OnlyFans models are using AI impersonators to keep up with their DMs(wired.com)
wired.com
OnlyFans models are using AI impersonators to keep up with their DMs
https://www.wired.com/story/onlyfans-models-are-using-ai-impersonators-to-keep-up-with-their-dms/
636 comments
> what is the actual good-faith rationale for using this feature?
There is none, because the whole thing was never good faith. It's always been about tricking people into having a real interaction, to make it easier to exploit them for ad clicks or to sell them junk. That's the whole YouTube content creator business, and it's what it always has been.
There is none, because the whole thing was never good faith. It's always been about tricking people into having a real interaction, to make it easier to exploit them for ad clicks or to sell them junk. That's the whole YouTube content creator business, and it's what it always has been.
The good faith is "We here at youtube adamantly REFUSE to spend any actual manpower on things that require it, and you know what, so should you! Join us. Thrive. Beep Boop."
Of course they only do it because it's inevitable, and they don't want others doing it before them.
Of course they only do it because it's inevitable, and they don't want others doing it before them.
It's only inevitable if people agree that this is the case.
Brand management people, who normally handled this, cost money. Self-service brand management with LLMs costs less money. Building this in as first-party product commoditizes this, costing the vlogger even less, while YouTube gets to keep them in-house and focused on the platform, instead of external services that may be cross-platform.
Yes, so if we assume that cost saving is the only metric that is meaningful and that there should be no legislation or norms saying otherwise, then indeed it follows as a consequence.
But that does not make it "inevitable".
But that does not make it "inevitable".
Cost saving is basically what drives the market, and thus shapes our entire reality. It's not some side goal of some people, that you could suppress or eliminate - it's the thing itself.
As such, I'm not sure where you'd like to draw the line. There's no obvious, defensible place to do it, not unless you're willing to go back up, expand the scope and fight the entire advertising industry on principle - in which case, I'll agree, because I believe that's where the problem originates and where it needs to be solved.
As such, I'm not sure where you'd like to draw the line. There's no obvious, defensible place to do it, not unless you're willing to go back up, expand the scope and fight the entire advertising industry on principle - in which case, I'll agree, because I believe that's where the problem originates and where it needs to be solved.
Why were you born? Because people were trying to save costs?
It is inevitable.
Market forces demand it, and people are beholden to the market so long as they exist within its sphere.
Market forces demand it, and people are beholden to the market so long as they exist within its sphere.
It is not inevitable, almost nothing is... This just bothers me because so many people in tech talk about things as being "inevitable" when it's just a lazy resignation to the current zeitgeist.
There are a plethora of other forces at work beyond "the market".
Yes, if no one imagines anything different the future will turn out as we expect. But with even small changes to legislation, norms and culture thing can turn out completely different. It is only inevitable if we resign ourselves to the status quo.
There are a plethora of other forces at work beyond "the market".
Yes, if no one imagines anything different the future will turn out as we expect. But with even small changes to legislation, norms and culture thing can turn out completely different. It is only inevitable if we resign ourselves to the status quo.
> But with even small changes to legislation, norms and culture thing can turn out completely different.
Those are the qualities that define "the market". What are the other forces you speak of?
Markets can change. They have many times before. But, and call me unimaginative if you will, I struggle to see why anyone would want to pay substantially more to ensure that comments on YouTube are written by a real, live human, let alone enough people to sustain the service. It is not like you are face-to-face at the bar. It is a blob of text that has always been disassociated from what human involvement there may have been behind the scenes.
Inevitable in the strictest literal sense may be too much, but the chances of the market changing here seem infinitesimally small to the point that "inevitable" is close enough.
Those are the qualities that define "the market". What are the other forces you speak of?
Markets can change. They have many times before. But, and call me unimaginative if you will, I struggle to see why anyone would want to pay substantially more to ensure that comments on YouTube are written by a real, live human, let alone enough people to sustain the service. It is not like you are face-to-face at the bar. It is a blob of text that has always been disassociated from what human involvement there may have been behind the scenes.
Inevitable in the strictest literal sense may be too much, but the chances of the market changing here seem infinitesimally small to the point that "inevitable" is close enough.
You are uninmaginative.
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I see this attitude over and over again, particularly where it comes to regulating things like AI and bans on social media. Tech would rather do nothing if "it's complicated", or had any downside to anyone while ignoring the rampant downsides impacting everyone right now. Sometimes it comes across as thoughtful policy making, but more and more I see it as a crutch for intellectual laziness and in some cases dishonesty.
In these cases for it to be inevitable there doesn't need to be agreement. Someone does it and if enough clueless people use it, now we're stuck with it. Why we can't have nice things.
Not just Youtube. Most of the time unintentionally but, any personified information broker is manipulative in its nature. Watching vlogs or streamers, listening podcasts, reading post of social media accounts one follows. There is face between you and the information and that face becomes familiar to you. Face that builds trust.
It used to be that TV or newspapers or any other media was 'talking' to the audience (plural) now it talks to 'you' (singular).
It used to be that TV or newspapers or any other media was 'talking' to the audience (plural) now it talks to 'you' (singular).
> Most of the time unintentionally but, any personified information broker is manipulative in its nature.
I'm past calling this unintentional. It's not. If it's some random account barely anyone has heard of, posting interesting stuff every now and then, then sure, that's unintentional - and also mostly harmless. However, if the creator is somewhat known[0], posts regularly, and their content is structured and polished, and they start uttering phrases like "like and subscribe" or "ring the bell"[1], or Patreon is mentioned - then you're looking at entirely intentional manipulation.
To a degree, it's unavoidable - it's the nature of the medium and the economy at large. Making quality videos is pretty much a full-time job, so even the creators with purest of hearts will be forced to include stuff that puts their videos on SponsorBlock lists. But then there's a difference between those who want you to subscribe to their Patreon and maybe buy some stickers so they can afford treating their hobby as a job, and those whose content is just a vector for feeding you first-party and third-party (sponsor) ads. Most well-known vloggers are, unfortunately, the latter. Also anyone who's called or calls themselves an influencer is - it's literally the definition of that word.
--
[0] - Perhaps you could say they're "effectively a brand" in their niche - but then, that phrase alone should tell you something.
[1] - Unless it's preceded by "climb the steps" - then you're dealing with a whole other barrel of monkeys.
I'm past calling this unintentional. It's not. If it's some random account barely anyone has heard of, posting interesting stuff every now and then, then sure, that's unintentional - and also mostly harmless. However, if the creator is somewhat known[0], posts regularly, and their content is structured and polished, and they start uttering phrases like "like and subscribe" or "ring the bell"[1], or Patreon is mentioned - then you're looking at entirely intentional manipulation.
To a degree, it's unavoidable - it's the nature of the medium and the economy at large. Making quality videos is pretty much a full-time job, so even the creators with purest of hearts will be forced to include stuff that puts their videos on SponsorBlock lists. But then there's a difference between those who want you to subscribe to their Patreon and maybe buy some stickers so they can afford treating their hobby as a job, and those whose content is just a vector for feeding you first-party and third-party (sponsor) ads. Most well-known vloggers are, unfortunately, the latter. Also anyone who's called or calls themselves an influencer is - it's literally the definition of that word.
--
[0] - Perhaps you could say they're "effectively a brand" in their niche - but then, that phrase alone should tell you something.
[1] - Unless it's preceded by "climb the steps" - then you're dealing with a whole other barrel of monkeys.
> even the creators with purest of hearts will be forced to include stuff that puts their videos on SponsorBlock lists
I don't agree with this at all. No one is forced into making video cration their only job. Yes, making videos on weekends means less "output" and as a result a smaller following. But so what? It's still a choice. And IMO almost always a bad one if you care about quality - pretty much no person can keep up creative quality for long when working on a schedule and that's before you even get to intentionally degrading the quality for the sake of monetization.
Every person at the very least has the choice of just creating and sharing things rather than trying to build a business. Of course calling them "creators" already shifts the discussion into the worldview that shapes the current internet.
If "Youtuber" isn't a profitable job without engaging in slimy practices then maybe it shouldn't be a job at all. In fact, trying to make any human activity into a profitable business is one of the big if not the main driving forces behind the enshittification of the internet as well as many things outside it. And it's always this same justification - that engaging in shitty behavior is required to compete.
Personally I don't mind you mentioning your Patreon [0] but "like and subscribe" guarantees a dislike from me and I sure as hell am not going to subscribe [1]. Sponsored sections will get me to immediately close the video and make a mental note to ignore videos from that person in the future. Yes, I could use SponsorBlock but if someone is willing to sell themselves in that way I don't trust them or their videos to not be also compromised in other less obvious ways. It's important to remember that Youtube and similar media is completely optional entertainment and you don't need to engage in any of it.
[0] Please consider alternatives though, Patreon itself is a pretty shit website what I only use begrudgingly.
[1] I don't use youtube subscriptions at all, only RSS subscriptions for the very few channels I want to follow - most things are not important enough to get regular releases from and I'm fine with only seeing videos that are good enough for others to share them with me.
I don't agree with this at all. No one is forced into making video cration their only job. Yes, making videos on weekends means less "output" and as a result a smaller following. But so what? It's still a choice. And IMO almost always a bad one if you care about quality - pretty much no person can keep up creative quality for long when working on a schedule and that's before you even get to intentionally degrading the quality for the sake of monetization.
Every person at the very least has the choice of just creating and sharing things rather than trying to build a business. Of course calling them "creators" already shifts the discussion into the worldview that shapes the current internet.
If "Youtuber" isn't a profitable job without engaging in slimy practices then maybe it shouldn't be a job at all. In fact, trying to make any human activity into a profitable business is one of the big if not the main driving forces behind the enshittification of the internet as well as many things outside it. And it's always this same justification - that engaging in shitty behavior is required to compete.
Personally I don't mind you mentioning your Patreon [0] but "like and subscribe" guarantees a dislike from me and I sure as hell am not going to subscribe [1]. Sponsored sections will get me to immediately close the video and make a mental note to ignore videos from that person in the future. Yes, I could use SponsorBlock but if someone is willing to sell themselves in that way I don't trust them or their videos to not be also compromised in other less obvious ways. It's important to remember that Youtube and similar media is completely optional entertainment and you don't need to engage in any of it.
[0] Please consider alternatives though, Patreon itself is a pretty shit website what I only use begrudgingly.
[1] I don't use youtube subscriptions at all, only RSS subscriptions for the very few channels I want to follow - most things are not important enough to get regular releases from and I'm fine with only seeing videos that are good enough for others to share them with me.
I don't think listening to a podcast is really substantially different to tuning into Walter Cronkite. Both are deliberately recognisable human faces (or voices) for the presentation of the media to you.
Maybe it gets a bit weird when you start messaging your favourite Youtuber and they reply fast enough that you feel like it's a personal conversation rather than a professional correspondence. Sending a letter to Cronkite would have been far less immediate.
Treating media as anything other then virtually entirely read-only has always been what nutters do - they'd be the only ones writing any significant numbers letters to the person if the TV, and the same is probably true of modern media.
Maybe it gets a bit weird when you start messaging your favourite Youtuber and they reply fast enough that you feel like it's a personal conversation rather than a professional correspondence. Sending a letter to Cronkite would have been far less immediate.
Treating media as anything other then virtually entirely read-only has always been what nutters do - they'd be the only ones writing any significant numbers letters to the person if the TV, and the same is probably true of modern media.
These ecelebs are just like prostitutes. You're not really having a relationship.
People can have relationships with pet rocks and pigeons, of course they can have one with an online sex worker.
Pet rock’s survival and well being isn’t dependent on extorting money from lonely, desperate simps.
No, but the survival of the "entrepreneurs" who convince people they need those rocks, very much is.
In the OF/pet rock/pidgeon trio, the pidgeon is actually the odd one out; the other two are all about making money by exploiting people's need for socializing.
Alas, "e-celebs" are a step worse than "e-prostitutes". Both exploit parasocial relationships to trap customers, but in the end, OF performers provide customers actual value in exchange for money, while vloggers and influencers also try to sell you all kinds of random shit - their actual business is advertising.
(It's similar to analog world prostitutes vs. telemarketers; the former engage in voluntary exchange of value for money, the latter just try to scam you. That the society scorns the former while accepting the latter is some perverse inversion of morality, if you think about it. One could argue that the value prostitutes provide is poison - but then so is what telemarketers sell, too, and prostitutes don't cold-call you to trick you into buying.)
In the OF/pet rock/pidgeon trio, the pidgeon is actually the odd one out; the other two are all about making money by exploiting people's need for socializing.
Alas, "e-celebs" are a step worse than "e-prostitutes". Both exploit parasocial relationships to trap customers, but in the end, OF performers provide customers actual value in exchange for money, while vloggers and influencers also try to sell you all kinds of random shit - their actual business is advertising.
(It's similar to analog world prostitutes vs. telemarketers; the former engage in voluntary exchange of value for money, the latter just try to scam you. That the society scorns the former while accepting the latter is some perverse inversion of morality, if you think about it. One could argue that the value prostitutes provide is poison - but then so is what telemarketers sell, too, and prostitutes don't cold-call you to trick you into buying.)
It's not an exclusive relationship. It is a highly transactional ephemeral one.
The basic reproductive qualities of females favor LTR since it takes 9 months at the very least to pop out a kid, during which time mating with other males provides no additional children for them.
It will be an interesting world if these short transactional relationships are basically available anywhere like chips out of a vending machine. I suspect most of the reason for laws against prostitution are a mixture of protectionism for prostitution rings (they need the illegality / high risk to lock in heavy profits) and disproportionately appeals towards the female reproductive strategy that is potentially at a disadvantage with guiltless "normal" sanctioned prostitution on the table at every computer and street corner.
The basic reproductive qualities of females favor LTR since it takes 9 months at the very least to pop out a kid, during which time mating with other males provides no additional children for them.
It will be an interesting world if these short transactional relationships are basically available anywhere like chips out of a vending machine. I suspect most of the reason for laws against prostitution are a mixture of protectionism for prostitution rings (they need the illegality / high risk to lock in heavy profits) and disproportionately appeals towards the female reproductive strategy that is potentially at a disadvantage with guiltless "normal" sanctioned prostitution on the table at every computer and street corner.
It's a logical evolution of how emotional labor is used in the business world. We pay service and hospitality workers not only to literally do what their job description says but also to be nice to people, keep them engaged and create parasocial (or at least one-sided) relationships that make customers come back and spend more money. Live streamers have long deployed similar strategies with the only difference being they profit off of it themselves rather than being paid through an employer (although many employee moderators, editors and even people to manage their social media accounts so they at best only have to engage with a filtered subset of messages directly if at all).
"The whole thing" in this case isn't just AI. It's "brands".
"The whole thing" in this case isn't just AI. It's "brands".
> That's the whole YouTube content creator business, and it's what it always has been.
I mean, no? That’s the most cynical possible read.
A lot of successful YouTube channels don’t even interact significantly in the comments. For example, in Doug DeMuro’s latest video, I don’t see any comments from his channel in the comments.
You’re also claiming that the YouTube content business is all about exploitation, tricking people into selling them junk. But that’s also a cynical read: lots of creators don’t go down that route.
Using Doug DeMuro as another example, the only recent advertisements he has are for his own car auction site and for Turo, which are both relevant and useful services to automotive enthusiasts.
Some other YouTubers just don’t advertise at all and mostly rely on Patreon, like Technology Connections.
I mean, no? That’s the most cynical possible read.
A lot of successful YouTube channels don’t even interact significantly in the comments. For example, in Doug DeMuro’s latest video, I don’t see any comments from his channel in the comments.
You’re also claiming that the YouTube content business is all about exploitation, tricking people into selling them junk. But that’s also a cynical read: lots of creators don’t go down that route.
Using Doug DeMuro as another example, the only recent advertisements he has are for his own car auction site and for Turo, which are both relevant and useful services to automotive enthusiasts.
Some other YouTubers just don’t advertise at all and mostly rely on Patreon, like Technology Connections.
Screens with ads intermixed is only optimized towards attention farming long term.
The renewed interest in long firm on YouTube might be something though.
A post digital addiction Internet is possible - I wonder how many early users of the internet now silence their notifications, maybe even run their screens in greyscale.
The renewed interest in long firm on YouTube might be something though.
A post digital addiction Internet is possible - I wonder how many early users of the internet now silence their notifications, maybe even run their screens in greyscale.
I'm an "early" user of the Internet (early to mid 90s, I missed out on BBS's and Usenix but had an internet-connected PC in my home before most people I went to school with did).
And yeah I turn off notifications always on everything. Even my smart phone is usually in Do Not Disturb.
I don't know how much of my online experience shaped this, though. I've got an asperger personality (worded as such because I've not been diagnosed) and unexpected interruptions of any kind drive me insane.
Then there are notifications like they have on LinkedIn and now Facebook where they're more like ads than they are genuine notifications. Things such as "so and so shared a post you might be interested in." These are not designed to notify of you something you wanted to be alerted to, they exist to "drive engagement." Because I don't even like notifications when it's something I care about, these really trigger me to the point where I don't even want to use the "platform" anymore. It's so bad on LinkedIn that I just stopped reading the notifications all together since if you try and turn off all notifcations on LinkedIn .. good luck. You'll spend hours navigating through complex multi-page forms clicking on toggles and then they'll just add some new notification and auto-enable it for you. There's no global "turn of all notifications for all devices" option that I've been able to find.
I don't comment on YouTube videos as much as I used to, because people started comparing the comments sections they are shown for a given video to what their friends and spouses are shown and realized that the comments section is also now algorithmically curated for you based on your viewing and commenting habits. This leads into some serious "dead Internet theory" territory, especially related to this article about OF creators using AI to reply to DMs. Because if two people can see different subsets of comments for the same video, and if YouTube has AI reply features for creators ... how can I trust that the comments I'm reading and replying to are actual humans? Even if they are humans, I don't want to interact with people that just agree with me.
And yeah I turn off notifications always on everything. Even my smart phone is usually in Do Not Disturb.
I don't know how much of my online experience shaped this, though. I've got an asperger personality (worded as such because I've not been diagnosed) and unexpected interruptions of any kind drive me insane.
Then there are notifications like they have on LinkedIn and now Facebook where they're more like ads than they are genuine notifications. Things such as "so and so shared a post you might be interested in." These are not designed to notify of you something you wanted to be alerted to, they exist to "drive engagement." Because I don't even like notifications when it's something I care about, these really trigger me to the point where I don't even want to use the "platform" anymore. It's so bad on LinkedIn that I just stopped reading the notifications all together since if you try and turn off all notifcations on LinkedIn .. good luck. You'll spend hours navigating through complex multi-page forms clicking on toggles and then they'll just add some new notification and auto-enable it for you. There's no global "turn of all notifications for all devices" option that I've been able to find.
I don't comment on YouTube videos as much as I used to, because people started comparing the comments sections they are shown for a given video to what their friends and spouses are shown and realized that the comments section is also now algorithmically curated for you based on your viewing and commenting habits. This leads into some serious "dead Internet theory" territory, especially related to this article about OF creators using AI to reply to DMs. Because if two people can see different subsets of comments for the same video, and if YouTube has AI reply features for creators ... how can I trust that the comments I'm reading and replying to are actual humans? Even if they are humans, I don't want to interact with people that just agree with me.
No or extremely limited notifications are bliss.
My devices should work for me, not the other way around.
My devices should work for me, not the other way around.
This is a bunch of hand-wringing. If the AI reply is what I would have said anyways; awesome! Finding thumbnails is hard, but if AI comes up with a good one? Fantastic!
None of your interactions except the ones with your friends and family are authentic, and they never were. It's a bit silly to get annoyed over OnlyFans models or some mega YouTube celebrity using AI because you're losing out on "authentic human interaction" - you only mattered to them insofar as you provided them with money to begin with.
None of your interactions except the ones with your friends and family are authentic, and they never were. It's a bit silly to get annoyed over OnlyFans models or some mega YouTube celebrity using AI because you're losing out on "authentic human interaction" - you only mattered to them insofar as you provided them with money to begin with.
I think you miss the part where they fake it being real.
Just like you have a formal paper with CEO signature printed out - you know that guy is not going to sign million of copies.
But I feel offended that they think badly printed signature with pixelation will fool me or will make it somewhat better.
I don’t miss interaction with CEO but I know someone put in effort to fool me.
From all Christmas bonuses and gifts over the years from companies I remember only one where manager of 100 or so people in business unit who actually wrote 100 cards with name for each of us.
Just like you have a formal paper with CEO signature printed out - you know that guy is not going to sign million of copies.
But I feel offended that they think badly printed signature with pixelation will fool me or will make it somewhat better.
I don’t miss interaction with CEO but I know someone put in effort to fool me.
From all Christmas bonuses and gifts over the years from companies I remember only one where manager of 100 or so people in business unit who actually wrote 100 cards with name for each of us.
Even the US presidents don't even sign all laws by hand. They use machines since a long time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopen
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopen
Politicians should not only be required to sign the laws they back by hand but to fully recite them without error - anything less means the law isn't important enough to make the books.
> Just like you have a formal paper with CEO signature printed out - you know that guy is not going to sign million of copies.
No, but I assume it would still be considered a valid signature in case of some legal dispute. The CEO may not have signed the document by hand (nor even read it), but the company placing the likeness of CEO's signature in the document signals that the CEO accepts responsibility for it. The CEO is still "in the loop" anyway, they had to personally approve the use of their signature like this.
Which is to say, I consider such "fake signatures" perfectly OK. I just don't consider them as a sign of care or personal interest.
Now, marketing communication that does it, is another story. It's bullshit all the way through, signature included.
> I remember only one where manager of 100 or so people in business unit who actually wrote 100 cards with name for each of us.
Which reminds me - even actually hand-written letters can be fake. Have you ever found a hand-written letter inviting you to a Bible study?
I grew up in a religion that's big on preaching; mostly door-to-door, but when that's for some reason impossible (e.g. time, health constraints), people would write letters instead. Some people were real "high performers" here, in the sense they would sit down over couple evenings and hand-write couple dozen letters, to be distributed around some neighborhood instead of going through it personally. I used to be impressed by dedication, but it eventually dawned on me - it's just exploiting the faux personal connection. They're selling something (which they may feel is genuinely worth it), and hand-written letters is just a sales tactic. They're hoping you pick it up and think about how much effort someone put into a personal letter to you. But the effort is not genuine; it's a fake signal. In reality, the author probably had a good time spending an evening with friends, writing a letter after letter after letter.
So while I 100% believe the intentions of that manager of yours were pure and his heart was in the right place, I post this as a warning for the general case: high effort doesn't automatically imply it's genuine and honest. If it feels like sales, it probably is.
Related: the secret to pulling off a magic trick is to put much, much more effort into preparing the trick than a reasonable person would expect. Same applies to sales.
No, but I assume it would still be considered a valid signature in case of some legal dispute. The CEO may not have signed the document by hand (nor even read it), but the company placing the likeness of CEO's signature in the document signals that the CEO accepts responsibility for it. The CEO is still "in the loop" anyway, they had to personally approve the use of their signature like this.
Which is to say, I consider such "fake signatures" perfectly OK. I just don't consider them as a sign of care or personal interest.
Now, marketing communication that does it, is another story. It's bullshit all the way through, signature included.
> I remember only one where manager of 100 or so people in business unit who actually wrote 100 cards with name for each of us.
Which reminds me - even actually hand-written letters can be fake. Have you ever found a hand-written letter inviting you to a Bible study?
I grew up in a religion that's big on preaching; mostly door-to-door, but when that's for some reason impossible (e.g. time, health constraints), people would write letters instead. Some people were real "high performers" here, in the sense they would sit down over couple evenings and hand-write couple dozen letters, to be distributed around some neighborhood instead of going through it personally. I used to be impressed by dedication, but it eventually dawned on me - it's just exploiting the faux personal connection. They're selling something (which they may feel is genuinely worth it), and hand-written letters is just a sales tactic. They're hoping you pick it up and think about how much effort someone put into a personal letter to you. But the effort is not genuine; it's a fake signal. In reality, the author probably had a good time spending an evening with friends, writing a letter after letter after letter.
So while I 100% believe the intentions of that manager of yours were pure and his heart was in the right place, I post this as a warning for the general case: high effort doesn't automatically imply it's genuine and honest. If it feels like sales, it probably is.
Related: the secret to pulling off a magic trick is to put much, much more effort into preparing the trick than a reasonable person would expect. Same applies to sales.
> Just like you have a formal paper with CEO signature printed out - you know that guy is not going to sign million of copies.
Then don't. It is pathetic and disingenuous to pretend to be personal when you are not. Especially those who spend extra on a single squiggle of blue printer ink.
Then don't. It is pathetic and disingenuous to pretend to be personal when you are not. Especially those who spend extra on a single squiggle of blue printer ink.
This is a silly take, I think.
The point is that people pay to have a genuine interaction. If everything is fake, why interact at all? Imagine you were typing into the void and no one saw what you said. Would you continue doing it if you knew? How about on this forum?
The point is that people pay to have a genuine interaction. If everything is fake, why interact at all? Imagine you were typing into the void and no one saw what you said. Would you continue doing it if you knew? How about on this forum?
I actually been in this exact scenario before. I and another friend were avidly into Hearthstone, and another third person was playing with an Hearthstone Cheat bot in an University study room. We asked to watch for a while.
After a while, some dread was setting in. We started asking questions:
* Why did it hover that card?
"To pretend it's human. The card has less than 10% playrate on that class"
* Did it... just spam the Well Met meme while going face?
"Of course. Because people do it"
* Wait it ropes the opponents?
"Yes. You can set it to rope back"
We kept seeing more and more behaviors. It would squelch noisy opponents. It would even tap the ground pretending to be a bored person. And then it hit me: 95% of Hearthstone players are bots. Every single human behavior that you could perhaps use to identify 'people', it faked.
I quit Hearthstone within that week.
After a while, some dread was setting in. We started asking questions:
* Why did it hover that card?
"To pretend it's human. The card has less than 10% playrate on that class"
* Did it... just spam the Well Met meme while going face?
"Of course. Because people do it"
* Wait it ropes the opponents?
"Yes. You can set it to rope back"
We kept seeing more and more behaviors. It would squelch noisy opponents. It would even tap the ground pretending to be a bored person. And then it hit me: 95% of Hearthstone players are bots. Every single human behavior that you could perhaps use to identify 'people', it faked.
I quit Hearthstone within that week.
People looking for dates on Tinder.
Yes more than 70% of Tinder profiles are already probably bots at this time. The CEO said they had an AI strategy.
People will be more and more lonely.
Yes more than 70% of Tinder profiles are already probably bots at this time. The CEO said they had an AI strategy.
People will be more and more lonely.
It's hard for me to understand how Tinder is not dead yet. One big pile of pop-up ads (even when you pay you get upsell popups) and some Chinese scammer bots.
It's even more of a shame that OkCupid is dead.
They had such a nice method, which was actually introducing good people to me.
It's highly dependent on location. I use it while traveling, and yes in a few countries it's useless, but I've met 300-400 people over the last 7 years. It's added more value to my life than any other single app (even though I've never paid a dime for it).
For the record, I'm male, mid 30's, and average looking.
For the record, I'm male, mid 30's, and average looking.
An average of 1 person per week over a period of 7 years? Impressive. Is it fair to assume you're using a relatively shallow definition of "value" here, or was there something else you had in mind?
> People will be more and more lonely.
Or people might be less lonely. There will come a point where the online experience becomes worthless and people will place greater importance on face-to-face interaction. That's how it was 20 years ago.
Or people might be less lonely. There will come a point where the online experience becomes worthless and people will place greater importance on face-to-face interaction. That's how it was 20 years ago.
Don’t worry, robots are coming for that too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrogates
Will be very hard to tell the difference until you are intimate
Will be very hard to tell the difference until you are intimate
Why surrogates wouldn't be able to function as teledildonic proxies for 'intimacy'?
You'd be able to tell the difference.
Come on, how would you know the difference, if you'd grown up without ever have known the real thing?
To extrapolate the theme of that movie just a little bit further?
To extrapolate the theme of that movie just a little bit further?
Why would you quit hearthstone over the presence of bots?
It's not like you have meaningful interactions with the other players anyway (beyond the occasional post-game friend request which has a 50/50 chance to be abusive).
(Honest question, I'm not arguing you're wrong)
It's not like you have meaningful interactions with the other players anyway (beyond the occasional post-game friend request which has a 50/50 chance to be abusive).
(Honest question, I'm not arguing you're wrong)
If you are just playing against bots, the challenge is arbitrary. What would top 10% actually mean? 5000 ELO? Albeit, the ranks are slightly arbitrary already as the matchmaking algorithm significantly influences your competitive experience. But you know when you get higher rank, you have proven you are better than increasing amounts of real players. If every person was actually playing a single player variant of the game (matched against bots), the reward for climbing the ranked ladder is significantly diminished.
In multiplayer games much of the fun in winning is someone else losing.
