With traditional adult entertainment, creators are aware of the social ramifications (e.g., social stigma, familial ostracism, difficulty dealing with the future, and so on), and there is a decent theoretical economic framework to measure that.
I am not sure if there's the same this new army of "civilians" joining OF, let alone the additional toll it will take on the creators in terms of social ostracism, future prospects, future opportunities, and mental health.
A few decades ago, there weren't that many "productions", performers were much fewer and some porn performers name were known by anyone, regardless if you had seen porn with them staring or not. A person getting out of the business and trying to make a new career would have a high chance of meeting people, especially men, in real life who might have seen at least one movie.
Nowadays pornhub and onlyfans are flooded by wannabee independent performers. Even the most addicted to porn can't possibly follow and keep track of more than a tiny subset of performers. So there is a good chance you can still have a career alongside it or switch from OF to a non sex related career easily.
This is dangerously wrong coming at least a decade after there are entire communities devoted to unmasking performers’ real identities and multiple reverse image search tools exist as apparent businesses. That used to be a human-driven practice - I first heard about it coverage of the Chinese internet mobs from the perspective of victims of misidentification - but like everything else it’s reportedly adopting AI. Here’s a story which got a bit of discussion a few years back:
https://thenextweb.com/news/creepy-programmer-builds-ai-algo...
One of the big things to remember is that these systems don’t need to be perfect, or even close, to cause harm. Even if they were only 10% accurate, that’s still a lot of people living with the question of whether the person they just met knows or whether today is the day some nut sent those links to HR. You can’t rely on getting lost in the crowd any more.
And more importantly, said creeps would be the one who would have an inappropriate behavior in the workplace regardless of the tools they have at their disposition.
Your model of "social ramifications" seems to assume no one ever talks to anyone else, which is dead wrong. So to see problems, the only thing that needs to happen is one person needs to see their porn out of maybe the 1000 people who could recognize the performer IRL, then a rumor starts and a significant fraction of the 1000 (and more people besides) find out. No fame required.
Then the problem can balloon if another person out of that 1000 is angry with the performer, and decides to dox them by creating a website or posting that explicitly outs them to anyone who searches their name on Google.
Then, on top of that, there's all the facial recognition tech that's floating around, which is basically a "go strait to jail, to not pass go" thing.
I think the odds of getting recognized were a bit lower for me being a male, my peak live viewership was a little over 1k viewers. A video of me also got reposted and featured on PornHub gay and was able to accumulate ~100k views before I was able to get it taken down. There are still plenty of videos around that I wasn't able to get taken down but the big sites like PornHub respect DMCA takedown requests.
Regarding getting recognized, I think you are somewhat right but it likely still happens. I had 2 people recognize me in person, only 1 found my real name because they recognized me at my college graduation. Nothing came of it besides them trying to add me on FaceBook. I think for girls they would be more likely to get recognized if they are successful because they get a lot more viewers.
I was lucky that nobody that did recognize me posted anywhere about what my real name is since that would be a way to find the videos of me when people search my real name. I think that is probably the biggest risk with performing is that if that association happens, it would probably be hard to wipe that association from the internet. One way out of it for women though is that they could take their spouses last name when they get married, their new name wouldn't be associated with the old porn name.
I have told people in my life about that past job. It had no impact on any of those relationships and never really came up again. So if it did come up again, I don't think it would have much impact on my life. In my mind, sex work is real work and those who do it should not be shamed for doing it.
I have no comment on the morals and ethics but as far as modern technology goes; most if not all of OnlyFans finds its way to darkweb | pirate | hoarder megasites where there's always a few because-we-can obsessed techlords training facial recognition, gait recognition, and seeding AI generated VR porn engines, etc.
We can be certain that any woman with an OnlyFans portfolio will face that being dragged up later in their life if they are at all slightly public.
They do have the modern available hand wave explaination of "deepfake by weird ex" that becomes more and more believable each passing day.
I fail to see how it would be limited to women with an OF portfolio and not any female with an instagram/tiktok/facebook/linkedin account? Deepfaking is an online abuse problem that can reach anyone who has a public photo online on the internet.
also most of the camgirls i know in real life block access to people who live in the same country as they (and i) do; that greatly reduces the chance of awkward dialogues with long-distant uncles at the next family reunion
Is it such a big problem nowadays as it used to be? My impression is that society in general, and younger people in particular, have become more tolerant of such things; at least in Northern Europe.
I’m an old married guy, but I can’t imagine dating and then finding out that the person you were involved with was doing that type of thing. In a friend group I wouldn’t even blink.
Based on the conversations I see, this seems to be a common experience.
I know too many people with masters degrees and student loans working food service to not think OF is smart if you can find your niche.
https://nida.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/2023/12/repor...
I think you're just projecting.
That depends. Ask Erick Adame[0] about the toll being outed took on his life.
[0] https://www.advocate.com/media/erick-adame-weatherman-webcam...
The idea that someone shouldn't be hired for a job because they have/had an OF is puritanism plain and simple.
I expect that fewer people actually care about the "morality" and simply want to use morals as a weapon against women in the workplace.
As a hiring manager, if anything I'd want to consider sex performers as a green flag in a job history. Speaks to resourcefulness, social skills, courage and self confidence.
last two decades all the representation was sex worker exclusionary, fighting for a libidoless morph of the corporate world, talking over and on behalf of any women that thought or acted differently
glad that was temporary
booth babes and atmosphere models coming back soon
It adds risk that another hire may not have.
You can hire anyone and have them target of allegations from colleagues. Them having a higher social status won't really help, we're post #metoo and there has been way too many cases of well regarded people being predatory. Whether the employee had some arguable past jobs, you'll have to do due diligence and get to the bottom of it either way.
I would say there's a greater risk hiring sanctimonious prudes.
This is why in general it is frowned upon by "certain members of society" as you call them.
Some forms are a lot more taxing on both mental and physical health (plus STD risk). OF doesn't have this same level of risk but people mentally lump it all together
The morals are there for a reason, they just lack nuance
Japan's actually got the least-worst birthrates among Far East, and everyone knows what it's best known for on the Internet.
I don't know why you say this, as it is laughably untrue. The porn industry has ALWAYS filled itself with very very young women who were assured (by liars) their family and friends and coworkers wouldn't see it, promised they wouldn't have to do certain things that they then get pressured and bullied into doing, and giving the women zero control over the produced media, how it is represented, how THEY are represented, and how it is portrayed to the audience.
