It is indeed algospeak. The term was popularized by OnlyFans creators (often while on other platforms like Tiktok), being used to get around algorithmic censorship. And when the creators use it, they don’t seem to use it like some sort of reclaimed slur or anything.
I personally also think it sounds cute, but one article I found on the term says that it is apparently sometimes used negatively by younger people. (But is that because it was a negative term, or because whatever term you used for porn actors always becomes negative?)
Very different shows, the similarities are pretty superficial. I think it is just part of the current cultural zeitgeist driving plots. But both are pretty decent - Elle Fanning and Tatiana Maslany are both good leads.
Leave it to the SDMB to take a thread about pornstars, human trafficking, and meth labs and turn it into a debate about the proper terminology for OnlyFans creators.
Metro St. Louis straddles the Mississippi river between MO & southern IL. Both regions being bastions of bluenose Baptist Bible Beltery w lotta restrictions on (gasp!) adult entertainment.
One town that was mostly a captive municipality for heavy industry with almost zero actual residents took the opposite tack. Adult stuff was 100% legal there. Or at least as legal as IL state law allowed. So there were a couple of streets sort of lined with adult toystores and seedy “gentlemen’s clubs”.
The town is Sauget, properly pronounced in the French style as “saw-ZHAY”. So of course everyone in the metro area referred to attending the “Sauget Ballet” = “saw-ZHAY Baal-AY”. A name that just trips off the tongue.
When i was a kid, Boston had a district where sex acts and pornographic movies were explicitly legal. It was called the combat zone. I think the goal in zoning for it was to keep that material out of other neighborhoods?
It was a thriving industry until video tapes became widely available. It turns out most people would prefer to watch porn in the comfort and privacy of their own homes, and not in a grungy public theater.
I’m sure that’s part of it, but i think part of it is just that the ease of making porn in the comfort and privacy of your own home is still somewhat new.
Way more that. This has little to do with the economy and much more to do with a new medium for doing something that has always thrived. There isn’t an uptick.
Something like OnlyFans puts the performer in charge; they control what they do and with whom and collect the money themselves, unlike when they work for a porn studio. I believe the most successful make over a million dollars, though that’s only a very few.
No. The webcam model has been around for a while now, but actual people in the industries noticed a distinct uptick with Covid and since. I’m going to trust the opinion of orgs that work in the field as to the trends. Not just in online sex work, but street prostitution, too, has seen an uptick.
The infrastructure to do it profitably (and under your own terms) and the knowledge that the resulting product is out there to buy have both grown a lot somewhat recently. I think it would be surprising if there weren’t stories (books, movies, whatever) about people doing it.
Onlyfans is ten years old, but the distinct uptick was only really noted from the pandemic.
Again - argue with the people I’ve cited who actually work with sex workers, both online and not, who are saying there’s been a recessionary impact on the number of people taking up sex work. Argue with the sex workers themselves, for that matter, their own stories say the same thing.
I’m not disagreeing that there’s been an uptick lately. I have no opinion, and trust your sources. But i also think that something ten years old is ripe for stories with broader reach than the thing.
Did you mean to post that article? It’s about revenge porn. It doesn’t mention street prostitution at all. It cites a couple of anecdotes from people about why they went to OF and I am sure that there are legions of them. People move in and out of the business all the time. Covid shut down the strip clubs which heavily contributed to moving online.
The main reason for the more than an uptick in street prostitution in the US was FOSTA SESTA which prevented sex workers from advertising on places like craigslist and other sites specific to escorts.
I have to wonder about this because I’ve heard influencers (non-porn) talk about how they have to chase the followers to make ends meet, and while it sounds quite a bit better than dealing with a coercive studio, there might still be a little power dynamic there between the platform and the user trying to make money.
Also I have to believe there are plenty of people on OnlyFans forced into it by an abusive partner.
I’m not opposed to porn, I’m just interested in keeping it as autonomous as possible. It does seem like a step up, anyway.
It’s always economic. Either desperation or it’s just in their mind the best way to make money either full time or a side gig. A few get off on it of course. I think we can agree that it’s always been a significant part of the economy and that it fluxuates.
As with all aspects of the influencer culture, the percentage of people on OF making a lot of money or even a decent living is very small. The rest are chasing the success of the few. Although it appears that it’s a way for the individual to maintain control and not be exploited by others the reality isn’t what it seems. After someone realizes that setting up a cam isn’t enough to make money many seek out OF brokers or OF management companies with the hopes of making money after getting support with marketing and other aspects of the business. As you might imagine that is a magnet for unscrupulous people. The creator winds up getting a small percentage of the revenue. Thats not even counting overseas OF farms that are just human trafficking with webcams added.
Wikipedia says, without a source, that the average OnlyFans creator makes $1,300 per year. (And the company takes twenty percent of the revenues.) That’s not much, but I’ll bet that most people on other sites, like YouTube, don’t make much.