> I quit Hearthstone within that week.
So it had positive effect in the end. I wish I had something like this that would stop me use any social media.
So it had positive effect in the end. I wish I had something like this that would stop me use any social media.
> I wish I had something like this that would stop me use any social media.
We must be looking at different social medias as this is pretty much all I see.
We must be looking at different social medias as this is pretty much all I see.
> Every single human behavior that you could perhaps use to identify 'people', it faked.
Except, you know, actually playing the game well. The bots all play aggro decks and get lower than average winrates.
> I quit Hearthstone within that week.
Why? Their presence makes climbing the ladder easier, so you get more rewards.
Except, you know, actually playing the game well. The bots all play aggro decks and get lower than average winrates.
> I quit Hearthstone within that week.
Why? Their presence makes climbing the ladder easier, so you get more rewards.
> 95% of Hearthstone players are bots
Pure cope, but whatever helps you sleep better at night.
Pure cope, but whatever helps you sleep better at night.
Honestly, if more people wondered about who'll read what they write online, and whether it matters that those folks read it, the Internet would probably be a better place.
I really don't care about youtubers using tools like this. If it works for them and saves them time: great! If it reduces their level of authenticity: that'll lead to a correction of their popularity.
For OnlyFans... meuh. To me, the idea of interaction there reminds me strongly of the "adult" phone lines of old. You want someone to tease you and say naughty things to you? Well, you can get that for 99 cents/minute.
If you want to buy the attention of someone specific, when they can let someone/something else do that for cents on the dollar... don't be surprised to be tricked.
I really don't care about youtubers using tools like this. If it works for them and saves them time: great! If it reduces their level of authenticity: that'll lead to a correction of their popularity.
For OnlyFans... meuh. To me, the idea of interaction there reminds me strongly of the "adult" phone lines of old. You want someone to tease you and say naughty things to you? Well, you can get that for 99 cents/minute.
If you want to buy the attention of someone specific, when they can let someone/something else do that for cents on the dollar... don't be surprised to be tricked.
I think that is the point of this article.
On only fans people are paying extra for individual specific attention.
But AI can be good enough to fool people that are specifically looking for that experience.
Sure, free market view, if the automated chat isn't good enough then it will lead to people leaving. The point is, it is good enough.
Don't think anybody is complaining that people on only fans are being duped, maybe more concerning that if you can have realistic video and chat, and people are being fooled, then there is some wider impacts on society. Large chunks of people could get fooled by any number of relationships that aren't real.
On only fans people are paying extra for individual specific attention.
But AI can be good enough to fool people that are specifically looking for that experience.
Sure, free market view, if the automated chat isn't good enough then it will lead to people leaving. The point is, it is good enough.
Don't think anybody is complaining that people on only fans are being duped, maybe more concerning that if you can have realistic video and chat, and people are being fooled, then there is some wider impacts on society. Large chunks of people could get fooled by any number of relationships that aren't real.
> pay to have a genuine interaction
If you're paying for it, how genuine is it really?
If you're paying for it, how genuine is it really?
Depends on the price.
I wonder if signed content will ultimately be needed?
If I use AI to generate the text of a happy birthday greeting to grandma, if I review and approve of the message, is it genuine?
Humans have been doing this long before AI. It's called Hallmark.
(and no, it's not genuine)
(and no, it's not genuine)
Hallmark cards tend to leave a lot of blank space to write. It’s absolutely genuine when you grab a pen and start writing. Bonus points if the Hallmark message is relevant to the person receiving it and maybe something you can riff on in the handwritten part. Funny cards are also great!
So I would say the golden rule continues to apply: the more effort is visible, the more genuine it is.
So I would say the golden rule continues to apply: the more effort is visible, the more genuine it is.
You could even say that Hallmark is giving you a prompt.
If you paid someone to do it for you, is it genuine? Ghostwriting birthday cards is…quite grim, whether that’s an AI or not.
To me, yes. Key point being, "if I review and approve of the message" - if you actually do this, then yes.
Being genuine is all about how much actual care and heart you pour into thing. That's really something only you can truly know. Using generative AI doesn't automatically make it not genuine, much like using a grammar checker or a thesaurus doesn't.
Conversely, not using AI tools doesn't suddenly make YouTube and OnlyFan creators' comments genuine. They never were. There is no care and heart in there, only salesmanship, and it's most likely outsourced to a brand management company anyway.
Being genuine is all about how much actual care and heart you pour into thing. That's really something only you can truly know. Using generative AI doesn't automatically make it not genuine, much like using a grammar checker or a thesaurus doesn't.
Conversely, not using AI tools doesn't suddenly make YouTube and OnlyFan creators' comments genuine. They never were. There is no care and heart in there, only salesmanship, and it's most likely outsourced to a brand management company anyway.
Only if you also tell me you did. Then I know I'm not worth your time.
I recently went to an social interest group meeting. It begins with a presentation, which is generally confirmed in advance by the organizer based on a text abstract of the planned presentation submitted by a future presenter. This time, the presentation turned out to be staggeringly bad, mostly consisting of filler words and interjections, and presenter was struggling to express even the basic idea. I could not fathom how that could happen, considering the idea was presumably expressed in the abstract. I had to write one before, and felt annoying and difficult to write down what I felt was all ready to be said in my head, but as a result I knew what I wanted to say and how I could say it when in front of a dozen of people.
At some point, the organizer (to help situation) quoted from the abstract that was submitted, and it was indeed apparently decently written. After that, I could not help thinking that the likelihood the abstract was written by an LLM is very high. In that case, the presenter certainly reviewed it, but crucially did not write it—the thought process that makes the idea part of your active vocabulary, and you capable of expressing it, would not have taken place.
To reiterate, I don’t know whether it happened or not, but even if no LLM was involved in this instance (perhaps it was just a particularly violent case of stage fright, despite the event being very small and the IRL vibe extremely casual) it would be beyond silly to assume that it would not be happening going forward.
I used to think that it is beneficial if an LLM can help in handling certain boring signaling communication for people who are very bad at it, acting as a sort of an equalizer. A model writes stuff, you approve it, and you gain access somewhere without having, say, the written language flair of someone who went to a prestigious school, or having to spend time on something that seems unnecessary.
I am changing my mind now. Sure, the case I have described is one of the more extreme ones, but it made me think how signals are actually signals for a reason[0], and when some signals go away the communication field does not become equalized—instead, other signals and barriers are used: money, IRL meetings, invitation, some sort of privacy-violating invasive check of humanity, etc., or the communication that relied on some signals before would simply not happen now. When the Web and tech in general had removed a whole lot of constraints on communication, we still could rely on those signals, but that is apparently coming to an end.
Writing a birthday card is another endangered signal. The impression from the movies, how these gestures become very cheap if they come from some rich CEO who certainly has a personal assistant for this sort of stuff, now applies to everyone (including people who would never touch an LLM with a ten foot pole). Once we all know that a birthday card can be reduced to “I have read and approved this message”, as social beings we won’t stop needing the psychological impact of such positive gestures—we only stop receiving it.
I am not sure I see all of the above as positive (even if in the latter case I am slightly optimistic that some viable substitute for those signals could be found within personal relationships).
[0] Even that reason is dubious, like discrimination by a social criteria, well then that’s not going to go anywhere. Tech is not going to solve that human problem, besides perhaps a very fleeting handful of months when some techies gain edge while everyone is still catching on. New barriers will be erected, the core problem left unaddressed.
At some point, the organizer (to help situation) quoted from the abstract that was submitted, and it was indeed apparently decently written. After that, I could not help thinking that the likelihood the abstract was written by an LLM is very high. In that case, the presenter certainly reviewed it, but crucially did not write it—the thought process that makes the idea part of your active vocabulary, and you capable of expressing it, would not have taken place.
To reiterate, I don’t know whether it happened or not, but even if no LLM was involved in this instance (perhaps it was just a particularly violent case of stage fright, despite the event being very small and the IRL vibe extremely casual) it would be beyond silly to assume that it would not be happening going forward.
I used to think that it is beneficial if an LLM can help in handling certain boring signaling communication for people who are very bad at it, acting as a sort of an equalizer. A model writes stuff, you approve it, and you gain access somewhere without having, say, the written language flair of someone who went to a prestigious school, or having to spend time on something that seems unnecessary.
I am changing my mind now. Sure, the case I have described is one of the more extreme ones, but it made me think how signals are actually signals for a reason[0], and when some signals go away the communication field does not become equalized—instead, other signals and barriers are used: money, IRL meetings, invitation, some sort of privacy-violating invasive check of humanity, etc., or the communication that relied on some signals before would simply not happen now. When the Web and tech in general had removed a whole lot of constraints on communication, we still could rely on those signals, but that is apparently coming to an end.
Writing a birthday card is another endangered signal. The impression from the movies, how these gestures become very cheap if they come from some rich CEO who certainly has a personal assistant for this sort of stuff, now applies to everyone (including people who would never touch an LLM with a ten foot pole). Once we all know that a birthday card can be reduced to “I have read and approved this message”, as social beings we won’t stop needing the psychological impact of such positive gestures—we only stop receiving it.
I am not sure I see all of the above as positive (even if in the latter case I am slightly optimistic that some viable substitute for those signals could be found within personal relationships).
[0] Even that reason is dubious, like discrimination by a social criteria, well then that’s not going to go anywhere. Tech is not going to solve that human problem, besides perhaps a very fleeting handful of months when some techies gain edge while everyone is still catching on. New barriers will be erected, the core problem left unaddressed.
If the commenter or chatbot doesn't say [AI simulation] and labels itself as an authentic interaction, then it is wrong.
Is it? Is it also wrong that they so far weren't labeled as [copy-pasted], and/or [outsourced to influencer management agency], and/or [not by ${influencer name}]? YouTube influencers and vloggers are brands, not people; they go big enough, they start outsourcing this stuff, which to my mind is just like "AI slop", except produced by protein parrot instead of silicon one.
Nah, first and foremost, the comment page and the video itself should start with Surgeon General's warning: "You're watching a long-form, semi-interactive ad. None of this is authentic, and none of it is meant to do anything good or nice for you."
(And perhaps also: "You're probably better of going for a smoke instead of consuming this.")
Nah, first and foremost, the comment page and the video itself should start with Surgeon General's warning: "You're watching a long-form, semi-interactive ad. None of this is authentic, and none of it is meant to do anything good or nice for you."
(And perhaps also: "You're probably better of going for a smoke instead of consuming this.")
A lot of it is labeled as "you are talking to me personally".
It is akin to a movie stating "a true story" - some liberties may be taken but if the protagonist becomes world president then travels to mars and becomes king of the martians. I am going to start looking for citations.
It is akin to a movie stating "a true story" - some liberties may be taken but if the protagonist becomes world president then travels to mars and becomes king of the martians. I am going to start looking for citations.
It sounds like we agree that misleading interaction should be labelled as such, you just think it's already happening and wonder why the uproar now.
> Is it also wrong that they so far weren't labeled as [copy-pasted], and/or [outsourced to influencer management agency], and/or [not by ${influencer name}]?
IMO, yes. Copy-pased might be accepteable if it is the author himself doing the selection of what to copy and paste.
If the main value of the comments is interacting with the person in question then anything less is fraud. If authenticity doesn't matter then the label won't impact the desired effect.
Should people know that these interactions have never been genuine? Yes. Is that an excuse for scamming people? Absolutely not.
IMO, yes. Copy-pased might be accepteable if it is the author himself doing the selection of what to copy and paste.
If the main value of the comments is interacting with the person in question then anything less is fraud. If authenticity doesn't matter then the label won't impact the desired effect.
Should people know that these interactions have never been genuine? Yes. Is that an excuse for scamming people? Absolutely not.
Sensible take.
Expecting internet celebrities to have "authentic" interactions with you is just parasocial relationship. It always has been, and gen-AI just reveals it.
Expecting internet celebrities to have "authentic" interactions with you is just parasocial relationship. It always has been, and gen-AI just reveals it.
> It always has been, and gen-AI just reveals it.
Yeah, and it doesn't even change it - it just makes it more appealing for news to run with a story. Of course, the focus is on AI/authenticity angle; I'd thought they'd give some space for the plight of brand agency marketers (and cheap labor they subcontract to) being pushed out of their jobs by LLMs, but I guess that would require first explaining to people that it was those marketers who people were having their "relationships" with all along. But that's just too sad and complex to report on; it's more of an op ed stuff anyway.
Yeah, and it doesn't even change it - it just makes it more appealing for news to run with a story. Of course, the focus is on AI/authenticity angle; I'd thought they'd give some space for the plight of brand agency marketers (and cheap labor they subcontract to) being pushed out of their jobs by LLMs, but I guess that would require first explaining to people that it was those marketers who people were having their "relationships" with all along. But that's just too sad and complex to report on; it's more of an op ed stuff anyway.
It reduces the cost of the scam siginificantly which makes it available to many more scammers. It's the same with other spam content on the internet - it was possible before but AI makes the problem so much worse.
Or in other wors, yes we should be concerned about the crime syndicate moving into town even if petty theft existed before.
Or in other wors, yes we should be concerned about the crime syndicate moving into town even if petty theft existed before.
God forbid people think they matter to each other even worth an iota of one's time.
The fans make the person famous. The famous person isn't doing a favor for the fans. They should remember that
The fans make the person famous. The famous person isn't doing a favor for the fans. They should remember that
True, fans are the foundation of any creator's success
Fans should remember their porno hero doesn't care about them. Worse, probably despises them.
The whole ecosystem is toxic and, at the risk of sounding like a prude, should be banned.
The whole ecosystem is toxic and, at the risk of sounding like a prude, should be banned.
Some do, some don't.
Some people like their bosses, some don't.
Some people like their clients, some don't.
It's not all black and white.
It's not all black and white.
Why should it be banned? It's not like it's the worst of mainstream humanity.
Well for one only someone with severe mental issues would ever consider paying for porn considering how much of it is available. The corollary to that is that anyone making money from the porn industry is taking advantage of people incapable of making rational purchasing decisions.
And the adult industry knows this, which is why sites like Onlyfans empahsize exclusivity and direct interactions. Faking those makes the whole thing even more of a scam.
And the adult industry knows this, which is why sites like Onlyfans empahsize exclusivity and direct interactions. Faking those makes the whole thing even more of a scam.
They should, but "should have known better" has never been a good excuse for scamming the ignorant.
I think it should be banned too. And maybe they do think that, but I'm just saying, anyone whose livelihood is based on the appreciation of other people should remember not to alienate those people too much
I mean, I guess if your sole goal with consuming content online is to kill free time and pound dopamine out of your brain without putting in any effort, then yeah, fair enough. I'm sure Mr. Beast appreciates your viewership.
I don't follow any creators for such a purpose. I follow creators who make interesting and meaningful things, be they YouTube videos or otherwise. The sorts of people who make a thumbnail that explains what the video is, not just one that's most likely to get attention in the algorithm. Conversely, those folks often respond to people who comment on their interesting and thoughtful things in interesting and thoughtful ways, with interesting a thoughtful replies. This is called a conversation, and it exists for purposes far beyond engagement, and is not a task well suited to AI automation (thank fucking god).
One would counter that if your (if you are indeed some sort of creator) replies are so easily automated, and your thumbnails automated, then the question must be asked... who needs you? How long until YouTube replaces you with a bot, trained on your previous videos, and tells you to kick rocks? After all, you're an unnecessary expense.
I don't follow any creators for such a purpose. I follow creators who make interesting and meaningful things, be they YouTube videos or otherwise. The sorts of people who make a thumbnail that explains what the video is, not just one that's most likely to get attention in the algorithm. Conversely, those folks often respond to people who comment on their interesting and thoughtful things in interesting and thoughtful ways, with interesting a thoughtful replies. This is called a conversation, and it exists for purposes far beyond engagement, and is not a task well suited to AI automation (thank fucking god).
One would counter that if your (if you are indeed some sort of creator) replies are so easily automated, and your thumbnails automated, then the question must be asked... who needs you? How long until YouTube replaces you with a bot, trained on your previous videos, and tells you to kick rocks? After all, you're an unnecessary expense.
What if I'm prone to saying things some might perceive as edgy? I doubt their AI would also know where I draw the line.
>None of your interactions except the ones with your friends and family are authentic
Please speak for yourself only.
Please speak for yourself only.
> If the AI reply is what I would have said anyways; awesome! Finding thumbnails is hard, but if AI comes up with a good one?
If the AI can replace you so easily then your interactions are worthless. In practice it won't say what you would have said but some corporate approved PC-filtered version of it devoid of any soul.
> None of your interactions except the ones with your friends and family are authentic, and they never were.
Speak for yourself. Not everyone is a sociopath.
> It's a bit silly to get annoyed over OnlyFans models or some mega YouTube celebrity using AI because you're losing out on "authentic human interaction" - you only mattered to them insofar as you provided them with money to begin with.
If (when) this catches on, it won't just be "mega celebrities" using these dystopian methods. But no, even for them expanding the scope of their ability to delude and take advantage of simps is a negative.
If the AI can replace you so easily then your interactions are worthless. In practice it won't say what you would have said but some corporate approved PC-filtered version of it devoid of any soul.
> None of your interactions except the ones with your friends and family are authentic, and they never were.
Speak for yourself. Not everyone is a sociopath.
> It's a bit silly to get annoyed over OnlyFans models or some mega YouTube celebrity using AI because you're losing out on "authentic human interaction" - you only mattered to them insofar as you provided them with money to begin with.
If (when) this catches on, it won't just be "mega celebrities" using these dystopian methods. But no, even for them expanding the scope of their ability to delude and take advantage of simps is a negative.
Worth noting that - mostly - punters weren't having real interactions with the models anyway. As the article points out, they'd previously reported (and I think HN had linked to the story) that a large number of models had been outsourcing their DM interactions to a rotating cadre of gig-workers already. And as the gig workers wouldn't be able to keep track of the full chat history between each punter and "the model", the conversations could sometimes feel off, or have long-term inconsistencies.
I guess LLM hallucinations will just give a slightly different flavour of unreal interactions.
I guess LLM hallucinations will just give a slightly different flavour of unreal interactions.
I assume in this case, you are saying "the model" to mean the human Only Fans account holder and not an ML model in which the fake models are trained on? Something funny about clarifying that too.
>are saying "the model" to mean the human Only Fans account holder and not an ML model in which the fake models are trained on?
I get the feeling that it won't be long before the "model" will also be the "model".
I get the feeling that it won't be long before the "model" will also be the "model".
Yes, “the model” here appears to refer to the person who owns the OnlyFans channel.
As I contemplate using AI tools to generate images to start an OnlyFans, I see the irony where first they outsourced to Chatters, then replaced the chatters with AI and next we will replace their hotness with AI models. I'm sure this is already happening.
If AI could have a bank account then bots could subscribe to bots and talk with other bots that aren't the bot they're subscribed to
and summarize it for humans.
and summarize it for humans.
Maybe they can't have real bank accounts (well, not without fraudulent IDs), but nothing stops them from having cryptocoin wallets.
incredible cyberpunk concept
Yeah, there are already “influencers” which are AI improved clones of existing influencers (without the original model’s consent). So in addition to looking perfect, curating their perfect existence, pleasing sponsors, keeping the attention of the masses, scaling up their ability to respond in a timely way to fans, content creators now need to police their IP from being stolen by other “creators” (and not just the fans).
Chatters-for-hire were always questionable. Some are cheap labor in cheap English-speaking countries. But I’ve also seen that vendors that offer chatter services have difficulty with quality control (of the chats), causing the OnlyFans channel to drop the chatters and apologize for the breach of trust to paying fans.
That said, I imagine there is a LOT of value in identifying high quality leads/chats to be prioritized and ignoring/ blocking the lowest quality (eg. Insurers and time wasters).
Chatters-for-hire were always questionable. Some are cheap labor in cheap English-speaking countries. But I’ve also seen that vendors that offer chatter services have difficulty with quality control (of the chats), causing the OnlyFans channel to drop the chatters and apologize for the breach of trust to paying fans.
That said, I imagine there is a LOT of value in identifying high quality leads/chats to be prioritized and ignoring/ blocking the lowest quality (eg. Insurers and time wasters).
> So in addition to looking perfect, curating their perfect existence, pleasing sponsors, keeping the attention of the masses, scaling up their ability to respond in a timely way to fans, content creators now need to police their IP from being stolen by other “creators” (and not just the fans).
How sad.
"Influencers" living on borrowed time is one of the few good things about the machine learning dystopia.
How sad.
"Influencers" living on borrowed time is one of the few good things about the machine learning dystopia.
I feel like we've all spent way too much time in front of the screen in an AI echo chamber if we have to clarify this. Humans performing for the camera have been known as models long before an AI model has ever been dreamed up. Now that the word is being used with both meanings in the same article, the smart "nerds" are the ones having problems deciphering the use?
Humans selling their bodies for profit have historically been known as prostitutes. "Model" is already term intended to mislead about what the job is. Also not a term the average person would use.
Legally speaking, a channel or account is not property that can be owned.
Is there a difference anymore?
Good point, it’s already practically impossible to distinguish between ChatGPT o1 output and say the median substack essay. At least for someone who only has a few minutes to spare for second guessing.
> real interactions with the models anyway
The next step is not having real models at all. It'll be 100% AI all the way up and down the stack.
Completely AI porn is going to be booming business. PornHub, OnlyFans, and perhaps even some dating websites will be "innovator's dilemma"'d out.
The next step is not having real models at all. It'll be 100% AI all the way up and down the stack.
Completely AI porn is going to be booming business. PornHub, OnlyFans, and perhaps even some dating websites will be "innovator's dilemma"'d out.
CD players did not spell the end of live music. I have never really understood people who pay money to OnlyFans models but I do think its not just to see some boobs on a screen? its to experience a (para)social relationship with another person.
On the other hand it is not completely trivial to determine whether a live performance is really live versus the artist lip-syncing.
Most of the experience of a live performance (especially for pop artists) is in being there, with a crowd, and the soundscape of a giant auditorium or stadium, so the lip-syncing doesn't matter much either way.
I just don't get parasocial relationships.
Do people honestly convince themselves some stranger performing on the internet in a very one way relationship somehow truly cares about them and not their ability to monetize.
Do people honestly convince themselves some stranger performing on the internet in a very one way relationship somehow truly cares about them and not their ability to monetize.
I think it's a case of the conscious mind knowingly tricking the subconscious mind. Because doing so feels good. Compare with artificial sweeteners.
AI can almost handle the social relationship with another person already. Things are going to get weird.
Maybe I'm a hopeless optimist but I think the novelty of this will wear off too quickly for it to become the future. People will have to realize the emptiness of it. I need to believe that.
It won't. Conservatively over 60% of young men are single. The real number if you remove men that have had maybe one relationship or encounter in a multi-year span is 80% or more. The lie you will hear is that men are choosing OnlyFans over a relationship. There is no choice. They can't get a relationship.
None of that supports the idea that people will remain interested in talking to bots long term. We have unmet transportation needs, but the hype of the Segway didn't allow it to take over the world.
> but the hype of the Segway didn't allow it to take over the world.
That was just a product / form factor thing: Bird and Lime scooters are everywhere in my city. And, moreover, lots of people use personal scooters, e-bikes, hoverboards, electric skateboards, Onewheel, electric unicycles, etc. I don't go a day without seeing these things.
It'll be the exact same with this technology. Give it a few years and more men will be using AI chatbots and AI porn than the existing tools in the space, such as PornHub and OnlyFans.
> the idea that people will remain interested in talking to bots long term
Porn has never gone away, it's only grown.
AI porn can match a person's exact preferences in an unparalleled way that hasn't been possible before. Add in VR, photorealism, voices, and trainable agentic behavior and you've got a market that will likely contribute to the decline of real, actual relationships and marriages.
More men will probably be using AI porn over actual sex, too, due to difficulties with dating, dead bedrooms, etc.
I'd be willing to place bets on marriage numbers going into a steep decline over the next decade.
That was just a product / form factor thing: Bird and Lime scooters are everywhere in my city. And, moreover, lots of people use personal scooters, e-bikes, hoverboards, electric skateboards, Onewheel, electric unicycles, etc. I don't go a day without seeing these things.
It'll be the exact same with this technology. Give it a few years and more men will be using AI chatbots and AI porn than the existing tools in the space, such as PornHub and OnlyFans.
> the idea that people will remain interested in talking to bots long term
Porn has never gone away, it's only grown.
AI porn can match a person's exact preferences in an unparalleled way that hasn't been possible before. Add in VR, photorealism, voices, and trainable agentic behavior and you've got a market that will likely contribute to the decline of real, actual relationships and marriages.
More men will probably be using AI porn over actual sex, too, due to difficulties with dating, dead bedrooms, etc.
I'd be willing to place bets on marriage numbers going into a steep decline over the next decade.
The argument against virtual porn is that people appreciate quality over quantity and specificity.
I'd say the market has previously proven that's definitely false.
Consequently, AI porn will probably eat the bottom of the bulk market, with a much-smaller market left for higher-end human content.
Which probably isn't the worst thing... as the low-value pornography seems to encourage the most horrific, exploitive conditions.
I'd say the market has previously proven that's definitely false.
Consequently, AI porn will probably eat the bottom of the bulk market, with a much-smaller market left for higher-end human content.
Which probably isn't the worst thing... as the low-value pornography seems to encourage the most horrific, exploitive conditions.
Notably, this also removes one of the remaining major economic options for otherwise unemployable women. Going to be a rough time economically when even pornstar/escort isn’t a viable option, eh?
Even if that were true, I really think the solution ought to be something else than "let's stop AI so that really poor women can be forced back into selling their bodies for sex".
Sure, but what do you propose?
Backhoes drastically reduce the demand for laborers (the traditional equivalent for men), and I don’t see anyone with reasonable options there either.
Notably, at least 90% of the laborers I’ve met would love to be able to get paid having sex instead of being laborers. But the market dynamics don’t make that a viable choice.
Backhoes drastically reduce the demand for laborers (the traditional equivalent for men), and I don’t see anyone with reasonable options there either.
Notably, at least 90% of the laborers I’ve met would love to be able to get paid having sex instead of being laborers. But the market dynamics don’t make that a viable choice.
Basic income + population control?
At some point we should get past make-work that creates horrible lives for people, when we have the capability to automate that work.
Not automating something so that someone will have a job is bad reasoning and traps society in a local rut.
At some point we should get past make-work that creates horrible lives for people, when we have the capability to automate that work.
Not automating something so that someone will have a job is bad reasoning and traps society in a local rut.
They'll just have to do the undesirable jobs that others who weren't born into a desirable body have to do now.
I thought this was for men who couldn't find relationships. Why would the marriage rate go down? Prompting your own porn will be so much better than current human porn that the people who are actually married will choose to be single instead?
If a dead bedroom marriage is still intact now, why would AI porn change that? Do you need to get divorced before you can chat with the bot? Is the bot going to help parent the children you were staying in the marriage for?
If a dead bedroom marriage is still intact now, why would AI porn change that? Do you need to get divorced before you can chat with the bot? Is the bot going to help parent the children you were staying in the marriage for?
> I thought this was for men who couldn't find relationships. Why would the marriage rate go down?
Not being able to find a relationship is not binary. Having alternatives to satisfy needs means less effort is put in achieving the real thing. This goes for both genders of course, just the needs and alternatives being different.
Not being able to find a relationship is not binary. Having alternatives to satisfy needs means less effort is put in achieving the real thing. This goes for both genders of course, just the needs and alternatives being different.
> Why would the marriage rate go down?
New marriages, not divorces. Though I wouldn't necessarily rule out the latter, either.
New marriages, not divorces. Though I wouldn't necessarily rule out the latter, either.
> men will be using AI chatbots
Men had a headstart from being more into tech, but I think women are already the majority users of AI sex-rp and AI partners. Makes sense too given that they read more erotica than men.
Men had a headstart from being more into tech, but I think women are already the majority users of AI sex-rp and AI partners. Makes sense too given that they read more erotica than men.
The other thing about porn is you can turn it off when you're done.
The service won't care what you do, as long as you keep paying the subscription for your porn-bot, otherwise it will get deleted - or so it will tell when you try to start the subscription cancellation process - begging to not let it die.
I think marriage is the one thing that won't get hit by this. Hookups will die, and perhaps Americans will need to find new paradigms for meeting people, but marriage offers a bunch of things that even the best porn doesn't.
> I think marriage is the one thing that won't get hit by this.
Marriage was hit way before that. Marriage is not a rational choice in a lot of countries, where a civil union does the same thing without the hassle and the costs of divorce if it happens. The main reason is religion and it has been losing ground for decades at this point.
This is not going to make it any more attractive.
Marriage was hit way before that. Marriage is not a rational choice in a lot of countries, where a civil union does the same thing without the hassle and the costs of divorce if it happens. The main reason is religion and it has been losing ground for decades at this point.
