I still don't get why people spend money... there's tons of it for free

0x4E4F@sh.itjust.worksbanned from community to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 505 points –
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"I still don't get why people spend money"

Because you want to support specific content creators and free isn't sustainable

Yeah, but for porn tho…

Just beat your meat to standard stuff or meet someone IRL, rather than developing some unhealthy attachment to someone on OF who’s exploiting your desperation.

I dunno, I guess if you just wanna pay for porn you like then it’s fine, but some people develop very unhealthy attachments/obsessions to supplement a real human connection.

It's no different than subscribing to twitch/YouTube creators. The content is just different. There are plenty of people with unhealthy obsessions that aren't related to porn.

You’re right, it’s the same as the lonely people being exploited by Twitch streamers or YT creators.

There’s a point it goes from “supporting a creator” to “throwing money at someone so they acknowledge your existence and you feel validated”.

Honestly part of the reason I stopped watching twitch, it’s just sad at a certain point as these people think they’re actually friends with the creator, rather than just enjoying the stream for what it is.

The whole donation/sub part of twitch culture is disgusting imo.

A better example would have been patreon. I’ve never given money to an online content producer of any kind (except my monthly donation to Wikipedia), but if there’s one thing the internet is good at, it’s crowdfunding. Gofundme, patreon, onlyfans, twitch, kickstarter… it’s all the same.

True, but I think the key difference is that one is an exchange of services, and the other is taking advantage of peoples desperation for a connection, whether that be a romantic connection or just friendship.

Satisfying physical urges with porn or supporting a twitch streamer you like is one thing, but these fake relationships between viewers and OF or twitch creators is wrong imo.

I feel like you're way off mark on this.

I subbed to a chick on Onlyfans because she's my type and I jerked off to her videos.

I would wager 95% + of the audience is just that, and not the "unhealthily obsessed" type that you are so hung up on.

Cases like Grant Amato have got to be the exception. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Amato

Yeah, but for porn tho…

So what you're saying is sex workers aren't real workers and don't deserve to be paid. If that becomes true and no one pays for porn, GUESS WHAT: no more porn. It has to be profitable for the people doing it. It's not like art, the vast, vast majority aren't doing it because they love it. They're doing it for money.

Nah, even if nobody paid for porn there would still be porn. In fact, there's already enough porn already made out there that we have enough to last us for centuries. But even disregarding what's already out there, people would still make porn for free because they want to show off and share their videos.

Could you imagine if porn stopped being produced in the ‘70’s and all we had to jerk off to was huge muffs (huge fan of muffs by the way (it’s mostly a texture thing))and blue eyeliner up to their eyebrows?

the vast, vast majority

Not to disagree with your main point - everyone deserves to be paid - but porn scales so well that we might already have enough free amateur production for everyone. It just doesn't get to the top of SEO-optimized searches.

we might already have enough free amateur production for everyone. I

You've seen significant amounts of porn produced and distributed that was made for fun and not monetized? I certainly haven't.

And if that were true, why would people still be paying for it now?

There's a parasocial aspect to onlyfans since you can dm the person, and they often take requests.

You've seen significant amounts of porn produced and distributed that was made for fun and not monetized? I certainly haven't.

I have. You just need to search a bit harder... I guess 🤷... I've even got them bookmarked, they release regularly.

Porn and OF are essentially two separate things though.

Sex workers do work and they should be paid for it, because it’s just work. OF creators often exploit desperate peoples’ emotions to take their money.

People watch porn to beat their meat and satisfy a physical urge, whereas a lot of people subscribe to OF for a fake connection that only worsens and warps their view of a healthy relationship.

If you wanna pay for Brazzers then go for it, if you’re simping for an OF creator who’s happy to just take your money then that’s sad.

How is porn the same as being with a real live human being 🤨? Sure, I can understand (up to a point... I wouldn't do it) paying for sex, but for porn 🤨... I mean, even if I did really liked something about this specific girl, nah, I wouldn't pay. She's basically selling something that hundreds of people will buy, not just me. And even if it was just me, that's not an IRL experience. I MIGHT pay for a real world sexual experience (very unlikely though), but for a fake one? No way!

I think you're really overthinking it. I'd say the vast majority of people paying simply came across something they wanted to see, and paying for it is faster and easier (and safer) than trying to search it out for free.

