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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2716 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 8, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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ELI5. Why many vaccines against diseases that can infect in tiny airborne droplets must be administered via injection which creates noticeable discomfort and, in case of some, very noticeable scar?

Agree with Ren, but an even more direct cause is "because they seem to work better". Biology and especially the immune system are just very complicated, and it's very difficult to predict a priori what will work. Convincing-sounding rationales for claims about drugs, even ones that convince experts, fail all the time, and testing them is very laborious, which is a big part of why drug development is so insanely expensive. And as a result nasal vaccines have been attempted many times, including for covid, and (usually) aren't as effective as injected vaccines.

This also means that maybe, in the future, nasal vaccines will re-emerge, or even become dominant, as technology and our understanding of the immune system improves! Probably not, but who knows.

The real disease is potent and can infect cells & multiply very fast if not actively stopped by your immune system, so even minimal contact with a droplet can spread through your body.

The vaccine is killed or otherwise incapitated, so it can't really infect & multiply. Instead you need to inject a relatively large amount directly into the bloodstream to trick your immune system into doing something about it. If you swallowed it, the immune system would likely correctly register it as harmless dead matter going through your stomach and being dissolved.

Also, the main noticeable discomfort comes from the immune reaction itself, so it's kind of unavoidable.

I have a gut feeling that mental health is declining in the United States. How would I go about quantifying and gathering data that would provide evidence for/against my gut feeling?

The problem I'm running into is that I don't think the data I need is publicly available. I was thinking I should look at trends in things like:

  • Deaths of despair (drug overdoses, suicides) - this is the easiest data point to gather
  • Percent of population with a mental health diagnosis, with further breakouts by type of diagnosis
  • Number of people currently seeing a mental healthcare provider (per capita)
  • % of total population that ever saw a mental healthcare provider
  • Waitlist times for new clients seeking a mental healthcare provider
  • Percent of population not seeing a mental healthcare provider, but that indicate via survey that they have symptoms of a mental health disorder.

New Matt Yglesias blog post is about this

Interesting, thanks for sharing.

I think a good data point for determining if despair is rising would be to look at attempted suicides.

I found a Polish study, it says (based on data from General Police Headquarters of Poland)

In the analyzed age group, an increase in the number of suicide attempts has been observed over a period of 20 years (Figure 1). During recent 5 years, the number has more than doubled—from 428 in 2014 to 905 in 2019

I haven't found good US data but I think this is an interesting angle to explore.

See if there were any large cohort surveys done across the decades with questions like “would you say you are happy with your life”, “how often do you think about killing yourself”, “do you consider your life to have purpose”, “do you look forward to the future”, “how often do you feel gratitude”

IMO you can’t do “deaths of despair” because Americans have more cheap distractions now than ever, which is certainly preventing some from suicide. You can’t do mental health diagnosis because criteria changes and because of availability differences.

I found https://www.samhsa.gov/data/nsduh/national-releases there is a number in each years report like this:

Among adults aged 18 or older in 2021, 22.8% (or 57.8 million people) had any mental illness (AMI) in the past year.

In 2021, 5.5% of adults aged 18 or older (or 14.1 million people) had serious mental illness (SMI) in the past year.

I think this will be a decent way to see the trend. It is self-reported but there would be some consistency due to some of the same respondents self-reporting over multiple years.

Deaths of despair (drug overdoses, suicides) - this is the easiest data point to gather

Isn't this exactly the point of the 2015 article and subsequent media coverage that coined the term "deaths of despair"? Like, can't you just replicate the methodology, update the plots, and see if the trend continues? I guess there is the complication that the numbers would have been disrupted by COVID.

The other points are going to be really difficult to disentangle for effects from access, diagnostic criteria, population shifts, social attitudes to seeking care, etc.

Like, can't you just replicate the methodology, update the plots, and see if the trend continues?

Yes, but you need other data to give it context to determine mental health trends. For instance:

  • Are attempted suicides also rising?
  • Are non-lethal drug overdoses also rising?
  • Are more people seeking mental healthcare?

For instance, you could have a situation where deaths of despair remain stable but attempted suicides are trending higher indicating that mental health is getting worse. You can't tell from just the deaths of despair data.

"Deaths of despair" are confounded by increased use of opioids on an outpatient basis and the subsequent crackdown (leading addicts to substitute more dangerous alternatives), followed by the fentanyl boom.

Also, the other ideas OP mentioned are confounded by mental health care becoming more fashionable, greater awareness, greater access to mental health care due to increases in income, changes in insurance coverage, etc.

Finding an objective measure of mental health that's been tracked reliably over time is a very difficult problem.

IMO Angus Deaton, the guy pushing the "deaths of despair" narrative, is cashing in his Nobel credibility to push an ideological narrative that is at best one of multiple hypotheses consistent with the available evidence.

Why are there so many women in data science? I don't mean fake boot camp data scientists who know how to use pandas or matplotlib. I mean women with a math degree then a master's in data science. I won't pretend to be a data science expert by any means, but when I was getting my CS degree, I took a couple data science electives and they were really hard. I'd put them up there with my operating systems (dinosaur book) and computer systems classes in terms of difficulty. There was a ton of calculus and probability on top of coding in there. If you look at low level programming in C or assembly there's almost no women in any of those classes unless its a requirement. It's the same in industry. Yet there are a ton in data science, which I found to be just as difficult to be good at as programming in C.

Is this just some kind of networking effect where women gravitate to a field with other women? This is something that seems super obvious to me and I've never heard anyone give a good explanation.

Data Science is a weird profession. You have people doing everything from adding 2+2 in excel sheets all the way upto creating SOTA models being labelled as data scientists. I'm sure there are other fields too where the variation in the difficulty and objects level of what is done is the same if not more.

As to why there are so many women? I think the reasons are;

  • Not all Data Scientists took the CS (with ML) route. Some just got there because they had quantitative undergraduate degrees or masters and failed upwards into the job because "thet know math". A lot of women would have been stupid to cash in on the trend, especially given most employers don't even know what the fuck they want when they want a data scientist, other than the fact that they want one.
  • The fact you would need to code isn't in your face as much. This is partly true if you find yourself in the "right" kind of data science job. I mean I'll admit, we have good PR.
  • Tends to be more credentialist and academic heavy than traditionally male dominated fields. Most DS openings ask for you have a masters. Base rate of female college grads is higher.