This is not going to make it any more attractive.
like losing half my assets? But on the other hand, someone can visit me in the hospital outside of normal hours.
Marriage rates have collapsed.
[deleted]
At the rate technology is improving and the rate that women are becoming less and less accessible to average men, I wouldn't be surprised if in 50 years, 80-90% of American men go an entire lifetime without a non-AI relationship.
Polygyny - a smaller number of "high status, high attraction" males having app-mediated interactions with larger numbers of females.
Extrapolation to the whole population seems crazy though. And I wouldn't expect dating apps to remain the same, we should expect more behavioral experimentation as well as backlash and new social movements to change mating behavior. It isn't like the average woman is a fan of polygyny either.
Extrapolation to the whole population seems crazy though. And I wouldn't expect dating apps to remain the same, we should expect more behavioral experimentation as well as backlash and new social movements to change mating behavior. It isn't like the average woman is a fan of polygyny either.
Good on them. Modern Women aren't entitled to the financial and social support of men :)
> women are becoming less and less accessible to average men
What the heck does that mean? Last I checked, population demographics weren't that far off 50/50 in most countries.
What the heck does that mean? Last I checked, population demographics weren't that far off 50/50 in most countries.
> What the heck does that mean? Last I checked, population demographics weren't that far off 50/50 in most countries.
Hey, I'm married so I'm just going by what my single / online dating friends tell me. It has nothing to do with demographics. In today's app-based environment, something like 80% of women are interested in / going for the top 10-20% of men, and it's getting even more extreme. Is this not true?
Hey, I'm married so I'm just going by what my single / online dating friends tell me. It has nothing to do with demographics. In today's app-based environment, something like 80% of women are interested in / going for the top 10-20% of men, and it's getting even more extreme. Is this not true?
Are your friends mostly male or female?
It just feels oddly gender specific to assume that in an environment where there are approximately equal numbers of single men and women (no?), one gender has sights set too high and the other doesn't.
It just feels oddly gender specific to assume that in an environment where there are approximately equal numbers of single men and women (no?), one gender has sights set too high and the other doesn't.
Gender ratio on Tinder is heavily skewed toward male than women, except Europe.[1]
No wonder why women are so incredibly selective. Gender ratio population wise is roughly equal, with slightly more women than men in the US, AFAIK. Men are chasing women in the wrong place.
1. https://www.reddit.com/r/Tinder/comments/165lsmp/tinder_gend...
No wonder why women are so incredibly selective. Gender ratio population wise is roughly equal, with slightly more women than men in the US, AFAIK. Men are chasing women in the wrong place.
1. https://www.reddit.com/r/Tinder/comments/165lsmp/tinder_gend...
Every city/region is different probably. I can see the above holding in Seattle and San Francisco, or even LA, but not Cleveland.
The study has been taken down for a long time now but OkCupid found that 80 percent of women went for 20 percent of men whereas men had a relatively normal distribution of women they went for.
This was a long time ago as well and I think the situation has gotten worse in the age of tinder and friends.
This is a summary of the article: https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/18/okcupid-inbox-attractive/
This was a long time ago as well and I think the situation has gotten worse in the age of tinder and friends.
This is a summary of the article: https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/18/okcupid-inbox-attractive/
Unless you're in one of the few countries where polygamy exists, that still doesn't work out.
Basically you'll need as many single men than single women.
Now if you're talking about apps, a minority of men can date most of the women, but that doesn't work for long term relationships.
Basically you'll need as many single men than single women.
Now if you're talking about apps, a minority of men can date most of the women, but that doesn't work for long term relationships.
If men outnumbered the women, the numbers are going to be more stark, no? Also, online dating doesn't really match real life dating. You miss so much information.
Nobody's going around advertising their fancy cars, their hobbies and the church they goes to, etc. We're heavily focused on the perfect match rather than doing vibe check.
Nobody's going around advertising their fancy cars, their hobbies and the church they goes to, etc. We're heavily focused on the perfect match rather than doing vibe check.
Wasn't it like this before tinder? That's kinda how I remember it was when I was going out to pubs/clubs.
The people won't have a choice there either. Even if you can spot 90% of the fake content the remaining 10% will still drown out anything even remotely genuine.
... Are you claiming that 80% of young men are single? Like, I mean, unless you're defining young as _children_, that is simply not the case.
That isn't what I said, if you can't read a sentence that's not my problem. And don't "simply not the case" without providing any source. What a terrible remark.
> There is no choice. They can't get a relationship.
and the porn-rot brains will make it harder for them to get into healthy relationships as well adjusted individuals, resulting in a glut of long-term customer for corporate-mediated para-social "relationships". Another victory for unbridled capitalism.
The young men have to "git gud" & level up IRL like they have to in every other aspect of life. There won't be government issued waifus
and the porn-rot brains will make it harder for them to get into healthy relationships as well adjusted individuals, resulting in a glut of long-term customer for corporate-mediated para-social "relationships". Another victory for unbridled capitalism.
The young men have to "git gud" & level up IRL like they have to in every other aspect of life. There won't be government issued waifus
The average young man wants mutual compassion and respect from their social circles and loyalty and being loved from their girlfriend.
Porn rot is an online myth that exists to justify demonizing men, who don't live up to traditional gender expectations.
Porn rot is an online myth that exists to justify demonizing men, who don't live up to traditional gender expectations.
> The average young man wants mutual compassion and respect from their social circles and loyalty and being loved from their girlfriend.
Everybody wants that, including the potential girlfriends, but a functional relationship requires 2 well-adjusted parties. The average level 2 druid also wants respect from their guild and a trusty side-kick, but they may have to grind for those things and go on some side quests. No one is owed a partner, especially if they are unable to compromise (the grease of all social interactions).
> Porn rot is an online myth that exists to justify demonizing men
Fortunately,there is scientific research[1] in the field, so we don't have to go with our gut-feeling. Modeling behavior on scripted pornography leads to socially unacceptable behaviors in real life. A female acquaintance was recently propositioned by the man she had just started dating for an 3-way "encounter" involving her sister (as in full sibling); I think "porn rot" is the right description of what led him down the road of thinking it was a perfectly reasonable request to verbalize. This put an end to the relationship, but I'm sure he might be out there somewhere complaining about how he's being unfairly rejected by women.
> ...who don't live up to traditional gender expectations.
every generation has a subculture like this, and in the past, they accepted, and gloried even, that they were a subculture instead of demanding to be accepted by the mainstream (beatniks, punks, goths, emos, etc).
1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37847848/
Everybody wants that, including the potential girlfriends, but a functional relationship requires 2 well-adjusted parties. The average level 2 druid also wants respect from their guild and a trusty side-kick, but they may have to grind for those things and go on some side quests. No one is owed a partner, especially if they are unable to compromise (the grease of all social interactions).
> Porn rot is an online myth that exists to justify demonizing men
Fortunately,there is scientific research[1] in the field, so we don't have to go with our gut-feeling. Modeling behavior on scripted pornography leads to socially unacceptable behaviors in real life. A female acquaintance was recently propositioned by the man she had just started dating for an 3-way "encounter" involving her sister (as in full sibling); I think "porn rot" is the right description of what led him down the road of thinking it was a perfectly reasonable request to verbalize. This put an end to the relationship, but I'm sure he might be out there somewhere complaining about how he's being unfairly rejected by women.
> ...who don't live up to traditional gender expectations.
every generation has a subculture like this, and in the past, they accepted, and gloried even, that they were a subculture instead of demanding to be accepted by the mainstream (beatniks, punks, goths, emos, etc).
1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37847848/
Yup.. it's definitely the women's fault that you can't get laid. Isn't this type of comment the definition of "incel", lol
It's definitely mens' fault when women disregard them for not being 6 feet before they know anything else about them.
The dark gamified patterns of app dating reward and encourage women to rapidly dismiss huge numbers of men in the hopes of finding one of the very few who meets a number of superficial criteria. Meeting people IRL has less toxic intrinsic structure, but has only become more difficult as the apps advertise themselves as a "safer" alternative.
The dark gamified patterns of app dating reward and encourage women to rapidly dismiss huge numbers of men in the hopes of finding one of the very few who meets a number of superficial criteria. Meeting people IRL has less toxic intrinsic structure, but has only become more difficult as the apps advertise themselves as a "safer" alternative.
Get your eyes out of a screen and get out. This is where real relationships starts. Dating apps somewhat work to get dates, but not very often to start a relationship. Individual dates aren't relationships.
prmoustache(4)
Well you should see what happened when replika nerfed their bots, people were extremely upset, as if somebody killed a loved one. You are underestimating the tendency of humans to build connections, and if virtual connections make it easy then why put all the effort to build human ones?
I think that the AI-pretending-to-be-human does not have much future, because if people end up chatting with AIs why not go with the real thing rather than with the only-fans ones. The only-fans creators are training their replacements.
I think that the AI-pretending-to-be-human does not have much future, because if people end up chatting with AIs why not go with the real thing rather than with the only-fans ones. The only-fans creators are training their replacements.
People anthropomorphize their vacuum robots, and we have a long way to go in how realistic these bots are getting.
It wont wear off because people, customers, aren't consuming this because of the 'novelty'. They are being fooled. They don't realize it is a 'novelty'.
Those with behavior not suited for the environment will be culled by natural selection.
Except the "environment" in question here is entirely of our own making. There is nothing natural about it.
The same goes for societies.
Yep, we know already which sub cultures will dominate.
I actually got approached for a job for a "virtual girlfriend" site. Paid amazingly well too, and the user numbers were mind blowing to me, but it felt scummier than working for a gambling site to me.
IIRC (from mobile), it was a different article from Wired that corroborated this, with a surprising disagreement (from what you mentioned) being that the gig-workers would keep notes that are attached and shared. The notes are per-... random? I suppose they'd be called? The gig-worker's customer is the streamer (or agency) that pays them, so I don't have a better name for the hoarde of people they're meant to be chatting with
Though I don't doubt that less careful (or less well-paid) gig-chatters exist and can have a slightly different feel when handing off a random at shift-change
Though I don't doubt that less careful (or less well-paid) gig-chatters exist and can have a slightly different feel when handing off a random at shift-change
It's kind of fascinating to consider the level of automation and UI affordances you can apply to faking authentic human contact.
> It seems like the only use case is to trick people into thinking they're having a real interaction.
It's easy to rationalise a time saving measure I guess. I feel I'm unauthentic when I use auto-generated response suggestions in Outlook. But, like OnlyFans, it's 'just business'. Perhaps I'm overthinking it. How genuine and heartfelt can OnlyFans responses be? Probably as much as my response to a budget approval.
It's easy to rationalise a time saving measure I guess. I feel I'm unauthentic when I use auto-generated response suggestions in Outlook. But, like OnlyFans, it's 'just business'. Perhaps I'm overthinking it. How genuine and heartfelt can OnlyFans responses be? Probably as much as my response to a budget approval.
The problem is that this seems like DAAS (deception as a service), possibly even fraud.
It's not, not anymore than it already was.
I guess there is some truth to the adage that a male body can't push blood both to the brain and to the penis at the same time - it's either one, or the other. I mean, if you step back and take a cold look at the content produced by popular OF performers, it's pretty apparent those are business operations. There are other people involved. Someone does the camera work. Location work. Promotion. And yes, fan management too.
Same applies to YouTube personas, too. Brands, not people. Talking to fans is a job that can be outsourced. AI doesn't introduce anything new; AI features on the platform are competing with creators' brand management agencies, which themselves likely already use ChatGPT for this anyway, because why wouldn't they? ChatGPT does better job at this stuff and is cheaper than human labor - but again, the AI angle isn't important here - that human labor was just a generative model in a protein substrate anyway.
I guess there is some truth to the adage that a male body can't push blood both to the brain and to the penis at the same time - it's either one, or the other. I mean, if you step back and take a cold look at the content produced by popular OF performers, it's pretty apparent those are business operations. There are other people involved. Someone does the camera work. Location work. Promotion. And yes, fan management too.
Same applies to YouTube personas, too. Brands, not people. Talking to fans is a job that can be outsourced. AI doesn't introduce anything new; AI features on the platform are competing with creators' brand management agencies, which themselves likely already use ChatGPT for this anyway, because why wouldn't they? ChatGPT does better job at this stuff and is cheaper than human labor - but again, the AI angle isn't important here - that human labor was just a generative model in a protein substrate anyway.
First, let me say that you often post here on HN, and you are one of my favourites. You really have an ability to view the issue from multiple angles and provide thoughtful replies.
After reading your post, I had a thought: Making this story about OnlyFans is the click bait element. Seriously, replay the story in your head where it says that top 1/2/3/4/5% of YouTubers or Instagrammers or TikTokkers are using LLMs to answer comments and DMs. Suddenly, the story is much less enticing. It probably would not even make HN front page. Most readers here would look at such an article, shrug their shoulders, and say: "Yeah, seems right. I would do the same.". However, as soon as you add sex work into the mix, it gets way more spicy and elicits more emotional responses.
After reading your post, I had a thought: Making this story about OnlyFans is the click bait element. Seriously, replay the story in your head where it says that top 1/2/3/4/5% of YouTubers or Instagrammers or TikTokkers are using LLMs to answer comments and DMs. Suddenly, the story is much less enticing. It probably would not even make HN front page. Most readers here would look at such an article, shrug their shoulders, and say: "Yeah, seems right. I would do the same.". However, as soon as you add sex work into the mix, it gets way more spicy and elicits more emotional responses.
The difference is that on OF the direct contact is part of the sales pitch (perhaps the only part that actually provides "value" since there is no shortage of free porn, including OF leaks) whereas on other platforms it is not (and you are not directly purchasing anything at all but watching ads instead). Onlyfans isn't clickbait here because it is genuinely more scummy than doing this in the other places you mentioned.
That said, I don't agree that using AI chatbots to deceive fans is OK anywhere else either. And no, I would definitely not ever do it myself.
That said, I don't agree that using AI chatbots to deceive fans is OK anywhere else either. And no, I would definitely not ever do it myself.
>"It's not, not anymore than it already was."
Maybe it already was fraud. I expect to see class-action lawsuits on the way soon.
Maybe it already was fraud. I expect to see class-action lawsuits on the way soon.
It wasn't. It perhaps should've been, but instead, it was just "legitimate marketing practice".
This is another facet of a larger phenomenon, that I just commented on in another thread[0] - there's a lot of harmful activity that's considered legitimate, thus invisible to our legal and cultural immune systems, yet no less harmful than the slightly less legitimate scams.
--
[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42401894
This is another facet of a larger phenomenon, that I just commented on in another thread[0] - there's a lot of harmful activity that's considered legitimate, thus invisible to our legal and cultural immune systems, yet no less harmful than the slightly less legitimate scams.
--
[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42401894
Your linked post seems to be a polemic, not a legal analysis. Many advertisements are subject to successful (expensive) class-action lawsuits based on some fraud or truth-in-marketing claim. Also, this isn’t an advertisement, it’s a communication which takes place under an implied contract.
If I take something from you and am never caught was it not theft?
Really? Do people really think OF "performers" really enjoy interaction with random dudes fapping in front of their screen.
Shouldn't there be a level of candidness at which it cannot be considered deception? I mean we accept casinos/gambling and religions in our societies for example.
Shouldn't there be a level of candidness at which it cannot be considered deception? I mean we accept casinos/gambling and religions in our societies for example.
Fraud is lying for financial gain.
If the site is saying ‘chat with X for $5/min’, and you never have any interaction with X at all for your $5/min, that seems like a pretty clear cut case doesn’t it?
If the site is saying ‘chat with X for $5/min’, and you never have any interaction with X at all for your $5/min, that seems like a pretty clear cut case doesn’t it?
"Give god the first portion of your income. Don't spend it and come sunday say i'll just give god a little of what's left. Give god the first portion of your income!"
Yeah, ok.
Yeah, ok.
Okay, I've been in and around both sides of religions, and I do believe this is the first attempt at saying tithing is an act of fraud. I don't necessarily disagree. Just noting that it's the first time. I'd assume the down votes were expected with this one.
I have several friends who are "creators" who answer their own messages. I had an ex who warned me that she wouldn't mind if I watched porn but she wouldn't want me to use onlyfans because the platform encourages 1:1 communication.
I wouldn't expect, like, Mia Khalifa (I'm out of the game, who's current?) to answer her own messages but there does seem to be an expectation that smaller creators are actually behind the accounts.
I wouldn't expect, like, Mia Khalifa (I'm out of the game, who's current?) to answer her own messages but there does seem to be an expectation that smaller creators are actually behind the accounts.
The fact they answer themselves or with help from someone is one thing. The fact they are sincere in their messages in another one.
I know there are also some people who pretend they are falling in love with the prostitutes they pay to have sex but the terms are clear both in physical and online prostitution. It is all a business about pretending and consumers should expect that.
I know there are also some people who pretend they are falling in love with the prostitutes they pay to have sex but the terms are clear both in physical and online prostitution. It is all a business about pretending and consumers should expect that.
Even if it is 1:1 communication, it's not like the two of you were likely to meet. The thing that I've always seen as the one to get upset about is if the person is local thirst trap type of someone that is much less famous and more of a possibility of real life interactions.
People being easily duped is not an argument for something not being a scam. In fact, protecting easily duped people from scammers is the entire reason for having laws against scams.
Good-faith rationale: None.
Rationale: More growth for less effort, even if there is no soul.
Fitting for our times.
Fitting for our times.
The other day I was helping an elderly family member purchase something from the Internet. They were talking to a chat bot. One of the automated replies was a voice recording. There was not much "AI" in it, just a bunch of spam in Whatsapp all the time telling them to purchase all sorts of products. They were added to multiple "group chats" where only admins could send messages (i.e. a spam fest). But what worried me was that because the automated messages are never marked as such, I wasn't sure if they were perfectly aware that they were talking to a bot, since it seemed they were tried to have a conversation, saying hello and explaining things. Maybe that's just they think that's how bots work, and, loosely, the bot responds appropriately, by ignoring almost everything all the time and just spamming more.
I found it repulsive on a visceral level.
Add AI to this and I'll need to start praying to God to give me the restraint of not breaking other people's smartphones.
I found it repulsive on a visceral level.
Add AI to this and I'll need to start praying to God to give me the restraint of not breaking other people's smartphones.
Yes, I'm experiencing this in the form of 'suggestion' buttons.
It's so clearly trained on my own replies that it parrots stuff I've said, but it tends to get the sense of the words literally backwards and wrong. If I used that I would be telling my fans the opposite of what I actually meant, or various other catastrophically not-even-wrong assertions. It really, really is not figuring out what it's being fed. Sometimes I let people in on what the AI is suggesting I say.
It's not actually wresting the controls from my hands and talking to my fans AS me… yet.
It's so clearly trained on my own replies that it parrots stuff I've said, but it tends to get the sense of the words literally backwards and wrong. If I used that I would be telling my fans the opposite of what I actually meant, or various other catastrophically not-even-wrong assertions. It really, really is not figuring out what it's being fed. Sometimes I let people in on what the AI is suggesting I say.
It's not actually wresting the controls from my hands and talking to my fans AS me… yet.
> It's so clearly trained on my own replies that it parrots stuff I've said, but it tends to get the sense of the words literally backwards and wrong.
"Yeah back then I was weirded out by their now standard response prediction thing, it was always just one or two words off exactly what I wanted to reply (usually missing/adding a negation, or substituting a word with an antonym)"[1]
[1]: https://qntm.org/perso
"Yeah back then I was weirded out by their now standard response prediction thing, it was always just one or two words off exactly what I wanted to reply (usually missing/adding a negation, or substituting a word with an antonym)"[1]
[1]: https://qntm.org/perso
Feels like that ended with an ai escape when I was hoping that the punchline would be that all the apparently happy, well adjusted, coherent users were in fact ai trained in the preapocalypse and the insane sick, repetitive people were the real users living in the post apocalypse.
That's depressing, and I didn't realize. This is truly the death of the the comment section.
It's like when you find out the band you like probably didn't respond to you, but just some social media manager.
I got a friend that goes to live shows in Los Angeles and then interviews the bands after the shows for a decent amount of time and with decent quality. mostly punk rock bands. I've personally met Les Claypool and Trent Reznor and a bunch of smaller artists after shows. However i've never tried to email or otherwise contact any musicians or whatever, except one time in the late 90s there was hosted AOL chatrooms or something similar on yahoo or something where many fans would be in a room and get selected to ask a question that the person of the hour could see, and they'd reply. I also got to ask Reznor a question like that, 26 years ago or something.
I may be an outlier, i've actually met a couple dozen famous people, because a lot of my friends were (strong were there) industry adjacent. Like, i've been to NAMM multiple times, and iirc the tickets were quite pricey and limited.
I may be an outlier, i've actually met a couple dozen famous people, because a lot of my friends were (strong were there) industry adjacent. Like, i've been to NAMM multiple times, and iirc the tickets were quite pricey and limited.
Yeah, there are some not-nobody bands that do actually talk to fans after shows - as in face to face without special appointment, just hanging around at the exit merch store.
I would rather have those "celebrities" that don't want to directly interact with plebs be honest about it. Nothing wrong with setting boundaries for your job, a lot wrong with deceiving people even if it might seem benign at first.
I would rather have those "celebrities" that don't want to directly interact with plebs be honest about it. Nothing wrong with setting boundaries for your job, a lot wrong with deceiving people even if it might seem benign at first.
gets a bit sadder when you paid $1000 to send that letter out. But I don't think bands commonly promise that they hand-respond to every letter.
75% music, all business
I would so much rather the creator not participate in the comments than have a fake AI that doesn't know the creator's mind in the comments.
I don't care if someone with a million viewers replies just to me. Almost any video's comment stream, you can scroll through, get a general sense of what people's reactions/questions/etc are to the video, and then good creators respond in one or two comments to the masses.
The second I see someone with a huge following obviously AI responding to each of the comments, I have lost all respect for them, and people will call them out on it. I see this a lot on reddit now where people are responding to AI generated posts pointing this out, and it is causing some major issues in communities.
I don't care if someone with a million viewers replies just to me. Almost any video's comment stream, you can scroll through, get a general sense of what people's reactions/questions/etc are to the video, and then good creators respond in one or two comments to the masses.
The second I see someone with a huge following obviously AI responding to each of the comments, I have lost all respect for them, and people will call them out on it. I see this a lot on reddit now where people are responding to AI generated posts pointing this out, and it is causing some major issues in communities.
I'm OK with it as long as it would be labeled as such...
I think users need to demand that if it's AI generated that it's labeled as such.
I think users need to demand that if it's AI generated that it's labeled as such.
YouTube’s best interest is ad, and having more content to retain you, the consumer, on the platform as long as possible would be their main goal.
Every single online content platform operates in the same way. Their KPI is number of hours spent on their platform, because the longer you spend there the more ads they can shove down your throat.
Every single online content platform operates in the same way. Their KPI is number of hours spent on their platform, because the longer you spend there the more ads they can shove down your throat.
Google has also outsourced the rationale for their actions to LLMs.
Hopefully it's not only trained on their own data.
> what is the actual good-faith rationale for using this feature
So, responding to viewers increases engagement, and thereby a channel's virality.
And one human can only do so much of that. So eventually, you hit a marketing scalability bottleneck — you get more comments than you can read, and the people who don't feel engaged with, are more likely to churn from your viewership, so your viewership growth starts to decelerate.
Large media companies + MCNs previously solved this bottleneck, by hiring paid human community managers to scale responding-to-comments.
But individual creators bootstrapping their growth, had no good solution to this (besides joining an MCN), because the too-many-comments threshold comes long before they make enough revenue to afford to hire their own community managers.
This creates a pay-to-win model where companies who already have capital from other ventures can afford to circumvent this bottleneck and so get big on YouTube, in a way that individual creators cannot.
And YouTube doesn't like that; those big companies aren't beholden to YouTube in the way that creators that think of themselves fundamentally as "YouTube content creators" are. (Or, to say that in a nicer way: YouTube wants to democratize content creation, ensuring that there's a way for small bootstrapped content-creators to "make it.")
AI comment responding is a substitute good for the paid human community managers who already perform this function for large media companies / MCNs / etc. It serves to allow these independent bootstrapped content-creators to overcome the responses-to-comments marketing bottleneck for much lower cost.
This doesn't do anything good for the people who post comments, of course; but it does work to ensure a healthy ecosystem of independent bootstrapped content creators, rather than an oligopoly of media companies — which is something that viewers want from YouTube.
(An analogy might be to level-1 CSRs in a call center: as a complainant, they just get in your way; but they solve a customer-service scalability bottleneck for the company, which thereby allows the company to grow past the point where it would otherwise stop being able to handle support at all due to the increasing flood of "nonsense" complaints.)
> It seems like the only use case is to trick people into thinking they're having a real interaction.
Yes, it is, but that's going to happen whether or not there's a built-in feature to do it. That ship has sailed literally centuries ago — ever heard of writing to a famous author/actor/etc, and getting a hand-written response, seemingly from the famous person themselves, but actually from their agent and just signed by the famous person?
So, responding to viewers increases engagement, and thereby a channel's virality.
And one human can only do so much of that. So eventually, you hit a marketing scalability bottleneck — you get more comments than you can read, and the people who don't feel engaged with, are more likely to churn from your viewership, so your viewership growth starts to decelerate.
Large media companies + MCNs previously solved this bottleneck, by hiring paid human community managers to scale responding-to-comments.
But individual creators bootstrapping their growth, had no good solution to this (besides joining an MCN), because the too-many-comments threshold comes long before they make enough revenue to afford to hire their own community managers.
This creates a pay-to-win model where companies who already have capital from other ventures can afford to circumvent this bottleneck and so get big on YouTube, in a way that individual creators cannot.
And YouTube doesn't like that; those big companies aren't beholden to YouTube in the way that creators that think of themselves fundamentally as "YouTube content creators" are. (Or, to say that in a nicer way: YouTube wants to democratize content creation, ensuring that there's a way for small bootstrapped content-creators to "make it.")
AI comment responding is a substitute good for the paid human community managers who already perform this function for large media companies / MCNs / etc. It serves to allow these independent bootstrapped content-creators to overcome the responses-to-comments marketing bottleneck for much lower cost.
This doesn't do anything good for the people who post comments, of course; but it does work to ensure a healthy ecosystem of independent bootstrapped content creators, rather than an oligopoly of media companies — which is something that viewers want from YouTube.
(An analogy might be to level-1 CSRs in a call center: as a complainant, they just get in your way; but they solve a customer-service scalability bottleneck for the company, which thereby allows the company to grow past the point where it would otherwise stop being able to handle support at all due to the increasing flood of "nonsense" complaints.)
> It seems like the only use case is to trick people into thinking they're having a real interaction.
Yes, it is, but that's going to happen whether or not there's a built-in feature to do it. That ship has sailed literally centuries ago — ever heard of writing to a famous author/actor/etc, and getting a hand-written response, seemingly from the famous person themselves, but actually from their agent and just signed by the famous person?
How far we have fallen that a few bytes sent to a server are a 'real interaction'.
To the extent that we think that even real-life interactions are just byte exchanges themselves, and human mind is just a processor of information.
These nihilist arguments often ignore physical, nonverbal interaction. You can interpret it as byte procession in the end but it is still missing from digital interaction.
>It seems like the only use case is to trick people into thinking they're having a real interaction.
As opposed to the genuine interaction the porn star you follow offers to you and the 10,000 other subscribers. The whole thing is theatre.
As opposed to the genuine interaction the porn star you follow offers to you and the 10,000 other subscribers. The whole thing is theatre.
They are selling an experience, that includes the style of content, conversation, personality or persona of the creator.
Given that premise the functionally the same whether the creator or the app using an LLM responds, as long as you can keep the immersion in the role play does it matter if its the Youtube or OnlyFans actually responding?
It was already some underpaid offshore worker responding for the large creators, and this is nothing new, ATN and other phone sex line providers were doing this in 1990s and there were probably similar things in times past.
Given that premise the functionally the same whether the creator or the app using an LLM responds, as long as you can keep the immersion in the role play does it matter if its the Youtube or OnlyFans actually responding?
It was already some underpaid offshore worker responding for the large creators, and this is nothing new, ATN and other phone sex line providers were doing this in 1990s and there were probably similar things in times past.
As soon as they're clear about that, sure. The problem is that they lie to their fans and selling it as a conversation with the creator.
We weren't talking to a sexy young attractive lady on those phone sex lines either.
Some didn't care and still used them, many were scammed, but that is the nature of the industry. Sadly it has always been on the consumer of unregulated sexual services to be aware of how the industry of their era works.
Should we legalize, regulate and make it safer for both the buyers and also sex workers? Yes, but that is an another conversation altogether.
Some didn't care and still used them, many were scammed, but that is the nature of the industry. Sadly it has always been on the consumer of unregulated sexual services to be aware of how the industry of their era works.
Should we legalize, regulate and make it safer for both the buyers and also sex workers? Yes, but that is an another conversation altogether.