There's an immense amount of regret and "I didn't know" in the industry.
I am reminded of the study done on the damaged goods hypothesis, which gave a negative on that hypothesis. Not only did porn actresses not have higher rate of childhood sexual abuse, but they rated higher than the average in terms of self-esteem, positive feelings, and social support. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23167939/)
Why though? It is an interesting issue when you look closer. For an individual, it's more obvious - I wouldn't like to be with a prostitute because of possible hidden diseases and lack of trust - but there is no way of telling how many sexual contacts my new partner had, whether paid for or not.
But I wouldn't have any problem working with an ex-pro in the same company or team, they would be just a colleague like all the rest, and I can't imagine any adult making any immature comments about the past of any colleagues on my team.
The same is true for their clients but they don't get the same treatment.
In stable families and societies, women use sex as control (power) over men. Younger women who sell sex are undermining that power structure. That is why they must be punished.
Another way to look at in economic terms: Female sex is a scarce resource. Female selling transactional sex is commoditizing this resource. In general, people don't like their valuable service getting commoditized.
Why do you inherently distrust a former sex worker? What about sex work is distrustful? Do you think prostitutes have a habit of not delivering after payment or something?
How is that 'fine'?
I would like to see a future where someone doing sex work to make ends meet (or even as a freely chosen profession!) is not ostracised for it. Sex is part of society whether you want it or not, and so is paying for sexual acts.
Some cultural norms are outdated, but prostitution is still degrading and dangerous for those practicing it, especially for the women; who may not be doing so willingly, prostitution being the main incentive for human trafficking. And the online medium doesn't change that by much.
Some people may be willing to pay for sex, some people are willing to pay for many other things or activities that should be or are illegal.
When it becomes fine, it will be worth no more than someone coming to mow your lawn, and probably less than that.
It's better to have a future where people don't have to do SW to make ends meet
A future where more people get forced into sex work because of economic reasons is not desirable. Consider the diseases, conflict with cultural norms, potential for rape and abuse
Sex should be freely given. "Free laborers" aren't freely giving their labor, they're forced to for economic reasons
Yes, and this seems to be a discussion of whether people want it or not. I don't think paid sex acts ruin the world. Some people probably need it in place of real intimacy, for their own mental health. I still think it's generally scummy and unproductive. Then again, I think all sorts of businesses can be described that way. Snake oil has been killing it for as long as commerce has been around. Another example: if you go around gutting productive companies to line your own pockets, e.g. buying & dismantling competitors to stop competition, I see that as a greater moral failing than baiting lonely people with sex appeal.
It's common that people forget or fail to understand that business is a way to cooperatively shape life into something desirable, and instead see it as a way to win at others expense.
Drug dealers are also part of society, yet we still frown upon them.
Sex is in all (?) human cultures viewed as most intimate and private expression of civilized love. It is also how we teach our kids about sex. Pornography and prostitution serve only our primal desires which goes against all this. Does it really surprise you that society will shun people that partake in these things? To me it is obvious as day.
Somehow it's mainly the ones who sells their body and not the ones who buy them who get punished.
Buying is more often voluntarily than selling.
A large amount of those people are very young, at an age where you don't really pick your options solely on their super long term consequences.
Most people are going to be "stupid" in their early adulthood, failing and adjusting is a big part of it. Unfortunately, some of those decisions will stick more than others and sex work is very sticky (zing).
And they will continue to be if there are never any consequences.
Stop bailing people out of problems they make for themselves and people will start learning to not make those problems.
Human beings are not stupid machines who see others put their hand in the fire, getting burned, then they put their own hands in the fire get burned, and then keep doing it over and over again.
Most will stop when they see others get burned, others still will stop when they get burned, and a small minority will stop once there is no hand left to burn.
No, if you sell sex, lots of societies will punish you. Selling or renting your body otherwise -- which a very large share of jobs involve just as much as sex work does -- is otherwise lauded.
> Thats fine, societies have all sorts of norms we all need to learn.
Lots of norms that societies have or historically have had would be better eliminated. That something is an existing norm isn't an argument in favor of it being a norm.
> It’s just as easy to imagine demand for the “real thing” going down due to the emergence of more substitutes as it is to imagine the premium for parasocial authenticity going up. And yet only Generative AI “creators” will truly do whatever “you” want and only for you. And unlike real ones, they speak in every language and are available at any time (and eventually, in immersive 3D).
Disagree. When (AI is) mentioned it has a negative correlation. Real content will fetch a premium
There is no "formula" for success in the creator economy - the winners are largely random. A better way to look at it is there are 4 million humans out there trying every permutation to crack success, and ~400k actually do it.
Unless you have a sufficiently advanced AI agent that is both varying it's content and it's marketing strategy to the tune of maybe ~1000 different iterations it's unlikely we will see a version of OnlyFans that exists that is majority AI generated.
The "parasocial ai girlfriend" sounds like a flawed premise aswell. OF girls are not therapists - Cardi B, Bhad Bhabie, and others aren't raking in millions because they are good girlfriends (although that is part of the upsell). Social status plays a part in the most successful girls, people seem to subscribe because the creator is popular, especially if she's already built a platform elsewhere.
In short, social status does not have an AI substitute.
That observation has echoes of the music industry - another extremely top-heavy creator business. There are formulaic ways to make "good enough" and "catchy enough" songs, but the window for "X enough" keeps shifting. Cranking out grunge won't be sustainable in the age of K-pop.
But the massive runaway hits have been predominantly outliers for their age. They have veered far enough from the mainstream to be interesting in new ways, different enough, and surprising enough to break through.
But to predict in advance what kinds of outliers will win the lottery? Largely random, indeed.
I think that strongly depends on what you call "the creator economy". For example, on YT it's really mostly skill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip2trao6dYw
Not that I believe its easy, nor do I think AI will be super good at it, at least not before everything else also enshittifies into the habsburg-AI-powered dead internet.
I watched that video from start to finish and disagree with your conclusion. I watched it all so I could make an informed comment but regret spending those 15 minutes on it.
The author essentially made a video about a popular streamer, then went on their stream and baited them with 50$ and a video about themselves. It was literally click bait. It was so transparent that the streamer realised at the end what had happened but still decided to go along with it since it cost them nothing.
