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This sounds a bit isomorphic to "Men must want to wear a suit and tie and sit in a cubicle being a wagie for 8 hours a day, look how many of them do it!"
I work in my wagie cube grudgingly because I need the money. It is not beyond imagination that Instagram/TikTok/SnapChat thots have similar ulterior motives.
That's an incorrect comparison. Most of the men who work office cubicle jobs do so because there's no other way for them to make a living. This doesn't apply to insta/tiktok/etc models.
Doesn't it?
I mean, obviously the median woman with an Instagram account doesn't need to post Instagram bikini pics to to able to afford bread. But human beings have other requirements, like high-value mates. How do you think (or how does she think) she's going to get one of those without some kind of self-promotion?
I ask you not to move the goalposts. Nobody was discussing such other requirements here.
Yes, I maintain that most of the women modeling full-time on tiktok/insta etc. could also earn a living by doing mundane crappy office cubicle jobs or service jobs etc. What they're doing is a lifestyle choice, not a necessity. This differentiates them from the average man working that same type of job (to earn a living, and not for any ulterior motive), because he usually doesn't have that option.
Well I certainly was, and given that I wrote the post to which you are responding, I can assure you that the goalposts remain exactly where I first placed them. My point about working in the wagie cubes was intended to refer to the broad class of "activities engaged in grudgingly" rather than the specific class of "activities engaged in out of purely economic necessity". Revealed preferences need not always refer to the revealed preferences of one's employment.
But with that out of the way:
It feels strange for me to be whiteknighting career e-thots, but I still think your reasoning is flawed. Let's say Job A contains upside 1 and downside 2, while Job B contains upside 3 and upside 4. And let's say the magnitudes of the upsides and downsides run 1 > 2 >> 3 > 4. Job 1 has big upsides and big downsides compared to either in Job B, but in both cases the upside exceeds the downside so you do actually want the job (more than unemployment). That you stick with Job A despite REALLY hating downside 2 is testament to the advantage of upside 1, not that you actually, secretly, masochistically enjoy downside 2.
To but some colour to these scenarios: Job A is Instathot, upside 1 is simpbux, downside 2 is "constant thirstposting in her comments", Job B is office worker, upside 3 is mediocre salary bux, and downside 4 is the anomie of regular office work.
In this rubric we see that it is logically possible that Instathots do not in fact appreciate the drool and asparagus emojis they get in their DMs, but they're willing to put up with it to live the high life. Whether they have any moral right to complain about it is another question - they have signed the Faustian Pact and bought themselves tropical holidays with it, it seems therefore petty to whine that the devil will inevitably take his due. But do they like having to hold up their side of the contract? Well, no-one I know has ever enjoyed holding up their side of a contract, so I can believe that they do, in fact, not, and are just in it for the (lots of) money.
As your comment was a response to a response to the original comment, I’d say you weren’t the one to place the goalposts. You expressed your disagreement with @Butlerian, who expressed his disagreement with the claim in this particular ad that the US beer industry used to put women in bikinis, implying that they were somehow coerced or manipulated into posing for ad photoshoots in bikinis. This is where the goalposts are.
Let’s clarify a few things. If you want to discuss the human requirement to find a high-value mate, then go ahead, but I ask you to recognize that this is a completely different issue. Because it is.
Also, I’ll claim that differentiating “activities engaged in grudgingly [in exchange for money]” from "activities engaged in out of purely economic necessity [that is, in exchange for money]" is needlessly pedantic and pointless.
And also, please recognize the very crucial and clear difference between male office cubicle workers and instathots, namely that the latter are choosing an economic option which does not exist for the former.
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By revealed preferences, they do. That's because revealed preferences, on their own, don't make for good social inference.
So we can go a little beyond: we can ask men if they would enjoy their work more if they didn't have to wear a suit and tie. We can ask women if they would enjoy having attention and approval more if they didn't have to put any effort into it.
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Perhaps they know that they live in an attention economy, even as they wish they did not? They think it would be better if they were valued for their opinions and not their curves, but alas, it is not so.
(Also I don't think they're spending their own money on those swimsuits)
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