Comment by volkk

2 days ago

At what point do we ever ask ourselves -- "what kind of culture do we want to create for the future of our country?" I don't think a pro soccer player is comparable to an onlyfans contributor. I would much prefer my future kids to be inspired by Cristiano Ronaldo than someone baring themselves on camera.

Yet CR7 is routinely photographed baring himself on camera, which is one of the reasons he's so popular.

  • Alongside delivering in performance, and being a role model in pushing oneself to the limit in regards to training.

    Photos don't win matches.

    • I'd be willing to bet that a vast majority of his "followers" are not because of his antics on the field but because of his thirst trap images

    • I am not an expert, but I would guess there is a lot of "pushing oneself to the limit" on OF...

If what you’re just concerned about people “baring themselves on camera” then they can continue to do that without emigrating to America and it would still affect your culture. The internet is global after all.

Also, it’s going to take more than a few thousand immigrants a year to affect the culture of a country as populous as America.

  • The internet is global, but having folks in our midst who make a living that way has more of an effect on our culture than if they are just on the internet.

    • Why?

      I actually worked in the adult industry earlier in my career so have a better insight than most. and I can tell you that these models are just normal people like you an I. They aren’t interested in corrupting your children nor throwing wild sex parties in public spaces.

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  • i mean you said it yourself, the internet is global. those few thousand can have impressions of hundreds of millions. whether they do their cam shows abroad or local matters little. it's the inherent incentivization approved by a government that leads to deeper cultural erosion. if you're in a poor country with no access to education, and your only way into the US is porn, then that's what will ultimately win, rather than incentivizing higher education, etc. And before an argument is made that this will just be a way to get in and then those folks will go and seek PHDs and be productive members of society--i have a bridge to sell you.

    • If a person immigrates to the USA due to success with onlyfans, are they not productive members of society by virtue of having taxable & disposable income from the fruits of their labor? They don't need a PHD to be productive anymore than a soccer player, mentioned earlier. In reality we already have American citizens in the US paying for their college degrees via onlyfans.

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    • Sex sells and everybody knows that. Why should the government use antiquated-at-best moral codes to discriminate against people who will increase the global influence of the country? Cultural exportation and exploitation have been key to US soft power for nearly a century.

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I see no difference in Cristiano Ronaldo and a porn star and an influencer and whatever you name it. They are all idols that sell stories for people to project their own thoughts and desires onto and get emotional. I would be more worry about my kid believing in celebrities, regardless of who they are. And the American mainstream culture is filthy anyway. As the old French joke once said the difference of yogurt and the us is that if you leave yogurt for a coupled of hundred years they would develop culture.

  • You would not have a lot of trouble with your kid trying to be best in basketball, or football, and make a name for it.

    I don't think the same would apply to OF or porn. Totally different things.

    • You do aware of being best in sport and what I just said are hella two different things right? I wish my kids aware that *hell is other people*. Otherwise being a porn star or being a sport star makes not so much difference. Both can give you mental struggles and physical injuries. I think the another comment articulate it well too.

      Edit: And sure It's concerning that the society being shallow but OF and porn are just consequences not the cause. Without them we would have something else to turn important human experience(ie sex) into a commercial show and twisted it. Turn humans into tradable goods. Body commodification is just moral decay and the end of civilization! I think we already have such a thing called ... sports? Edit: professional sports

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    • I mean, this is purely for socially constructed morality reasons.

      In actuality, both require you to sell your body, and both can have long standing health effects. If anything, I would say the typical OF model sells their body much less than an athlete. I mean, I don't think they're going to tear their ACL.

      And also, both offer no real tangible value to humanity. Sports do not produce anything, neither does porn, they're purely for entertainment. A cashier at McDonalds is providing more absolute value to the world than even the most esteemed athlete.

      That's not to say that athletes are bad, entertainment and games are important. But you can't just say one form of mindless entertainment is more valuable than another form.

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  • In the interest of fairness, can you really say different about "mainstream" French culture?

    • Well I don't know much about French aside from the joke but Cannes obviously has way better taste than Hollywood.