I think a lot of this just boils down to the title being ill defined and the field having really good PR.

I'm a DS for a startup sized company and I have to write a lot of backend/server side code (not Python unfortunately for me). I think a lot of the data science PR leaves out the fact that unless you are in a mega corp, no one is really going to take time out of their day to deploy the models you make. I am the default numbers and SQL guy for the company (the backend engineers only use ORMs and don't feel the need to help the hordes of analysts with their menial tasks).

I studied applied maths in biology/medicine and my year was literally 4 men and about 20 women. I already knew that it was much more gender balanced than pure/theoretic math but was still surprised, so I talked with some of them about why they chose to study this. The answer was fairly uniform: They had always been very good at math, but didn't particularly like it. Some originally wanted to study medicine, but were put off for some reason (and there's more than enough good reasons!). This allowed them to take advantage of something they're good at, while still ultimately working on a topic they like.

I'd wager data science is in a similar boat, albeit to a slightly lesser degree.

I think this is the most likely explanation. The most significant difference between men and women when it comes to careers is preferences, not abilities.

Is there any strategic long term benefit to what Hamas did? I really don't know much about it or follow that conflict because I find it to be boring at this point, but based off vibes I felt like Israel was really starting to lose support in the West. Reminding Westerners in France, US, UK etc how savage and violent Islamists can be seems like it was a huge mistake. People on the left will say white nationalists and right wing extremists are more violent than Islamists, but I really think this is obviously not true and they know it. Right wing terrorists that kill innocent people are usually lone wolf terrorists or in small cells. They also generally operate in their own countries. Islamist terrorists are like if thousands of these people got together in political organizations that have long term political goals. Reminding people that these are the kinds of people Israel has to deal with will garner them a lot of support and they also stupidly filmed their atrocities and put it on social media. I think people will generally support Israel here, at least for a little bit.

Some people are saying that this will kill other Arab countries recognizing Israel, but I think that will still happen anyway. Sometimes things are just inevitable, like the end of slavery or Jim Crow. I think this is a similar thing because it is in Saudi Arabia's long term interest to recognize Israel because they want to do business in the West and diversify away from oil. To do that, they need to be on somewhat decent terms with Israel. Plus, their country is rapidly modernizing and who knows if in 15 years young people in SA will even care that much.

It seems to me, Hamas just did a YOLO attack for really no long term gain. The only thing I can think of is they just want to cause chaos and see what happens because they have nothing to lose. Maybe they can shake things up and things turn out better for them.

Am I totally off here? I am woefully ignorant on this issue, but that's what I'm thinking.

The only thing I can think of is they just want to cause chaos and see what happens because they have nothing to lose. Maybe they can shake things up and things turn out better for them.

Who is the "they" here? Palestine? Palestinians? The Gaza Strip? Residents of the Gaza Strip? Or Hamas? Or the leaders of Hamas? Clarifying whose interests are being pursued is necessary if your question is going to be answered. Because those who made the decision to launch this attack are almost certainly acting in their own interests, not the interests of the Gaza Strip or its residents. The decision was probably driven in part by internal politics, either between Hamas and its political rivals, or among factions within Hamas. That is hardly an unusual phenomenon (see the Falklands War). Note than "driven by internal politics" does not preclude the possibility that Iran played an important role, given that Hamas relies on Iran for some of its funding, which like all governing organizations Hamas uses to purchase legitimacy (whether in the form of public services or in the form of striking Israel).

I think we need a megathread going, the next few weeks are going to be INSANE

The big winner here is Iran; Israel has been working hard to normalize relations with as many arab countries as possible, and has been coming close for SA in particular. The problem is, while the arab elites are often westernised and receptive to talks of peace, the common arab man still absolutely hates Israel's guts. As long as there is no open conflict, the arab elite can go behind the population's back and broker contracts with Israel. But the moment any violence breaks out, the arab population is on Palestina's side no matter what. Hamas can massacre civilians and they will go "good riddance", and even if Israel would just answer with peace calls instead of violence, they will say "Israel is afraid, now it's time to strike!".

Engineering this conflict puts a wrench int relations between Israel and any other arab country, and weakens SA's position in particular. Yes the elites know what you know and would love to change things, but recognizing Israel while a conflict with Palestina is brewing is just about the only thing that could possible cause a rebellion to usurp the elite.

the end of slavery

For the record, slavery is still very much present in the world today and probably won't be going anywhere any time soon.

It seems to me, Hamas just did a YOLO attack for really no long term gain

The future is uncertain, by preventing recognition of Israel today, they are effectively buying another roll of the dice tomorrow and hoping for more favourable conditions to emerge that can then be exploited. Superficially this sounds like YOLO'ing it, but it's a more considered strategy.

I felt like Israel was really starting to lose support in the West

Reminding people that these are the kinds of people Israel has to deal with will garner them a lot of support and they also stupidly filmed their atrocities and put it on social media

You're thinking like a westerner and focusing far too much on a peripheral audience. Filming atrocities energises their arab/islamic base and will push Israel into pursuing a harder line and probably killing a bunch of Palestinian civilians to boot, which makes for useful propaganda. It's a win/win for Hamas on the PR front as far as they're concerned.

At this point the ball is very much in Israels court, it'll be interesting to see what tack Israel takes in this next phase of the war.

This feels very "well actually" where you purposely misinterpret what I said to make me look bad. And it also feels like you are accusing me of having an agenda when I literally said I am asking a question and that I could be wrong.

I am completely indifferent to if you look good or bad, if you have an agenda or are simply asking questions. My post was nothing more than a stream of consciousness in response to a prompt.

I am far from qualified to comment on the intricacies of the long-term conflict.

But I can spitball a few motivations that make sense EVEN IF they knew or should have known that Israel would respond disproportionately.

  1. To spur further funding from their sponsors by demonstrating the ability to inflict real damage.

  2. To take advantage of the U.S. being distracted by Ukraine and generally less able to police the region (esp. after that horrendous Afghanistan withdrawal).

  3. Possible diversion for an ally's action. See what Iran might attempt in the coming days, for instance.

Sometimes things are just inevitable, like the end of slavery or Jim Crow.