That’s just directed spam (which, by the way, is a word the author used themselves). It was one video about drivel. Granted, it’s not dissimilar from the other garbage that populates YouTube, but it also didn’t get views for being good. It’s the equivalent of video junk food. You know it, the creator knows it, yet it’s still hard to stop consuming.
The formula for success in any field is simply to make a product that other people want to consume. It’s not 0 variance, but if you have some insight into what people want, and you do the work to execute your idea, then you can simply work through the ups and downs and success is almost inevitable.
People just want to chase a local maximum of constant validation that they're pretty/smart/correct. They don't see or understand the value in working through fights to create something beyond the sum of two people.
AI excels at maintaining that local maximum. It can confidently reassure you better than any human can even if you're wrong. AI partners following this are successful now and people in their teens and early 20s are being hooked en masse.
Historically, superior pieces of technology haven't displaced older incumbents when the learning curve is too steep.
I don't see why a person dating an AI partner that has lovebombed them for several years would switch to another AI (or a person) that starts fights and bickers. Even if it's better in the long-term, that's still a marked decrease in short-term satisfaction.
Relationships don't require 'arguments and fights and makeups' to be real. And if AI girlfriends offer 'ideal relationships', how is that not 'good'?
You are conflating what people actually want with the artificial drama of TV shows and Hollywood/the messy scenario of reality. If people can pay to get their fantasy girlfriends/relationships brought to life, they will, and it will be successful especially if all forms of conflict/relationship dissatisfaction can be avoided.
What AI girlfriends will do is mimic perfect Hollywood relationships, complete with hot makeup sex.
* Point #1, OnlyFans is the biggest thing in porn by far, its rise is meteoric.
* Point #2, OnlyFans is in the business of selling relationships. It's not a tech company and attempts to analyze it as such are therefore off the mark. Customers pay OnlyFans because they feel they are obtaining a relationship with the model, that she is aware of them and responding to them in a personalized fashion.
* Point #3, The relationships OnlyFans sells are fraudulent - a high percentage of customers actually believe they are talking to the model. In reality none of the models who are successful have time to talk to fans, everything is outsourced. Some models run their own accounts but most of the time it is more professionalized with a pimp/production company behind the scenes who just orders pictures and clips from the model, so the intimacy the customer is buying is a lie.
* Point #4, and this may be the biggest one explaining OF's meteoric rise, OF creators are allowed to advertise via their social media profiles, whereas a conventional porn site is not. Reddit, X and Instagram are all massive drivers of OnlyFans traffic and signups. The business model is that softcore porn is hosted on these social media sites, which makes tons of money for the social media sites, and then there is a link or mention to the OnlyFans profile where OF delivers the service for whales who want to escalate their porn consumption.
I'll say it again, the key innovation in the OnlyFans business model is that they figured out how to get women to advertise their service on Instagram. Not a tech company.
Another significant takeaway is that since OF's product is fundamentally a lie, the social media giants are indirectly profiting from fraud.
It depends how you define “successful”, but I would say that’s not true. I personally know several OF models for whom it is their fulltime job (earning decent money), and they do not outsource anything. Highly popular models almost certainly do, but there’s a lot of smaller creators who don’t
Is there any hard evidence this is true beyond a tiny deluded fraction of the userbase?
Aren't 99% of users just straightforwardly transactional, trading money for access to photos and videos, just like subscribing to a newspaper?
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/onlyfans-management-agency-c...
I will also not be surprised at all when the inevitable scandal breaks where some popular OF creator was ousted as being AI generated instead of being "real".
There are Instagram influences that are on the platform /today/ that are immensely popular, and they are completely AI generated. Some of their followers even know this, yet they don't really care.
Unlike something like professional wrestling (that is make believe real content), the AI equivalent to only fans seems like it will be trivial to make.
And as the article pointed out, part of why onlyfans exploded in popularity is that other sources of free porn dried up, so it shows there is a substitution aspect where if something better / cheaper comes along, people will switch to it.
One other response mentions social status.
I will contribute another: personal human interaction with someone that seems both "out of your league" AND "no-need-to-get-away-from-the-computer" available. That configuration has significant value (as real content from a real human) for enough of these fans, enough of which recognize this and pay well for it - to make it worth the performer's time. And still very far from "generative AI".
is it possible to write a non-seminal article about onlyfans, though?
I have an llm inference rig that I enjoy on the weekends and the problem for the first time in my life is that I have supernormal stimulus which doesn't seem to reduce in potency the more I use it.
It's gotten to the point where I don't visit porn sites any more because the locally generated material is better than what I can find there, and these are just the first sparks of gen AI porn.
Gen AI porn will make the issue of online pornography seem laughable when it drops in requirements so you can run the state of the art models in prosumer hardware.
What do you do when reality is a distant second to the digital world?
realize it's a torus and wander happily in circles
I have no idea what this sentence means
I think it says something quite dark about our society as a whole that we have basically commoditised distress and are encouraging some people often themselves in dire circumstances to prey on others to the benefits of the middle men. I find these new pimps scarier than the old sort in that they pretend to have clean hands.
I think you should step back and look at it with a bit of distance. Is the content they're paying for really the same as you think is available for free, and do they even get it under the same conditions, in morality and circumstance.
Not knowing your life, it feels like you could have said the same towards people buying pricy concert tickets when there's royalty free music abundantly available.
> commoditised distress [...] often in dire situations
The first step to alleviate these specific situations could be to stop marginalizing this kind of content and give them a regular professional status, instead of systematicly pigeon hole it.
The analogy holds. Most people don't pay concert tickets for the music itself. It's the experience, the crowd, the physical presence of the artists, etc.
That's just any customer business.
When you go buy a house it feels like the agent is really looking at your personal circumstances and trying hard to be your friend. When you go cut your hair the staff will remember your name and ask about your day. Your dentist will keep track of your operations, personalize your care and make sure you're in trust and as comfortable as possible.
There's really nothing special about having people you pay be friendly with you.
> Taylor has always cultivated a parasocial relationship with her fans, and her success is in no small part due to this cultivation. Here are just a few examples besides just her deeply personal and largely autobiographical lyrics:
> 1) Publishing her personal journal pages in the four different versions of the Lover album.
> 2) Inviting fans to her house for Secret Sessions to listen to her albums before release dates.
> 3) This direct quote from the Eras Tour in Tampa: "I'm really loving this tour. It's become my entire personality and I've always loved putting on shows, always loved that connection... Knowing you have felt the same way... I need you guys very much for my well-being."