> to trick people
"Artificial Intelligence" -> noun artifice: ruse, clever trick, guile, deception, cunning, a skillful or artful contrivance
"Artificial Intelligence" -> noun artifice: ruse, clever trick, guile, deception, cunning, a skillful or artful contrivance
China's Weibo also has a similar chatbot, but the chatbot is a separate account with clear indication that it is a robot.
Assistants/employees are being democratized. That's a good thing, because it levels the playing field.
In the end, you are vouching with your name. If you feel the suggestion is missing the mark, don't hit send. If the suggestion is missing the mark most of the time, the product is bad and will be shut down.
In the end, you are vouching with your name. If you feel the suggestion is missing the mark, don't hit send. If the suggestion is missing the mark most of the time, the product is bad and will be shut down.
I mean they started calling people content creators and the people liked it and thought that was a compliment, that's all you need to know.
A content creator is not an artist or a videographer or a grandpa sharing some craft. A content creator is not even human, it's whatever can fill the <div id='content'></div>.
You only need programmers for everything else, but that damn div was hard to fill until now. Soon enough they'll have what they wished and then they'll realize the div that managed to sell ads is probably becoming useless.
A content creator is not an artist or a videographer or a grandpa sharing some craft. A content creator is not even human, it's whatever can fill the <div id='content'></div>.
You only need programmers for everything else, but that damn div was hard to fill until now. Soon enough they'll have what they wished and then they'll realize the div that managed to sell ads is probably becoming useless.
People already weren't quite a lot. For any channel that can afford it, other people write messages, not creators. This just automated that. These aren't real interactions.
The line between helpful automation and deceptive practices is thin
IG has this feature as well - or at least was trialing it. I got an AI-generated response to a comment on a post -- I was not amused (or impressed), but at least it was clearly labelled as such. Still warranted an immediate unfollow. It's hard for me to see why anyone would want to receive AI-generated replies, like what's the point?
On OnlyFans you get so many messages there’s no hope of replying to all of them manually. So it’s either reply to basically no one, or use automated methods.
If fans are paying for a personal connection, doesn’t automating replies risk undermining that value?
This is like plane overbooking. Airline companies could do the right thing and just sell exactly the seats left on the plane (in this case, the OF creators could put a limit to the people being able to DM them) but instead they choose the extra profit by selling more tickets than there are seats (OF creator allowing an ungodly amount of people to flood their DMs) and just take the blame the few times the statistics goes against their favor (someone figures out they have been talking with an AI/employee)
That’s an interesting analogy, but I think there’s a key difference here. With plane overbooking, passengers still get the same core service
You can still reply personally to a few whales.
> It seems like the only use case is to trick people into thinking they're having a real interaction.
This is a broadly successful economic use-case.
This is a broadly successful economic use-case.
>trick people into thinking they're having a real interaction.
I'm curious what real interaction means here. At best the person is pretending to be a character with the intention of monetizing it. Having an AI play the character vs a person doesn't seem to make it "less real" considering the entire premise is, in this case, selling a fantasy and character?
I'm curious what real interaction means here. At best the person is pretending to be a character with the intention of monetizing it. Having an AI play the character vs a person doesn't seem to make it "less real" considering the entire premise is, in this case, selling a fantasy and character?
If it doesn't matter then why is it hidden?
The use case for Alphabet is to control more of the interactive bandwidth so they can steer the influence on behalf of the highest bidder / inject increasingly subtle conversational advertising.
You can bet your ass that in the fullness of time the generated content is going to put Alphabet's interests first.
You can bet your ass that in the fullness of time the generated content is going to put Alphabet's interests first.
I sort of get why this feels dishonest, but in the same way I’m not sure social media is something that users expect to be a reciprocal experience in 2024, save speaking to ones own immediate circles.
Kids might believe that MrBeast is replying to them personally, but I think some Internet education goes along way to help here, and I don’t know of anyone of legal age to be engaging with these platforms that would expect genuine “celebrity” responses to their comments.
Kids might believe that MrBeast is replying to them personally, but I think some Internet education goes along way to help here, and I don’t know of anyone of legal age to be engaging with these platforms that would expect genuine “celebrity” responses to their comments.
Things seem directly headed to the movie Her where your monthly subscription is mostly used to pay for hosting your personal interaction model in the cloud.
That is the business model of most media.
I guess so, to a point. Jimmy Kimmel wants you to feel like you're a part of a community because you watch his show and get all of his inside jokes, but he's not sending you fake text messages pretending to be your close personal friend. Seems different to me!
The parasocial television friend hustle was developed before that was possible, or else they'd probably all be doing it too. As it is, they stick with their establish form and don't innovate because their audience is people who haven't and probably won't ever adapt to the newer forms of the hustle. If parasocial hustling is food service, then television talk shows are Cracker Barrel.
Thats a general issue. Lots of comments here could as well be ai generated. You never know for sure at least.
Could be, but I believe HN can determine such things. And Dang's made it clear multiple times that this comment section is for humans, not bots.
How could hacker news determine such things?
This comment is 100% AI generated, straight from an LLM (admittedly a small and specifically trained one). My first and likely only AI generated comment.
Can you tell it's AI generated? Can dang?
This comment is 100% AI generated, straight from an LLM (admittedly a small and specifically trained one). My first and likely only AI generated comment.
Can you tell it's AI generated? Can dang?
On a micro level there's no clear way to tell, nor is it really valuable.
Like most engineering there's a matter of "good enough" and you get surprisingly close to that by simply tracking down the most obvious accounts.
It couldn't be completely automated out regardless because intent is important as well. Using an LLM to try and translate yours or a foreign post has more honest intention than a soliciting bot or an otherwise disruptive user that is breaking rules.
Now with that context in mind:
> How could hacker news determine such things?
Good question, I'm curious as well. I'm not well versed in the state of tracking such behavior. But I'm sure any site of size has needed to prepare for this for a while.
Like most engineering there's a matter of "good enough" and you get surprisingly close to that by simply tracking down the most obvious accounts.
It couldn't be completely automated out regardless because intent is important as well. Using an LLM to try and translate yours or a foreign post has more honest intention than a soliciting bot or an otherwise disruptive user that is breaking rules.
Now with that context in mind:
> How could hacker news determine such things?
Good question, I'm curious as well. I'm not well versed in the state of tracking such behavior. But I'm sure any site of size has needed to prepare for this for a while.
It's a cat and mouse game, same as all other spam. There are AI detectors, but then the AI get better and the detectors aren't much better than 50:50 ... I don't know how we'll combat this in the future but I don't think detectors are the answer
Given what I read of Dang, I'd be surprised if any method HN uses isn't supplemented by heavy manual jidgment. I imagine any automated solutions will simply be used to flag for review more than do any sorts of auto-modding.
Ugh. Another reason I stay signed out nowadays.
They're already tricked into ceding power to billionaires. We are way passed the Rubicon on the ethics of capitalism and propaganda as a service.
This feels representative of our times: Using chatbots to power a gig economy of para-social relationships for lonely people short on real in-person interactions.
Human contact is indeed a luxury good now.
They used to say:
"buy cheap, buy twice"
Now it'll be something like:
"interact cheap, interact with AI"
They used to say:
"buy cheap, buy twice"
Now it'll be something like:
"interact cheap, interact with AI"
What are people doing instead of interacting? I've noticed this trend but i've kept my wits by ascribing it to "my peer group getting older and doing more things with their own families" - but every so often something makes my brain get hot, like this comment.
It can't all be ig/tiktok interactions, can it? I moved away from all my friends (they started it) and now it's hard to find people who have "free time" - even those that WFH! So i mostly hang out with retirees, they have free time.
It can't all be ig/tiktok interactions, can it? I moved away from all my friends (they started it) and now it's hard to find people who have "free time" - even those that WFH! So i mostly hang out with retirees, they have free time.
The broadest strokes of these issues are
1. people are working more than ever, especially in this economy. Some do lots of overtimes, some have multiple jobs (be it two literal part time jobs or full time job and doing dash services on the side). Some have other side hustles that they hope to convert into more income
Personal anecdotes: I work in games so it's never a surprise when I hear some of them need to crunch for a few months. A few others are actually trying to build up their band and do gigs every other weekend
2. non-surprisingly, people's down on money. Probably not much explanation here; not much time to hang out if they have to move (2 of my friends out of state) or job hunt after a layoff (pretty much all my friends at some point in 2023/4).
3. There's a lot of pandemic habits that never truly wore off. Some simply stay on social media, a few of my friends were always into MMOs and put more time than ever into that. They are interacting, just not necessarily with you.
4. Family. Very old knowledge, but when friends get serious partners and later spouses and especially kids, that's what they put almost all their time into. A single friend will fall off without some work.
1. people are working more than ever, especially in this economy. Some do lots of overtimes, some have multiple jobs (be it two literal part time jobs or full time job and doing dash services on the side). Some have other side hustles that they hope to convert into more income
Personal anecdotes: I work in games so it's never a surprise when I hear some of them need to crunch for a few months. A few others are actually trying to build up their band and do gigs every other weekend
2. non-surprisingly, people's down on money. Probably not much explanation here; not much time to hang out if they have to move (2 of my friends out of state) or job hunt after a layoff (pretty much all my friends at some point in 2023/4).
3. There's a lot of pandemic habits that never truly wore off. Some simply stay on social media, a few of my friends were always into MMOs and put more time than ever into that. They are interacting, just not necessarily with you.
4. Family. Very old knowledge, but when friends get serious partners and later spouses and especially kids, that's what they put almost all their time into. A single friend will fall off without some work.
could it be business networking? if only you made money just making vague affirmations with friends...then you can achieve less in life, I suppose...
You've got it upside down. Human contact is cheap. If you want to talk to another human being in real life, I bet you can do so within 5 minutes. What has actually happened is that the internet has created a close enough simulacrum of human contact that is as addicting as any drug. It provides a cheap hit of socialization, and you can fill every last inch of your life with it.
Listen to a podcast in the car, walk around while scrolling social media, watch Twitch streams while doing the dishes. It doesn't actually fulfill your needs but it feels like it does. Gen AI is just a way to generate more of that kind of content than is possible, removing any human element, making something supposedly just as tasty, but it's empty calories.
Listen to a podcast in the car, walk around while scrolling social media, watch Twitch streams while doing the dishes. It doesn't actually fulfill your needs but it feels like it does. Gen AI is just a way to generate more of that kind of content than is possible, removing any human element, making something supposedly just as tasty, but it's empty calories.
You are actually right.
I'm fairly gregarious, and find it fairly easy to approach strangers (if I have to). Yes, a lot of human contact can be had for fairly cheap.
However, I'm also aware that this is far from "normal" -- the average person is not this way (at least, not today). How/why things have come to be this way, I cannot pinpoint, but our lives have gotten progressively busier to the point where many of us choose convenience over "richness/fullness of experience".
However, my point is still valid, in that if you are an average person today, the prevailing social gestalt in America is "mind your own business, and don't talk to (or approach) people in the street".
Yes, weird folks like me, who are willing to be more vulnerable (what if the person you just said "Good morning!" to cusses you out?) will be able to get human contact for cheap, but high-quality Human contact is definitely waning.
P.S. Also agree with you that GenAI (and other modern technologies) are providing a frictionless existence, while also removing the richness and meaning that comes with the friction. It's the "soma" from Huxley's "Brave New World".
I'm fairly gregarious, and find it fairly easy to approach strangers (if I have to). Yes, a lot of human contact can be had for fairly cheap.
However, I'm also aware that this is far from "normal" -- the average person is not this way (at least, not today). How/why things have come to be this way, I cannot pinpoint, but our lives have gotten progressively busier to the point where many of us choose convenience over "richness/fullness of experience".
However, my point is still valid, in that if you are an average person today, the prevailing social gestalt in America is "mind your own business, and don't talk to (or approach) people in the street".
Yes, weird folks like me, who are willing to be more vulnerable (what if the person you just said "Good morning!" to cusses you out?) will be able to get human contact for cheap, but high-quality Human contact is definitely waning.
P.S. Also agree with you that GenAI (and other modern technologies) are providing a frictionless existence, while also removing the richness and meaning that comes with the friction. It's the "soma" from Huxley's "Brave New World".
Is there that much difference between this and a phone sex cubicle worker in the 70s or 80s? It's been a commoditized job for ages. Slightly higher tech now, but basically still the same thing.
Did phone sex operators stars get million dollar incomes in the 70s and 80s? Was it a 10 digits industry then?
The company owners did. But the phone operators were (to my understanding) reasonably well paid. However income dropped off with the introduction of video chat(first on sky TV, then internets).
One of my former colleagues bought a flat in london with the proceeds from their dancing in night clubs. Which I thought at the time, and still do, is might impressive. They keep that private, for a number of sadly obvious reasons, however they are not ashamed of it.
They refused video chat, because it was less protected, and less anonymous. In a (good) club, you are protected by bouncers, no phones, no intimidation. OF and the rest you have limited control on who shares your stuff, so its much harder to be a part time model.
One of my former colleagues bought a flat in london with the proceeds from their dancing in night clubs. Which I thought at the time, and still do, is might impressive. They keep that private, for a number of sadly obvious reasons, however they are not ashamed of it.
They refused video chat, because it was less protected, and less anonymous. In a (good) club, you are protected by bouncers, no phones, no intimidation. OF and the rest you have limited control on who shares your stuff, so its much harder to be a part time model.
>Was it a 10 digits industry then?
Apparently so. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_sex)
"By the end of the 1980s, nearly all of the major local phone companies in the United States, plus the major long-distance carriers, were actively involved in the phone sex business[...] In 2002 profits from phone sex were estimated at one billion dollars a year"
And in relative terms in particular that seems pretty huge given how much smaller all the phone and online markets were compared to what they're now.
Apparently so. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_sex)
"By the end of the 1980s, nearly all of the major local phone companies in the United States, plus the major long-distance carriers, were actively involved in the phone sex business[...] In 2002 profits from phone sex were estimated at one billion dollars a year"
And in relative terms in particular that seems pretty huge given how much smaller all the phone and online markets were compared to what they're now.
> And in relative terms
Well the comparative change is kinda the point. OF is huge and content producers have a chance of making big bucks, as opposed to what was there before
Well the comparative change is kinda the point. OF is huge and content producers have a chance of making big bucks, as opposed to what was there before
Globally probably - since now it is bigger. Have a look at Teleholding in the netherlands as an example, they printed money mostly with recordings not even people on the other side.
I think it's more common now. I don't know that phone sex was ever all that popular, but OnlyFans is huge. Also, there's just a lot more sollicitations. On twitch you have gamer girls in skimpy outfits using the platform as a funnel to drive people to OF, and most of their audience is underage. They're on twitter and reddit as well. Just in general porn is a lot more prevalent and it's kind of leaking into other platforms, harder to completely avoid it.
Also uh, I was on Facebook recently and they've added this reels feature, trying to be tiktok. Occasionally I browse my feed to see what my friends are up to, and in the reels (which can't be turned off) I see some underage girls doing really inappropriate things for views. I think this is really problematic. I don't want to be shown this, and I also feel upset that young girls are being encouraged by social media platforms to use their sexuality to get attention online (and make said platforms more money by doing so).
Also uh, I was on Facebook recently and they've added this reels feature, trying to be tiktok. Occasionally I browse my feed to see what my friends are up to, and in the reels (which can't be turned off) I see some underage girls doing really inappropriate things for views. I think this is really problematic. I don't want to be shown this, and I also feel upset that young girls are being encouraged by social media platforms to use their sexuality to get attention online (and make said platforms more money by doing so).
> but OnlyFans is huge.
Is it? Who in their right mind pays for porn?
It could just aswell be a 98% money loundry scheme.
Is it? Who in their right mind pays for porn?
It could just aswell be a 98% money loundry scheme.
It is also in the interest of all those involved with OnlyFans to highly exaggerate all the $$$ figures.
The people I have known that have made OnlyFans content made as little money as you would expect.
There has always been money in porn though with a giant power law distribution. The only difference now is that instead of some sleazebag porn producer trying convince some woman they are the next Jenna Jameson, we have this sleazebag technology platform doing the same thing.
The people I have known that have made OnlyFans content made as little money as you would expect.
There has always been money in porn though with a giant power law distribution. The only difference now is that instead of some sleazebag porn producer trying convince some woman they are the next Jenna Jameson, we have this sleazebag technology platform doing the same thing.
Not to mention sleazebags hounding every woman on social media to do an only fans.
In case you've not noticed, not all the public are in their right mind.
I’ve never been, but it’s how I imagine Japan based on the snippets I hear/read about their culture
The models themselves are going to be replaced by those same AI Impersonators. Onlyfans has to be the most predatory service I have ever used. You are pretty much signing up to be a target of scammers, whether they be some kids in the Philippines sitting with 20 phones, or AI bots, it has become incredibly obvious that every creator uses them. They all employ the same tactic of seeing how much you are willing to pay and then increasingly offering you more and more expensive content. A few years ago you could have some real conversations but now it is just glorified spam. Even if a creator wasn’t using these tactics, the water has been so muddied that you just assume it’s all fake now.
I find it scary how many people I see online or even in real life that actually call girls on there their girlfriend and say things like 'sure it costs money, but so does yours when you buy dinner etc'. And no amount of; these girls are doing their job; you are a client, they forget about you the second you switch off, if their weren't bots on the first place seems to help.
you know multiple people IRL who refer to onlyfans models as their girlfriends? might be time for a new social circle
'know' is a bit much, see my other comment in this thread.
I have never seen anyone online or IRL say that. Could it be your social circle?
It's not 1:1 the same, but I think the episode "Take me private" from series "Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On", gives a glimpse into that.
It's released in 2017, so more cam-girl than OF model, but it shows a deeply parasocial girlfriend-stand-in relationship of someone that spends a good chunk of his disposable income on that. I think the now common OF model + chatters are an evolution of that has even more tendencies to create girlfriend-stand-in relationships.
It's released in 2017, so more cam-girl than OF model, but it shows a deeply parasocial girlfriend-stand-in relationship of someone that spends a good chunk of his disposable income on that. I think the now common OF model + chatters are an evolution of that has even more tendencies to create girlfriend-stand-in relationships.
Online: watch some episodes by Catfished (or so; there are multiple of these shows; kind of the same) on YT. I saw it on Reddit too.
Offline: I meet many people as I travel and skip company (I have a small company doing emergency software/hardware fixes, so jobs are very short and diverse) a lot and talk a lot with strangers for fun; sometimes we end up going deep in the night over beers and things come out. Usually they are somewhat awkward and lonely guys with the tendency to see women as things; that intersects often with programmers/engineers. These are not even the weirdest things I hear from strangers either.
Offline: I meet many people as I travel and skip company (I have a small company doing emergency software/hardware fixes, so jobs are very short and diverse) a lot and talk a lot with strangers for fun; sometimes we end up going deep in the night over beers and things come out. Usually they are somewhat awkward and lonely guys with the tendency to see women as things; that intersects often with programmers/engineers. These are not even the weirdest things I hear from strangers either.
You should write a book.
I’ve definitely had points in my life where I would have loved to have a girlfriend that forgot about me the moment I went away. I wasn’t seeking a relationship, I only wanted the physical part the rest was a headache.
There should be some hashtag for men forced onto relationships when all they wanted was the sex /s… but honestly, if roles were reversed this would totally exist
There should be some hashtag for men forced onto relationships when all they wanted was the sex /s… but honestly, if roles were reversed this would totally exist
Do you mean that you want prostitute? You can buy time with one.
No. I’m aware of that industry but not really into it. Something like “friends with benefits” was usually my preferred arrangement. Normal, non sex worker, people but without all the extra stuff that comes with being in a relationship.
a non-committal relations on both parties is not an easy feat - as usually people have different goals and preferences.
I could well image if you looked like a young Clooney, it'd not be hard to arrange one night stands, either.
I could well image if you looked like a young Clooney, it'd not be hard to arrange one night stands, either.
> Onlyfans has to be the most predatory service I have ever used
>> employ the same tactic of seeing how much you are willing to pay and then increasingly offering you more and more expensive content
Oh, in that way.
>> employ the same tactic of seeing how much you are willing to pay and then increasingly offering you more and more expensive content
Oh, in that way.
The porn industry being predatory?
Absolute shocker.
Absolute shocker.
There's still plenty of avenues to have direct access to sex workers with varying levels of intimacy/realness if you cast a wide enough net. Just not necessarily with a top tier OF model! Though it seems like most people are satisfied with superficial interactions, in which case the AI bot approach might be a win-win.
I'm curious. Why did you use OF?
There were non-nude people on there, once upon a time. But the banking issues around XXX caused a mass migration to that service. I think originally it was supposed to be like patreon.
regardless, though, does it matter why?
regardless, though, does it matter why?
I think a bunch of people around here used it for tutoring and yoga classes and such. It was meant to be a Patreon. But after a while, they stopped because everyone assumed it was "tutoring" and "yoga classes".
Perhaps this is why every platform ends up banning or pushing all the XXX to a red light district.
Perhaps this is why every platform ends up banning or pushing all the XXX to a red light district.
It was started by the founder of clips4sale and intended primarily for the findom kink. They really pushed the SFW angle early on as a way of hanging on to Stripe's low processing rates.
There are still people on there who make $$$ by pretty much just publishing Instagram-level stuff, but in bigger sets + videos. Most actual cosplayers moved off OF eventually and either sell directly or via Patreon now.
It doesn't always have to be hardcore, but the implication of having an OF is "porn star".
It doesn't always have to be hardcore, but the implication of having an OF is "porn star".
OnlyFans might want to look into the legal implications.
I could imagine a class action law suit where the company is sued for fraud on the basis that it is selling real interactions with models.
OnlyFans user should know better, but you could make the case they were defrauded for services (in this case, interaction with the model).
I could imagine a class action law suit where the company is sued for fraud on the basis that it is selling real interactions with models.
OnlyFans user should know better, but you could make the case they were defrauded for services (in this case, interaction with the model).
OnlyFans chat operator has been a job for quite a while. It is well documented, with news exposes and everything. So if OnlyFans wants to protect themselves from a lawsuit on impersonation, the horses left the barn years ago.
A class action lawsuit alleges OnlyFans has deceived subscribers who, unbeknownst to them, communicate with paid chatters, and not actual creators themselves.
For how much these creators get paid per fan per month, does one really expect anything else? It’s not hard to imagine that many of them would be paid less than minimum wage if they actually responded to all their messages. But that much isn’t really that much different from the rest of the creator / gig economy.
Perhaps "less than minimum wage" is justified for the offering though? Most industries struggle to compete with free, that doesn't justify deception.
OnlyFans is just the platform, it's the creators that are doing the deception.
Does it really matter? The only question should be, did it get you off? If it did, you got what you paid for.
For a person who expects to talk directly to a creator, especially when being asked for money, I would say that it would matter.
And I am sure there are many men who believe they are talking to the creator and not a chatter or bot.
And I am sure there are many men who believe they are talking to the creator and not a chatter or bot.
> OnlyFans might want to look into the legal implications.
Pretty sure they have.
> I could imagine a class action law suit where the company is sued for fraud on the basis that it is selling real interactions with models.
They fairly explicitly are not, as (1) they aren’t selling the creator services, that’s explicitly (as agreed to by fans in their agreement with OF) a separate (standardized) contract between the fan and the creator, and (2) that standardized contract includes an agreement that the fan acknowledges that the creator may employ third parties to assist with interactions, and, as regards AI content specifically, (3) AI generated content is required by the terms imposed on creators to be explicitly labelled, where it is allowed.
> But you could make the case they were defrauded for services (in this case, interaction with the model).
IF a particular representation around a particular interaction evidenced a special promise with regard to that interaction beyond the standard contract, maybe, by the creator, and in violation of OF’s explicit terms for creators prohibiting false and misleading representations.
Pretty sure they have.
> I could imagine a class action law suit where the company is sued for fraud on the basis that it is selling real interactions with models.
They fairly explicitly are not, as (1) they aren’t selling the creator services, that’s explicitly (as agreed to by fans in their agreement with OF) a separate (standardized) contract between the fan and the creator, and (2) that standardized contract includes an agreement that the fan acknowledges that the creator may employ third parties to assist with interactions, and, as regards AI content specifically, (3) AI generated content is required by the terms imposed on creators to be explicitly labelled, where it is allowed.
> But you could make the case they were defrauded for services (in this case, interaction with the model).
IF a particular representation around a particular interaction evidenced a special promise with regard to that interaction beyond the standard contract, maybe, by the creator, and in violation of OF’s explicit terms for creators prohibiting false and misleading representations.
Can't be that much legal risk considering AshleyMadison.com is still around.
Wasn't that just dating/hookups for people in relationships? Not seeing a fraud angle there.
A majority of the women on that site were bots. That's the fraud part.
Couldn't they add something in their TOS indicating that AI assistance is common and they aren't responsible for what their content creators do?
What if they spin the service as "an experience" rather than specifically about interaction with a model? And who'se to say that a model has to be a live model anyway?
What if they spin the service as "an experience" rather than specifically about interaction with a model? And who'se to say that a model has to be a live model anyway?
> Couldn’t they add something in their TOS indicating that AI assistance is common and they aren’t responsible for what their content creators do?
They (1) do have a policy (and separate standardized fan/creator contract) about their limited responsibility for fan/creator interactions, and that contract includes a fan acknowledgement that creators may use third-party assistance in interactions, but also (2) a policy that requires creator to explicitly disclose any AI-created content as AI-created.
They (1) do have a policy (and separate standardized fan/creator contract) about their limited responsibility for fan/creator interactions, and that contract includes a fan acknowledgement that creators may use third-party assistance in interactions, but also (2) a policy that requires creator to explicitly disclose any AI-created content as AI-created.
It’s just Tim down the block. I’d love it if they had to put a disclaimer at the very least if they are using any services.
I would say that’s a risk for the individual models. OnlyFans provides a platform for creators to distribute content and collect payment.
What content they provide is up to the creators. Which is why it became a de facto porn site in the first place. They essentially AirBudded the site: “well the rules don’t say I can’t show hole”. And since it was the only thing in the site getting traction, they turned a blind eye to it.
But I don’t think OnlyFans ever promised subscribers any particular interaction.
What content they provide is up to the creators. Which is why it became a de facto porn site in the first place. They essentially AirBudded the site: “well the rules don’t say I can’t show hole”. And since it was the only thing in the site getting traction, they turned a blind eye to it.
But I don’t think OnlyFans ever promised subscribers any particular interaction.
You mean... one like this?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41879574
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41879574
There is and has been for a while, an entire industry behind OF management, mass messages, paid chat operators and what not. AI is just making it easier to run the whole thing on autopilot at the expense of the ”fans”
> selling real interactions with models
For some value of real...
At least a stripper is actually there in front of you.
For some value of real...
At least a stripper is actually there in front of you.
But she's also there in front of you. I don't think people grasp how dissonant social isolation can be. I know a couple of guys that are sorta hikikomori and they both want human contact as well as don't want it. They would not enjoy at all to be in the strip club to leave the house, for people to be around. They just want to consume the same content but with some personalization like her saying their name. It's quite strange and I think we'll get many more people like this over time if we don't change something.
> I think we'll get many more people like this over time if we don't change something.
it may seem similar to a stripper or an escort but onlyfans is not just selling nudity or porn, they are selling faux relationships.
> it may seem similar to a stripper or an escort but onlyfans is not just selling nudity or porn, they are selling faux relationships.
The “but” there suggests you don’t really understand the things you are comparing to OF. The illusion of companionship has always been a major part of those in-person services.
The “but” there suggests you don’t really understand the things you are comparing to OF. The illusion of companionship has always been a major part of those in-person services.
> OnlyFans user should know better...
If OnlyFans users were thinking straight they wouldn't be wasting money on a model who doesn't care about them to begin with. I don't really know that I would expect them to do the math on their own on this one.
If OnlyFans users were thinking straight they wouldn't be wasting money on a model who doesn't care about them to begin with. I don't really know that I would expect them to do the math on their own on this one.
throw838499(1)
Oh come on. Its not as if they're showing you photos of what those folks look like in real life either.
If you expect realism from an adult entertainment site, you might as well go buy a bridge or two.
If you expect realism from an adult entertainment site, you might as well go buy a bridge or two.
Using historical advice, if you expect nude photos you post of yourself on the internet to stay private, you might as well go buy a bridge or two.
Oh, but they do. And they will sue to keep it that way.
I don't think being dismissive of consumer rights just because it deals with something icky is wise. We need to be able to have adult discussions about adult content - a lack of this is why the internet has been quietly filled with porn of dubious consent featuring models of dubious ages for the past 20 years.
Oh, but they do. And they will sue to keep it that way.
I don't think being dismissive of consumer rights just because it deals with something icky is wise. We need to be able to have adult discussions about adult content - a lack of this is why the internet has been quietly filled with porn of dubious consent featuring models of dubious ages for the past 20 years.