I am definitely not like others, I have only paid like 3 times on OF and they were like $5 each. Sometimes you just really want to see what that person looks like. 99% of the time I don't care and free is cool. Never got exploited, or had an unhealthy attachment.

You can get a personal performance and it can be healthy. They ain't mutually exclusive, especially around niches where content isn't just reposted on every site.

So basically, you like paying for porn, is that it? Or maybe that specific girl/guy? Or couple?

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Buy local from small producers

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Not quite OnlyFans, but when you have specific interests, you gotta find specific folks with skills tailored towards those interests.

Source: Close buddy of mine is a furry fetish artist. Not suspiciously wealthy, but he's full time drawing raptor asses.

I don't get the whole furry thing but sometimes I wish I had artistic talents because I would have no qualms getting paid to draw whatever degenerative crap people are into these days. Seems like a solid side hustle.

I suspect most of that market’s about to die

The real money now is in selling credits to a private AI art generator with all the nasty word restrictions disabled.

Luckily I've got a good enough card for Stable Diffusion and I spent a couple weeks scouring civitai for the perfect blend of models and improving my prompt game and when I had the exact "content" I wanted, it never did anything for me. Like at all...

I’m about to set up SD, do you have any recommendations for further reading on exactly this subject?

But… Raptors didn’t have fur 🧐

That's what you're hung up on? There's a whole subgenre of sharks with tits.

and you know this how? 🤨

Listen mate, when a furry comes up to ya and says "Here's three hundred bucks, draw me a picture of a cybernetic shark gal with huuuuumongous life-ruining tits," you say "How big ya want 'em?"

Furry is just the kinda general term for the whole fandom. If you wanna refer to a furry or a scalie character without worrying about calling a scaly fella furry, anthro works plenty fine.

Also they most likely had feathers, which is rad as shit in my books.

Don't let your wet dreams be dreams...

FYI: there's a whole swath of furry (literally) dragons and scalies.

This. Also in real life, people with specific talents know they're rare and charge accordingly. Pornhub is full of average stuff and if that does it for you great (though I'd argue anyone considering themselves a 'porn addict' is unlikely to be satisfied with basic porn)

I still don't get why people spend money... there's tons of it for free

There are free video games. There are paid video games. Why do people pay for video games if free ones exist?

There's advantages to paying for video games, even single player such as cloud saves as one example. For multiplayer games you get online play with dedicated servers, rather than finding a workaround like LAN tunneling with pirated games.

You literally get nothing special from paying for porn.

You literally get nothing special from paying for porn.

You literally get the most special content by paying for porn, personalized content that's catered to your needs. That's literally why you pay for it.

Yes, if I just want to see regular old sex I can just go to one of the bazillion free sites out there. But if I have a specific fetish that only a few creators are doing, of course it's worth paying for it to support the production of said content, especially if their onlyfans allows requests.

I totally understand that the vast majority of people are more than satisfied with typical porn and won't ever feel the need to pay for it, but there's so much diversity out there that the regular porn sites can't get to it all, and that's why some people pay for it, because they really want to scratch a specific itch.

And before someone says you can just pirate it, trust me, some stuff you can't even find pirated. I've been there. Some creators go through very convoluted methods of distributing their content to deter piracy (especially with pricier tiers fans usually don't want to spread it to keep it exclusive to themselves).

I really doubt the majority of people paying for OF are getting content specifically made for them. This is a weird argument.

That's fine if you're into vanilla porn, but if you have a fetish even slightly more niche than what they've got on ex: Kink.com, you're not going to find more than a handful of videos for free (unless you go with piracy but that's beside the point). And those will be digitized German VHS tapes. And will be out of focus. So in situations like that, paying for porn (or, paying to support creators that produce content you enjoy) becomes a lot more attractive as an option.

... not that I'd know anything about it first hand.

not that I'd know anything about it first hand

You sure 🤔... he did kinda sound honest... he probably just has a friend that's into that, and they are really close and share things like kinks and stuff like that... yeah, seems like a legit story to me 🤷.

You don't share your kinks with your friends?

Good friends share. Not everyone can afford dungeon furniture.

Indeed! My wife's BFF knows all about my kinks!