> 4) The Fearless TV announcement. "This was the musical era in which so many inside jokes were created between us, so many hugs exchanged and hands touched, so many unbreakable bonds formed, so before I say anything else, let me just say that it was a real honor to get to be a teenager alongside you..."
> 5) Leaving secret messages in the liner notes of her physical CDs and the eventual TS culture of Easter Eggs.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TaylorSwift/comments/13zlbi9/paraso...
Wow, What a great analogy. That really is almost the same except not with music but sexual attraction.
> the content they're paying for really the same as you think is available for free,
I dislike arguments made in this vein, it's sortof a way to intellectually dismiss someone's point without addressing it.
I share the grandparent poster's concern. Parasocial relationships feed us in a certain way, but do not nourish.
Don't get me wrong; I'd rather have OnlyFans than pimps. But that's not the point.
I don't see the CrossFit like dogma of "if it's not working just do more of it" as beneficial in this topic.
I also don't like looking at a service like OF and only focusing on the extremes.
It's a brand, they like it, they want to be reminded of it and show their love of it off. It creates an "in group" which is socially valuable. Streamers are nothing special in that regard.
I owned an operated a "free" adult website for 18 years. For 15 years it was my primary source of income. During those years I always got a kick out of "there is so much free porn online, why would anyone ever pay for it?"
The way that my website worked was that it was very content-rich and content-focused. The content came directly from the affiliate programs that I was advertising for. Despite it being all advertising, I often got compliments that my website was "ad free." That's because I didn't push banner ads or anything intrusive. It was free content plus a text link that you could click on if you wanted more of that content.
The website shut down in 2022, and the bank accounts are all closed. But many of the affiliate accounts are still pulling rebills.
Most of the subscription based websites that were advertised were not websites that promised any sort of interaction with the performers or models. It was very obvious that you were paying for content, not social interaction and if anyone were ever confused as to that, the rebill numbers would have reflected otherwise. The fact that an indivdual subscription rebills is not a conclusive indication of a happy customer. But when so many in the aggregate rebill, it doesn't really paint the picture of a large number of people feeling duped. It's also worth noting that chargeback rates were nearly non-existent. I could count the number of times that happened over 18 years on one hand.
Now, if you've read this far thanks, I will acknowledge that we're talking about OF specifically.
At the risk of TMI, I subscribe personally to one adult content site: suicide girls. I am happily married, I'm not looking for any social interaction. It's purely eye candy. Many of the models on that site promote their personal OF pages, and while I haven't subscribed to any, I will admit that I've been tempted because they produce content that I like and I'm curious about what else they offer. I'm not at all interested in DM'ing them or trying to start some kind of parasocial relationship. I've watched a few live streams on SG, have even had some interaction in the chats in those ... but there's no desire what-so-ever to try and have some kind of "relationship." I've never tipped them or sent them money or gifts. Just the annually recurring subscription to the SG website.
People who are in difficult situations in life, have mental illnesses or physical disabilities may try and use online porn to fill a void in their life, and for some it may be unhealthy. People also stalk celebrities for the same reason. Yet we seem to make more assumptions and talk about it a hell of a lot more when it comes pornography for some reason. I'm not saying that there aren't social issues that are important to look at and talk about. But when it comes to porn there's such a taboo and willingness to shame others and make mass assumptions about their motivations even though we have very little idea of what we're actually talking about.
> a few exceptional people (many of them imaginary) get far more love than most people need or can enjoy.
> This seems an essential tragedy of the human condition. You might claim that love isn’t a limited resource, that the more people each of us love, the more love we each have to give out. So there is no conflict between loving popular and imaginary people and loving the rest of us. But while this might be true at some low scales of how many people we love, at the actual scales of love this just doesn’t seem right to me. Love instead seems scarce at the margin.
> Please, someone thoughtful and clever, figure out how we might all be much loved.
Sounds like credit card fraud to me. Bots using stolen cards to scrape OF content. Also easily verifies that the number works before attempting a pricier purchase.
I’ve subscribed for one month to two different creators just to check the content. Neither was interesting enough to maintain a subscription. I don’t think the described behavior sounds nefarious.
The problem with subscription sites like that is that paying for a month's subscription gives you access to the entire backlog of the work that a person has been doing for years. There's only so much that an OF model is gonna be able to do in terms of posing before they've done all the angles that someone would want to see. Why pay for repetitive content when you can just pay for a month and download everything, wait a year, and then do it again?
If these sites were smart, they'd implement a 3 month rolling backlog and then a set add-on price for accessing additional months worth of content.
I have a friend who produces a few successful OF models and makes about 5-10x a good SF tech salary. He has a whole army of sexters who impersonate models and DM with fans. Vast majority of his income comes not from subscriptions, but from content sold in these DMs, content which is presented as "exclusive" to the buyer.
To my mind the bigger issue is how much of it is a total scam. OF models offshoring their DM responses so their clients think they’re having conversations with the model when it’s actually some dude half the world away. Or using AI for the same, which I’m sure is increasing exponentially.
It’s going to be interesting to see what happens when AI is able to generate on demand video/photo and chat that’s realistic enough to satisfy an online client. If people are specifically told it’s AI will they be content with that? Or will they still want an actual real human? We're not exactly rational creatures at the best of times so it’ll be fascinating to see. We’ll have gone from the phone sex lines of yore, where you are interacting with a real human even though they’re definitely not the human you’re imagining in your head, to an AI video chat where you’re seeing exactly what you want but there’s nothing behind it.
This seems like OF's Etsy trap moment.
On the one hand, scaling creator:individual_fan multiples via AI assisted messaging = $$$ (to creators and OF)
On the other hand, it canabalizes their core business value tenet -- authenticity.
It'll be curious to see which path they choose, and if it ends up playing out similar to Etsy. I.e. temporarily increasing their revenue while erroding their brand, then having to tack back once they realize how dire things have gotten in customers' eyes.
Wait, are you intentionally ignoring the fact that OF is the middleman? Because it definitely is, making about 1 billion dollars off of 5 billion dollars of transactions. Or are you saying OF is a "good non-toxic middleman".
That said, people only need to _believe_ it's real.
When it's that easy to screw up, it's easier and cheaper to pay real humans $1k a month for sexting than to build an LLM-based system that never makes mistakes and is 100% secured against prompt injection.
...