There will be no lawsuit. This kind of work long predates OF. Premium sex chat SMS services were doing the same thing at least a decade before OF existed.
This. I used to spam thirsty dudes on AOL/AIM/Yahoo Chat/MSN Messenger with a chatbot with prompts to convert them to porn website sales in the 90s. I made 6 figures one year.
It wasnt even AI, just if else shit and looking for keywords in their messages and then reply X or Y lol.
One of my favorite quotes: Never underestimate the stupidity of a man with his dick in one hand and his wallet in the other.
It wasnt even AI, just if else shit and looking for keywords in their messages and then reply X or Y lol.
One of my favorite quotes: Never underestimate the stupidity of a man with his dick in one hand and his wallet in the other.
Do you have any regrets? Given your revenue number you clearly caught a lot of marks, some of which may have been very vulnerable when you targeted them - recently widowed, mental crisis, etc.
Would you do it again?
Would you do it again?
No real regrets besides not saving more of it I suppose.
It taught me a lot and now some almost 30 years later I'm still a nerd and programming bots that make me money.
It taught me a lot and now some almost 30 years later I'm still a nerd and programming bots that make me money.
Damn six figs in the 90’s was a lot. Please tell me you invested it in Bitcoin and are a tres commas club lol
Any other crazy stories from those times? You seemed to be ahead of the curve.
Any other crazy stories from those times? You seemed to be ahead of the curve.
I was 15 so I spent it all on stupid shit :P I continued this into my early 20s.
Bitcoin wasn't around yet.
Tons of crazy stories for sure. Captchas weren't invented yet, no one really had any rate limits on login pages, inbox spam filters were easily bypassable, trojans like sub7 were just coming around, all kinds of wild fun back then. If you wanted to make money, there nothing was really stopping you.
The 90s were peak internet imo
Bitcoin wasn't around yet.
Tons of crazy stories for sure. Captchas weren't invented yet, no one really had any rate limits on login pages, inbox spam filters were easily bypassable, trojans like sub7 were just coming around, all kinds of wild fun back then. If you wanted to make money, there nothing was really stopping you.
The 90s were peak internet imo
awesome! do you think AI is gonna change the web as we know it?
Hm seems one was already filed so… you’re wrong
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41879574
I was surprised the Tates were bragging in great detail about doing that years ago and no one seems to care that they defrauded men out of millions
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41879574
I was surprised the Tates were bragging in great detail about doing that years ago and no one seems to care that they defrauded men out of millions
Indeed, I was 100% wrong. That’s a really interesting link. Thanks for sharing!
By the way the Tates have just the other day rugpulled many of their followers AGAIN — in a different way:
https://x.com/gadget44027447/status/1860339419020231071?s=46...
https://x.com/gadget44027447/status/1860339419020231071?s=46...
Lawsuits are based on the probability of being able to extract and its amount; not the relevance of the claim or the morality of it. Given that Onlyfans is moving billions, it's probably only a matter of time before they start getting their share of lawsuits.
Small professional rabbithole:
So I do GTM and work a lot with marketing websites for companies with long sales processes.
The company mentioned there, Supercreator, funnily has a CRM - which is not just some funky AI chatbot thingie, but a proper enterprise thing that people use when doing sales.
It looks like they're treating creators and the "agencies" (whatever that means) as what we would potentially call "SMBs", and sell this CRM thing to them to manage their "customers", which I assume are the fans or subscribers or whatever on the OF side of things.
This is insanely interesting to me. Look at the website - you have a "request a demo" section (which is super enterprise B2B), look at the menu, it's like an enterprise SaaS website.
What the actual fuck is going on here lol
So I do GTM and work a lot with marketing websites for companies with long sales processes.
The company mentioned there, Supercreator, funnily has a CRM - which is not just some funky AI chatbot thingie, but a proper enterprise thing that people use when doing sales.
It looks like they're treating creators and the "agencies" (whatever that means) as what we would potentially call "SMBs", and sell this CRM thing to them to manage their "customers", which I assume are the fans or subscribers or whatever on the OF side of things.
This is insanely interesting to me. Look at the website - you have a "request a demo" section (which is super enterprise B2B), look at the menu, it's like an enterprise SaaS website.
What the actual fuck is going on here lol
Man traditional CRM's are missing a major medium size market segment I guess.
also checked Supercreator.app out - looks really interesting
a better headline would be: “OnlyFans human chatters are being replaced by AI”.
That’s because:
- 99% of the time the models on OF don’t actually have any conversation(many of them don’t speak English at all), they may not even signup on OF. They are “managed” models(aka pimp-ed through a local pimp or totally remote/web pimp/agency))
- the DMs were handled by chatters in the first place so this has nothing to do with the models.
- 99% of the time the models on OF don’t actually have any conversation(many of them don’t speak English at all), they may not even signup on OF. They are “managed” models(aka pimp-ed through a local pimp or totally remote/web pimp/agency))
- the DMs were handled by chatters in the first place so this has nothing to do with the models.
If anything, an LLM might be better at remembering about the small details of the model persona, previous conversations with the customer, and stay in character.
And how does that affects those OF models who actually type out their own interactions? The problem with chat farms and AI alike is the deception, and destroying for those who are genuine.
Tricking a human to interact with a bot is imo in the same category as trolling, spam or propaganda. It's a way to redirect attention and energy away from people, without spending any yourself. Sure, we can laugh at the simps wasting money on "interactions" with streamers, but it's no fun when our Google searches and Amazon reviews are filled up with AI slop, is it? It was already bad before AI, and now we're moving towards noise levels that will cripple human-crafted content.
Labeling content is the first, and right thing to do, just like the unwritten rule of giving credit to a creator when you post their work. It doesn't stop ill-faithed AI slop, or human content farms, but it can at least create a social expectation and prevent normalizing it.
Tricking a human to interact with a bot is imo in the same category as trolling, spam or propaganda. It's a way to redirect attention and energy away from people, without spending any yourself. Sure, we can laugh at the simps wasting money on "interactions" with streamers, but it's no fun when our Google searches and Amazon reviews are filled up with AI slop, is it? It was already bad before AI, and now we're moving towards noise levels that will cripple human-crafted content.
Labeling content is the first, and right thing to do, just like the unwritten rule of giving credit to a creator when you post their work. It doesn't stop ill-faithed AI slop, or human content farms, but it can at least create a social expectation and prevent normalizing it.
>> And how does that affects those OF models who actually type out their own interactions?
They will work harder and get paid less. Just like Amazon affects small store owners.
They will work harder and get paid less. Just like Amazon affects small store owners.
Yeah this just went from "You're speaking to someone in a call center pretending to be a cutie" to "you're speaking to an AI cutie". With the amount of people addicted to AI girlfriends it's not surprising.
The issue this brings up always reminds of that scene in Westworld where the protagonist arrives there for the first time and meets a host.
Host: "You want to ask, so ask."
Protagonist: "Are you real?"
Host: "Well if you can't tell, does it matter?"
It always gives me chills because at least for me, the answer is like Schrödinger's cat. It really doesn't matter at all if you never know the truth and definitely seems to matter if you do find out.
Host: "You want to ask, so ask."
Protagonist: "Are you real?"
Host: "Well if you can't tell, does it matter?"
It always gives me chills because at least for me, the answer is like Schrödinger's cat. It really doesn't matter at all if you never know the truth and definitely seems to matter if you do find out.
I hope I don’t come off as offensive asking this, but is there really that much of a difference? I’m not a fan of services which prey on peoples loneliness, but isn’t the defining feature or these para-social relationship platforms that they are all make-belief? Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s very hard for me to imagine that you could form any sort of relationship with the thousands of lonely people who pay you money to notice them. Hell, they must have some impressive note taking strategies to remember it all. An AI might end up being more engaging and personal.
Presumably the goal of the people throwing money at an OF content-creator [in the form of "donations" — "here's some extra money without any implied obligation" — rather than e.g. paying for custom content] is to try to jump the gap from parasocial relationship to real (sugar?) relationship.
Of course, the OF creator can't form true relationships with thousands of people. I'm guessing that the implicit mental model in the heads of OF subscribers who "donate" to creators, is that this is a competition — that they're all participating in something like an ongoing hidden auction for a slice of the creator's limited time. They think "if I just pay the most, then she'll feel obligated to pay attention to me." (Of course, most creators feel no such sense of obligation.)
If OF subscribers can know in advance that that jump is fundamentally impossible — such as if they can discern that a dumb AI is responding to their donation-attached messages, and that that AI fundamentally has no feature to forward messages to the creator themselves — then they probably wouldn't bother "donating" in the first place.
Of course, the OF creator can't form true relationships with thousands of people. I'm guessing that the implicit mental model in the heads of OF subscribers who "donate" to creators, is that this is a competition — that they're all participating in something like an ongoing hidden auction for a slice of the creator's limited time. They think "if I just pay the most, then she'll feel obligated to pay attention to me." (Of course, most creators feel no such sense of obligation.)
If OF subscribers can know in advance that that jump is fundamentally impossible — such as if they can discern that a dumb AI is responding to their donation-attached messages, and that that AI fundamentally has no feature to forward messages to the creator themselves — then they probably wouldn't bother "donating" in the first place.
That's not an unreasonable thought, but I think you underestimate how many people know that they are buying an illusion and are fine with that. To support that point: there are people right now who pay real money to chat with an AI companion that pretends to be their boy- or girlfriend. [0,1]
I think these people are, by and large, under no illusion that their AI companion is anything other than a computer program, but they get attached anyway and choose to live in the illusion.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/replika/top/?sort=top&t=month
[1] https://replika.com/
I think these people are, by and large, under no illusion that their AI companion is anything other than a computer program, but they get attached anyway and choose to live in the illusion.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/replika/top/?sort=top&t=month
[1] https://replika.com/
I would agree that at least some OF consumers that throw donations at the OF creators, are knowingly buying an illusion. But I don't think your analogy holds. I think there's a fundamental difference between these two activities (interaction with OF creators, vs interaction with AI "character" chatbots.) The former is, in fact, expected to be literally parasocial — key word "social"; while the latter is expected to be a form of private entertainment.
---
Re: the former, I would read "interacting with an OF creator" as no different than interacting with any other "their job is to pretend to like you for money, but they aren't putting themselves in a position where they're ever obligated to do anything for you" type of sex worker. For example, the employees at strip clubs; or for maybe an even better analogy, the employees at a Japanese "host club".
These are quintessential parasocial relationships: the consumer of such a service is buying an illusion, but the "product" they expect to be buying is specifically the illusion of fondness, as performed by a human. They're buying a pure act of emotional labor done by a human — "service with a smile", but where the service is the smile. (It's the same thing people get out of donating to a Twitch streamer — the streamer thanks them on-stream for their donation. They get noticed in a performatively appreciative manner.)
And, depending on how in-demand that human's time is / how many other consumers want that same emotional labor output from them, that emotional labor can be incredibly highly-valued in the market. Which is why some OF subscribers — despite knowing that the possibility of deeper connection to the OF creator is likely illusory — are still willing to pay huge amounts of money. They aren't expecting to literally enter into a sugaring relationship with the OF creator; but they are expecting to get the creator's attention and possibly receive a hand-written thank-you note or shout-out or some custom selfie they didn't ask for. An act of emotional labor on the OF creator's part, performatively responding to their donation.
But, like with going to see a magic show, this kind of illusion is only valuable when it has high verisimilitude. Nobody will pays to see a bad magic act, if they know it's going to be bad. And nobody donates to an OF creator, if they know they're going to get AI responses.
(I'm sure there are some OF consumers who are not observant enough to realize they're receiving AI responses, and so feel like they are receiving the parasocial emotional labor service they paid for. Just like there are some people — usually children — who are not observant enough to notice the flaws in a bad magic act, creating a market for bad magicians.)
---
Re: the latter — paid subscribers to AI character chatbot services treat this economic relationship entirely differently. They don't see the individual chatbot as anything that holds value. And a business model that tries to get them to pay for a specific AI chatbot character, would likely never work.
Rather, from my understanding, to the people who subscribe to these things, paying for the service is analogous to paying a subscription to a game streaming service like GeForce Now.
In both cases, there's a large quantity of interactive entertainment out there that you want to "play". And running that interactive entertainment locally, would require capabilities that none of the devices you own possess. And it would be very expensive to buy the fancy hardware with those capabilities—possibly to the point of financial impracticality, if you want a top-of-the-line experience. (And, funny enough, in both of these cases, the fancy hardware is a GPU!)
Also, you might want some additional convenience — maybe you don't have anywhere to put a gaming rig, but want to play everything on a laptop. Or even on your phone sometimes.
A game streaming service has one major USP, and one minor USP:
- The major USP is that it trades CapEx for OpEx. Rather than owning / maintaining / dealing with a gaming rig, you can effectively rent one in the cloud.
- The minor USP is that it might provide subsidized access to a number of entertainment titles you'd otherwise have to purchase. (Xbox Game Pass does; GeForce Now does not.)
AI character chatbot services — which form a spectrum with generic flat-monthly-fee "Inference-as-a-Service" providers intended for use with private FOSS AI-character-chat frontends (e.g. SillyTavern) — have the same two USPs:
- The major USP is, again, trading CapEx for OpEx.
- The minor USP is a bit stranger — the services that specifically market themselves as "AI character chat" services often market a model that's being continuously fine-tuned on other users' interactions to improve its fidelity for the specific use-case; and, less often, market a proprietary stable of characters developed for the service. (But "AI characters" themselves — the definitions that make a chatbot into a particular character — are mostly considered to be a commodity; they're posted for free to various "AI character card" hosting services, and most systems in this space just expect you to import the characters you're interested in from such hosting services, rather than offering their own proprietary ones.)
All in all, there's no "illusion" here for anyone to "fall for." There's just a desired capability (running AI models to play with), with a zero-sum trade-off being made between self-hosting that capability, vs. paying someone else to manage it for you.
There is, as always, the exception that the world contains some very unobservant people — possibly again children — who will mistakenly develop a parasocial bond to AI characters because they fail to notice the flaws and limitations that make interactions with an AI character qualitatively different from interactions with a human, and thereby fail to move past the initial sense of full immersion/verisimilitude they feel when interacting with such systems.
But these chumps are the exception. Most subscribers to these services are not confused about what they're paying for; they have moved past any initial impression of full immersion. Instead, they just see AI characters as fun toys — entertainment software! — and they're paying $10/mo or whatever because that's a fair price to pay to access a unique type of fun toy.
The key testable hypothesis here, is that once even our phones have the GPU grunt required to run high-fidelity "roleplaying" LLMs locally, the bottom will drop out of this market; there'll be no reason to pay for an "AI character streaming service" indefinitely, once your phone's OpEx gets you free unlimited access to that capability locally, in the form of a free or one-time-cost app that does the same thing.
(...also, just as a tangent: this is probably the "everybody knows it but nobody's going to say it" reason that so many people got so excited about the new Mac Mini. It's a perfect single-user AI-character-chatbot RP model host, that takes up minimal space and has a reasonable price-point. Many people currently paying for these services would actually rather trade OpEx for CapEx — the CapEx was previously just too dang high to make it worth it!)
---
Re: the former, I would read "interacting with an OF creator" as no different than interacting with any other "their job is to pretend to like you for money, but they aren't putting themselves in a position where they're ever obligated to do anything for you" type of sex worker. For example, the employees at strip clubs; or for maybe an even better analogy, the employees at a Japanese "host club".
These are quintessential parasocial relationships: the consumer of such a service is buying an illusion, but the "product" they expect to be buying is specifically the illusion of fondness, as performed by a human. They're buying a pure act of emotional labor done by a human — "service with a smile", but where the service is the smile. (It's the same thing people get out of donating to a Twitch streamer — the streamer thanks them on-stream for their donation. They get noticed in a performatively appreciative manner.)
And, depending on how in-demand that human's time is / how many other consumers want that same emotional labor output from them, that emotional labor can be incredibly highly-valued in the market. Which is why some OF subscribers — despite knowing that the possibility of deeper connection to the OF creator is likely illusory — are still willing to pay huge amounts of money. They aren't expecting to literally enter into a sugaring relationship with the OF creator; but they are expecting to get the creator's attention and possibly receive a hand-written thank-you note or shout-out or some custom selfie they didn't ask for. An act of emotional labor on the OF creator's part, performatively responding to their donation.
But, like with going to see a magic show, this kind of illusion is only valuable when it has high verisimilitude. Nobody will pays to see a bad magic act, if they know it's going to be bad. And nobody donates to an OF creator, if they know they're going to get AI responses.
(I'm sure there are some OF consumers who are not observant enough to realize they're receiving AI responses, and so feel like they are receiving the parasocial emotional labor service they paid for. Just like there are some people — usually children — who are not observant enough to notice the flaws in a bad magic act, creating a market for bad magicians.)
---
Re: the latter — paid subscribers to AI character chatbot services treat this economic relationship entirely differently. They don't see the individual chatbot as anything that holds value. And a business model that tries to get them to pay for a specific AI chatbot character, would likely never work.
Rather, from my understanding, to the people who subscribe to these things, paying for the service is analogous to paying a subscription to a game streaming service like GeForce Now.
In both cases, there's a large quantity of interactive entertainment out there that you want to "play". And running that interactive entertainment locally, would require capabilities that none of the devices you own possess. And it would be very expensive to buy the fancy hardware with those capabilities—possibly to the point of financial impracticality, if you want a top-of-the-line experience. (And, funny enough, in both of these cases, the fancy hardware is a GPU!)
Also, you might want some additional convenience — maybe you don't have anywhere to put a gaming rig, but want to play everything on a laptop. Or even on your phone sometimes.
A game streaming service has one major USP, and one minor USP:
- The major USP is that it trades CapEx for OpEx. Rather than owning / maintaining / dealing with a gaming rig, you can effectively rent one in the cloud.
- The minor USP is that it might provide subsidized access to a number of entertainment titles you'd otherwise have to purchase. (Xbox Game Pass does; GeForce Now does not.)
AI character chatbot services — which form a spectrum with generic flat-monthly-fee "Inference-as-a-Service" providers intended for use with private FOSS AI-character-chat frontends (e.g. SillyTavern) — have the same two USPs:
- The major USP is, again, trading CapEx for OpEx.
- The minor USP is a bit stranger — the services that specifically market themselves as "AI character chat" services often market a model that's being continuously fine-tuned on other users' interactions to improve its fidelity for the specific use-case; and, less often, market a proprietary stable of characters developed for the service. (But "AI characters" themselves — the definitions that make a chatbot into a particular character — are mostly considered to be a commodity; they're posted for free to various "AI character card" hosting services, and most systems in this space just expect you to import the characters you're interested in from such hosting services, rather than offering their own proprietary ones.)
All in all, there's no "illusion" here for anyone to "fall for." There's just a desired capability (running AI models to play with), with a zero-sum trade-off being made between self-hosting that capability, vs. paying someone else to manage it for you.
There is, as always, the exception that the world contains some very unobservant people — possibly again children — who will mistakenly develop a parasocial bond to AI characters because they fail to notice the flaws and limitations that make interactions with an AI character qualitatively different from interactions with a human, and thereby fail to move past the initial sense of full immersion/verisimilitude they feel when interacting with such systems.
But these chumps are the exception. Most subscribers to these services are not confused about what they're paying for; they have moved past any initial impression of full immersion. Instead, they just see AI characters as fun toys — entertainment software! — and they're paying $10/mo or whatever because that's a fair price to pay to access a unique type of fun toy.
The key testable hypothesis here, is that once even our phones have the GPU grunt required to run high-fidelity "roleplaying" LLMs locally, the bottom will drop out of this market; there'll be no reason to pay for an "AI character streaming service" indefinitely, once your phone's OpEx gets you free unlimited access to that capability locally, in the form of a free or one-time-cost app that does the same thing.
(...also, just as a tangent: this is probably the "everybody knows it but nobody's going to say it" reason that so many people got so excited about the new Mac Mini. It's a perfect single-user AI-character-chatbot RP model host, that takes up minimal space and has a reasonable price-point. Many people currently paying for these services would actually rather trade OpEx for CapEx — the CapEx was previously just too dang high to make it worth it!)
Isn't the entire reason people pick OF over traditional porn is they get to have a personal connection with the performer? DMs, custom requests etc.? Seems like it would make a huge difference to a subscriber who's looking for that experience. Maybe traditional porn will make a come back once AI dominates the OF scene.
Some people just subscribe for the content. I've long preferred the type of porn available on OF or Chaturbate over the traditional stuff.
Not only that, but CB/MFC is preferable to Tinder. The technology to fake it, to catfish it, doesn't exist yet -- at least the video part. Chat is another matter.
AI isn't replacing a personal connection with the performer here. The baseline case for OnlyFans messages is that they go to a paid phone sex operator who the performer hires to manage messages.
People should know if they talk to a bot or a human. This goes for only-fans, customer service, anything. A human pressing a "send" button does not change anything. But disclosing it would hurt the specific business, right? So it matters to something for someone. I respect AI-companion apps like replika much more than this.
They should also know if they're talking to the actual content creator, or an operator paid to pretend to be them.
Which is not the case currently, you think you're talking to your favorite porn actress but you're talking to some dude in India pretending to be her and trying to sell you "exclusive content" (i.e. prerecorded videos from a catalog).
Which is not the case currently, you think you're talking to your favorite porn actress but you're talking to some dude in India pretending to be her and trying to sell you "exclusive content" (i.e. prerecorded videos from a catalog).
> Isn't the entire reason people pick OF over traditional porn is they get to have a personal connection with the performer? DMs, custom requests etc.?
Hm...
I assume custom requests would either happen realtime-- in which case it's not currently possible to substitute AI video output-- or asynchronously-- in which case the proof of personal connection eventually happens during a future realtime video stream.
If the customer is paying for DM'ing during times when the person isn't streaming, I'm having a hard time imagining why it would matter whether AI is used or not. Well, at least if the quality is decent enough for what I imagine are rather terse, domain-specific DMs. :)
Hm...
I assume custom requests would either happen realtime-- in which case it's not currently possible to substitute AI video output-- or asynchronously-- in which case the proof of personal connection eventually happens during a future realtime video stream.
If the customer is paying for DM'ing during times when the person isn't streaming, I'm having a hard time imagining why it would matter whether AI is used or not. Well, at least if the quality is decent enough for what I imagine are rather terse, domain-specific DMs. :)
> what I imagine are rather terse, domain-specific DMs
You'd be surprised. A lot of men really do just have no-one to talk to.
You'd be surprised. A lot of men really do just have no-one to talk to.
>note taking strategies to remember it all.
They don't do this at all. I know a guy who worked as a cam-girl manager for some time. His job was to communicate in her place with 4-6 people at the same time (via text of course) while the model "acts" on the screen.
They don't do this at all. I know a guy who worked as a cam-girl manager for some time. His job was to communicate in her place with 4-6 people at the same time (via text of course) while the model "acts" on the screen.
And pretty soon, we'll be able to get rid of the model acting on the screen as well. I'd say in about 10 years the entire operation will be automated by AI. Probably less than 10 if things keep developing at this breakneck pace.
(At least, that will be true for run of the mill cam girls. Obviously certain other types of influencers may be more difficult to emulate via AI.)
(At least, that will be true for run of the mill cam girls. Obviously certain other types of influencers may be more difficult to emulate via AI.)
I cannot figure out if vast multitudes of incels carrying on relationships with AI sexbots is more or less harmful than if they were just being catfished by real, but insincere person(s).
Honestly this dystopia is a big letdown over the one I was expecting.
Honestly this dystopia is a big letdown over the one I was expecting.
Essentially that is part the 'male sedation hypothesis'.
Due to the amount of incels or men who aren't really in relationships or even work these days, they should be causing significant social unrest as they have nothing to lose and try and overthrow the current social structure. In reality we hardly see any real violence or trouble from incels other than the odd angry rant on social media and the idea is that things like porn, video games and social media take care of the base needs just enough to stop the angry from boiling over and causing real trouble.
Due to the amount of incels or men who aren't really in relationships or even work these days, they should be causing significant social unrest as they have nothing to lose and try and overthrow the current social structure. In reality we hardly see any real violence or trouble from incels other than the odd angry rant on social media and the idea is that things like porn, video games and social media take care of the base needs just enough to stop the angry from boiling over and causing real trouble.
I think the statistics speak for themselves. There were exactly two famous incel terrorists aka Elliot Rodger and another guy whose name I don't remember. They both lived in the US and honestly the only thing that connects them with other shooters is that they had guns.
This type of terrorism did happen in Germany i.e. the "Halle" shooter, but he had to rely on homemade weapons with his own black powder ammunition and his attack failed, because his guns weren't strong enough to breach doors at a synagogue. What he did do is shoot a random woman passing close by (less than 5m distance) who was angrily glaring at him and then he went to a random kebab shop to shoot up an immigrant, before the police caught him.
It's really mostly a matter of keeping guns away from people who shouldn't have access to them.
This type of terrorism did happen in Germany i.e. the "Halle" shooter, but he had to rely on homemade weapons with his own black powder ammunition and his attack failed, because his guns weren't strong enough to breach doors at a synagogue. What he did do is shoot a random woman passing close by (less than 5m distance) who was angrily glaring at him and then he went to a random kebab shop to shoot up an immigrant, before the police caught him.
It's really mostly a matter of keeping guns away from people who shouldn't have access to them.
>It's really mostly a matter of keeping guns away from people who shouldn't have access to them.
What about knives? I see news about knives attacks from China and Japan quite often.
What about knives? I see news about knives attacks from China and Japan quite often.
> I see news about knives attacks from China and Japan quite often.
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Here you are primarily focusing on what's happening to them.
But we shouldn't forget that a big part of the "incel" community is actively pushing for reducing rights & liberties of women, because they see them as "things" or just "lesser humans".
If you replace real women by AI sexbots, not only you remove them a source of income (I know, it's not perfect today either, with pimps & stuff like that, but at least some women can make a living with this) but also there's a big risk that the AI are going to be quite extreme in their behavior, alienating "incels" even more, which would be harder for real women to do.
But we shouldn't forget that a big part of the "incel" community is actively pushing for reducing rights & liberties of women, because they see them as "things" or just "lesser humans".
If you replace real women by AI sexbots, not only you remove them a source of income (I know, it's not perfect today either, with pimps & stuff like that, but at least some women can make a living with this) but also there's a big risk that the AI are going to be quite extreme in their behavior, alienating "incels" even more, which would be harder for real women to do.
I don't think most of these guys are interested in a Black Snake Moan situation. I know the type and they mostly are content to play video games, eat junk food, and whack off all day. They are predictably unproductive in the political arena.
Besides, whether it hurts women or not, people at the top of that industry are going to replace the vast majority of the women working with AI bots. They'll do so for the profit increase.
Money is in the driver's seat. Not men's rights or women's rights. People can certainly have their preferred philosophies, but that's not going to change what's going to happen.
Money is in the driver's seat. Not men's rights or women's rights. People can certainly have their preferred philosophies, but that's not going to change what's going to happen.
It's only harmful if you hate men. If you actually like men as fellow human beings (not necessarily as boyfriend material), you wouldn't care about what they are doing to make themselves happy as long as they don't harm anyone.
Maybe if the AI was trained to manipulate people into being wholesome.
AI solutions will work for the type of person who consumes free porn but will likely fall flat for paying customers.
> His job was to communicate in her place
True of some -- mostly ones that don't know English, or sometimes just for the first week or so -- but not all. Not even most.
True of some -- mostly ones that don't know English, or sometimes just for the first week or so -- but not all. Not even most.
I don't have the numbers. But I find it hard to believe one can communicate with a few clients at the same time and still work for camera. (with private sessions as an exception)
Despite appearances, it's not a job for dummies.
What does this have to do with being smart or not? (and no, they are not smart, sorry)
Your prejudice is showing. Many are studying to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, computer programmers etc.
konart(1)
If you willingly pay money to talk to AI slop that's one thing, but if you're sold access to a person then that's what you should get. You're right that they're both empty experiences, but one is an erosion of consumer rights and the other is just stupid.
But you never got that; the successful OnlyFans people have always had teams pretending to be them. Anyone who ever believed otherwise is like a kid who thinks that the mall Santa Claus is the real guy.
I'd imagine the typical long tail creator isn't successful enough to pay people for that. Hence automation. But sure, to the extent there's been misrepresentation about that, it's wrong.
Now I have this image in my head of a mom talking her son to the mall to queue to meet a porn star; to sit on her lap and have a photo together...
You are sold a fantasy, not a person.
I do not think it's about relationship - it's about exclusive/personal access which is what is promised/suggested. And no, it's not about sense of ownership either - just exclusive access. Like a one to one coaching/training rather than a group one. Only a nutter or an absolutely desperate and a nutter would believe they are in a relationship with an OF model.
All the top earners on these platforms are already employing teams of people to manage interactions with fans. Adding an AI layer on top doesn't change all that much in that regard.