Ironic to pull the 'end of slavery' as an example, given that slavery "ended" in the U.S. after a lengthy and extremely bloody war. Do you think the Slave states just "Yolo'd" against the forces of history, or did they have reason to fight over it and possibly believe they'd succeed?

And indeed, some people would count "the eventual annexation of Palestine into Israel" as one of those historical inevitabilities.

I actually do think there's nothing the South could have done to keep slavery in the long term and it was more or less a pointless YOLO. I think that even if they South won they would have gotten rid of slavery pretty quickly afterwards because it wasn't viable economically long term and they would have been a pariah state in the West after everyone else outlawed it.

So why would it be confusing that Hamas might YOLO in a similar situation where they are fighting against an inevitable outcome?

I think we agree? My question was if there is a strategic long term goal I'm missing because I have no clue what I am talking about on this issue. And I don't think a YOLO is irrational under certain circumstances, so maybe this attack by Hamas was rational even if it was barbaric and cruel.

It's about the best they can muster under current circumstances.

I would just wait to see if there is any indication of a phase 2 to the plan.

A thought and question I've had bouncing around in my head that I don't expect a real answer to, or even a coherent framing, since its possible there are a few false premises at work here.

Is it possible that one side effect of the rise of Onlyfans/digital prostitution is that (many) men are noticing that (many) women know precisely what men want in a sexual partner and are willing to provide it... but only outside the context of a committed relationship.

Simply put, Onlyfans creates an extremely liquid marketplace for attractive women to produce smut content for a large audience. Content producers want to optimize to capture as many customers as possible. Something like 87% of the customers/users on OF are men. So competitive forces drive the (mostly females) creators to figure out exactly what men's sexual preferences are and provide content tailored to those preferences and produce it en masse.

So by sheer economic necessity, these women are demonstrating that they are willing to engage with men's deepest sexual desires in order to make a buck.

Imagine being a 20-something male in the current environment, being aware of the fact that you can go on OF and for the price of a cheeseburger find women who will perform almost any male sexual fantasy you could imagine. Then going on the dating market to find a woman who might be willing to indulge in fantasies with him (assume he's seeking an otherwise healthy, committed relationship).

If he goes into the dating marketplace and is open about his own personal sexual desires, he can be branded as a pervert or a sex pest because "women don't exist solely to please men" and/or "you can't reduce women to sex objects, even if they sexualize themselves." In some cases, they might just simply express ignorance of men's sexual preferences and act as though expecting sexual gratification from a partner is suspect!

But this would read as extremely bad faith given that, as above, women clearly can figure out what men want if they put in a modicum of effort, and WILL provide it when provided sufficient incentive.

Seems, to me, that seeing the difference between what women are willing to do for money and attention from thousands of onlookers online vs. how they can be unwilling to indulge their own partner's personal desires could lead to a feeling of resentment.

I would guess that Instagram/tiktok is doing the work of this implicitly for far more women than OF, because almost every young young woman is interacting with it and their attention economy is driven by men.

It both provides immediate feedback in the form of likes, comments, and trending but also allows rapid comparison with people meeting the desires of the faceless masses that set the algorithm.

Imagine being a 20-something male in the current environment, being aware of the fact that you can go on OF and for the price of a cheeseburger find women who will perform almost any male sexual fantasy you could imagine.

Well, not for the prize of a cheeseburger and not almost any fantasy by far. Unless you eat gold-plated cheeseburgers, I guess.

But I think you're right in general. OF performers are certainly learning what makes men tick. It's deeply amusing to watch various memes aimed at increasing engagement spread across the thotdom, bloom, wither and die, like pretending to be interested in "older men", average-sized cocks or the recent "what do you call a girl that does ?" aimed at boosting both positive and negative engagement.

I think the biggest discovery so far has been that a lot of men are looking for, uh, for the lack of a better name, transwomen. Not in the literal sense of female-presenting AMABs, but women that, while looking explicitly feminine, are otherwise a lot like men: much hornier than a modal woman, interested in male-coded hobbies, prefer shooting the shit to gossiping and don't make you play "guess the mood".

Honestly, none of this is really new by itself. Prostitution is the world's oldest profession, after all, and the top escorts have always been like that, providing what's now called GFE to senators and businessmen. What's revolutionary is the democratization of this experience. Now, for the price of a fancy cheeseburger, any loser can talk foreign policy with an half-naked attractive woman that is fluffing you for round two watch a half-naked attractive woman play Fortnite while talking how horny she is.

I think the biggest discovery so far has been that a lot of men are looking for, uh, for the lack of a better name, transwomen.

Femboys are probably closer to the mark. If only because fucking one is marginally less shameful than fucking a tranny to most men. But also because many trans throw themselves into liking stereotypically girly things to try and shore up their identities, instead of embracing being a bro like femboys are more likely to do.

I find it pretty funny that nobody else has apparently thought of the actual term, tomboys and have instead fallen into the age old argument of "which form of gay is less gay".

Well, I very deliberately didn't say "tomboys" because tomboys are not explicitly feminine. How do stereotypical sexual fantasies involving tomboys start? She's been the only girl you know that didn't have cooties, wearing stereotypical boyish clothes, cutting her hair short and liking stereotypical boyish activities. Then one summer she suddenly matures into a woman and her friends can no longer play with her because they lose the trail of thought every time they see her new assets that are irresistible despite her lack of effort to promote them.

The modal OF model is sexy and she knows it. She can stream on Twitch, but her hair will be coiffed, her make-up expertly done, her outfit carefully picked to draw attention to her femininity.

How do stereotypical sexual fantasies involving tomboys start? She's been the only girl you know that didn't have cooties, wearing stereotypical boyish clothes, cutting her hair short and liking stereotypical boyish activities. Then one summer she suddenly matures into a woman and her friends can no longer play with her because they lose the trail of thought every time they see her new assets that are irresistible despite her lack of effort to promote them.

I've never heard of this stereotype. Or, tbh, any stereotype about sexual fantasies involving tomboys. I don't really know any other people who are into tomboys, but I am someone who's into tomboys, and that stereotype is the opposite of what I would consider a satisfying sexual fantasy about a tomboy; the reason I'm attracted to a tomboy is that she has those boyish features, like short hair, small breasts (this is a preference I hold for non-tomboys as well), perhaps slightly muscular build, along with engaging in more masculine activities with her, such as sports or video games. I'd find the notion of a girly girl "maturing" into a tomboy-ish woman (though obviously that asset growth only goes one way, so it'd be just a matter of minimal growth rather than reduction) far more sexually appealing than the other way around.