      The neat part is, with social media and global internet, culture are generally degenerating regardless of countries. If I were American citizen(gladly Im not) I might as well just let them in to get some tax money, and potentially see if the industry can be used as a soft propaganda machine. Just like Hollywood.

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The other replies to this show a form of argumentation that's always fascinated me.

You say "We should encourage X over Y" and the retorts are

    * "Y will still exist" 
    * "Y can still be encouraged separately"
    * "You should tell me the difference between X and Y"
    * "Hey, I found an X that sometimes acts vaguely similar to Y!"

None directly disagree with the original point, but they do imply fault in the original reasoning without providing any proof or requiring any effort.

The third one is a classic, the straw man. A concise implication of error in which a good-faith response would be long-winded and boring comparatively.

To what end?

What are they hoping to get out of disagreeing with someone trying to encouraging our future culture to be one of relative wholesomeness?

... Why take the time out of one's day to say "well... encouraging X is great and all but you know what's better? passive-aggressively working against anyone that suggests it."?

  • It is disappointing that it is so easy to bamboozle HNers with a straw man argument.

    The original poster was clearly not making an analogy between professional soccer and only fans creators.

    To be explicit, the comparisons were:

    Cinematic actors -> TikTok creators

    Victoria’s Secret model -> only fans creator

    Pro soccer -> esports

    I fail to see how the culture of our country will be negatively impacted by any of those changes. Comparing Cristiano Renaldo to OnlyFans is a straw man because that specific comparison was never suggested, except by the “rebuttal”

    • I don't believe the rigidity of the comparisons matter within the broad context of my point. Regardless of whether OP didn't directly compare pro soccer to OF, the point is that allowing the degradation of expectations of Visas will only incentivize low effort crap. And yes, one can sit here and argue all day that OF fans, or TikTok creators are the same thing as Victorias secret models or Cinematic actors (and I would argue that's far from true) but I think most of us can all feel societal erosion happening and the decline of average IQs and the fact that a huge generation of growing young adults can barely read. Let's not pretend this has nothing to do with multiple epidemics like porn addiction, gambling, and general disregard of trying to better yourself because 90% of people are using 80% of their days staring at said TikTok creators

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  • it's low iq pedantry/contrarianism that pervades the tech industry that i refuse to engage with. it's exactly the same people that will bikeshed every feature into the abyss. i agree and appreciate your sentiment.

The more I hear about culture, the more I think it seems like the new age mysticism of the right

What's wrong with an OnlyFans contributor? It's a self-employed job that services a demand within the economy and pays taxes. It's pretty close to the ideal job an immigrant can have since the product is already globalized but the revenue is not - i.e. an OnlyFans influencer with an American audience who moves to America is now bringing that income back into the economy via taxes and spending, or if they have an international audience they are attracting foreign dollars into your economy and strengthening your currency position.

  • Extracting money from horny young men with an illusion of intimacy/friendship just doesn't seem ethical. Or good for society as a whole.

    Especially when you've got streamers using sites like Twitch, aimed at younger gamers, promoting their OnlyFans porn.

    The regular porn industry is bad enough (https://traffickinghub.com/), but at least the content is non-interactive, there's no pretence of friendship/connection.

    • Most users understand that there is no real friendship.

      Just like people understand that the violence in movies is fake.

      What makes an onlyfans contributor worse than an actor in a violent movie?

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  • Sex work (OF or otherwise) is unsavory, that's what. You can't stop it but there's zero reason we should be going out of our way to grant visas to sex workers.

    • > there's zero reason

      The comment you are replying to articulated, I think rather clearly, one reason why maybe we should.

      I think what you actually mean is that the reasons not to ("sex work is unsavory") outweigh the reasons to ("sex work is going to happen anyway and if some of the people doing it move to the US then they will spend their money and pay their taxes in the US and contribute to the economy there").

      Maybe you're right, maybe you're not, but I don't think you should say "there's zero reason" when in fact there obviously are reasons and you just think other countervailing reasons matter more.

They don't believe in the concept of a culture improving or declining. It's an axiom of a certain ideology that no culture can be inferior to another.