> the defining feature or these para-social relationship platforms that they are all make-belief
It's not make-belief to the mark (or john) - they believe they are in a relationship with the person / thing talking back to them.
It's not make-belief to the mark (or john) - they believe they are in a relationship with the person / thing talking back to them.
they are participating in a fantasy whether or not they're self aware enough to actually have fun with it.
How much lying for money would be too much for you, personally?
I enjoy theatre and movies and opera. Don't you?
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Not really no. The models that are replying to fans directly are just saying whatever they need to to get more money, often from scripts theyve written beforehand. The ones that do well offload the communication to an assistant, so the fan isn't even talking to model faking it, but an assistant faking it.
The people in the DMs tend to be the whales, the top 0.1% of spenders that get you most of your income. That the "unwashed masses" that pay a subscription and leave some comments don't have a real relationship is clear, but once you are at DMs there is the expectation of at least real engagement with the creator.
Of course big creators have long outsourced this. You aren't writing with them but with someone entirely different who gets paid to answer messages. Using AI is just the next step in enshittification of something that's pretty exploitative to begin with.
Of course big creators have long outsourced this. You aren't writing with them but with someone entirely different who gets paid to answer messages. Using AI is just the next step in enshittification of something that's pretty exploitative to begin with.
One of the top models on OF has a single subscriber that's given her $4.7mm in donations.
just to put "whale" in perspective, here. We're not talking about a thousand or two.
just to put "whale" in perspective, here. We're not talking about a thousand or two.
What do you think the long tail of whales looks like? It must drop to 1000 USD pretty quick.
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The number of people here who see no difference between the two scenarios despite one of them having a very clear intent to deceive is–well, I'd say shocking, but this is exactly what I would expect. It is really just soul-crushingly depressing.
And this is really the tricky part of mental health care.
Is it a disorder to be depressed when the actual situation is really screwed up and soul crushing? Because most folks will get prescribed anti-depressants for this kind of situation.
Since practically, what else should someone do?
Is it a disorder to be depressed when the actual situation is really screwed up and soul crushing? Because most folks will get prescribed anti-depressants for this kind of situation.
Since practically, what else should someone do?
I genuinely don’t understand how OnlyFans customers wouldn’t understand this. What, you think that someone with hundreds of thousands of subscribers is going be personally chatting with you? It’s either going to be AI, or some poor guy across the world who’s paid to pretend to be a sexy woman.
It’s hard to fathom how so many people can be so gullible.
It’s hard to fathom how so many people can be so gullible.
It really seems like a subset of men get so horny that they should be declared incapable of managing their affairs.
When you watch porn you understand very well that you're not actually having sex, but you still watch it. It's not really about being gullible.
> It’s hard to fathom how so many people can be so gullible.
"Lonely" is probably the deeper issue here.
"Lonely" is probably the deeper issue here.
Surely the motivation for paying for this pornography is precisely the somehow more "human" "closeness" of a known individual creating content on a direct, "personal" basis.
It's not quite the-Queen-is-my-friend levels of parasocial but it does seem to be about intimacy.
What happens to that business model if customers paying on that basis realise they are seeing & talking to a bot? Seems quite footshooty.
It's not quite the-Queen-is-my-friend levels of parasocial but it does seem to be about intimacy.
What happens to that business model if customers paying on that basis realise they are seeing & talking to a bot? Seems quite footshooty.
People who frequent services like these will go to great lengths to keep the fantasy alive. Heck believing that the model on the other side of the screen cares for you as a person needs a... special state of mind to begin with.
While you are right, I think the mindset is different. People know that the interactions are fake. The real lie they tell themselves is that "If they only got to know the real me......." This is what feeds the personal messages/requests to try to break through the "noise" and be seen as a real person with shared interests or w/e.
Someone in the “side projects making $500+ per month” thread yesterday said they have a business doing this
This guy specifically https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42376682
wow lot of moral police in that thread but im genuinely impressed that you can fit six 3080s in 4U space
speaking of which anybody have recommendations? I want to run my own inference in colocation too
speaking of which anybody have recommendations? I want to run my own inference in colocation too
Possibly related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38491293
How long until the most popular Only Fans creators are fully AI?
I could see these pseudorelations, which are already mediated by so much fakery, just continue to evolve in that direction?
Maybe everyone gets their own OnlyFan creators which are tailored/adapt to their personal desires?
In the future all of this is AI generated, multimedia, tailored to your wants, available and fresh 24/7.
I could see these pseudorelations, which are already mediated by so much fakery, just continue to evolve in that direction?
Maybe everyone gets their own OnlyFan creators which are tailored/adapt to their personal desires?
In the future all of this is AI generated, multimedia, tailored to your wants, available and fresh 24/7.
That sounds like the death of Only Fans.
There is plenty of generic porn for free on the internet. The only advantages an Only Fans creator has over that are
- being more "real" and relatable
- forming parasocial relationships through engagement
- providing "niche" content (like the teasing egirl non-nudes Belle Delphine became famous for)
AI gives you none of that. It's not very good at niche content, and for the other two it can only give illusions that will break as people get used to AI. In the beginning there is a novelty factor to AI interactions, like Twitch's Neuro-Sama, but that will wear off. And after that all you're left with are disillusioned customers.
There is plenty of generic porn for free on the internet. The only advantages an Only Fans creator has over that are
- being more "real" and relatable
- forming parasocial relationships through engagement
- providing "niche" content (like the teasing egirl non-nudes Belle Delphine became famous for)
AI gives you none of that. It's not very good at niche content, and for the other two it can only give illusions that will break as people get used to AI. In the beginning there is a novelty factor to AI interactions, like Twitch's Neuro-Sama, but that will wear off. And after that all you're left with are disillusioned customers.
You don't need to dig hard on Instagram to find 100% AI generated models.
They seem to be pictures and videos from actual people, but AI-modified to add the characteristics of the AI model they're pretending to be.
Some of them have the IG subscription system active and most of them have OF links or similar in their profile.
Reporting them to Meta does nothing.
They seem to be pictures and videos from actual people, but AI-modified to add the characteristics of the AI model they're pretending to be.
Some of them have the IG subscription system active and most of them have OF links or similar in their profile.
Reporting them to Meta does nothing.
Not OF because they need an ID that matches the person.
I believe FanVue (OF competitor) allows these AI creations though?
In fact, looking on their web site the first model in their list of top creators is AI:
https://www.fanvue.com/
I believe FanVue (OF competitor) allows these AI creations though?
In fact, looking on their web site the first model in their list of top creators is AI:
https://www.fanvue.com/
This was my first thought as well. It won't be long before OnlyFans is swamped with bots from organized syndicates, and individuals will be forced out.
There's already copious amounts of scammers on there. I had a buddy who would go on Reddit and scrape tons of photos from all the NSFW subs, then create OF accounts, pump them up with some fake followers and then wait to see how much cash they brought in. Rinse and repeat as necessary.
Porn has become such a commodity, access to the images and videos to provide fake content has never been easier. Using bots to schedule posts and respond to comments has lowered the bar even lower and clouded the ability for people to tell the difference between what is real and what is fake.
Porn has become such a commodity, access to the images and videos to provide fake content has never been easier. Using bots to schedule posts and respond to comments has lowered the bar even lower and clouded the ability for people to tell the difference between what is real and what is fake.
For sure. I think AI image generation (and soon AI video generation) can keep up a steady flow of new content for any well established creator these days who has enough training content. No need for new photo sessions in real life or worry about them aging.
First, they came for OF creators, and I did not speak out
I am surprised we don’t have more YouTube influencers who are AI generated. A lot of the opinion YouTubers can likely be replaced by AI, eg take a news item and then represent their worldview and perspective as the prompt and ask for a script. Then pad it out with appropriate AI generated videos to go along with the script. You would be missing the custom graphics still, but it would be getting close.
somewhere between 20 and 40% of all short videos recommended to me have AI involved at least somewhat, and a full 10% are 100% AI, from the captions to the graphics to the audio.
Capcut has(had?) a feature to just pump this garbage out. I thought i had a video on youtube i made with capcut but apparently i have scruples and didn't even upload it privately.
Capcut has(had?) a feature to just pump this garbage out. I thought i had a video on youtube i made with capcut but apparently i have scruples and didn't even upload it privately.
There are quite some, just mostly in the form of short videos.
Why bother when most of the viewers themselves are bots anyway?
Never - and I hold this belief for most social media. As genAI gets better there will simply be a trillions of slop out there rather than simply billions. There is already more content out there than a human can reasonably watch.
The best OF creators have simply mastered distribution. Either they have taken success in one market and pivoted to OF or they are relentlessly marketing themselves through other platforms and viral stunts.
I have yet to see an AI master the distribution side. At the least good genAI will see the rise of male OF creators
The best OF creators have simply mastered distribution. Either they have taken success in one market and pivoted to OF or they are relentlessly marketing themselves through other platforms and viral stunts.
I have yet to see an AI master the distribution side. At the least good genAI will see the rise of male OF creators
> At the least good genAI will see the rise of male OF creators.
i can imagine the backlash, as if it were already happening. a decent amount of the OF "creators" are making 7 figures a year off this, and lots are making median yearly pay in a month. Having to share that with men who are technically adept and good at marketing is gunna chafe.
> There is already more content out there than a human can reasonably watch. I submit there's more "9/10 or better" content than anyone can reasonably watch or experience, even if you set some arbitrary cutoff date like, oh, february 22nd, 1988 and before is all you're allowed to consider.
Law and Order (one of my favorite background noises) has something like >650 hours of content, and i've watched it all. Multiple times. that's nearly 1/3rd of a work-year!
i can imagine the backlash, as if it were already happening. a decent amount of the OF "creators" are making 7 figures a year off this, and lots are making median yearly pay in a month. Having to share that with men who are technically adept and good at marketing is gunna chafe.
> There is already more content out there than a human can reasonably watch. I submit there's more "9/10 or better" content than anyone can reasonably watch or experience, even if you set some arbitrary cutoff date like, oh, february 22nd, 1988 and before is all you're allowed to consider.
Law and Order (one of my favorite background noises) has something like >650 hours of content, and i've watched it all. Multiple times. that's nearly 1/3rd of a work-year!
I think we’re already heading in that direction. As generative models improve, it’ll become cheaper and easier for creators, or platforms themselves, to spin up AI-based companions that feel personal, available around the clock, and perfectly tailored to each subscriber’s tastes. Tools like https://roleplayr.ai are just the start; we’ll likely see many more services offering on-demand, individualized role playing based on any image/context as the technology matures.
OF creators need valid ID, so they can't create a totally fictitious profile with nobody behind it.
BUT... from what I understand some agencies managing these accounts are training models with hundreds of photos of the creator and then using that to push out more photos in different outfits and locations without the creator being involved at all.
BUT... from what I understand some agencies managing these accounts are training models with hundreds of photos of the creator and then using that to push out more photos in different outfits and locations without the creator being involved at all.
Maybe, but I suspect many lonely people will want to know there is a "real" person on the other side of the screen.
I'm not at all sure that's true.
I've been a fanfic writer, spinning up fictional characters for company and writing their exploits, and it was indeed compelling and interesting in its own right. I think more people than you suspect will go for the hollow pretend version, especially since they're already aware the 'real' OnlyFans person is not gonna come seek them out. Why not go for the clean break of an entirely fictional thing?
I've been a fanfic writer, spinning up fictional characters for company and writing their exploits, and it was indeed compelling and interesting in its own right. I think more people than you suspect will go for the hollow pretend version, especially since they're already aware the 'real' OnlyFans person is not gonna come seek them out. Why not go for the clean break of an entirely fictional thing?
I really dislike the business model of Tinder->Snapchat->OnlyFans conversion.
There might be a lot of fish in the sea, but there's a lot of pollution too.
There might be a lot of fish in the sea, but there's a lot of pollution too.
as a daily tinder user, this tinder bios that are trying to do this have become really obvious for me. occasionally one slips through but it's uncommon. but i agree it's super annoying, and while i support sex work and sex workers, it does feel pretty dishonest and crappy for the people who are maybe a little less bright and fall for this. im torn on whether to report these bios, because i understand marketing for sex work is really difficult, and there's not really a "right" platform for it
Finally a use case for generative AI which makes money. And we all know, if the porn industry adopts a technology then it is here to stay.
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Exactly zero major OF models handle their own messages anyway. They used hired humans or 3rd party services for that.
I think OF itself lets you send "personal" mass messages with something like "Hey, $name, I've missed you. Here, pay $100 to see a single picture"
Dunno how thick do you have to be to believe the message was sent only to you and none of the other 10000 subscribers...
I think OF itself lets you send "personal" mass messages with something like "Hey, $name, I've missed you. Here, pay $100 to see a single picture"
Dunno how thick do you have to be to believe the message was sent only to you and none of the other 10000 subscribers...
Uh yeah… thick… :(
Our country has an increasingly worsening loneliness epidemic and this is amplifying it. $1,000 tip?? That's enough to take a lot of dates or take a trip with some friends instead of making OF even more appealing a job option to people who have the potential to have much more fulfilling lives and careers.
I always use AI impersonator to DM my favourite OnlyFans models.
A comment on another thread claimed the author was getting $15K/month with one of these bots: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42376682
The irony is that fans pay for a personal connection, yet increasingly interact with scripts crafted by machines
I was working on exactly such a project in 2022. It was scrapped because there is too much risk in LLM accidentally violating OF rules, which immediately results in losing a very valuable account.
Previously:
I Went Undercover as a Secret OnlyFans Chatter (wired.com) 32 points 6 months ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40391797
I Went Undercover as a Secret OnlyFans Chatter (wired.com) 32 points 6 months ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40391797
A friend of mine ran a management company for a couple years, and indicated that with the talent they managed, it was almost never the actual person responding to DMs.
The outsourced the interactions to third world "typists" that took care of it.
This is just an evolution of that, and probably provides a better experience, since they're able to tailor the model in a way that someone speaking English as a second language never could.
The outsourced the interactions to third world "typists" that took care of it.
This is just an evolution of that, and probably provides a better experience, since they're able to tailor the model in a way that someone speaking English as a second language never could.
There was an AMA I saw on reddit from one of the people who worked as a "typist". It was one of the most depressing things I've ever read.
Here's a technical podcast interview with someone who is doing this: https://www.latent.space/p/nsfw-chatbots
It starts feeling pretty weird when he starts talking about conversations where someone spends $1000.
It starts feeling pretty weird when he starts talking about conversations where someone spends $1000.
Oh, it goes much further than $1000.
https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/christian-onl...
https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/christian-onl...
not too shocking if you've read into this scene. even non-sexual parasocial interactions can have some scarily powerful effects. Add the idea that someone is forming a romantic connection and they will give you their entire paycheck.
Looks like Wired lurks here, this was posted in an Ask Reddit thread yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42376682
So, aside from the only-fans specifics, the general idea as I get it is that if a human presses the send button then the content that is sent does not have to be registered as "AI content"? Seems like a cheap way to go around this. AI generated content should be marked as that and people should not interact with AIs thinking they interact with humans, in any context. Using autocomplete to get the next word as you type and gneerating a whole message and sending it without even reading it is not the same. Same goes for code.
I seriously wonder if this is considered fraud. Since tips and money via DMs appear to generally be the largest source of income for OF models. And if the money is sent under the pretence of someone directly messaging the model but messaging someone else that would appear to be fraud, no?
And this isn't a small amount of money, if I understood the screenshot of Sophie Rain's revenue she made 43 million from messages. But maybe it was just tens of millions which is still a lot of money.
And this isn't a small amount of money, if I understood the screenshot of Sophie Rain's revenue she made 43 million from messages. But maybe it was just tens of millions which is still a lot of money.
eventually, other AI bots will be the only fans left
a trully automatic economy
a trully automatic economy
future money laundering scheme? at some point it wouldn't be much different than the computers that talk to each other in millisecond bursts all day buying and selling stocks
Fortunately, we have humans running financial institutions who will continue to enforce the existing AML laws on the books.
The monetization of social and parasocial relationships (from advertising in social media to the industry around influencers and celebrities of all types) might be one of the cruelest things in modern capitalism.
I think someone should file a class action lawsuit for fraud against Onlyfans and any and all subscribers that have purchased content under the guise of speaking to ai or management team should get fully refunded
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throwaway since I'm identifiable
My partner did OF on a small scale (just for fun, she liked it) and I spent a month or so iterating on a platform for her to use. Some sort of CRM on top of the OF API: post scheduling, tracking income, users, tips. I spent some time chatting and learned some interesting stuff about other peoples jobs but I think the general idea, and a sentiment that's echoed here, is that people are just lonely. They wanted someone to talk to who's also beautiful.
I did end up using a model with fine tuning on her past conversations to match the wording and text style but ultimately didn't move forward because she didn't want to commoditize herself in that way.
My partner did OF on a small scale (just for fun, she liked it) and I spent a month or so iterating on a platform for her to use. Some sort of CRM on top of the OF API: post scheduling, tracking income, users, tips. I spent some time chatting and learned some interesting stuff about other peoples jobs but I think the general idea, and a sentiment that's echoed here, is that people are just lonely. They wanted someone to talk to who's also beautiful.
I did end up using a model with fine tuning on her past conversations to match the wording and text style but ultimately didn't move forward because she didn't want to commoditize herself in that way.
A creator of some of those was talking about their business in the recent 'Those making 500/m on side projects in 2024'[0]
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42376682
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42376682
A member here mentioned his AI chatbot that does this yesterday as his (lucrative) side business: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42376682
was that story inspired by the last side project thread? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42376682
LonelyFans is the one of the more depressing platforms to exist.
The only solution is to get out there and meet actual people IRL. I call it a win-win situation. Until those get replaced by Androids as well.
i wonder how they get around the heavy censorship that most flagship LLM use. I was assuming that they were outsourcing to lower-wage countries
I don't want to link to the thread because the author didn't seem to want to, but someone in another thread said Llama 3 with a few-shot prompting to get the model to respond, using their actual DMs with fans.
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Maybe they're using Gemini; it's possible to disable censorship in Gemini, which combined with a custom base prompt can get the model to say almost anything.
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Unless the smell or pheromones are mimicked and can be passed virtually, there is no match to actual physical replacement.
lol - imagine paying for that one OF creator that earns $40M/year and just get canned responses from Character AI.
When you talk to a stripper, online or offline, you're always getting canned responses. AI might produce higher quality...
As someone who knows a lot of people who have done various types of sex work, and having done some myself, that's simply not always true. I think people seek out and find the type of interactions that work for them. Some people are easily amused. Maybe most! But a wide range of interactions are available for people who want them and look for them.
Even on the high end, most workers would be happy to actually get to know a client - if the client isn't totally off-putting and is willing pay $100/hr for Skype! But if a client wants canned responses, they'll get canned responses. And maybe AI is actually an improvement for those types of clients if they can retain some plausible deniability.
Even on the high end, most workers would be happy to actually get to know a client - if the client isn't totally off-putting and is willing pay $100/hr for Skype! But if a client wants canned responses, they'll get canned responses. And maybe AI is actually an improvement for those types of clients if they can retain some plausible deniability.
We need to start quickly a discipline studying the pathologies induced by technology.
I don't get OF. Grown men pay to beat their meat to strangers. And with this you wouldn't even be talking to a real person. Just go to a goddamn bar and meet someone. I'm a nerd, and not particularly good looking, and even I managed to find girlfriends back in the day. If I could do it, anybody can.
Soon it will also be images and video…
Hold on folks. The internet is about to get weird.
Hold on folks. The internet is about to get weird.
>about to
This is an archived post from 1998.
This is an archived post from 1998.
Gah I was trying to make a general comment, not trying to reply to this thread.
It's ok, they're young. Things was weird in '92, too.
That's a fascinating and crucial fetish you have. Let's delve in.
First step is Only Fans influencers automating their DMs. Next step is the fans automating the influencers. Who needs Only Fans when you can generate a GF.
First step is Only Fans influencers automating their DMs. Next step is the fans automating the influencers. Who needs Only Fans when you can generate a GF.
That’s hilarious.
Why not make the whole of OF AI?
porn and santa are mostly fake
i am curious to hear more about this partly real santa
“Hi, I’m NG Resonance. What would you like to talk about?”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F2Fwb8OrvSw&pp=ygUMbmcgcmVzb25...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F2Fwb8OrvSw&pp=ygUMbmcgcmVzb25...
OnlyFans is an interesting paradox of the "consenting adults" ethic. On one hand it triggers the disgust reflex. Yet people avoid criticizing OF to avoid seeming prude.
You will feel better just saying what you feel. Intuition does exist.
You will feel better just saying what you feel. Intuition does exist.
Old news
Yeah this is whole operation is weird and I knew it
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wild
Get off the apps. The Internet is full of this kind of social sleight of hand. Leave it alone. Use it for what it's good at, and intimate relationships is not one of those things, beyond meeting someone. And even that's gotten worse.
Learn the dying art of in-person socialization. Memorize interesting things to talk about if needed. Buy a deck of icebreaker cards for inspiration.
Strike up conversations anywhere and everywhere. Learn magic tricks to entertain people with. Film things in your neighborhood and show people clips that you think they'd like.
For the rusty or nerdy (like me), write test cases for your interactions. Figure out what went wrong if someone isn't receptive. Refine your approach until you figure it out.
"Digital everything" has proven to be a dead end. We need to go backwards to go forwards.
Learn the dying art of in-person socialization. Memorize interesting things to talk about if needed. Buy a deck of icebreaker cards for inspiration.
Strike up conversations anywhere and everywhere. Learn magic tricks to entertain people with. Film things in your neighborhood and show people clips that you think they'd like.
For the rusty or nerdy (like me), write test cases for your interactions. Figure out what went wrong if someone isn't receptive. Refine your approach until you figure it out.
"Digital everything" has proven to be a dead end. We need to go backwards to go forwards.
> Learn the dying art of in-person socialization. Memorize interesting things to talk about if needed. Buy a deck of icebreaker cards for inspiration. [...] Strike up conversations anywhere and everywhere.
Adaptive socialisation happens through conversation. It is as scary to live in a society where conversation is forbidden as it is in a society where discourse is manipulated or perhaps even made overwhelmingly toxic to the point where people relapse into the sort of brutish tribalism that... forms the plot of many Roddenberry episodes.
Adaptive socialisation happens through conversation. It is as scary to live in a society where conversation is forbidden as it is in a society where discourse is manipulated or perhaps even made overwhelmingly toxic to the point where people relapse into the sort of brutish tribalism that... forms the plot of many Roddenberry episodes.
>Adaptive socialisation happens through conversation
It's kinda tricky to start conversations with strangers in a world where everyone out in public has their Airpods in, in an effort to tune out everyone and everything around them, or in cultures where talking with strangers if frowned upon.
For example, I'm trying to make new friends now in my 30's in a foreign country where everyone has their friends/cliques since childhood, and it's basically playing the game on ultra nightmare difficulty.
I can see why a lot of people just give up and hermit themselves into their introvert hobbies and resort to para-social relationships with people online, as forced socialization consumes a lot of time and effort with next to no returns.
It's kinda tricky to start conversations with strangers in a world where everyone out in public has their Airpods in, in an effort to tune out everyone and everything around them, or in cultures where talking with strangers if frowned upon.
For example, I'm trying to make new friends now in my 30's in a foreign country where everyone has their friends/cliques since childhood, and it's basically playing the game on ultra nightmare difficulty.
I can see why a lot of people just give up and hermit themselves into their introvert hobbies and resort to para-social relationships with people online, as forced socialization consumes a lot of time and effort with next to no returns.
I can guarantee you that it was just as hard before any technology developed in the last 20 years (mainly because I have lived before the era of smartphones). It might seem like the airpods are the issue, but they really aren't what gets in the way.
> It might seem like the airpods are the issue, but they really aren't what gets in the way.
You're missing the point. Airpods are not a core issue, but people insulating themselves audibly (and maybe soon visually if the Apple Vision Pro catches on) certainly doesn't help spark up random encounters with strangers in public.
You're missing the point. Airpods are not a core issue, but people insulating themselves audibly (and maybe soon visually if the Apple Vision Pro catches on) certainly doesn't help spark up random encounters with strangers in public.
There's an employee at work and every time I've seen her she has a full headset on. Outside, inside, cafeteria, everywhere. There's something very off-putting about it, visually signalling that you are unwilling to communicate.
Exactly.
I'd argue you might be missing the point. There was always something, airpods are just the current 'thing'. When I moved from Australia to Canada in 08 it took a solid 24 months to meet the people that are today still my friends. It was much harder than I expected...and more than once I almost gave up.
I doubt it. If things today were just as tough as they were 20 years ago, then we wouldn't be having such a massive loneliness and mental health epidemic.
Sure, some of it is due to more awareness on mental health than in the past, but a lot of it is also due to things just being worse and more difficult.
Sure, some of it is due to more awareness on mental health than in the past, but a lot of it is also due to things just being worse and more difficult.
> it is also due to things just being worse and more difficult.
Is it more difficult, or do we have greater expectations?
I look to my grandparents' generation and they "settled" for their neighbours as friends. I seriously doubt they were perfect soulmates, but they put in the effort to make it work and ended up quite close as a result. Whereas people in my generation seem to want that instant spark. If that isn't felt, they keep looking instead of working on building a relationship with who is there. Nowadays, becoming anything more than an acquaintance with your neighbour is almost unheard of.
Is it more difficult, or do we have greater expectations?
I look to my grandparents' generation and they "settled" for their neighbours as friends. I seriously doubt they were perfect soulmates, but they put in the effort to make it work and ended up quite close as a result. Whereas people in my generation seem to want that instant spark. If that isn't felt, they keep looking instead of working on building a relationship with who is there. Nowadays, becoming anything more than an acquaintance with your neighbour is almost unheard of.
I'd say the "missing the point" thing is that you're complaining about how hard socialization in society is now, but the solution for our own loneliness is in ourselves. We don't need to fix others or society to fix the problem we see every day.
As in - When you, the digital-first-lonely-guy, put away your phone and turn to the obviously-busy guy on his phone with earbuds in and doing super important socialdoomscroll work and you say "Hey, cool shoes!" suddenly it's not a problem anymore.
Instantly.
And it's never not been that way.
As in - When you, the digital-first-lonely-guy, put away your phone and turn to the obviously-busy guy on his phone with earbuds in and doing super important socialdoomscroll work and you say "Hey, cool shoes!" suddenly it's not a problem anymore.
Instantly.
And it's never not been that way.
Well yeah, to an extent. But i think the elders here are also relying on their experience in the before world to calibrate their "is this socially acceptible" meters. Young people have never seen a world where strangers spoke on public transport. They have seen media where young people think it's weird that random old's try to talk to them. They went to high school where every break between class was at least as much phone checking as speaking to any other person. They've been raised to think this is normal, so to them it's simply an obvious conclusion that speaking to other people is weird.
Now, you're correct that if they just fucking did it, it'd _probably_ be fine. But what happens when they try to speak to their peers who scoff and ignore them? Or when every person they try to talk to simply can't hear them. Or when there simply isn't a place to go after school and chat, and all social interaction stands on phone organizing as a prerequisite.
Yes, if they broke the seal on interpersonal interaction they'd see that almost everyone is actually positive and happy to speak and make friends. But that seal is getting harder and harder to break every day
Now, you're correct that if they just fucking did it, it'd _probably_ be fine. But what happens when they try to speak to their peers who scoff and ignore them? Or when every person they try to talk to simply can't hear them. Or when there simply isn't a place to go after school and chat, and all social interaction stands on phone organizing as a prerequisite.
Yes, if they broke the seal on interpersonal interaction they'd see that almost everyone is actually positive and happy to speak and make friends. But that seal is getting harder and harder to break every day
Yep. Absolutely correct all the way around.
It reminds me of the reproductive crisis that started happening in Japan some decades ago. The blame, as I recall it, was on the rigid social norms meant that it was super uncomfortable for everyone whenever a guy tried to talk to a girl. Guys stopped trying and switched to being absorbed in jobs and increasingly niche obsessions, further from the normalcy and reality around them.
Seems like we're not taking any hints from their example and instead saying "gee, society is bigger than me, woe is me, I'll just continue digging the hole".
It reminds me of the reproductive crisis that started happening in Japan some decades ago. The blame, as I recall it, was on the rigid social norms meant that it was super uncomfortable for everyone whenever a guy tried to talk to a girl. Guys stopped trying and switched to being absorbed in jobs and increasingly niche obsessions, further from the normalcy and reality around them.
Seems like we're not taking any hints from their example and instead saying "gee, society is bigger than me, woe is me, I'll just continue digging the hole".
You alone as an individual can't change societal norms since they really are in fact, bigger than you.
It's exactly like evolution in nature. Life didn't start on land because one single fish decided to jump out of the water an breathe air then every other fish followed, no, it started because collectively millions of fishes died trying to do that at the same time over millions of years till adaptation of the species to the new environment happend.