The modal OF model is sexy and she knows it. She can stream on Twitch

Counterpoint: the most popular Vtuber (engaged in a stereotypically male activity: gaming) has a tomboy model. Short hair, wears stereotypical boyish clothes, flat chest, and a voice that's naturally lower on the register than Vtubers that lean harder into a more traditionally feminine appearance. Subscriber count is roughly double (2 million more) than the 2nd most popular English-speaking one (whose model has a significantly more "traditionally" female appearance/voice/mannerisms) who's been at it for the same amount of time.

How do stereotypical sexual fantasies involving tomboys start?

Usually it's on sight, but there's a difference between sexual fantasies for "tomboys that are broad-spectrum attractive" and then there's sexual fantasies for "how tomboys usually look".

because tomboys are not explicitly feminine

Implicitly feminine is still feminine; boyish girls (tomboys) and girlish boys (this is what "femboys" means) are quite different.

Then one summer she suddenly matures into a woman and her friends can no longer play with her because they lose the trail of thought every time they see her new assets that are irresistible despite her lack of effort to promote them.

I believe this "tomboy death" effect filters out traditionally-attractive women, leaving only the women who are unattractive in that pool. "Looks like an overgrown little girl" is sufficiently unattractive for a few reasons, and tomboy activities tend to be more difficult the larger one's chest becomes (and the sorer one will be the day after, increasing with age) anyway, so there's a bunch of cooling effects there.

Counterpoint: the most popular Vtuber (engaged in a stereotypically male activity: gaming) has a tomboy model.

Who, the slightly mentally challenged shark girl?

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(Yes, that's the one. I'm pretty sure she out-earns even the more popular OF models despite never physically appearing on screen, and I assert that the immature/goofy tomboy character she uses is the main reason why. Even the animal she chose to use is associated far more with men anyway and I don't think that was coincidental either.

I guess you could say that most of those things are also highlighting femininity, but importantly, tomboyishness only highlights the parts of femininity that are common to both girls and women and tends to leave out the parts that separate the two.)

I guess we need to hash out the definition of a tomboy, because I've never considered her one. Of course, you're right that she's not flaunting her femininity, but she's not a sex worker either.

If only because fucking one is marginally less shameful than fucking a tranny to most men.

Huh? How? Why? Isn't it gayer to have sex with someone who identifies as a man?

Isn't it gayer to have sex with someone who identifies as a man?

The vast majority of human history says "no, because in that situation, only the bottom is 'gay'". Which makes intuitive sense provided you retain the traditional natural-order understanding that men seek to obtain sexual pleasure rather than being its source (and that men who exclusively prefer the latter job are malfunctioning to some degree; an assertion that is usually true, regardless of the other partner's genitals).

Gayness-as-in-bottom and effeminacy/submissiveness have always gone hand in hand; so has gayness-as-in-top and masculinity/domination (which is why ancient cultures were perfectly fine describing homosexual relationships and conquests of their champions and emperors- if it was embarrassing to the top, it wouldn't have persisted in most of the surviving sources).

[Note that 'gayness' is not a very good word for this, but all the concepts for human sexuality have been so thoroughly Newspeak'd that the labels create the behaviors/identities rather than the other way around and I don't feel like unpacking this that thoroughly right now.]

Because "n-no he identifies as a woman so it's really straight!! Really!!" comes off as desperate cope, whereas "cute is cute, regardless of gender" is more "honest" and chadly.

It's like wearing a bad wig to cover MPB versus just shaving your head.

I'm sceptical of your interpretation. I expect the same dynamics are in play in OnlyFans as have been in play in more conventional pornography for decades. Look up some of the most famous porn stars on the IAFD and you will rarely find them routinely performing extreme sex acts (double penetration, watersports, gangbangs etc.). It's a two-tiered market, wherein the top earners have enough name recognition to demand a premium for performing relatively vanilla sex acts (which less famous performers would only receive a pittance for), while the less famous perfomers can only make ends meet by holding their nose and taking the marginally higher fees associated with performing more extreme, disgusting and/or painful sex acts. If you watch a vanilla boy-girl scene starring Tori Black, you're watching it to see Tori Black; if you really want to watch a watersports scene, you'll take what you can get, and the identity of the performer is almost beside the point.

I presume that pornography salaries follow a power law distribution: 1-5% of top performers are more famous and make more money than the bottom 95-99% of performers. OnlyFans income most certainly does. The top earners are usually people who were already famous prior to starting an OnlyFans account, including Bella Thorne, Cardi B, and (amusingly enough in light of the years she spent ostensibly trying to distance herself from her initial foray into pornography) Mia Khalifa. I've read somewhere that the mean monthly income for a content creator is something like $300 - according to this article, the median monthly income is $180.

Niche fetishes are, well, niche, and one man's yum is very much another man's yuck. If you're not a top earner, you can find some highly specific niche and absolutely dominate it (carving out a comfortable $30k/year by being "the piss girl" or something); but no top earner is going to jeopardise her income by performing a sex act that 10% of their fanbase will find extremely arousing and the remaining 90% will be indifferent to or outright disgusted by. This is bound to result in lowest-common-denominator dynamics, wherein the top earners (who are disproportionately visible on the platform) play it safe by performing vanilla sex acts that few users are likely to be actively turned off by.

Additionally, I don't think the kinds of men who spend hundreds or thousands subscribing to OnlyFans content creators are in any way representative of the general male population. I suspect that these men are "whales", both in the sales sense of the term and a much less nice sense of the term. A woman who looks at what kinds of sex acts/fantasies/costumes etc. are most popular on OnlyFans is getting a window in the sexual fantasies of an extremely selected group, not into the sexual fantasies of the average man. Incest-themed porn does nothing for me, but apparently I'm not representative of the average porn consumer.