OF models offshoring their DM responses
I mean this sounds to me like the toxic middlemen have changed form, rather than gone away. Now the toxic middlemen work for the performer, rather than the other way around. But they're still toxic and their toxicity is now directed at the buyer instead.
If you go back and watch <= 90s movies and tv (PG-13!), it's amazing how pervasive and frank sexuality there is.^
In contrast to current mores that mandate sexy, but never actually talking about sex.
The deterioration of more honest discourse in mass media about realistic (read: fumbling, awkward, funny, vulnerable, spiritual) physical sexuality has left young folks ill prepared to enjoy that side of life.
^ Exhibit A: Hercules the Legendary Journeys (1994, produced by Sam Raimi!) S01E02, which would make most kids today cringe, despite just being scantily-clad depictions of consensual sexual desire and bawdy banter https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Tgz7burclcI
Do you have a source for that angrily defended "fully rational reinterpretation"?
I suspect the word for what's going on is rationalization not "fully rational reinterpretation" (e.g. "This is a thing we're doing, therefore it's good because we do it. Let's reevaluate everything else to achieve that result.").
These were redditors that were unhappy saying that being an only fan model is the laziest thing one can do. That's when they taught me about their concepts.
Let me first give you four quotations.
Firstly: “Our youth loves luxury, has bad manners, disregards authority, and has no respect whatsoever for age. Our children today are tyrants; they do not get up when an elderly man enters the room—they talk back to their parents—they are just very bad.”
Secondly: “I no longer have any hope for the future of our country if today’s youth should ever become the leaders of tomorrow, because this youth is unbearable, reckless—just terrible.”
Thirdly: “Our world has reached a critical stage; children no longer listen to their parents; the end of the world cannot be far away.”
Finally: “This youth is rotten from the very bottom of their hearts; the young people are malicious and lazy; they will never be as youth happened to be before. Today’s youth will not be able to maintain our culture.”
The first quote came from Socrates (470–399 B.C.); the second from Hesiod (circa 720 B.C.); the third from an Egyptian priest about 2,000 years ago; and the last was recently discovered on clay pots in the ruins of Old Babylon, which are more than 3,000 years old.
Anyway, a lot of people who have never used the site before think it's mostly what you said. It's not. The parasocial stuff is tiny unless you're doing specific kinks for people.
What I tell most people not familiar with the industry is that it's usually more like seeing someone in real life (NOT a porn star, celeb, etc, amateurs only) that you've got a crush on naked for only $10/mo. It has the amateur thing a lot of people love. Another reddit comment is always "Why pay when porn is free?" Have you never had a crush on someone? And amateur porn is probably the biggest "kink" I feel weird even calling it a kink, I'm practically on the "who doesnt like amateur porn??" end.
That's 90% of the customers. Lots of people who think a youtuber or instagram or whatever not professionally showing themselves off is just hot and want to see them naked.
I've never spoken to a single customer. I'm a straight man and most of mine are men and I have no interest or desperation for money to do para/kink stuff.
I really don't get why so many people think onlyfans is about messaging talent back and forth. It's kind of annoying to constantly read because it always comes from non-OF users who have this weird morality/ethics problem with sex work. It makes no sense if you know anything about porn. Most people jack off in silence and close their laptop and there aren't thousands of onlyfans models with media managers. Most are 18-25yo women who work corporate jobs or bartenders and have their own life to live. They treat it like youtube, upload content a few times a week and never look at messages.
Don't kink shame, stop with the "I don't know why anyone uses this instead of that, you're a loser if you pay for porn" thing. You like what you like, other people like what they like.
Vices like gambling, obscenity, prostitution, drugs, etc are banned or heavily controlled societies over because they have significant negative cultural effects. “Why do YOU care what other people do in their private lives?” was always a stupid justification: if everyone in your community is addicted to vices, that DOES affect me.
Looking at western culture (the only one I feel confident speaking about), we are still bound by puritanical values that were imposed as control mechanisms but managed to sneak their way into a set of cultural norms as a moral code despite their actual value to us not being evaluated and actively selected.
It's not a "western culture" thing. Many western cultures do, sure. Many eastern cultures do as well. Not literally puritanism and that specific history, but very similar kinds of thoughts and ideas.
This libertarian stance where neither you nor the state should care about how your neighbors lead their lives is the exception, not the norm, and it has its merits, but the cost of this ideology is obvious.
Do they? Citation needed. So far it seems that marijuana consumption leads to far less violence than alcohol, and proliferation of porn leads to much lower rates of sexual violence.
> if everyone in your community is addicted to vices, that DOES affect me
Then choose and manage your own community, but don't push this view on the whole country. Dozens of millions of people (I don't know what country do you live in, so not sure about the population) are not a "community" that you can put under the same norms. If you think that porn is bad, it's your right to do so, and to find likeminded people to build a community that shares these values. But why would you want to force it on other people?
If so, how?
Should they be required watching in elementary school? If not, why not?
The free stuff isn't always as good, especially if you want something of a specific niche (fursuits, cosplay, etc). A lot of creators only upload cut-down vidros or "trailers" to free sites with a link to their OF.
At least in my case, I simply see it like the Patreon model. I like supporting some of my favorite artists, especially with something like an ongoing comic series I'll get previews of and vote on polls to influence. Onlyfans is the same if I particularly like some creator. It's great that we can directly support content creators of all kinds now.
I think you're making assumptions about people's motivations that aren't consistent with evidence.
Pornhub and similar sites are full of content that is a dime a dozen and available for free and does not suggest any kind of "parasocial" relationship with the viewer. It's just two or more people fucking. And it's the same as it was ten years ago. And yet... More of that content keeps being made. Porn production companies exist. Pornstars making money for fucking on camera exist. Clearly there are people willing to pay for new porn that will just end up on free-to-view sites anyway.
Your mental model of "it's all about the parasocial relationship" doesn't explain these facts. Thus your mental model can't be the whole truth. I suspect it's at most a fairly small part of the truth.
The entire system is geared around feeling unheard, unseen and paying to be heard or seen.
20k people shouting into a a void. Paying to get a badge signaling you subscribed. Paying to highlight messages hoping they are read. Hanging on for that hope this popular person gives you 10 seconds of attention.
That's the reality of the depressing industry. And that's how the streamers and steaming providers like it. Ever wonder why the stream chat experience has never been improved? ;)
Oh, and the toxic communities it breeds.