Society is exactly like that as a collective. Going against societal norms as a lone wolf, doesn't get you seen as some sort of rebel hero who everyone looks up to, but as a weirdo/creep most of the time if you aren't handsome, rich or charismatic.
It's exactly like evolution in nature. Life didn't start on land because one single fish decided to jump out of the water an breathe air then every other fish followed, no, it started because collectively millions of fishes died trying to do that at the same time over millions of years till adaptation of the species to the new environment happend.
Society is exactly like that as a collective. Going against societal norms as a lone wolf, doesn't get you seen as some sort of rebel hero who everyone looks up to, but as a weirdo/creep most of the time if you aren't handsome, rich or charismatic.
Again: whether "society" changes is irrelevant.
The point of the conversation is that if /you/ are feeling isolated (and, statistically speaking, YOU ARE) /you/ can affect /you/ by breaking out of your lil self-imposed isolation chamber and doing what normal humans do: communicate.
Will doing so change society? Who gives a hoot? /You'll feel better/.
Frankly these excuses are just that. Excuses. Stop catastrophizing. Start trying. And, while I'm ranting, stop encouraging others to catastrophize too.
The point of the conversation is that if /you/ are feeling isolated (and, statistically speaking, YOU ARE) /you/ can affect /you/ by breaking out of your lil self-imposed isolation chamber and doing what normal humans do: communicate.
Will doing so change society? Who gives a hoot? /You'll feel better/.
Frankly these excuses are just that. Excuses. Stop catastrophizing. Start trying. And, while I'm ranting, stop encouraging others to catastrophize too.
> It's kinda tricky to start conversations with strangers in a world where everyone has their Airpods in in an effort to tune out everyone around them
Yes & no. I think this speaks to the bubble most HN commenters live in. Step outside a VHCOL coastal city and the statement does not hold...
Yes & no. I think this speaks to the bubble most HN commenters live in. Step outside a VHCOL coastal city and the statement does not hold...
>. Step outside a VHCOL coastal city and the statement does not hold...
I don't live in any coastal city. I live in mainland Europe.
I don't live in any coastal city. I live in mainland Europe.
Agoraphobia
“Fear of places and situations that might cause panic, helplessness, or embarrassment. Agoraphobia is an anxiety disorder that often develops after one or more panic attacks.
Symptoms include fear and avoidance of places and situations that might cause feelings of panic, entrapment, helplessness, or embarrassment.
Treatments include talk therapy and medication.”
turns out, the poison (talking) is the cure (talking).
“Fear of places and situations that might cause panic, helplessness, or embarrassment. Agoraphobia is an anxiety disorder that often develops after one or more panic attacks.
Symptoms include fear and avoidance of places and situations that might cause feelings of panic, entrapment, helplessness, or embarrassment.
Treatments include talk therapy and medication.”
turns out, the poison (talking) is the cure (talking).
Agree with your point. Old man will now yell at cloud:
Whoever came up with the modern definition of "agoraphobia" has failed to define the term. "Fear of places and situations that might cause panic, helplessness, or embarrassment." Is there any other kind of fear? The word is so broadly inclusive as to have little meaning.
ἀγορά (agora) – assembly, especially an assembly of the people; the place of assembly; speech; market, marketplace [1]
φόβος (phobos) – fear, terror, alarm, fright, panic [2]
Agoraphobia seems straightforwardly to mean "fear of public spaces and interactions." A person might say that etymology is not definition, but if you look at the most common examples of agoraphobia, this is exactly what's being described. [3]
We need to stop being so "inclusive" in our definitions! The purpose of a definition is to make something finite, i.e., to circumscribe its boundaries in order to enable clear thinking about that specific term. Broad definitions harm critical thinking.
1. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%80%CE%B3%CE%BF%CF%81%C...
2. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CF%86%CF%8C%CE%B2%CE%BF%CF%8...
3. https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/agoraphobia/over...
Whoever came up with the modern definition of "agoraphobia" has failed to define the term. "Fear of places and situations that might cause panic, helplessness, or embarrassment." Is there any other kind of fear? The word is so broadly inclusive as to have little meaning.
ἀγορά (agora) – assembly, especially an assembly of the people; the place of assembly; speech; market, marketplace [1]
φόβος (phobos) – fear, terror, alarm, fright, panic [2]
Agoraphobia seems straightforwardly to mean "fear of public spaces and interactions." A person might say that etymology is not definition, but if you look at the most common examples of agoraphobia, this is exactly what's being described. [3]
We need to stop being so "inclusive" in our definitions! The purpose of a definition is to make something finite, i.e., to circumscribe its boundaries in order to enable clear thinking about that specific term. Broad definitions harm critical thinking.
1. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%80%CE%B3%CE%BF%CF%81%C...
2. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CF%86%CF%8C%CE%B2%CE%BF%CF%8...
3. https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/agoraphobia/over...
Thank you for this. I feel like a lot of the arguments I get into are because someone is taking a measurement that’s more precise then the tool their using allows for. Their too busy trying to win the argument to see I’m trying to work with them to build a tool precise enough to take measurement we both want.
Yeeeahhh agoraphobia is just the fear of open places. That's it.
More true than you might think: rat poison (coumadin) saves lives as an anticoagulant. Conversely, Tylenol can kill you. Very few non-smoking alcoholics have serious atherosclerosis on autopsy, but lots of people die of alcoholism. Life finds a way. Or sometimes not.
Some people would find the kind of nerdy and analytical "social optimization" you describe more creepy and objectionable than chatting with an OnlyFans model. (whether or not they are actually an AI)
This is not a personal attack, but just my observation of how people perceive the way social interactions should work. Part of these perceptions would also be why people are driven to chat with women on OnlyFans, and why an AI would be effective....
This is not a personal attack, but just my observation of how people perceive the way social interactions should work. Part of these perceptions would also be why people are driven to chat with women on OnlyFans, and why an AI would be effective....
While describing it this way may make it sound worse, this is (IME) how it works. For some folks the optimization is intuitive and mostly happens subconsciously for some others it doesn't and needs more focus.
A long time ago I started noting when people (esp. my partner) said they like certain things in my phone, then I get them as gifts days, weeks, months, years later. People now think I'm very thoughtful, but I'm just a good note taker. The experience made me think that people who are naturally more "thoughtful", at least partially, just have better memories.
A long time ago I started noting when people (esp. my partner) said they like certain things in my phone, then I get them as gifts days, weeks, months, years later. People now think I'm very thoughtful, but I'm just a good note taker. The experience made me think that people who are naturally more "thoughtful", at least partially, just have better memories.
I get the optimization thing. I also replay situations in my head and how it could have gone better. I even save notes/reminders/mindmaps for the next time I talk to someone or I'm in a particular social situation. That's just how my mind works, and I can't remember everything.
I also second your approach. I have a todo.txt file of various restaurants, experiences, places my gf wants to visit. Next time I want to plan a date, I look up the list ("Hey babe, let's go that that [RESTAURANT MENTIONED 3 MONTHS AGO] tonight. It's proven to be a very good system. <3
I also second your approach. I have a todo.txt file of various restaurants, experiences, places my gf wants to visit. Next time I want to plan a date, I look up the list ("Hey babe, let's go that that [RESTAURANT MENTIONED 3 MONTHS AGO] tonight. It's proven to be a very good system. <3
The behavior you're describing does make you a thoughtful person even though the thoughts aren't necessarily in the front of your mind. Check out the concept of embodied cognition.
Which is fine, right?
IMO one of the major problems of the very online era is that we hypothesize about what somebody might find objectionable, and then act like it really matters. Some people might find anything creepy and objectionable. But we managed to get by—even with the knowledge that some people didn’t like is—before we invented all these theories.
IMO one of the major problems of the very online era is that we hypothesize about what somebody might find objectionable, and then act like it really matters. Some people might find anything creepy and objectionable. But we managed to get by—even with the knowledge that some people didn’t like is—before we invented all these theories.
Thats absolutely true, but people who don't like that tend to also be the people with painfully limited introspection and who are generally not worth talking too much with.
And if you do need to do that for work functions or something, you don't have to disclose that you are just doing how to win friends and influence people.
And if you do need to do that for work functions or something, you don't have to disclose that you are just doing how to win friends and influence people.
What's your suggestion?
(Same, not a personal attack, I'm interested in this subject and good to see it from different views).
(Same, not a personal attack, I'm interested in this subject and good to see it from different views).
I wasn't trying to suggest anything per se.
But like others in the thread I do believe that practicing socialization will cause you to improve at it.
And at the same time people will think you're creepy and awkward if you "don't do it right", and if you tell them it's something you are consciously trying to improve on and you show them your written test cases, they might also think you're creepy and weird. One of society's non-rational double standards.
But like others in the thread I do believe that practicing socialization will cause you to improve at it.
And at the same time people will think you're creepy and awkward if you "don't do it right", and if you tell them it's something you are consciously trying to improve on and you show them your written test cases, they might also think you're creepy and weird. One of society's non-rational double standards.
Luckily, it's entirely irrelevant. Simply not latching on assuages people's "creep" factor and besides, the idea is to get YOU to accept chatting not the other way around.
From my view:
point is - doesn't matter if they're confused or surprised you spoke to them. there's an assumption that if you speak up you must be out to manipulate them (sell something, convert someone, beg, etc.) and when you prove youre not, you help normalize ambient conversation AND fix your own sense of isolation.
From my view:
/Ok ready? uhhhh ooooo here goes!/
Me: "Hey nice shoes."
You: "... thanks?"
/OMG I DID IT/
Me: "this is my stop, have a great day!"
/OMGEXCELLENTFINISHSOHAPPY/
Me: "Hey nice shoes!"
You: "Thanks" (weirdo)...?
Me: "this is my stop, have a great day!"
You: /wow, ... i think he genuinely just wanted to give a compliment. didn't even try to bum money off me. huh./
point is - doesn't matter if they're confused or surprised you spoke to them. there's an assumption that if you speak up you must be out to manipulate them (sell something, convert someone, beg, etc.) and when you prove youre not, you help normalize ambient conversation AND fix your own sense of isolation.
This isn't entirely correct though. You definitely shouldn't creep people out or make them uncomfortable. Assuming no bad intent, it's still an issue to know that by saying something you could unintentionally make someone feel bad.
That's not to say that no one should ever say anything to an stranger, it's just to point out that there are non-zero consequences to your actions.
I think that depending on who you talk to they'll give more or less consequence to making someone feel uncomfortable. (I'm not strictly talking about dating or talking to someone you are possibly romantically interested in). Some specific extreme examples are: at work or if you are in a position of power over someone (you are their boss or their teacher)- or these situations there are more consequences to having an interaction where someone felt uncomfortable.
Yes, those are cherry-picked relationships, but just to say that fear of making people uncomfortable is a real and valid concern. Is your discomfort made up in your head? Many times it is.
Back to OP, relationships are complicated... it's not hard to see why people end up talking to AI bots instead.
That's not to say that no one should ever say anything to an stranger, it's just to point out that there are non-zero consequences to your actions.
I think that depending on who you talk to they'll give more or less consequence to making someone feel uncomfortable. (I'm not strictly talking about dating or talking to someone you are possibly romantically interested in). Some specific extreme examples are: at work or if you are in a position of power over someone (you are their boss or their teacher)- or these situations there are more consequences to having an interaction where someone felt uncomfortable.
Yes, those are cherry-picked relationships, but just to say that fear of making people uncomfortable is a real and valid concern. Is your discomfort made up in your head? Many times it is.
Back to OP, relationships are complicated... it's not hard to see why people end up talking to AI bots instead.
That's gushing over edge cases, lauding avoidance.
Fact is, the more you worry, the less success you'll have. Which reminds me of Hamlet -- the original worry-wart -- who said it best:
> 'conscience does make cowards of us all,'
Fact is, the more you worry, the less success you'll have. Which reminds me of Hamlet -- the original worry-wart -- who said it best:
> 'conscience does make cowards of us all,'
Regarding "creepy", someone my age, giving $10 per month to a 20yo so she can show me her "pipi" and messaging her to "next time wear red instead of blue".. I think I am the creep and she is the prostitute. And the age difference only makes it worse.
I get it that the article is about incorporating LLMs/chatbots. Don't many/most dating apps play similar dirty tricks?
Technology only enhances what we are.
I get it that the article is about incorporating LLMs/chatbots. Don't many/most dating apps play similar dirty tricks?
Technology only enhances what we are.
There is nothing creepy or wrong with paying a sex worker for sex work. It's the folks with deep and disturbing fetishes that don't hire a sex worker to work it out with that end up doing creepy and disturbing shit. And there are a lot of them.
Sex work is the oldest profession in the world, hence why it's legalized and regulated in most developed western democracies.
There's always gonna be supply, and there's always gonna be demand, you can never get rid of it since you can't get rid of biology. Even some animals provide sex in exchange for goods. As long as both parties are adults and consenting, I don't really see the fuss on this topic. Just legalize it, regulate it, tax it, and everyone wins.
"But it's not allowed according to the $RELIGIOUS_BOOK..." Shut up and mind your own business. If you live in a secular society, religion has no say in this.
There's always gonna be supply, and there's always gonna be demand, you can never get rid of it since you can't get rid of biology. Even some animals provide sex in exchange for goods. As long as both parties are adults and consenting, I don't really see the fuss on this topic. Just legalize it, regulate it, tax it, and everyone wins.
"But it's not allowed according to the $RELIGIOUS_BOOK..." Shut up and mind your own business. If you live in a secular society, religion has no say in this.
Yeah, honestly a lot of the comments on this post come off as sociopathic.
> Strike up conversations anywhere and everywhere.
I've never been able to do that but in the last 2 years or so I've somehow gained the confidence/ability/interest, whatever it is. Where I live, in the grocery store, on walks, etc people really don't seem to mind short random conversations a lot of the time. Perhaps I used to think they mind because that was the mindset I was in myself at the time.
I've never been able to do that but in the last 2 years or so I've somehow gained the confidence/ability/interest, whatever it is. Where I live, in the grocery store, on walks, etc people really don't seem to mind short random conversations a lot of the time. Perhaps I used to think they mind because that was the mindset I was in myself at the time.
If people could do in-person socialization and pull people, they would not go to OnlyFans in the first place.
Totally. It's a hard rut to get out of. But it's a skill that can be learned like any other.
For me, I'm a bit of a screen junkie with social anxiety. One of my blockers was negative self-talk. I would think, "They're going to get angry. They're going to ignore you. They're busy. You're going to waste their time."
I started replacing that with images of the person being interested and delighted by the interaction. That helped, but I also knew that wasn't realistic if I just walked up and blurted out, "Hi, I'm an isolated remote dev and I'd like to talk." Someone might be sympathetic, but I didn't want sympathy; I wanted people to have fun. So I started using the techniques I mentioned.
This can all be learned from books on small talk, personality psychology, social dynamics, etc. But unfortunately, it's rarely talked about or taught, at least in my circles. And people are suffering as a consequence.
For me, I'm a bit of a screen junkie with social anxiety. One of my blockers was negative self-talk. I would think, "They're going to get angry. They're going to ignore you. They're busy. You're going to waste their time."
I started replacing that with images of the person being interested and delighted by the interaction. That helped, but I also knew that wasn't realistic if I just walked up and blurted out, "Hi, I'm an isolated remote dev and I'd like to talk." Someone might be sympathetic, but I didn't want sympathy; I wanted people to have fun. So I started using the techniques I mentioned.
This can all be learned from books on small talk, personality psychology, social dynamics, etc. But unfortunately, it's rarely talked about or taught, at least in my circles. And people are suffering as a consequence.
100%
Isolation has a feedback that makes it hard to break out of once you're in really deep. The more desperately lonely you are, the worse your social skills.
Strangers are strange when you're a stranger.
Isolation has a feedback that makes it hard to break out of once you're in really deep. The more desperately lonely you are, the worse your social skills.
Strangers are strange when you're a stranger.
they did get angry though.
i cant believe anymore that "negative self-talk is bad for you" has to lead to "the negative self-talk is false." because frequently it's exists as a defense mechanism. it's likely i've just trapped in the spiral too long. but i don't have enough counterexamples to disprove them. the longer i chose to go on the more counterexamples i accumulated until it was too much.
from this I concluded that I needed a type of relationship closer to a steward...but there's a reason people beyond a certain age don't seek out those relationships. it creates a power imbalance that is ruinous. i didn't know this. i spent years in that kind of friendship. i paid the price. i do feel like i wasted their time.
i cant believe anymore that "negative self-talk is bad for you" has to lead to "the negative self-talk is false." because frequently it's exists as a defense mechanism. it's likely i've just trapped in the spiral too long. but i don't have enough counterexamples to disprove them. the longer i chose to go on the more counterexamples i accumulated until it was too much.
from this I concluded that I needed a type of relationship closer to a steward...but there's a reason people beyond a certain age don't seek out those relationships. it creates a power imbalance that is ruinous. i didn't know this. i spent years in that kind of friendship. i paid the price. i do feel like i wasted their time.
yeah I think the truth is in the middle. You definitely have to prepare to be rejected by quite a few people who really don't want to talk and couldn't give a shit less about you. That party is hard for me. When I finally get over the anxiety and start to talk, it's difficult not to take the rejection hard.
Timing and location is super important too though I haven't figured out the best places. Haven't had much luck at bars and stuff despite that being a common suggestion. Everyone seems to be there already with a social group and have zero interest in meeting a stranger.
Timing and location is super important too though I haven't figured out the best places. Haven't had much luck at bars and stuff despite that being a common suggestion. Everyone seems to be there already with a social group and have zero interest in meeting a stranger.
The local alternative paper interviewed a gay man who was going around teaching other gay men about the art of (real life) cruising rather than mediating one's sex life through an app.
He explained it is a skill, which needs to be learned, while many people use an app because it reduces their anxiety.
He explained it is a skill, which needs to be learned, while many people use an app because it reduces their anxiety.
Way to go on becoming better company for yourself and a friend to yourself.
Any specific books you'd recommend?
Most everything by Leil Lowndes is great IMHO. She helps you understand body language, which is a huge key to success. Most people telegraph their feelings with body language so you can pretty easily recognize who wants to talk and why doesn't. She also has a great sense of humor. Her books are very 90s/00s which might bother some people, hence this warning. Specifically she generalizes quite a bit based on sex/gender. Not in an exclusive way, but if you're somebody who feels strongly for example that there is no biological difference between the sexes, then you might have a hard time with her books.
"How to talk to anyone" would be my first recommendation.
"How to talk to anyone" would be my first recommendation.
I think the causality might go the other way. They can't "pull" people in person because they spend all their time on OnlyFans. Talking to and charming people is a skill you can develop, not an immutable characteristic.
It's hard to convince people of this if they haven't developed the skill in any context. I was pleasantly surprised to see @brushfoot's comment and reply at the top when I started reading. I didn't realize I suffered from anxiety until a diagnosis in my mid-30s.
I first developed coping skills for work situations in my first internship. Thanks to a great manager who recognized some of my issues and was able to give contextual help. After that my professional life was better, but I struggled in social and academic contexts. Eventually, I started to get the social/relationship part down but only by being forced to because I moved to another country for a job.
Without these events, I'm not sure I'd have developed these skills. I still struggle and eventually pursued medication. I suspect some people have an undiagnosed condition, but the majority have limits to their emotional development, challenges from their upbringing, etc. that are very individual to resolve.
Unless there is some forcing function, I think the majority of individuals will fall into paths which don't help them. Then it's even harder to get onto a path where it's /just/ a matter of "developing skills".
I first developed coping skills for work situations in my first internship. Thanks to a great manager who recognized some of my issues and was able to give contextual help. After that my professional life was better, but I struggled in social and academic contexts. Eventually, I started to get the social/relationship part down but only by being forced to because I moved to another country for a job.
Without these events, I'm not sure I'd have developed these skills. I still struggle and eventually pursued medication. I suspect some people have an undiagnosed condition, but the majority have limits to their emotional development, challenges from their upbringing, etc. that are very individual to resolve.
Unless there is some forcing function, I think the majority of individuals will fall into paths which don't help them. Then it's even harder to get onto a path where it's /just/ a matter of "developing skills".
> I think the causality might go the other way. They can't "pull" people in person because they spend all their time on OnlyFans. Talking to and charming people is a skill you can develop, not an immutable characteristic.
And it's not even necessarily much of a skill, it's more spending the time and effort to find people you connect with (and being open to the people you do connect with).
And it's not even necessarily much of a skill, it's more spending the time and effort to find people you connect with (and being open to the people you do connect with).
Speaking in general is also a skill you can learn yet some people are naturally better at it than others. Same goes for empathy towards those less skilled than yourselves.
You don't do in-person socialization to "pull" people. You "pull" git repositories. You do in-person socialization to experience the companionship of other human beings.
It can be done over the net too, but in-person is better while the net has been actively and intentionally made worse to monetize addiction.
If you want a girlfriend/boyfriend you start by making friends with people. Then you will notice some of your friends are of your sexually compatible gender, which means you may have friends that want to have sex.
Also helps to avoid listening to incel/femcel, PUA, and similar bullshit that actively makes the listener repellent. A lot of women for example will ghost at the first whiff of Andrew Tate or Jordan Peterson adjacent thinking, and as a man I'd do the same at the first whiff of the kind of stuff you hear on the angry womens' subreddits. I don't want someone with a head full of influencer poison.
A major reason to get off the apps is because the apps (social media and similar) reward toxicity and exploitation and are structurally designed to be maximally addictive, meaning they're made to keep you on them not talking to other people. Social media stopped being social around 2012 really. I call them tobacco companies of the mind.
It can be done over the net too, but in-person is better while the net has been actively and intentionally made worse to monetize addiction.
If you want a girlfriend/boyfriend you start by making friends with people. Then you will notice some of your friends are of your sexually compatible gender, which means you may have friends that want to have sex.
Also helps to avoid listening to incel/femcel, PUA, and similar bullshit that actively makes the listener repellent. A lot of women for example will ghost at the first whiff of Andrew Tate or Jordan Peterson adjacent thinking, and as a man I'd do the same at the first whiff of the kind of stuff you hear on the angry womens' subreddits. I don't want someone with a head full of influencer poison.
A major reason to get off the apps is because the apps (social media and similar) reward toxicity and exploitation and are structurally designed to be maximally addictive, meaning they're made to keep you on them not talking to other people. Social media stopped being social around 2012 really. I call them tobacco companies of the mind.
>If you want a girlfriend/boyfriend you start by making friends with people.
Not a good advice if your friends group are the same sex with you, which tends to be the case for a lot of people.
You gotta fish where the fish are.
Like, if you're unemployed and you want a job, you don't first go out making friends, hoping that once you become friends one of them can give you a job. You get a job by looking for a job and applying to jobs. Sure, depending on where you live and who you engage with you, might luck out and meet someone who can have a job for you but that's not the norm and you don't want to leave your survival to that random chance.
Similarly, if you want a romantic relationship you need to engage in dating activities specifically designed to maximize the protentional of meeting a romantic partner, not in friend making activities hoping one of them will be your next romantic partner because you might be wasting a lot of time with no returns.
Actually, I think the opposite is better: Engaging in dating activates can actually net you some friends along the way if the romantic part doesn't click.
Not a good advice if your friends group are the same sex with you, which tends to be the case for a lot of people.
You gotta fish where the fish are.
Like, if you're unemployed and you want a job, you don't first go out making friends, hoping that once you become friends one of them can give you a job. You get a job by looking for a job and applying to jobs. Sure, depending on where you live and who you engage with you, might luck out and meet someone who can have a job for you but that's not the norm and you don't want to leave your survival to that random chance.
Similarly, if you want a romantic relationship you need to engage in dating activities specifically designed to maximize the protentional of meeting a romantic partner, not in friend making activities hoping one of them will be your next romantic partner because you might be wasting a lot of time with no returns.
Actually, I think the opposite is better: Engaging in dating activates can actually net you some friends along the way if the romantic part doesn't click.
Dating is one of those things I was never good at unless I gave up.
Maybe it's just me, but my luck was women only wanted me when I was too busy or having too much fun to go looking. I have a terrible poker face and if it seems like I'm looking for love then for whatever reason in my individual case it seems to be taken as a sign I don't deserve it. Of course if someone was offering, I might free up the time.
Not sure how common this is, but I've heard same from others.
Maybe it's just me, but my luck was women only wanted me when I was too busy or having too much fun to go looking. I have a terrible poker face and if it seems like I'm looking for love then for whatever reason in my individual case it seems to be taken as a sign I don't deserve it. Of course if someone was offering, I might free up the time.
Not sure how common this is, but I've heard same from others.
When you gave up you started relating to them as people.
This is a really uncharitable take.
I doubt they weren't people to him before.
The majority of people I know did not find their romantic partners that way. Sure, I know people who had success with online dating, but I know many more who ended up dating friends or better yet friends of friends. If you have a friend group with a healthy mix of gender+sexual orientations, and those people know other people, then you have a good shot at finding somebody you gel with. A friend invites you to their friends party and you spend some time talking to people. The more people you encounter with whom you have overlapping social circles, the more options you have for people to either befriend, flirt with, or both.
> but I know many more who ended up dating friends or better yet friends of friends
I know almost none such people. Do you see how anecdotes work? Almost everyone I know met their SOs either in college, via online dating or at work, and rarely at a sports group or through a common friend gathering.
>If you have a friend group with a healthy mix of gender+sexual orientations
So a friend group that isn't gender mixed is unhealthy? I think friend groups form (as adults) organically via matching interest and personalities, they're not guaranteed to be mixed gender, especially if you're a male into male dominated jobs and hobbies. What now? Do I kick out Bob from my friends group and tell him due to DEI requirements, his position needs to be filled by a female in order to achieve a "healthy mix"?
>those people know other people, then you have a good shot at finding somebody you gel with.
Just because people know people doesn't automatically mean more dates for you. A lot of those people might already be in relationships or just incompatible with you romantically or even socially. Not every new person you get to meet will want to be your date or even your friend.
You're underestimating how many things need to fall into place in order to meet your SO "from other people". It's a lot more luck than things you can control.
> A friend invites you to their friends party and you spend some time talking to people.
I think your PoV and advice in entirely skewed towards college/early 20's dating when everyone's single and throwing parties.
I know almost none such people. Do you see how anecdotes work? Almost everyone I know met their SOs either in college, via online dating or at work, and rarely at a sports group or through a common friend gathering.
>If you have a friend group with a healthy mix of gender+sexual orientations
So a friend group that isn't gender mixed is unhealthy? I think friend groups form (as adults) organically via matching interest and personalities, they're not guaranteed to be mixed gender, especially if you're a male into male dominated jobs and hobbies. What now? Do I kick out Bob from my friends group and tell him due to DEI requirements, his position needs to be filled by a female in order to achieve a "healthy mix"?
>those people know other people, then you have a good shot at finding somebody you gel with.
Just because people know people doesn't automatically mean more dates for you. A lot of those people might already be in relationships or just incompatible with you romantically or even socially. Not every new person you get to meet will want to be your date or even your friend.
You're underestimating how many things need to fall into place in order to meet your SO "from other people". It's a lot more luck than things you can control.
> A friend invites you to their friends party and you spend some time talking to people.
I think your PoV and advice in entirely skewed towards college/early 20's dating when everyone's single and throwing parties.
I never said you were guaranteed to meet a SO just by meeting more people. But it's the only way I know of increasing your chances.
Also, when I said parties that includes potlucks, D&D sessions, going to the movies, book clubs, etc.
I also did not mean to imply that a sausage party was by definition an unhealthy way to hang. You do you.
And by the way, I'm in my 30s.
Also, when I said parties that includes potlucks, D&D sessions, going to the movies, book clubs, etc.
I also did not mean to imply that a sausage party was by definition an unhealthy way to hang. You do you.
And by the way, I'm in my 30s.
>potlucks, D&D sessions, going to the movies, book clubs, etc.
Also either male dominated activities or non existent in my area. Hence why dating apps and bars/clubs are popular.
> going to the movies
BTW, How are you meeting your potential date by going to the movies? Dunno about you but whenever I went to the movie people just watch the movies, not talking to others. How do you flirt there?
Also either male dominated activities or non existent in my area. Hence why dating apps and bars/clubs are popular.
> going to the movies
BTW, How are you meeting your potential date by going to the movies? Dunno about you but whenever I went to the movie people just watch the movies, not talking to others. How do you flirt there?
I don't like how dickish I sound in this thread but... they're not fish, they're people.
I've been married for a long time but I've seen enough of today's dating scene from the outside in and heard enough about it from people in it to think it really is worse than when I was dating in the 2000s. I think the reason is the normalization of this PUA meat market mentality, which has come in part from influencers pushing these ideas into the culture and in part from the nature of dating apps (especially Tinder) and how they encourage it.
https://www.engadget.com/2015-05-22-meat-your-match-with-thi...