PS: My wife doesn't wanna hear about them 🤷.

There's much niche stuff on Twitter… but your point stands.

It's wild how many people in this thread are using outliers as an argument for the norm.

I am sorry, I dont think I understand what you mean.

While I don’t disagree…. I’d just like to say, that if you pay enough for porn, you can get exactly what you’re looking for.

ROI isn’t worth it though.

You’ve unintentionally stumbled upon one of modern gaming’s most pressing questions. When both free and paid options are a neverending smorgasbord of poor design choices, why purchase anything? Live service game models have shifted the landscape much closer to the free porn model for several game genres. Slightly tangential but… !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works

Uuu, I like this comm, I'm exactly the type. Like I don't have cutting edge hardware ever, so I usually wait to play some game I liked several years ago, but now. I even borrow GPUs sometimes if I'm not into buying a new one, even if it's like $200, $300. I know, I'm cheap AF 😁.

There’s only so much time in the day and devoting much time to poorly designed games is silly. Finding a time tested production from 5+ years ago that plays as well or better than recent games is a minority decision but an objectively reasonable one. Cheaper and assured quality? Yes, please! It’s always nice to find someone likeminded.

Exactly my thoughts! Thank you! 😊

I like quality... buuuut I also like to pay the cheapest price possible for it 😁. I usually buy second hand AV equipment, but only the high quality sfuff. Same goes for everything else 😁. I usually wait for discounts on AliExpress 😁. I know, I know, I'm cheap 😂.

I like to think of myself as "economic". I only pay for stuff full price when there is no other way (emergency, whatever). In any other scenario, I wait 🤷 😁. As I said, I'm a patient man 😁. Uni taught me a lot of things, and patience was by far THE MOST important lesson IMO.

Might feel like a tangent but how do you feel about aliexpress? I’ve been burned by several month shipping times so it’s surprising to find someone who seems to use it reasonably frequently.

Yeah, the shipping time is terrible, no doubt there... and things don't always arrive, but hey, at least they refund, so... no harm no foul I guess. I don't order stuff I need right away from AliExpress though, I buy them locally if I can find them. But, when it's not something I need right away, I just order it from there. The prices are cheap, especially on sales. Got a 2 x 75MHz hand held oscilloscope for about $55 on sale. That's cheap 😊. And it's quite good and precise for the price, a lot better than I expected. Comes with a nice transport bag as well 😁.

That feels like the distilled spirit of the jokes contemporaneous to the popularization of online shopping. A perpetual double-blind opaque Christmas at your front door brought to you by [shipping company].

I might give them another shot if you managed to find something of worth. As long as I remember to set a reminder about the item to refund if it hasn’t shipped after 4 months. Thanks.

Piracy is a matter of convenience. Buying a game is more convenient than pirating it. You can watch pirated porn movies with a simple Google search.

Not to mention you even get pirate results even if search for a legit way to buy porn...

Like with Windows, you search for a specific build and tier (Pro, Ent, Home, whatever) and the first results you get are pirate links. Why? MS has abandoned those downloads a long time ago and basically, the only way you could actually get a copy of a specific Windows build is through pirate links... go figure 🤷.

See, that also puzzles me, I really have no idea... especially since paid ones can also be obtained for free, so 🤷...

You really can't get all paid content for free. Actually most paid content you won't find for free. It's not that easy.

Sure if they're a popular OF creator someone will likely be ripping their stuff but that dries up really quickly when you get to creators with like only a hundred patrons.

The more niche you get the harder it is to find new content for free (pirated or not). That's why people pay for it, they like the content and there's no other way to obtain it (and they want to support the creation of it obviously).

The more niche you get the harder it is to find new content for free (pirated or not). That's why people pay for it, they like the content and there's no other way to obtain it (and they want to support the creation of it obviously).

There are sites where you can get that content for a fraction of the price of all of the subscriptions you already have on OF or wherever (paid sharing)... if you really are that hungry for that niche material or a few particular OF content creators. Sure, you don't get up to date updates on the content, but at least it's a lot less than what you'd usually pay for all of that content.

And I wouldn't even pay for that either. It's not worth it IMO. In the end, it's just porn.