The end result is that a woman (not a content creator) who goes on OnlyFans is probably seeing:

  • a handful of conventionally attractive women (who were already famous prior to joining OnlyFans) performing fairly vanilla sex acts, in which most of the appeal comes from the name recognition and appearance of the performer, rather than the specific sex act itself
  • a larger number (but still small in absolute terms) of conventionally attractive women unknown outside of OnlyFans performing slightly less vanilla sex acts, but still fairly tame
  • a large number of unattractive women performing either vanilla sex acts (and making no money from them because they can't compete with the conventionally attractive and/or already famous women performing similar acts for the same price) or more extreme/weird sex acts which may be extremely popular only among the highly selected OnlyFans community and not the population at large

"Men like watching hot girls take their clothes off and finger themselves" is hardly a penetrating insight into the male condition; nor is "a much small number of men like watching unattractive women urinate". I doubt that any woman's impression of what the average man likes in bed is significantly changed by browsing the front page of OnlyFans for an hour. Especially when, even prior to the founding of OnlyFans, the West was already a pornography-saturated culture - I imagine just about every sexually active 25-year-old woman in the West has had a sexual partner request to ejaculate on her face or sodomise her at least once.

I don't know a single woman like this in real life. Ordinary women are human beings who love their partners, want to please them, and want to think of themselves as sexy and good in bed. Women's magazines are full of "10 Tips to Drive Him Wild!!" If you're not meeting women who are interested in mutually giving encounters, perhaps you need to move in circles more similar to mine.

The problem with magazine tips is them being trash. "Try gently kissing his nipple or the side of his abs" is not a bad advice per se, but it's ultimately inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

At no time have a majority of women aspired to perform men's sexual fantasies for pay, and in fact they generally find it degrading. The women on OnlyFans are not representative of "ordinary women." The idea that they are is a marketing gimmick, not unlike the "girlfriend experience" provided by escorts.

You are absolutely right here, except the most common male sexual fantasies are not deepthroating, rimming, watersports, a2m and other degrading acts. There are certainly escorts that combine "girlfriend experience" with a willingness to do anything for the right price, but the vast majority of the minority that can be called "escorts" achieves success by providing "GFE" and vanilla sex acts alone.

Is it the "GFE" that women find degrading? I am not a woman, so I won't insist they do, but the existence of such slurs as "pick me" that are used by women against other women suggests that at least some vocal part of them considers this behavior problematic.

Like I wrote elsewhere in the thread, the biggest threat of OF is providing "GFE" not just to men of sufficient means, but to the vast majority of them at discount prices. Why bother with a relationship with a "catty" girlfriend when you can replace her with a parasocial relationship with a time-share virtual girlfriend that is much more "doggy", plus some superstimulating porn if you need it? How many will think this is a better deal?

the existence of such slurs as "pick me" that are used by women against other women

“Pick me” is just the woman version of “simp”, it’s both an attempt to humiliate and an excoriation for being a scab from the collective lobbying position of one’s sex in the romantic marketplace, ie yielding too much to the wishes of the other gender.

Men have “simp”, “cuck”, “beta [buxx]”, women have “pickme”, “not like other girls” and “cool girl”. The purpose is preventing defection, the message is “you are behaving in a pathetic way with the opposite sex and you need to have some self respect and stop”.

How many will think this is a better deal?

Well, how many of an OF user’s say 10,000 paypigs is she fucking? Presumably zero or, if she is an escort, maybe a handful. So men who want sex will continue to have to negotiate with actual women, whether they pay actual prostitutes directly or, in most cases, pursue relationships with women.

And in any case, I think men get a lot more out of relationships than sex, including companionship, a mother for their children, often the majority of housework like cleaning, cooking and other domestic chores, shopping and various other things that the data shows women still do highly disproportionately to men. The first two alone, given the loneliness single men often face in old age and the biological drive to reproduce, might well be sufficient for many.

And I think you forget one of the most important things, which is that being able to attract beautiful women within his community/social class is one of the most important status symbols for a man, perhaps even moreso than wealth. Men will continue to work to attract women because the man who does so is respected and admired by other men.

So men who want sex will continue to have to negotiate with actual women, whether they pay actual prostitutes directly or, in most cases, pursue relationships with women.

I wonder what's happening to the rate of young men who are sexually inactive? Oh right, it's been rising steadily. It's been rising steadily since 2000, so I can't attribute its growth to OnlyFans alone, porn and videogames are probably the biggest driving factors, but the existence of women who pretend to care about you and tell you that everything's going to be all right when you feel pathetic during your refractory period certainly won't do anything to stop this trend.

I mean, a woman can go on fiverr and for low single digit $ get an out-of-work actor to say any of a number of gratifying things that most men would consider to be degrading and untrue in a relationship context. "I am dirt, a loser, I am nothing without you, I will never find anyone as good as you." "Honey, I agree, your best friend is way smarter than me, I should do everything she says from here on out." "Go ahead and gain 1,000 pounds, don't shower or comb your hair, you'll still be the sexiest thing alive to me." "My mom is a raging bitch, she should never have said that to you." So I should be resentful if my IRL man won't say those things, as well? What some people are willing to anonymously playact for a few seconds to faceless strangers, is different from what the vast majority of human beings are willing to do in a full-time intimate relationship where they believe they're showing up as their authentic selves.

Also consider that in the case of OF, while your $30 is maybe the precipitating factor that gets that one girl to rub herself in poo or whatever, in real terms your cash is just the visible tip of a whole iceberg of motivating factors, starting with whatever early traumas she's racked up and running all the way through what that run of bad boyfriends did to her, the practical life circumstances that ruled out less humiliating lines of work, and the desensitizing/Stockholm effects of the OF experience itself. Take an average nice girlfriend with a great family and good career prospects, retroactively run her through enough childhood conditioning and subsequent psychic or economic immiseration, and I bet at least some of the time she'd emerge more docile to your sexual suggestions. Arguably OF's cut of the $30 is for letting you carve off a sliver of that past abuse for your own benefit, while pretending that .001% rounds down to zero.

I mean, a woman can go on fiverr and for low single digit $ get an out-of-work actor to say any of a number of gratifying things that most men would consider to be degrading and untrue in a relationship context. "I am dirt, a loser, I am nothing without you, I will never find anyone as good as you." "Honey, I agree, your best friend is way smarter than me, I should do everything she says from here on out." "Go ahead and gain 1,000 pounds, don't shower or comb your hair, you'll still be the sexiest thing alive to me." "My mom is a raging bitch, she should never have said that to you." So I should be resentful if my IRL man won't say those things, as well?