There's always been a meat market aspect to dating of course, but we've turned it to eleven and taken away the human part entirely. On top of this we've slathered a layer of toxic gender stereotypes received by way of shitty grifter self help gurus.
I feel like my wedding was one of the last flights out of Saigon.
I've been married for a long time but I've seen enough of today's dating scene from the outside in and heard enough about it from people in it to think it really is worse than when I was dating in the 2000s. I think the reason is the normalization of this PUA meat market mentality, which has come in part from influencers pushing these ideas into the culture and in part from the nature of dating apps (especially Tinder) and how they encourage it.
https://www.engadget.com/2015-05-22-meat-your-match-with-thi...
There's always been a meat market aspect to dating of course, but we've turned it to eleven and taken away the human part entirely. On top of this we've slathered a layer of toxic gender stereotypes received by way of shitty grifter self help gurus.
I feel like my wedding was one of the last flights out of Saigon.
>they're not fish, they're people
It's a figure of speech, not a literal meaning. If you can't make the distinguishment, then I'm sorry.
>I think the reason is the normalization of this PUA meat market mentality
What if the PUA mentality is the effect and not the cause? Simply look at the statistics on how harshly women rate men on tinder vs how men rate women, and it might sink in who the meat market really is
It's a figure of speech, not a literal meaning. If you can't make the distinguishment, then I'm sorry.
>I think the reason is the normalization of this PUA meat market mentality
What if the PUA mentality is the effect and not the cause? Simply look at the statistics on how harshly women rate men on tinder vs how men rate women, and it might sink in who the meat market really is
Ah but here you're thinking of other meatsacks as "people" which interferes with your ability to manipulate them as objects. /s
ugh at the huge proportion of humanity that's like this, though
ugh at the huge proportion of humanity that's like this, though
Yeah that was kind of my point. Hope I wasn't too much of a jerk about it, but I think the idea that you're just meat and that all interactions are transactional is what turns people off.
The real "red pill" is disconnecting from the matrix of social media, influencers, and PUA/MGTOW/incel (or their female equivalents, which do exist) stuff and being human. The "matrix" is monetized, manipulative, addictive social media and apps. Influencers are people who have aligned themselves intentionally with this matrix to ride on it and monetize you.
Wasn't that how it was in the movie? Blue pill == stay connected to the matrix, red pill == go to the real world.
The real "red pill" is disconnecting from the matrix of social media, influencers, and PUA/MGTOW/incel (or their female equivalents, which do exist) stuff and being human. The "matrix" is monetized, manipulative, addictive social media and apps. Influencers are people who have aligned themselves intentionally with this matrix to ride on it and monetize you.
Wasn't that how it was in the movie? Blue pill == stay connected to the matrix, red pill == go to the real world.
Reducing human interaction to disingenuous, transactional terms like this one are the private-life version of "building a personal brand." It's evidence that you don't view other people, or even yourself, as having intrinsic value outside of what can be provided to others.
I fear sometimes that sociopaths have inherited the earth.
I fear sometimes that sociopaths have inherited the earth.
This is a very uncharitable interpretation. "to pull" is slang for being attractive to others (see latin "adtrahere"), and i didn't mean to imply more than that.
Sorry, I didn't meant to imply that it was a problem with you on a personal level. In retrospect I see why you interpreted it that way. My mistake.
I mostly meant to say that there seems to be something wrong with society at large and that it's leaking into our language. I view it in terms of psychological framing (or something like it). We use these very utilitarian and transactional phrases more and more frequently, and I suspect it may reflect a deeper change in the way we think about others.
I mostly meant to say that there seems to be something wrong with society at large and that it's leaking into our language. I view it in terms of psychological framing (or something like it). We use these very utilitarian and transactional phrases more and more frequently, and I suspect it may reflect a deeper change in the way we think about others.
I think people choose this because it is easier, not because they simply can't do it.
You're missing quite a bit of understanding here. First, I think the biggest concern is young men, who maybe haven't even had the chance to develop these social skills because they are born with the internet. Second, pick-up type skills (or any cold approach type activity) easily atrophy over time if not consistently employed. Shit, one year into a monogamous relationship and I suddenly get anxious at the thought of approaching strangers in a social setting, something I was quite comfortable with 13 months ago.
"If people could do in-person socialization and pull people, they would not go to OnlyFans in the first place.
"
Are you sure.
I think Only Fans was growing pretty rapidly before Covid and before AI.
If I want a cute furry girl to scream at me that spaces are better than tabs, so i'm worthless coder, I'm not getting that in regular 'in-person' socialization.
Are you sure.
I think Only Fans was growing pretty rapidly before Covid and before AI.
If I want a cute furry girl to scream at me that spaces are better than tabs, so i'm worthless coder, I'm not getting that in regular 'in-person' socialization.
Self-fulfilling prophecy laced with abject defeatism and a refusal for self-improvement...
I do in-person socialization all the time, and I still maintain an OnlyFans account. I don't talk to the models, but that's only because I'm demisexual and therefore would be paying $$$$ for an unsatisfying experience.
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Slight disagreement here: I don't think it's an issue of in-person socialization, I think it's an issue of non-person socialization. Keeping track of real people that you know in real life, or even meeting real people in small, closed groups (ideally physically local to you) is a great thing that social media does. Robot armies owned by nefarious actors whose whole purpose is to elicit any emotional response from you is also a thing social media is really good at. Digital Everything might not be what was promised to us but it's here and it's not 100% useless. After all, aren't we here on a social network having this discussion right now?
I would add - just make yourself more interesting. No faking, no lies, just a bit of good old hard work.
Could be anynthing - get more fit by taking up sports or gym. Men are more attracted to fit women, why would an opposite direction be different. Each of us can be a better version of ourselves. With improvements comes better confidence, again a thing the opposite notices.
Then it will start working on its own. Help it by exposing yourselves more to the opposite sex ie in some social events related to your strengths to speed things up.
This trajectory will change people for the better. Its really that simple (and complex)
Could be anynthing - get more fit by taking up sports or gym. Men are more attracted to fit women, why would an opposite direction be different. Each of us can be a better version of ourselves. With improvements comes better confidence, again a thing the opposite notices.
Then it will start working on its own. Help it by exposing yourselves more to the opposite sex ie in some social events related to your strengths to speed things up.
This trajectory will change people for the better. Its really that simple (and complex)
>get more fit by taking up sports or gym.
Buy a new shirt that fits. Generally, don't dress like a total slob and care about your-silly-self a bit.
>No faking, no lies, just a bit of good old hard work
While I agree about no lies. no faking - faking confidence initially does help immensely - if you don't believe yourself, nobody else will. Being confident is a skill that can be learnt.
Buy a new shirt that fits. Generally, don't dress like a total slob and care about your-silly-self a bit.
>No faking, no lies, just a bit of good old hard work
While I agree about no lies. no faking - faking confidence initially does help immensely - if you don't believe yourself, nobody else will. Being confident is a skill that can be learnt.
Fake confidence is miles away from a real one. A keen eye can see the difference immediately.
It doesn't mean even fake one can't make a difference, depends on 'target', it maturity, intelligence etc. But if you expect a lot from the opposite side, you need to deliver at least as much, the more the better.
Agree with appearance, its a bit silly game but it works so who am I to question it.
It doesn't mean even fake one can't make a difference, depends on 'target', it maturity, intelligence etc. But if you expect a lot from the opposite side, you need to deliver at least as much, the more the better.
Agree with appearance, its a bit silly game but it works so who am I to question it.
>Fake confidence is miles away from a real one.
No doubt about it. Many people can tell how forced it feels. Yet, w/o any confidence (fake or otherwise), there won't be any steps made - hence no progress. Again, with time confidence can be 'mastered'.
No doubt about it. Many people can tell how forced it feels. Yet, w/o any confidence (fake or otherwise), there won't be any steps made - hence no progress. Again, with time confidence can be 'mastered'.
> "Digital everything" has proven to be a dead end. We need to go backwards to go forwards
Hey I agree with this. But also an alternative path. I'm one of those people who did learn all the social skills and while not witty I can in general navigate and make conversation with all kinds of people now, and have been doing it for decades at this point. But the reality is before I found online niche communities like HN, what i felt was... extreme isolation and loneliness. The internet is a doom scrolling nightmare, but there's a part of it that lets folks like me find community they may otherwise never have found. I feel we're in a nadir of social networks at this point, where they are all optimized for superficial attention and (simply put) money. But there's a huge untapped potential there for helping people find, form, and maintain communities. You can technically do that now, but you have to swim somewhat upstream (ex: stick to more niche areas of Reddit, and bail when it becomes popular). It doesn't have to be like this. I've been pessimistic about technology and the limits of the digital world for the first half of my life, but I'm done with that now. I recognize the issue is people like me have spent far too long bemoaning the state of things, and not nearly enough time building the world we want to see.
I love your advice, and agree with it. But I also think the digital world can be so much more than it is now. I hope other folks like me are waking up and realizing they have to build the world they want to see, rather than (only) trying to maximize their life skills in this existing one.
Hey I agree with this. But also an alternative path. I'm one of those people who did learn all the social skills and while not witty I can in general navigate and make conversation with all kinds of people now, and have been doing it for decades at this point. But the reality is before I found online niche communities like HN, what i felt was... extreme isolation and loneliness. The internet is a doom scrolling nightmare, but there's a part of it that lets folks like me find community they may otherwise never have found. I feel we're in a nadir of social networks at this point, where they are all optimized for superficial attention and (simply put) money. But there's a huge untapped potential there for helping people find, form, and maintain communities. You can technically do that now, but you have to swim somewhat upstream (ex: stick to more niche areas of Reddit, and bail when it becomes popular). It doesn't have to be like this. I've been pessimistic about technology and the limits of the digital world for the first half of my life, but I'm done with that now. I recognize the issue is people like me have spent far too long bemoaning the state of things, and not nearly enough time building the world we want to see.
I love your advice, and agree with it. But I also think the digital world can be so much more than it is now. I hope other folks like me are waking up and realizing they have to build the world they want to see, rather than (only) trying to maximize their life skills in this existing one.
Or, make money by publishing on onlyfans and use any service you can to maximize that profit because the power of boners is an excellent source of revenue, including using AI assistants in the exact same way we used IRC chatbots back in the day.
This is a business, plain and simple.
This is a business, plain and simple.
I think its less "digital everything", and more "digital everything at the expense of analog somethings".
Just about every in-person social structure is experiencing falling numbers. For a lot of these (church, especially), there's good reason for why that particular structure needed to change or fall, but there's been nothing to replace the old structure. But for others, they experience failing numbers because modern society has become incompatible with unstructured, non-productive in-person interaction with strangers. "Where will I find the time to go to this singles mixer for bird watchers, I have to work 70 hours this week just to make rent?", etc.
Just about every in-person social structure is experiencing falling numbers. For a lot of these (church, especially), there's good reason for why that particular structure needed to change or fall, but there's been nothing to replace the old structure. But for others, they experience failing numbers because modern society has become incompatible with unstructured, non-productive in-person interaction with strangers. "Where will I find the time to go to this singles mixer for bird watchers, I have to work 70 hours this week just to make rent?", etc.
This is the first time I've heard of test cases for social interaction. Do you have any examples or resources for this?
If you have to ask...
Not gonna happen.
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Most of what determines the success of a social introduction made in hopes of gaining a physical partner for men is predicated on their physical attractiveness, mostly through genetically determined factors such as height, facial bone structure, and other non modifiable characteristics.
Studying your own social interactions to see where you may have gone wrong is likely a fool's errand. Physical attraction is determined visually in milliseconds, which means there's little to nothing you can change via behaviors to increase success in that way.
The rise of simp apps like onlyfans reflects the total desperation of men who fail to meet the genetic standards for looks. You are correct that the reach of social media is responsible as it has isolated most average men, as attractive men are always a swipe away for any woman who is looking.
While your suggestion to be more social is healthy and helpful for most daily interactions, looking for partners requires more than just that, it requires looks.
Studying your own social interactions to see where you may have gone wrong is likely a fool's errand. Physical attraction is determined visually in milliseconds, which means there's little to nothing you can change via behaviors to increase success in that way.
The rise of simp apps like onlyfans reflects the total desperation of men who fail to meet the genetic standards for looks. You are correct that the reach of social media is responsible as it has isolated most average men, as attractive men are always a swipe away for any woman who is looking.
While your suggestion to be more social is healthy and helpful for most daily interactions, looking for partners requires more than just that, it requires looks.
Are you aware that you're speaking incel ideology? Sure, attractiveness matters, it matters much much more on a phone. Yet i still see "objectively attractive" women walking around with "ugly" men. If you think that every woman instantly hates you because your chin to cheek ratio or whatever is wrong than maybe they will act funny around you, but it's not because your cheeks. It's because of your attitude. Women are human beings and thus have highly tuned social compasses that can tell healthy from unhealthy social attitudes. To use the language, "betas" from "alphas". It has very very little to do with the way they look and almost everything to do with the way they act and speak. You aren't falling with women because of millimeters of bone in your facial structure, you're failing with women because you _believe_ your face is wrong, because you _believe_ that your going to fail no matter what you do.
I've known many incels and almost was one some time long ago. You gotta get off the dating apps, they aren't for dating, they're for making men feel so bad about themselves that they believe they must spend money to get a chance at any real women. That's what they do to you. Go to a bar with people if possible and try to speak to a stranger. Try to speak to a stranger in the train, on the sidewalk, at the grocery store. Leave it at a single sentence complement if you must, but do it. Smile with your eyes when you make eye contact with someone. Speak to people and leave those forums trying to blackpill you. They aren't your friends, they're just holding hands as you all slowly commit suicide.
The rise of incel ideology is a terrible thing for our young men. We should be setting better examples so the only explanation they have isn't "your fucking face is broken and you'll never be good enough"
Also go to therapy
I've known many incels and almost was one some time long ago. You gotta get off the dating apps, they aren't for dating, they're for making men feel so bad about themselves that they believe they must spend money to get a chance at any real women. That's what they do to you. Go to a bar with people if possible and try to speak to a stranger. Try to speak to a stranger in the train, on the sidewalk, at the grocery store. Leave it at a single sentence complement if you must, but do it. Smile with your eyes when you make eye contact with someone. Speak to people and leave those forums trying to blackpill you. They aren't your friends, they're just holding hands as you all slowly commit suicide.
The rise of incel ideology is a terrible thing for our young men. We should be setting better examples so the only explanation they have isn't "your fucking face is broken and you'll never be good enough"
Also go to therapy
When people start throwing ad hominems, and incredulous suggestions of getting therapy, that's when I know they know they have no argument.
Holy shit. Ugly people get laid all the time. They also have long term relationships and get married and make ugly children. Your "genetic Incel" shit is ridiculous.
Good looking people might have social interactions set to easy mode by it's simply stupid to say just because you didn't hit the genetic lottery means no one will ever get close to you.
You know a better determinant of good social interactions? Confidence. If you carry yourself well and don't act like a toxic man-o-sphere dipshit people won't avoid you. You can be ugly as sin but have a good personality and get laid.
Far too many young people fall prey to influencers and think they're just doomed to loneliness. Then they adopt the stupidest most toxic personality which only creates a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Be clean, don't slouch, smile, and tell some funny light jokes. People like that. No one gives a shit about bone structure. Humans aren't robots responding automatically to genetic programming.
Good looking people might have social interactions set to easy mode by it's simply stupid to say just because you didn't hit the genetic lottery means no one will ever get close to you.
You know a better determinant of good social interactions? Confidence. If you carry yourself well and don't act like a toxic man-o-sphere dipshit people won't avoid you. You can be ugly as sin but have a good personality and get laid.
Far too many young people fall prey to influencers and think they're just doomed to loneliness. Then they adopt the stupidest most toxic personality which only creates a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Be clean, don't slouch, smile, and tell some funny light jokes. People like that. No one gives a shit about bone structure. Humans aren't robots responding automatically to genetic programming.
I find it cliched but still interesting that the rebuttals to my opinion on this particular topic are so vitriolic and laden with, as the poster above you has done,ad hominems and emphatic statements of incredulity. It kind of supports the assertion that ugly people are so disliked that to even suggest that they might be at a severe disadvantage is fought against because giving them even a smidge of sympathy or acknowledgement due to the accident of their birth is simply untenable. It might also stem from a rejection of the concept due to inciting hopelessness in the rejector should they accept it as true. Or maybe it's unconscious yet ill informed benevolent dishonesty.
Nevertheless, there are countless scientific studies outlining the severe disadvantage ugliness inflicts on people in all aspects of life. This has been magnified by social media.
You can't really "bootstraps mentality" physical attractiveness outside of weight control. All the confidence in the world won't help a goblin be desirable. Plus, personality is as genetic as looks, and some people just aren't wired for extroversion.
I fear that pushing a bootstraps narrative for ugly people will just result in unwarranted self blame.
Nevertheless, there are countless scientific studies outlining the severe disadvantage ugliness inflicts on people in all aspects of life. This has been magnified by social media.
You can't really "bootstraps mentality" physical attractiveness outside of weight control. All the confidence in the world won't help a goblin be desirable. Plus, personality is as genetic as looks, and some people just aren't wired for extroversion.
I fear that pushing a bootstraps narrative for ugly people will just result in unwarranted self blame.
I am going to try to tackle this from the positive side, but there's a lot that could be said, and I'm not sure I will be successful.
There's no doubt that inherent physical attractiveness, extroversion, confidence and charisma, winning the genetic lottery, creates huge advantages. I've seen it in action, seen it open doors that will never open for an asymmetric, scrawny, socially erratic, introvert nerd with a high-pitched voice like myself. Seen how it affords choices and outcomes I will never have, no matter what I do.
Like so much of life, it is patently unjust and painful.
But it turns out there are enough other doors to open and ways of opening them, that me and all my similarly hopeless friends, got laid, got long-term partners and went on to experience the same relationship joys and failure modes as the beautiful people.
I wish I could warn my young self I'd be the comic relief in the mainstream mating game, but that it's OK, that I should try it, study it, realize and grieve my inadequacy, just get over it, get comfortable with who I am and what's achievable for me, and then go and play a slower, deeper game in a smaller, more congenial league.
What works? Sure, do the self-improvement stuff. Get fit, get a purpose. Find and live by your values. Practice fearlessness and not giving a crap what others think and leverage that into charisma (which is really hard but doable and I'm still working on it).
Find your tribe or social ecosystem and learn to love it (I had contempt for nerds that I had to get past. It was internalized shame at being mainstream-inadequate and it held me back for decades.) Explore adjacent social ecosystems. Get out there. Engage. Do not care about winning any specific outcome.
Have faith that it gets better, almost certainly, in most cases.
Most important, and in accordance with your values and self-respect, work hard to make ongoing net-positive social contributions (all kinds will work, interpersonal, social, material, intellectual, ethical, time, effort) with no strings attached. Use your strengths and interests.
I know this works. I am a weird intense socially-incompetent pedantic misanthrope, but I make the effort to spare my friends the downsides and I deliberately contribute positives. For example, I lead with my values in word and deed. They aren't a matter of consensus and I am contrary to my friends often enough. My super power is that I am entirely comfortable around opposing values. I will not conform to other people's and I don't care, on a personal level, if they adopt mine. Oddly, that combination results in a lot of approval and status. (I didn't plan this, it's a byproduct of my misanthropy, I figured it out after the fact, and realized I was on to a good thing.)
Sometimes at gatherings I can tell that I've just gone off the range, and I can see the look of friendly acceptance. “He's a freak, but he's our freak.” That group judgement of me reflects well and raises my social status considerably. I know my wife is proud of the social respect I've earned, even if the means are a mystery to her. It means nothing at all to some of the ladies, but it does to her.
This is just one example of how a skinny inconsequential nerd can project dominance without cash outlays, big muscles or a strong jawline. And there are so many other ways to be a social contributor or leader. Which equals reproductive fitness!
You, and every other “ugly person” out there has strengths. Find them. Develop them. Use them. Get over the fact that you can't succeed in mainstream competition. Just let it go. Look around, explore, and play in arenas you can win.
Remember (paraphrased) “behind every high-status female is a high-status male who is sick of her shit.” There's no particular advantage in winning one, and there are likely serious downsides. (And before y'all get mad at me the reverse is obviously true too. Married with kids, you know. And I can't speak to the generalization across gender permutations.)
I'm aware that online dating is a problem, and maybe there's a big problem in unrealistic expectations. Going to absolutely support the advice that you get your head out of that world. Play in the real world like it's 1970, 1980, 1990, whatever works for you. I have direct knowledge there are women doing the same. Society will figure it out in the long term and you will be ahead of the curve.
There's no doubt that inherent physical attractiveness, extroversion, confidence and charisma, winning the genetic lottery, creates huge advantages. I've seen it in action, seen it open doors that will never open for an asymmetric, scrawny, socially erratic, introvert nerd with a high-pitched voice like myself. Seen how it affords choices and outcomes I will never have, no matter what I do.
Like so much of life, it is patently unjust and painful.
But it turns out there are enough other doors to open and ways of opening them, that me and all my similarly hopeless friends, got laid, got long-term partners and went on to experience the same relationship joys and failure modes as the beautiful people.
I wish I could warn my young self I'd be the comic relief in the mainstream mating game, but that it's OK, that I should try it, study it, realize and grieve my inadequacy, just get over it, get comfortable with who I am and what's achievable for me, and then go and play a slower, deeper game in a smaller, more congenial league.
What works? Sure, do the self-improvement stuff. Get fit, get a purpose. Find and live by your values. Practice fearlessness and not giving a crap what others think and leverage that into charisma (which is really hard but doable and I'm still working on it).
Find your tribe or social ecosystem and learn to love it (I had contempt for nerds that I had to get past. It was internalized shame at being mainstream-inadequate and it held me back for decades.) Explore adjacent social ecosystems. Get out there. Engage. Do not care about winning any specific outcome.
Have faith that it gets better, almost certainly, in most cases.
Most important, and in accordance with your values and self-respect, work hard to make ongoing net-positive social contributions (all kinds will work, interpersonal, social, material, intellectual, ethical, time, effort) with no strings attached. Use your strengths and interests.
I know this works. I am a weird intense socially-incompetent pedantic misanthrope, but I make the effort to spare my friends the downsides and I deliberately contribute positives. For example, I lead with my values in word and deed. They aren't a matter of consensus and I am contrary to my friends often enough. My super power is that I am entirely comfortable around opposing values. I will not conform to other people's and I don't care, on a personal level, if they adopt mine. Oddly, that combination results in a lot of approval and status. (I didn't plan this, it's a byproduct of my misanthropy, I figured it out after the fact, and realized I was on to a good thing.)
Sometimes at gatherings I can tell that I've just gone off the range, and I can see the look of friendly acceptance. “He's a freak, but he's our freak.” That group judgement of me reflects well and raises my social status considerably. I know my wife is proud of the social respect I've earned, even if the means are a mystery to her. It means nothing at all to some of the ladies, but it does to her.
This is just one example of how a skinny inconsequential nerd can project dominance without cash outlays, big muscles or a strong jawline. And there are so many other ways to be a social contributor or leader. Which equals reproductive fitness!
You, and every other “ugly person” out there has strengths. Find them. Develop them. Use them. Get over the fact that you can't succeed in mainstream competition. Just let it go. Look around, explore, and play in arenas you can win.
Remember (paraphrased) “behind every high-status female is a high-status male who is sick of her shit.” There's no particular advantage in winning one, and there are likely serious downsides. (And before y'all get mad at me the reverse is obviously true too. Married with kids, you know. And I can't speak to the generalization across gender permutations.)
I'm aware that online dating is a problem, and maybe there's a big problem in unrealistic expectations. Going to absolutely support the advice that you get your head out of that world. Play in the real world like it's 1970, 1980, 1990, whatever works for you. I have direct knowledge there are women doing the same. Society will figure it out in the long term and you will be ahead of the curve.
This is all good advice. Confidence isn't only "Gigachad" energy. Just being comfortable with yourself and accepting whatever you are displays confidence. Constantly looking down at yourself and whatever problems you have is not in any way productive. No one will ever be attracted to a guy prattling on about facial features ratios or other Incel cult bullshit. Not even attracted, no one wants to listen to that because it's just cult programming promulgated by people using your feelings of inadequacy to sell you or sell you something.
Very few people look like Sloth from Goonies, someone you can easily describe as a goblin in terms of looks. Being overweight, scrawny, or having some unflattering features does not make anyone a goblin by any sane definition.
The Incel cult bullshit reduces human being down to genetic robots that can't think or choose for themselves. It also requires you to ignore the world around you where ugly/fat/whatever people all over are in loving relationships. No one is automatically behaving because genes favor something. Normal actual humans have free will and make their own choices.
Many plants have evolved the production of capsicum because mammals have a sensitivity to the chemical. In the wild mammals will avoid capsicum bearing plants. As a mammal capsicum causes me pain. Despite my genetic programming I love many spicy foods and willingly prepare and eat them regularly. The Incel cult bullshit would have you believe because I have a genetic predisposition towards avoiding discomfort and a susceptibility to the pain causing effects of capsicum I would never eat so much as a bell pepper ever.
Everyone has physical imperfections. Every attractive person you ever see takes a shit eventually. They get acne. They have body odor. They get ingrown toenails and sweat. Some attractive people have awful personalities or are just personally insufferable. Some are dumb as a bag of hammers. Others are psychotic or just assholes to the core. Many good looking people only look so good at certain ages and change significantly over time. Physically good looks are far far from the only measure of the quality of a person or their overall personal attractiveness.
There are vanishing few genius super model warrior poets in the world. There is zero utility in looking down on yourself for not being one of them. It's also ridiculous to assume everyone else in the world is holding out for those super rare specimens. It's also problematic when your primary concern for a romantic partner is physical attractiveness. There's way more important things than physical attractiveness when it comes to romantic relationships.
Very few people look like Sloth from Goonies, someone you can easily describe as a goblin in terms of looks. Being overweight, scrawny, or having some unflattering features does not make anyone a goblin by any sane definition.
The Incel cult bullshit reduces human being down to genetic robots that can't think or choose for themselves. It also requires you to ignore the world around you where ugly/fat/whatever people all over are in loving relationships. No one is automatically behaving because genes favor something. Normal actual humans have free will and make their own choices.
Many plants have evolved the production of capsicum because mammals have a sensitivity to the chemical. In the wild mammals will avoid capsicum bearing plants. As a mammal capsicum causes me pain. Despite my genetic programming I love many spicy foods and willingly prepare and eat them regularly. The Incel cult bullshit would have you believe because I have a genetic predisposition towards avoiding discomfort and a susceptibility to the pain causing effects of capsicum I would never eat so much as a bell pepper ever.
Everyone has physical imperfections. Every attractive person you ever see takes a shit eventually. They get acne. They have body odor. They get ingrown toenails and sweat. Some attractive people have awful personalities or are just personally insufferable. Some are dumb as a bag of hammers. Others are psychotic or just assholes to the core. Many good looking people only look so good at certain ages and change significantly over time. Physically good looks are far far from the only measure of the quality of a person or their overall personal attractiveness.
There are vanishing few genius super model warrior poets in the world. There is zero utility in looking down on yourself for not being one of them. It's also ridiculous to assume everyone else in the world is holding out for those super rare specimens. It's also problematic when your primary concern for a romantic partner is physical attractiveness. There's way more important things than physical attractiveness when it comes to romantic relationships.
This is why I always introduce myself as David Mayer and share my love of counting r’s in strawberries.
Did you know the latest o1 model can count r's in strawberries? It just needed 5 mimutes to think about it, that was all in the end.
Could it be that since the question became a big benchmark, it (along with the correct answer) slipped into the training data?
It needs 4 seconds to answer correctly.
I would personally try to ask the OF model to code something for me. An LLM wouldn't refuse to do it!
Must... resist... temptation to fix fizbuzz code and talk about boobies.... oh hell...
``` var fizzBuzz = function () { var i, output; for (i = 1; i < 101; i += 1) {... ```
When the AI powered Boston Robotics machines are trying to kill us all, this is how I plan on distracting them. I call it LLM sniping.
"Before you kill me, explain how to make a web based to do list using perl regular expressions."
``` var fizzBuzz = function () { var i, output; for (i = 1; i < 101; i += 1) {... ```
When the AI powered Boston Robotics machines are trying to kill us all, this is how I plan on distracting them. I call it LLM sniping.
"Before you kill me, explain how to make a web based to do list using perl regular expressions."
Why David Mayer?
Discussed here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42304333
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42304333
David Mayer became famous for a moment on social media because ChatGPT appeared to want nothing to do with him.
It's a blocked name on some LLM's
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devops99(1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26QHXElgrl8
If you keep watching there's another feature that actually generates video ideas, scripts, and even thumbnails for video creators.
Seems really grim- what is the actual good-faith rationale for using this feature? It seems like the only use case is to trick people into thinking they're having a real interaction.