Naked people aren't fungible.
As a person who tried to start a startup but had been hacked and assaulted by the organizations who seem to maintain their monopoly by whatever methods they can use it’s more like a mob of pimps than a single pimp.
Edit: Maybe there is a correlation between Gamers and Porn.
I think there is a darker side there: many of those subscribers are minors, who discover this kind of content for the first time. That's why OF models stream on Twitch to expand their audience, there are plenty of kids who came there for Minecraft, but will end up subscribing to OF with mom's credit card.
I mean look at the extremely popular K-pop bands, fans get insanely invested into these groups, following them, bringing glowsticks to show support, etc. Or the entire Japanese idol movement for that matter.
Or think about how people stand in line for hours just to get the signature of somebody at a convention.
I think this is just the way a lot of people are wired. I don't know if it's bad or a good thing, it's just something I've noticed.
I do remember a study that people often think label their more popular friends as their "best" friends, but if you go ask THOSE friends, they label THEIR even more popular friends as their "BEST" friends. It's often asymmetrical.
Though tbh going too far down these rabbitholes usually isn't healthy/productive imo.
I still think there are multiple differences.
One is how OnlyFans has successfully turned everyday people into this source of para-social fixation for a multitude of small communities and somehow massified the issue.
The other and the main one for me is that in both the star system or the K-pop industry the system is a mean to an end - selling movie tickets or albums - while OnlyFans genuinely sells the illusion of closeness.
because OF models cannot realistically produce anything of that high production value to sell. They can take pictures, get videos shot, etc. And in any case, the closeness you speak also applies to the celebrity in mainstream industry.
Almost everyone I know thinks that things like OnlyFans are embarrassing at best, and disgusting at worst. Sure, most of us look at porn, but admitting that you've paid for it and _especially_ admitting that you have a "favourite camgirl" or whatever would be properly cringe.
sounds like you meant "professional courtesy"
But while there are successful people on only fans with either more or less clothes on, the vast majority of creators probably sell their dignity for a few dollars.
Agreed that there is something fishy about these new pimps. I guess there are still the conventional pimps too, but they now call themselves manager.
I don't see it as any less dignified than any other work. You sell your labor to someone who pays you less than the value it produces.
Now, if you want to argue that median creators get payed only a tiny fraction of their time, and like Twitch/YouTube it's a losing game for most, then we're on the same page.
I do live in a country where sex work is legal. There is still a darker sides to the trade. I think customers do lose even more dignity. Or someone who does sex work because it is "empowering" compared to someone that is forced into it.
You do not, and that is your moral judgement. Rationalizing earning money by any means necessary is a very slippery slope, and the discussion is much more nuanced than popular media would lead you to believe.
A plausible scenario might be an FBI agent paying a confidential informant without creating an unexplained income stream. The FBI and friends disclosed spending around $0.5B on informants. The truth could be more. We don’t know what other agencies around the world spend. I imagine they aren’t putting cash in brown bags under park benches.
The reality is that OnlyFans wasn't the first to try this model. You have to give them credit for successfully building the business, especially with several close calls between them and government regulations.
A similar app creator talks about her experience and why it failed.
It seems she and Justin Mares are running some kind of micro-funding for passionate <25yos. $2k to help young people develop themselves; super cool.
Shame that Twitter doesn't let people without an account to read it.
The problem is the payment processor. How the heck do you accept adult-content related payments? That is the hardest problem to solve when it comes to these things in my book.
It's beyond knowing the business model, I guess the founder were at the right place and right time and knew the right people to make this venture succeed.
Also, the marketing, how the heck did these guy blow up so fast. The funds for marketing and all, it's not cheap!
Is this accurate? Because (a) Stripe explicitly says they won't be a payment processor for adult-oriented businesses, and (b) I read somewhere (this was a while back) that OnlyFans had a slew of payment processors that they would rotate/diversify whenever things got too dicey with a specific processor (e.g. too many chargebacks)
https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/24/22639356/onlyfans-ceo-tim...
Recently they've tried to launch OFTV to try and build up more regular (non-spicy) paid content, but it's a tiny fraction of their revenue I would imagine.
Otherwise, paid porn was already on the downswing due to the rise of free tube sites. Onlyfans somehow got men paying for porn again.
When you can combine that experience with AI generated content, you will create something that I don't think anyone fully understands the ramifications of yet.
The strip clubs were closed, the strippers and the patrons moved to the online strip club.
This is a baffling section where the author goes out of their way to bash browsers vs apps. Maybe there are a lot of cons to apps that browsers don't have. Basically all of the sleights against browsers in this section are not true. When I buy something from amazon, from my browser, I definitely do not need to manually enter my credit card in every time.
For me, iPhone feels like surfing the web with a 46kbauds modem. Single page at a time. Want to load two? IT RELOADS.
Almost all my apps do this to me about once a month.
[Obviously I don't let Android update my apps automatically in the background. That way lies madness.]
Ok, looks like a total UI refresh.
Tried to schedule a bill payment (which previous version could do, uhh, for 10y+) and threw a dialog saying “coming soon”.
Cost can be a downside, of course.
For vendors the obvious downside is the Apple/Google tax, and is something even we need to be wary of at the company I work for.
But it's not the only downside.
I work for a company that offers a service via the web but, recently, we wanted to prototype some functionality that would exclusively be used from mobile and tablet. It uses the camera, does some nifty stuff with AI (and, to be clear, no, it's not a porn app!), etc., and I thought well, why not prototype it with and app? And, furthermore, why not prototype it as a native app with Swift? This should be the lowest friction route to ddeveloping and deploying an app to iOS, has full access to the platform's extensive built-in capabilities, and therefore it would offer the best user experience, etc.
And I've always been happy to sacrifice a quantity of developer convenience for the sake of offering a better user experience. At the end of the day if we, as engineers, wanted easy jobs we picked the wrong career: we should be aiming to make the lives of our users easier and more productive, and that's often really challenging.
And I'll tell you what: as far as it goes, if I didn't need the app to interact with anything outside of Apple's platform I might still use Swift. It's a nice language, and whilst XCode feels a bit like it Deloreaned in from 2005, it isn't completely terrible.
But that's not our app. It needs to integrate with a bunch of other services and here is where the pain kicked in. Swift and iOS are absolutely the poor cousins when it comes to library and API support. For so many things I wanted to do libraries were incomplete, and documentation was... well, it ranged from non-existent to wrong in critical aspects.