Even on sites like that you can't get everything, since it depends on subscribers actually sharing accounts and not all creators will have those. Trust me, I've really scoured the internet for certain creators' content and it's just not out there.

Also there are sites beyond OF, a lot actually. There's just no way to get everything you want easily if you're into certain stuff/creators.

I get that you find no value in porn regardless of type so you wouldn't pay for it, which is fine, the majority of people don't see the need to pay for porn either, but I hope you'll at least understand some people do find value in the content they like, enough to support it. It's like subscribing to a youtuber's patreon, their content is still free for everyone but some still want to financially help them.

No, I meant as in the owners of the sites (forums usually) have a request threads and you just give them the OF (or whatever site it may be) link and they usually fulfill the requests within a day or two. Of course, you subscribe to their premium section, for something like $10, $15 a year and you get access to the premium section where the owners share the content (also per request usually).

Just offering a cheaper alternative, if you really like certain content creators.

I still don't get why people buy books... there's ton of it at library

I mean ya, but not the book I wanted to read specifically.

FYI: your local library probably has a subscription to eBook software. And if you use that, do utilize it! Libraries often get more funding the more customers and utilization they have. And you can usually request certain books for your library to buy. That's really helpful for the librarians to figure out what their patrons want. Otherwise they often have to guess or just use national popular lists which might not fit as well.

But yeah, also buy books your library doesn't have.

My local library saved my butt last week for a uni class I'm in, and I plan to follow up by buying the book now that I've read part of it and like it so much! "Happiness is a Choice You Make" by John Leland if anyone's curious:) I was skeptical of the title but he's building an excellent argument for it regarding aging

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lol ...what? People buy books to have it accessible right at home and not have to drive to a library.

Porn is accessible anywhere.

What do you mean? I'd check the library website and it simply doesn't have the book I want. It doesn't matter even if I don't mind going there.

It will get to the library, sooner or later... so, from my POV there is no point in buying it. I'm a patient man, I can wait 🤷.

You can also go to anywhere on foot, sooner or later. Why do you pay for transport?

Almost 0. I walk to work and back. I live about 5km away from where I work, that's like a 30 minute walk (I used to ride my bike, but I need to fix it 😁). I rarely drive my car, weekends only or when I need to take the kid somewhere.

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Just like with video games, the people paying for it are what keeps the supply going for the freeloaders. They should grateful to them!

Ummm... no.

Freeloaders are only there because there is a product in the first place. If there was no product, freeloading off it wouldn't exist.

Ever heard of prohibiton?

Yeah, so? Don't really get the parallel?

Prohibited was the ban of alcohol (yes, technical it was the limitation of alcohol, but the laws put in place made it impossible to legally get alcohol), and so a mass black market for alcohol was created. Moonshine, home made whiskey, the term bootlegger was made for someone who smuggled alcohol. The freeloaders were now the only people who had alcohol, and the government really didn't like that, so they literally began poisoning alcohol to get people to stop drinking. Eventually, the government had to give up because they were loosing money just by banning alcohol. The freeloaders ensure that if something like alcohol is banned by the government, it will not stop people from enjoying it.

Oh, so you were on my side 😁.

Didn't know about the poisoning part, that is a nice bit of chilling info about how far governments will go to enforce something they think it's right... no different than terrorists I guess...

I think people don't pay for porn, people pay to be able to interact with the girl.

Especially with those with 1000s of subscribers - how are people fooling themselves into thinking that they don't have someone answering their messages for them?

Some of the most popular ones have whole crews for filming - why should social media be something they do on their own?

I kind of get it for the ones with few subscribers though

Our brains are highly effective at tricking us. And if a person is desperate for attention, they will fall into this trap. You're thinking rationally, but there's nothing rational about that in the right (or should I say wrong?) state of mind.

In that case, OF and sites like that do more damage than good. Instead of having a healthy real world relationship with someone, you get stuck in a dream world.

True. Real world relationships however are hard to obtain and hard to maintain. So many people, especially those that are deemed "not normal", due to looks or behavior, are giving up on that and instead give in to these easy surrogates. It is sad, but not like society presents any solutions.

Yeah, to be honest, that is true...

I mean, you know how there are a million free indie games and lots of slightly shady websites where you can download free copies of paid games? But lots of people still buy games because it's a better experience or they like to feel like they're supporting people who are making the kinds of games that they like? It's a lot like that, but with stigma.