Women have used Replika, which does do a lot of things that women find gratifying, like validating her by willing to just sit there and listen instead of either dismissing the problem as inconsequential or immediately suggesting a solution, reminding her of her value without prompting and so on. And yes, men will be resentful if their women partners start comparing them with a chatbot:

"Why can't you always be there for me, like my AI friend Brayden?"

"Because one, I am an autonomous human being that needs time for himself too. Two, I don't just say the words you want to hear, but what I think is the best for you. And three, we're in a mutually beneficial relationship and not some sort of contract work."

It's more or less the same as asking your wife why she won't send you dirty sexts from the office bathroom while Ella Sparxxx does. Or why she won't stop telling you about her BFF Erica's latest breakup with another shithead even though you've already told her that Erica is a dumb bitch who is only attracted to shitheads and you don't care about her love life, while Ella Sparxxx knows you'd rather talk about Ancient Rome. Of course she will resent you saying these things.

Ages ago I was listening to some relationship advice podcast, and a GenX woman mentioned how when she was dating, women were facing the dilemma of when it's appropriate to sleep with the guy. Too early and you look slutty, too late you look disinterested, apparently the third date was the sweet spot. At the time I found it to be a reasonable compromise in a world where we cast off the shackles of religious sexual repression. A few years have passed, and apparently we are now asking if women not performing like professional prostitutes for their boyfriends could cause resentment.

In related news the Garden of Earthly Delights remains one of my favorite metaphors for life.

All I can say is, if you're right, that's yet another reason why OnlyFans must be destroyed.

Its far from the biggest problem I would attribute to OF, but that's why I'm asking the question, I'm not sure if I'm even onto something real.

I think I'm more gesturing at the fact that Onlyfans has made it clear that "performing like a professional prostitute" has a lower threshold than we might have imagined, prior. Any woman of slightly above-average looks and slightly-below average inhibitions can get set up and get multiple 'clients' in short order, and learn the game quickly.

So now you don't even have to advertise in seedy classified ads or walk the street to engage in the oldest profession.

If a guy doesn't want a woman that performs like a prostitute, he'll probably want one that is as close to virginal as possible, so at least he knows what she's been up to.

But expressing THAT desire will probably get him castigated as well.

So I think I see the dilemma as Women don't want to preserve their virginity as a way to increase their SMV, but they also seemingly don't want to use sexual experience to increase their SMV, and guys are noticing that they'll perform all sorts of degenerate sex acts for money but not for 'love.'

And the unspoken part is that neither unconditional validation nor porn star sexual performance is likely to be any good for the person receiving, no matter how much they like it.

OnlyFans Delenda Est.

Most women are not professional consorts, and are not treating a personal relationship as they would a job, nor do they wish to. If a relationship feels like a slog where they have to do things they don't like just because the man likes it, and he's not reciprocating with something unusual she likes, especially early on, why would they proceed? There are some sugar daddy relationships, and they probably feature some aspects of sex work as work, but that is not the norm, and is usually low status for the woman. It's not so much that it's bad and wrong to be upfront about enjoying something women rarely enjoy, it's just that they'll expect to not enjoy intimacy, and discontinue the relationship before becoming too emotionally invested.

Do you expect you're talking about the same women? The women I know best wouldn't dream of setting up an OF account. I am sure they have their secret garden like all women, the face they don't show me and would never show me, but I am not sure the OF types are the same girls one might be approaching at, say, Starbucks. Of course you could argue you're talking about some sort of female psychology here, but that seems like women assuming all men are subscribers to OF or are dangerous potential rapists. This is only true in the least charitable view.

Also I am not sure it's either realistic or ideal (despite the modern idea of writing up a dating profile) to be "open about preferences" from the get-go (primarily because I think these preferences should be a natural growth based on shared experience of one another, and not, say, what one learns one gets off to via watching porn).

Many women are students of male weakness, yes. For various reasons. But I'd argue against anyone who suggests all men want one type of inamorata, actually. There are commonalities, probably, among men, but I mean camgirl and porn sites all have the Category button for a reason. If what you mean is "All men want to see your tits" then you're probably right. Past that it's vague. But presumably for most the draw of such sites is the same as the draw of the waterlogged magazine cache in the woods for boys of my era--the erotic forbidden. There have been Playboy centerfolds for a long time. That doesn't mean that's everyone's ideal (thus you get sexless wonders asking on reddit and elsewhere "Would U date an Onlyfans girl?") Regardless of the answers, the fact that this is a question that gets asked suggests these girls and women who put themselves in that marketplace are not the norm, despite how it seems.

I will offer that I think the normalization to some degree of this sort of virtual prostitution is very troubling and I can't imagine it sending us anywhere good. An equivalent would be normalization of, say, fighting and violence for men. We all have that side in us, buried to some degree. Make it acceptable and people suppress it less. There probably is a zone where girls who never would have imagined themselves dancing naked to shitty music in video are doing so because as you say, easy money and some degree of anonymity.

The women I know best wouldn't dream of setting up an OF account.

How do you know this?

Would you expect them to admit it if they did?

Regardless of the answers, the fact that this is a question that gets asked suggests these girls and women who put themselves in that marketplace are not the norm, despite how it seems.

I'm really no longer sure what "the norm" is, other than all indications are that its trending towards running an Onlyfans being a relatively acceptable practice.

And more to the point, it means any female who wants to figure out how to satisfy male sexual preferences need only check into what some of the top content producers are putting out.

Women now have no real excuse for being unaware of men's sexual preferences.

And guys now get the impression that females are willing to satisfy those preferences even if they claim to find them disgusting and crude.

An equivalent would be normalization of, say, fighting and violence for men.

AH, but I don't think that is equivalent.

Sexuality is often idealized as something to be shared with solely your committed partner, and seeking sexual gratification outside the relationship is considered adulterous.

Hence why having a sexually explicit OF might be a violation of that relationship.

I don't think a man's capacity for violence is something that has the same level of "sacredness" where he is expected to express it solely to his partner.

Although I see your point that we have a social interest in restraining the male tendency to violence.

I'm really no longer sure what "the norm" is, other than all indications are that its trending towards running an Onlyfans being a relatively acceptable practice.