And because Swift is niche (relatively speaking) it's very evident that it doesn't have the kind of mature ecosystem, thought leadership or best practices around it that the likes of C++, Java, C#, Python, and others do. I might be speaking out of turn here but I also get the vibe that it doesn't attract the kind of best of breed practitioners that other more niche development platforms have, which yields better library and API support for them even though they don't necessarily have huge developer bases: think Go, Rust, Flutter, etc.
I don't want to denigrate Swift because, as a language in isolation, I liked it (even though it's Objective C underpinnings are never far from showing themselves). But as a development experience, it was a complete nightmare. Outside of functionality that depended only on the device itself I struggled to get anything working well.
You could put this down to, well, you're new to the platform, what do you expect? But I was able to otherwise be immediately productive in Python 18 months ago when I started working with it, and didn't run into these kinds of frustrations.
In the end I literally got to the point of, screw this, let's just use web, or maybe a hybrid app with the thinnest of thin native wrappers, or maybe flutter. But not native, no way.
[0] I say little anxiety rather than no anxiety because I'm not generally a fan of free apps the serve ads, where you don't really know what's on the other end, or how they might be tracking you, and often the UX is such that it's made a bit easier than one might ideally like to accidentally click an ad.
Eh, with WebGL and WebRTC maybe. The problem is input
This is the wildest part. One company that is proving all the "why does <company> need 10000 engineers?" takes true.
Generally speaking, <company> needs <number> engineers because it's rational to keep hiring while each incremental engineer generates more value than they cost in salary and overhead, even if some of those engineers are at less than 50% utilisation and have to generate pointless make-work for themselves to get past performance review.
AWS/GCP/Azure manage physical data centers across the globe, and includes hundreds of services/offerings on each platform.
Additionally, critical industries (hospitals, banks, airlines) often rely on these companies to be available/resilient at all times. Thus the need for increased global workforce. OF on the other hand, nobody is going to die if they can’t access the feet pics they bought for a few minutes or days.
You are not comparing the same companies.
At least compare it to companies with similar businesses. I would argue twitch seems closer. I think they had over 1000 employees. You would have a better point with that comparison if you would want to make that argument.
For instance moderation and community management alone must be a huge pool of people. While the content and comments can be adult, they'll need to deal with all the payment related back and forth, including chargebacks, legal inquiries etc. Same for doxxing, underage filtering, spam and so on.
I assume most if not all of it is a different company which isn't counted in the 42 employees.
Of course engineering can be treated the same, with sub-contracting companies dealing with the actual running of the service or part of the developement.
If Company A sells $100M of televisions which they imported for $95M they've made $5M in profit.
If Company B sells $100M of search ads which they served for $1M they've made $99M in profit.
From a revenue perspective they're equal - but $1M invested in Company A produces a 5% return on investment, while the same $1M invested in Company B has a 9900% ROI.
funnily enough out of the 42 employees still there, i assume less than a fourth are actually engineers.
…but as others pointed out there I’m sure there is an army of contractors that don’t factor into any headcount figure. Which doesn’t at all subtract from the insane revenue per employee figure.
OnlyFans has only about 42 employees. They didn't hire a bloated staff. That's impressive considering the sheer volume of content that passes through their servers.
It looks like OnlyFans has figured out how to do the porno business in a more or less legit way. So what's the problem?
were you replying to someone else making a comment attacking onlyfans?
IMO the lede is a bit buried within the article. The idea that a non-app could survive this well within the strangling iOS system should come as a revelation to the greater iOS community.
I can see how 10's of thousands of people paying $25 a month can generate millions but $25M on private messages in a year is over $70K a day - how many is she doing or how much do they cost each?
> In many cases, the responses are actually written by a member of the creator’s extended team – remember, many of these creators are now multi-million dollar enterprises, and its obviously impossible for creators such as Bhad Bhabie to engage in detailed and personalized conversations with their scores of VIP subscribers – though this alleged subterfuge has resulted in some legal action.
if you're talking to them in some kind of textual instant messenger, rather than over the phone or video chat, you can probably maintain two to four detailed and personalized conversations at a time, which would boost that number into the low thousands
you're just conversing with people, not fucking them, and there are in fact real-life prostitutes who serve scores of clients per month
still i'd probably agree if ball had said 'thousands'. but 'scores' sounds easy
Why? I have disposable income and I feel good when I spend it supporting creators I like. I subscribe to several Patreons of artists and YouTube creators, I’ve got that yearly Nebula subscription locked in, I buy merch and CDs from local bands (even though I don’t really listen to them after shows), and I also will pay folks posting tantalizing stuff on the internet. Sure I can get similar things for free, but sometimes I want content from that person and I see no issue giving them a couple bucks for it. I can afford it, so why not? Why do they not deserve it when I’m willing to also sub to a Patreon for someone who makes cool digital art on Instagram?
The “para-social” aspect is icky to me. At no point do I expect that this person knows who I am or has any care for me; any time I receive messages insinuating or fishing for that I ignore them. My “relationship” to them is a consumer who enjoys their work and is willing to compensate them for it, and that “relationship” only exists for a limited amount of time every so often.
I don't really understand this. Digital art on Instagram is generally unique, but porn is not. Sure, there are some onlyfans models that cater to a very niche kink - I get why people would pay for that. But most of them just post regular naked photos/videos of themselves.
What is the value proposition here? You probably wouldn't pay for a Patreon of an artist that draws those generic boring corporate illustrations that every company uses, even though they have a use and still take effort to create. So why would you support a specific person that makes content which is not in any way different from any other person like that?
Revenue wise, you'll make a lot more money tailoring content to a small group of users who will pay for custom content / live cams etc than having any mass appeal with small donations. The large social media funnel is mostly there to get model's content out there to find the whales.
Context: I have a side business deploying chat LLMs for OnlyFans models for fans to "talk" to that's currently at 65k/MRR. It definitely helps with user retention, as models who chat to their fans will have a 2x or 3x spend rate per fan.
Seems illegal, or at the very least a violation of OF's Terms of Service.
good job
How did you market this? Do you have a website for it?
The OF content I pay for is usually from someone I discovered via Instagram or a camming site.
But the money I spend on camming sites is usually because it offers two things that aren't easily found elsewhere. 1) direct interaction with the models in real time and 2) seeing couples who are actually couples and have a real and pre-existing relationship. Part 2 is a tiny amount of camming content, but it is some of my all time favorite sex content.