I pays but only for my audio porn because that s a niche and I really like my creators

I still don't get it...

Call me an old fashioned pirate, but for me, it's more about the trip than it is about the destination.

I've been encountered with this fact about myself many times... I like this girl from somexxx.com website and I gotta take a look at what she's got published. Low and behold, all sorts of content! OK, gotta pick and find them one by one, gotta be picky about it, 1080p rips only, no 720p bullshit... aaaand after days of searching and downloading... I GOT IT ALL 🤤! And then I don't even watch it 😒. AND THAT PISSES ME OFF ABOUT ME 😤!

Well that's just the piracy magpie collector instincts lol. I dunno, I've never paid for that kind of porn, just AVNs

AVNs? 🤨

Sorry, I am a pirate, but I don't download that much porn 😂.

Let us not disrespect the paying consoomer as they effectively sponsor the rest of us, especially those using adblockers

i dont get it either like why would you pay for porn when there are free porn?

I'm of the same sentiment but I don't judge people that pay for porn, after all without them paying for it there would be no money in the porn industry so as a consequence no porn either. Simply put I will never pay for porn but I'm glad that others do so I can feed my addiction.

same reason you donate for a shoutout on twitch id assume

Like what... ego boost 🤨... some chick mentions your name in her stream and you get a hardon from it 🤨?

dunno tbh I guess - or maybe like a private session like how strip clubs do

Yeah, but that's still IRL... I would maybe pay for something like that IRL, but online... no, I don't see the point. It's not a real experience, it's like saying you can parrent your kids via Viber when you're abroad... no, you can't. You need to be physically there if you wanna be a real parrent.

You're like me and poor but I've been around people with jobs and stuff who can afford to throw away money on things and they seem to really enjoy the transaction element to things.

Like being able to use money to get what they want feels good to them because it kinda justifies their life being dedicated to making money. It's different for different people but you see the ones who love to buy something others can't have like five min in private video chat is exclusive so makes them feel special, or you get the ones who feel special by funding something for the group like reaching a target or funding a creator they like.

I'm not poor and still think giving money for shout-outs is stupid. I don't know who you talk to that you got that line of thinking.

It's good to support creators if you like what they're doing. I've supported Zishy in the past because they do high quality tasteful clothed/teasing photos of women who look like real women (not that there's anything wrong with bimbos/plastic surgery). If you appreciate what someone is doing, monetary support isn't unusual at all.

Because they have more money than you. Disposable income is going to be disposed of, one way or another.

Even if I was the richest person alive, I still wouldn't pay for porn. Sex? Maybe. Porn, no way.

I've found the quality goes up with paid porn, ethical porn is easier to get, and is also less objectifying.

For example, there's a bit on the Upper Floor between Stefanos (the dom and main host) and Penny Barber (one of the subs in that session). Penny noticed that Stefanos was wearing french cuffs, which she really likes. The next time she was on, Stefanos was sure to wear french cuffs again. It didn't enhance the show's primary purpose, which is titillation. It was simply a sweet gesture.

Now, many Upper Floor scenes are available in part on PornHub and the like, but this is one interaction that's likely cut. Even if it's left in, you might not be able to piece the two together unless you watched the series in order, which would be hard to do on tube sites.

Kink.com in general has pre and post interviews on almost all their content, which you don't always see on PornHub. These often give personal insights into the people and the industry that may be cut out.

AdultTime and Bree Mills are also doing some interesting work putting more women into production roles behind the camera, and stressing consent.

Finally, there's a list of sites like crashpadseries.com that are also stressing ethical porn, and they tend to deliberately keep their stuff off of tube sites.

Onlyfans is an oddity wrapped in an enigma. Not only is there a ton of free porn + all the porn one can torrent but there are dozens of free cam sites out there. I mean dead free! One can watch thousands of nude models nonstop.

There should be no reason to pay for onlyfans. Ever.

And yet, more and more women get onboard the OF train... you'd think people will get saturated with it after a while...

money spent means more porn

But... they still have to release trailers and ads... that's still free porn...

right, because other people are paying for it.

And they would still do it, even if no one pays for it. Why? In hope that someone will actually pay for it...