I think you may be falling for the availability heuristic, and your language is a bit weaselly. According to this source, there are a mere 2.1 million content creators on OnlyFans (and I imagine that includes numerous dormant accounts, or accounts which were set up but then the owner chickened out before actually posting so much as a single suggestive still photo). There's no doubt that that's dramatically higher than previous generations of pornographic performers (the IAFD, a database of more traditional pornographic films and performers, only lists 218,000 performers in the entire database), but there are 3.9 2.2 billion [thanks for the correction /u/orthoxerox] Millennial or Gen Z women in the world. The overwhelming majority of women of any age are not involved in the sex industry in any capacity, including OnlyFans.

EDIT: And that's not even to mention the fact that that figure of 2.1 million content creators includes content creators who don't create pornographic content, like fitness instructors or similar.

but there are 3.9 billion Millennial or Gen Z women in the world. The overwhelming majority of women of any age are not involved in the sex industry in any capacity, including OnlyFans.

Isn't this the number of women and men? Otherwise other generations would all have to fit into the remaining 0.2 billion.

Correct, will amend.

I have no idea what the argument you’re making is, that women should act like whores for their partners because they can Google the porn that OnlyFans creators make?

I'm exploring a question "whether the fact that women act like whores on OF for random strangers could lead to men resenting the fact that they won't do so in the context of a relationship."

I don't think there's any "should" about it.

Males have a lot of sexual preferences that they are, generally, told are disgusting, base, or socially unacceptable.

The signal that OF seems to be sending is that, for a relative pittance, women will absolutely engage in the most disgusting, base, or socially unacceptable behaviors that men want.

And OF is blurring the line between what is 'real life' and what is 'fantasy' with regards to sexual behavior. Indeed, a huge part of the "appeal" of OF is that women market themselves as just ordinary girls who just happen to like all the sexual behaviors men prefer and have as high a desire for sex as men do.

So men might be reading the signal, then contrasting it to their own experience in the dating market, and feeling as though women are intentionally withholding sexual behaviors from men that they would willingly engage in for paying online voyeurs.

How do you know this?

Would you expect them to admit it if they did?

We never know anyone completely, I suppose, so in the sense that anyone is capable of anything, sure, they might conceivably, in the wrong circumstances, get naked on a webcam for rent money. But shame, modesty, fear of public discovery, to say nothing of just lack of interest in debasing oneself in that way for strangers--I can say with relative certainty the women I'm thinking of wouldn't go there. Now there are some I know who would, and have, and another set who might without surprising me.

Also I'm not sure women have ever been unaware of the more base aspects of male lust. Are you suggesting Onlyfans has now pulled back the previously hidden veil on male raunchiness?

Are you suggesting Onlyfans has now pulled back the previously hidden veil on male raunchiness?

I'm suggesting that 'before' only professional prostitutes (often working at the direction of a male pimp) or porn stars (often working at the direction of a male producer/director) would have much reason to actually cater to men's sexual fantasies. And those behaviors were generally relegated to the seedy fringes of society and it was understood that "proper ladies" were expected to be less open to such base behaviors, so it was never asked of them.

There was absolutely no pressure to normalize those sexual behaviors, and women who wanted to learn about the 'crazier' things men desired would have to go and consult with actual prostitutes and porn stars. And for obvious reasons nobody would expect them to do that.

There's now a direct economic incentive for comparatively ordinary women to be aware of and cater to men's desires, and further to exhibit their willingness to engage in those behaviors to a large audience of mostly men.

And men are, thus, getting the signal that it is fine to ask women to do these things, and women are aware of what men actually want, sexually, without having to be prompted. The women are figuring it out on their own so as to better cater to their customers.

So this seems like it significantly shifts the norms of male expectations around sexual behavior, which will probably have other impacts if those expectations are thwarted in their actual experience.

There's now a direct economic incentive for comparatively ordinary women to be aware of and cater to men's desires [...] And men are, thus, getting the signal that it is fine to ask women to do these things

True, but...

women know precisely what men want in a sexual partner and are willing to provide it... but only outside the context of a committed relationship.

...your mistake is conflating the narrow context of participating on OnlyFans with the far broader context of "outside a committed relationship". Any OnlyFans user who is confused about this will likely find it clarified the first time he tries to transfer his experience to Tinder where, instead of having his requests to see a pretty girl's bumhole happily accommodated (for a price), he will be blocked and reported. At that point the man's expectations should be suitably recalibrated.

There's probably a parallel miscalibration where some men will treat OnlyFans performers as if they were actually on Tinder by trying to force the interaction into the frame of an intimate relationship. The difference is that the OF performers are incentivised to play along to keep the simpbucks rolling in. That seems like a bigger risk of distorting men's impressions about what is normal.

So, what are you reading?

Still on Paradise Lost. It's incredibly boring whenever the good guys are talking.

Paper I'm reading: Csiszar's Seriality and the Search for Order: Scientific Print and its Problems During the Late Nineteenth Century

I just started Pale Fire by Nabokov. Just finished Vagabounds by Hao Jingfang, translated by Ken Liu.

I’m reading The Count of Monte Cristo. I was also attempting to listen to Watership Down on Audible, but for the second time in five years, found it wasn’t holding my attention. I think it’s a sign that this book is not for me.

I just finished The Wager which was a quick and fun read. I'm going to read Days of Rage next. I tried reading Snow Crash but I thought it was one of the worst books I've ever read.

I have various Israel-Palestine questions for people more informed than me:

  • What do you think Israel will do about the hostage situation?

  • What’s the likelihood of Hezbollah becoming involved?

  • What is the significance of Saudi Arabia and Qatar blaming Israel on the attacks?

  • How do Israeli settlers factor in here? Were they the primary subjects of violence yesterday or no?

I am assuming the hostages are all dead. They will try an operation but it seems highly unlikely to me they can break in without the hostages being immediately killed.

Trading for them seems to be far too high of risks.

But that is just my opinion and hopefully I am wrong. This will include American citizens being executed.

  1. Attempt to free them via military operation. Commentary has been dropping all day in the Israeli press that negotiation isn’t viable this time, the demands will be for everyone to be released, and given several of the most senior organizers of this raid were formerly prisoners of Israel transferred in swaps, it’s hard to see them dealing again. Perhaps Qatar can be bribed by the US into convincing Hamas to free a few civilians to gain more favor in Washington (more likely for foreign civilians), but most will die.