The article makes mention of AI content potentially coming for this industry, but I believe it's the "GirlfriendGPT" and similar that will be the bigger threat, once they improve.
The article itself explains how subscriptions are a low part of OnlyFans business
But maybe this is only offering a glimpse
Many successful creators have a marketing strategy that includes a free subscription tier, and make money in pay per view DMs, or charging for DMs at all
So for people browsing for free pornography, its the same or better
Either way, its nice to see your attractive friends naked. Many women you meet in real life have a link in their social media bio that includes their onlyfans. In my world its very predictable based on visual attractiveness. Astoundingly, often it seems other women in their friend groups don’t know this and haven’t checked the “link in bio” of their girl friends. This masquerades as acceptance of sex workers.
Donate to streamer, get mention, get hit of dopamine.
Donate to OF person. Get a “personal” video. Get a hit of dopamine or whatever chemical corresponds to love/friendship.
I know girls who go the the gym. They work in IT and are not OF girls. They just want to stay healthy. People also don't smoke any more as much, and gen z drinks less alcohol then the other generations.
It is usually obvious what they're doing. It's not merely "there are women in the gym."
Some might just want to check out their form. Or upload an inspirational workout video.
Baby steps towards the “dead internet theory”
It (along with the growing revenue) tells us that a lot more people are joining constantly, so you will really need to stand out to make anything (just as in music, games etc.)
It certainly reduces it a lot and your point is valid, but let’s note that it doesn’t “eliminate” it: doxxing and stalking are very much a thing and my OF creator friends live in flatshare or have building security for safety reasons
Only in jurisdictions where minimum wage is less than $0.72/hr.
In what ways?
As an industry, it seems pretty much a pariah. In terms of political power, the religious organisations that that pressure the finance system to break ties with pornography seem more powerful. Maybe it influences culture/perceptions about relationships and sex in more ways than I can see.
I wish I was cut throat enough to know real players in internet commerce
1. COVID: The explosion in revenues during 2020 is self explanatory.
2. Product market fit/Execution: The owners having previously created other, albeit, unsuccessful platforms certainly helped with creating Onlyfans. This is a very simple idea that thousands will have had, but creating it successfully necessarily requires a good understanding of a sector avoided by most major corporations.
Second point - is this really Europe’s most successful tech company of the last 15 years?!
> it is probably the most successful UK company founded since DeepMind in 2010
Not sure I can name many US companies founded in the last 15 years with higher revenue numbers
It's so easy to stick to international units, folks. Please. PLEASE!
The M lives on in languages like Spanish where the word mil means one thousand.
Based on that, I can say `1.000.000` is equal to MM because Brazil uses `.` to separate groups of 3 digits, and `,` to separate integer and decimal parts.
My point is to stick to using the units the language you're writing on uses.
Btw, thanks for explaining the origin of MM! I definitely didn't know that.
It's not as easy as you might think, given how many places I've seen that measure weight in Kelvin-grams (Kg).
Also
> It's so easy to stick to international units, folks. Please. PLEASE!
should be to stick to the language's usage of units. Not necessarily international units.
Even though the comment doesn't exactly apply now that I know MM can be used in finance, but I wanted to correct it to have a broader coverage.
Still less confusing than "mph" (I always read it as "meters per hour" and have to go back to correct myself).
If you look up the user demographics, you'll notice an obvious problem: The demographics do not include the number of users under 18.
https://techreport.com/statistics/software-web/onlyfans-stat...
Some may say: well that's because you have to be 18 to use the site. But that's not true. Anyone can signup for onlyfans without entering their age. Onlyfans only does age verification for creators.
If you think this site isn't primarily being used by teenagers, then I have a bridge to sell you.
But if it's a common scenario for an adult OF creator to be sexually interacting with an underage teenager online (and, really, "grooming" them), are we going to start seeing life-ruining prosecutions of creators?
Incidentally including subpoenas of lists of creators and consumers, for additional chilling effect on both?
If so, could that kill OF's business, at least for Western creators, as well as for some consumers?
And if OF ends up with creators mostly in non-Western countries, with a reputation for preying upon UK/US/etc. teens (and maybe even reports of human trafficking, and/or funding sanctioned parties), will OF be banned in many Western countries? Maybe the most lucrative ones?
Separate from serious questions about what's ethical and healthy for everyone, given that the topic is OF's economics, I wonder whether they're making so much money because they're too close to the line of what's legally sustainable.
I wouldn't venture to say what percentage of the income is coming from users are the under age of 18, beyond that is certainly a number larger than $0.
> But if it's a common scenario for an adult OF creator to be sexually interacting with an underage teenager online (and, really, "grooming" them), are we going to start seeing life-ruining prosecutions of creators?
This more or less happens on twitch.tv with alarming frequency. The hot tub streams are not much different than soft core imo. And users will get shoutouts and prizes (in the form of writing the users name on the streamers body) for sending money. It's all done in a way that's nearly impossible to attribute wrong doing to creators, though.
What do you mean by "preys on"? Teenage boys seek out porn, is normal. There's nothing magical about this type of porn. If they are breaking the ToS and committing credit card fraud, who's at fault?
Society figured out a long time ago that teenagers are susceptible to being taken advantage of by adults. It's why every modern nation has age of consent laws.
But onlyfans circumvents that. Creators interact with users, and the users, mostly teenagers, can interact back. This happens on twitch as well, and twitch is used as a funnel for onlyfans.
I think it's hard to argue that there isn't a fundamental difference between:
- watching recorded porn
- a social media platform that allows pornstars to chat with and perform private shows for users, who have a high chance of being under 18
Ask yourself, would you prefer your family members to be under an IRL pimp or run their own OF?
If you look at this realistically, OF is not nearly as morally reprehensible as an IRL pimp.
Probably common for a lot of luxury products; US is like 1/4 of world GDP, and a lot higher than that in personal income beyond basic needs.
Yeah, but so? "Subsisitence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa spend substantially less per capita on online adult entertainment than Americans" is...not a surprising bit of information.
> Every stat in the global context of usage/consumerism gets weird when you consider this
Seems to me that the weird thing is the implicit premise that consumer and especially luxury spending should be expected to track population and not wealth.
> and even weirder when you account for debt-to-income ratio.
Are you assuming that the ability to borrow should be negatively correlated with luxury spending?