Here’s the thing: Yes, there are lots of people doing amateur and uploading to pornhub, and there are even some people doing higher quality stuff on free sites. And there are full videos pirated from pay sites.

If all you want is to slob your meat to whatever is available, or if you just have very generic desires, more power to you. Personally, I have specific tastes and buying a year-long membership to Kink.com for $120 a year on Black Friday every year does not put a dent in my finances, but it does get me access to thousands of extremely high quality videos with great production quality that cater to my specific desires and are freely downloadable for me to save in Stash.

I feel that is completely reasonable to either pay for porn or not pay for porn based on a number of factors. What I don’t understand is the willful ignorance of why someone might choose to pay for porn.

The other thing that I can’t get behind is your insistence throughout this thread that people paying for porn isn’t what supports your ability to get free porn. It is, there are just no two ways about it. If people weren’t willing to pay money for porn, there would be a lot less of it and it would be way less accessible. Most people posting content on PH are doing it to advertise their OF profiles and if everyone who visited PH had an adblocker on, there would be no way for them to pay the massive hosting costs that come with being a streaming video provider of that size. By and large, porn exists because people will pay money for it, and your ability to access massive quantities of it is 100% funded by people who “pay” via ad impressions.

If people weren’t willing to pay money for porn, there would be a lot less of it and it would be way less accessible.

Even if that was true, so what. There's already tons of it available from decades of production. You can't possibly watch all of it.

You just wanna pay for porn, plain and simple... like I wanna eat burger from time to time. Now, if someone told me that there is free food (not a free burger, just free food) somewhere where they also serve burgers, I would eat the free food 9 out of 10 times, while you would pay for the burger 10 out of 10 times... if it's on sale, maybe like 7 or 8 out of 10 if it wasn't on sale.

I do have specific kinks that I enjoy, but there really is A LOT of free or pirated content out there. I really really don't see a point paying for it. Even if there is no pirated content, there really is a lot that is completely free... like I probably wouldn't be able to watch all of it in a year if I watched porn non-stop, 24/7.

Most people posting content on PH are doing it to advertise their OF profiles and if everyone who visited PH had an adblocker on, there would be no way for them to pay the massive hosting costs that come with being a streaming video provider of that size.

Yet on the other hand, everyone here recommends using ad blockers when YT is in the picture... how is PH any different 🤨.

In the end, they decided to go into this business, that comes with the teritory (ad blockers and all that)... and apprently, they're not doing that bad, I mean, you can clearly see that the site is progressing.

By and large, porn exists because people will pay money for it, and your ability to access massive quantities of it is 100% funded by people who “pay” via ad impressions.

Paying with watching ads is not the same thing as plain out right paying for something. Besides, how much money will they get out of me watching ads 🤔? $2 or $3 on a yearly basis, and that is only if I watch A LOT of porn (ads are cheap nowadays). That is not what keeps the industry going, it's the hope of being paid for someone seeing your content that keeps it alive. They might not get paid ever, or not enough (dead end content creaters, it is quite common nowadays, you see abandoned PH profiles or OF links), so they quit... or they didn't advertise their content enough or in the right places... whatever the cause, it's the notion of easy money that keeps the industry going, not being actually paid for porn. You know how many freebies porn scene newbies give out to try and get subscribers to their OF or MV pages? It is A LOT of content... and it's all free 🤷.

If I’m going invest 3 hours into a film or a series of films then I want a plot to follow

Actually, I think of onlyfans subscribers as pathetic simps that are too stupid to pirate that overpriced crap.

Of course there's people who pay for onlyfans just to re-distribute it for free everywhere they can. And to those people. I give a sincere thankyou, because 99% of leaked onlyfans content is boring compared to the free stuff that small creators on pornhub put out for free.

To be honest, I completely agree. I have downloaded some pirated OF content and it's boring AF. On the other hand, as you said, there are some content creators on PH, I have them bookmarked... and it's all free!

of the two camps, I would say the only fans aficionados are probably SLIGHTLY less depraved and slightly healthier than pornhub addicts because at least the OF subscribers are lusting after real women with whom there might be a SLIGHTLY higher chance of ever connecting with

lusting after real women with whom there might be a SLIGHTLY higher chance of ever connecting with

Doesn't sound less depraved to me