficking
With PornHub that makes sense because the type of content they provide is the crux of their businesss.
But does anyone care or know what MasterCard is associated with? I would not even think to blame PG&E for providing electricity, even if the recipient turned out to be doing some super illegal things with that electricity.
So I am not convinced by reputation damage to payment processors. I am more convinced by unacceptably high chargebacks and fraud, but even there it is hard to explain the about face that payment processors have made here. Curious!
Are they powerful though? Or rich even? They might have momentary reach like some celebrities and influencers but does that extend to effecting consumer behavior and would advertisers work with them?
Are you saying that working retail or construction is about the same as doing porn in terms of how society treats you? That does not match my experience by a long shot. They are qualitatively different.
> Religious morality is the only reason a much more safe, comfortable and lucrative option like OnlyFans is banned.
I do not think this is right either. Take away all the religious baggage and still parents will try to keep their daughters from doing porn. Change our neurobiology so we don't act that way and, well you have a different species.
"It takes a village." Extended family care and smaller tight-nit communities were more common than they are now. If you're talking about extra-pair paternity, it's estimated to be only 2% in humans.
> Sex is similar. We are descended from males who mated with as many women as they could. Maybe not all men are like me, but there is a part of my brain that literally wants to mate with every attractive woman I see.
Not quite. We are descended from sexual pairs whose children survived long enough to reproduce. Often, it took at least both mother and father to keep children alive. And human female reproduction selects for males who stick around, primarily by hiding most signs of ovulation, unlike many other mammals with obvious signs of momentary fertility.
But you're not wrong either. Both male and female reproductive strategies want to maximize number and viability of offspring, but the female cost is much higher than the male cost in time and energy, so males can theoretically roam more easily. In the past, mobility and low populations generally limited that ability (though Genghis Khan managed). That's the disconnect between prehistoric and modern humans that porn and dating apps exploit.
> Women, in general, don't really have to try to get solicitations.
Women put in high effort up front and lower effort per solicitation. Men put in lower effort up front and more effort per solicitation. Women's approach scales better, though they also bear the safety risks.
> those that feel the system is tilted against them in general don't understand that it's just them
Absolutely. Imagine if dating apps showed users their rating!
> At Tinder headquarters, I ask them if the data they’re about to show me will scar my ego. The beauty of Tinder, after all, is that rejection has been removed entirely from the process. Now, in an instant, I’d learn exactly how I ranked on Tinder. Then Solli-Nowlan revealed my score. “It’s 946,” he said. What does that mean? “It’s on the upper end of average.” It’s a vague number to process, but I knew I didn’t like hearing it. Something about “upper end of average” didn’t exactly do wonders for my ego. https://www.fastcompany.com/3054871/whats-your-tinder-score-...
On the other hand, showing your rating could be good IF coupled with actionable ways to improve it. Credit Karma but for Tinder anyone?
> Those men result in a worse experience for BOTH women and men
Someone at Match Group must have worked out that having these users boosts the bottom line more than it reduces engagement and retention. Maybe these are the guys paying for Premium Platinum with extra InMails each day. (Oops wrong platform.)
No, that's an aberration perpetrated by software. The same problem has manifested in interviewing. Maybe you're thinking of "nobody owes you sex" instead?
If you greet a person in real life or over a call and they intentionally ignore you, they are being rude. Obviously, if you're being rude first, that's different. They can say "hey" back, or "sorry, I'm not interested" or "kind of busy right now, can we pick this up later?" There are plenty of options.
I understand that the way these apps are set up, responding like this isn't a winning strategy. Despite what the Internet would have you believe, there is a minimum social bar when there's a human on the other end of a comm channel.
> mass media culture has made people scared or less capable of sharing how they are different from the herd
You're right. Everyone is interesting once they open up a little.
The goal though isn't to show how you're different from the herd, it's to show that you're better than the herd, for whichever sub-herd you're signaling membership. That strategy preserves maximum choice.
I would say they're different, because it's possible to remove a lot of the triggers associated with video games, gambling, alcohol, and drugs (by not having them easily accessible, for example) but it's not possible to do that with food.
Consider that the limited resource may be mental, not temporal.
We don't expect everyone to be able to run a 10-minute mile, even though most people can. Likewise we shouldn't expect everyone to be able to hold down a 40+ hour-a-week job and "functional adult" life, even though most people can.
That usage of "lived" is a romanticization. It's the grandparent telling the starry-eyed children about the good old times, glossing over the decades of toil and hardship.
Many video games similarly skip time to focus on heroic moments. You don't role-play the 10,000 hours studying tomes at Hogwarts to become a 1st level wizard; instead you start the adventure at graduation, or at most do a training montage.