  2. Medium. That it wasn’t a two-pronged attack suggests it’s unlikely they coordinated with Hezbollah, now that the element of surprise is gone an attack would be harder. Hezbollah isn’t entirely immune to Lebanon’s financial crisis either, it’s good for consolidating their authority but bad for many of their commercial interests, which in addition to the IRGC make up a large part of their funding. They may still go for it depending on how things go down in the next few days or weeks.

  3. Qatar is an Iranian ally and home to Hamas’ political/diplomatic leadership (whether they actually call the shots in Gaza is very debatable). Saudi Arabia was always going to do this, it’s a sensitive time for them and the population (which the House of Saud has been scared of since 1979) is extremely hostile to Israel.

  4. ‘Settlers’ generally refer to Jews - mostly Religious Zionists (a specific grouping in Israeli politics) - living in Jewish settlements built on land internationally recognized (including by the US) as Palestinian, but guarded by Israeli troops. The attacks yesterday were on Israel proper, so the victims were not settlers in that sense. That said, things could easily pop off in East Jerusalem, at which point violence between West Bank Palestinians and Settlers would likely break out. Unlike liberal festivalgoers, Settlers are also often armed and have their own posses.

I have a silly question about the stock market and what is meant by volume.

In my neophytic understanding, volume in the market is the number of trades taking place. Many traders pay careful attention to volume before making trades.

My question is in the age of algortihms and ai, isn't volume immensely pliable?

Why can't an A.I. make a million one dollar trades instead of one million dollar trade? Andnif they do so, won't that impact "volume" a million times more?

Maybe I fundamentally misunderstand the concept of market volume. Is it the number of agents trading or the number of trades made? And either way, wouldn't an army of a.i. trader easily manipulate volume, if possible, to their advantage?

It counts number of shares traded. Doesn't matter how many agents were involved, or how they listed their orders. When lots of shares are changing hands, that normally represents a strong belief.

There are numerous ways to abuse this. If the buyer and seller are actually the same entity, shares aren't really changing hands, and it's a wash. In market ramping, large purchases or sales actually occur, but it's intended to bait other investors into moving the price, then capitalizing on that movement. Another option is just faking intent to trade.

These are all more or less illegal under the general category of "market manipulation." The SEC (and its non-American equivalents) really frown on such behavior.

Volume is the number of eg shares traded, not the number of individual ‘trades’. The volume of shares traded in your two examples would be the same. You can find out the number of trades (ie number of buy and sell orders) for a security over a given period, for example, but this is not the same as the volume.

Does anybody here subscribe to any print magazines? Which ones?

I started reading The New Criterion recently and I really enjoy it.

I used to subscribe to the Economist print version and I really liked it.

I got my Dad Bloomberg Businessweek and he sends me the old issues. I thinks its good on economic issues, has decent politics and world events; the captions and summaries after articles make it easy to read. But I get overrun with issues and there's many I don't read, I'm not sure I would buy it for myself. One of my favorite things of print magazines is to bring them to places where you know you'll have to wait (picking up food at a restaurant, meeting a chronically late friend at a bar) and you can feel superior to people staring at their phones! Like bringing a book on a plane!

Does anyone have access to ChatGPT with images? Is there some opt-in setting I have to find and enable, or are they still doing a staged roll-out?

I have Dalle3 accecss. It's... alright.

Humans look extremely uncanny. All pictures look like 3-d renders.

Worst of all, They reword your prompt in 4 different styles.. why? It's even funnier when you want pictures of people. It will automatically give you 4 different races (evident in the prompt lol).

I'm really not liking how much OpenAI tries to baby its users.

We using the same DALL-E 3?

Because for me, it's amazing, almost solving the problem of AI image generation barring truly baroque prompts.

It can be as aesthetic as Midjourney, while having far more intelligence, especially for semantics and interactions between objects, than either that or SD.

Previously, asking for artwork of a woman with cyborg legs holding her child while they curiously look up at a painting of a superhero would have produced less than ideal results, like a female cyborg child looking at her mom or something. It usually works these days.

And humans look human, in every art style I cared to try, which is an improvement from the previous DALL-E 2 Experimental, itself far better than the first DALL-E 2.

Here, pictures are a thousand words or something along those lines, depending on the compression algorithm I bet:

And I'm cherry picking the best out of 2 or 3 acceptable images in a batch of 4, not one from 4 batches like I had to previously

/images/1696784544217604.webp

/images/1696784544583013.webp

/images/16967845450328023.webp

I guess it's only natural that AI would generate a picture of Internet Explorer Man embracing the older generation.

Ouch.

If you'd like to know what I was trying to achieve, that guy is a knockoff Superman who is simultaneously embracing his mother as she actually is, young, healthy and beautiful after anti-aging therapy, contrasted with how he sees her in his mind's eye, old and withered, as would any woman of her age be today.

Largely a psychological hangup from the fact that his superpowers leave him unable to avail of some of the options available to baseline humans, such as said therapies, cybernetics and so on. He has a hard time accepting that despite the entire world looking up to him, he's going to age and die in a few decades, while she might live on for centuries, millennia, or till the Heat Death of the universe. Well, maybe not, if the hostile K2 aliens next door have something to say about that. But in theory at least.

Dude, that granny's arm in the first pic is SWOLE. Damn granny.

HGH is a helluva drug! Maybe that's where the superhero, Consul, got his.

The proportions are still really weird if you look closely. And I agree that it had the kind of waxy, Digital Art^TM look that the other people mentioned, I want one of these models that’s only trained on scanned physical art, just to see what changes.

Waxy? I don't really see it, but I use a combination of artist names and keywords that have served me well since before SD launched for the public.

You can get more naturalistic results if you want, I just wanted this look.

Epic embed fail?

/images/1696784466780857.webp

/images/16967844670873923.webp

Sorry I mean the ability to upload images, e.g. upload a photo of a menu with the prompt "pick something vegan".

Did you have to do anything, or did a Dalle3 button one day appear for you on the interface?

Staged roll out possibly dependent on account history and region.

I follow Mikhail Parakhin, so I know a full rollout was done for the version in Bing Image Creator a few days back.

Ah, I’m talking about ChatGPT Plus.

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