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What a curse, to die with not one but two forms of cancer.
Somber reminder of our mortality. Rest in peace Leonid.
I hate the idea of a service like that, but I feel for his family. Its terrible to go out like that.
Everything that touches on the adult industry is controversial, sometimes rightfully so, but it also responds to a need, like it or not. Regulation can make it more or less open, but it always here.

Out of everything in the adult industry, to me, OnlyFans is one of the most sane. That is encouraging independent performers to get payed directly by their fans, taking only a reasonable commission. It doesn't mean there is no exploitation, but at least, it offers a way for those who want to do this kind of work to do it on their own terms.

The flip side is that if you make a thing smooth, profitable, and safe-feeling, you get more of it, as any economist can tell you. Also, as any sociologist can tell you, when you make a fringe thing feel normal among young people, you get a LOT more of it.

So your defense of OF only real works if you think that an explosion of commercialized sex has no negative effect on our culture, or if you (stupidly) believe that the rate of sex work is an immutable constant, impervious to laws, technology, or social contagion.

I agree with your description of what goes on here with this and other things as well. It's depressing that it seems like for almost any activity the two choices are illegal and celebrated. It seems like if you venture an opinion that X is wrong not adding and I think it should be a crime marks you as something akin to a hypocrite.

Nominally we live in a tolerant society but sometimes I wonder if anyone knows what the word means.

I would largely consider being critical of sex workers (who do it in a safe manner) is largely just intolerance.

In American society, sex is in it's own corner. It's icky, immoral, unpure, and stands alone in it's perception. Violence, blood and guts, exploitation, injustice - these are all much easier for Americans to swallow than sex. A company laying off 500 people and potentially ruining their lives is business as usual, but a woman showing a part of her body to people who consent is unthinkable.

The reality is, I think, we all sell our bodies, and minds. And, out of all of us, OnlyFans models sell their bodies some of the least. After all, they are not at higher risk of heart attack. After all, they do not get carpal tunnel or arthritis. After all, they are much closer to self-employed than me. After all, they write their schedules, they define their work, and they set the expectations for performance.

That's not to say it should be celebrated. But I think we should view it honestly, for what it really is. A way to make money. People want to see other naked people, and they're gonna do that, so why not? And, is the human body really so repulsive that we have to degrade people for showing it off? I don't believe so.

If my daughter said she was choosing between two jobs - plumber and OnlyFans - I'd suggest she buy a wrench.

There are a lot of people who will say that all jobs are exploitative. Besides that who's to say the woman on OnlyFans aren't the ones doing the exploitation of the guys who are forking over money. And as you say should anyone be degraded for showing their body? Or even wanting to see someone else's?

It's all true.

And yet for some reason I'm still going to say buy a wrench. I'm not sure why but I think it has to do with the fact that it confuses the personal and the social. Things that you do for personal non monetary reasons should be separate and apart from things you do for social monetary reasons. It's probably why I wouldn't ever loan money to friends - I'd rather just give them money. Or my job gives me a paycheck and not a thumbs up every 2 weeks - even though that's pretty much all my wife gives me when I take out the garbage.

I don't think saying people holding the opposite view are wrong is intolerant. Making it a crime? That's intolerant. When you go from making an argument to forcing your will is where intolerance starts. The opposite end is approval and that starts with thinking something wrong but not actually saying anything at all.

If you draw the line of intolerance at making laws, I would say you have next to no conviction.

Which is why I think you probably don't actually believe that. That's just the standard you're choosing to apply to this one specific case. As I've said - sex stands alone. The standards are completely unique.

In general I'd say, if the intolerant think I'm intolerant, then I must be doing something right. Ultimately I don't really care how women choose to make their money, and I don't see anything wrong at all with lust. Purity is stupid, who cares, have all the sex you want and jerk yourself off silly.

Also, monogamy is stupid. Or, at least, how most people view it is. There's nothing wrong with being monogamous because you want to. But most people aren't doing it for that. They're doing it because they fear how they will be perceived if they are not monogamous.

And so we see rampant divorces, failed marriages, and cheating out the wazoo! The stupid point to this and say "see, this is what happens to the impure!" But that's not true. That happens because of a notion of purity fueled by shame and perception.

Nobody asks themselves if they love someone. They ask if other people view what they are doing as love. And so, sex is wicked, marriage is good, and that's that.

Employ atomized logic, reach atomized conclusions.
This doesn't mean anything to anyone.
> Out of everything in the adult industry, to me, OnlyFans is one of the most sane. That is encouraging independent performers to get payed directly by their fans, taking only a reasonable commission.

I kinda agree, but the prevalence of fake chatting soured me on the company as a bastion of sane sex work. Without it, it seems legit: fans pay for content, they get content. But add the layer of fans pay for chatting with the models, and get something else.

That's big of you, given that he showed no concern for anybody else's family. What's terrible is to spend your life ripping apart society.
Personal responsibility has to enter the picture somewhere. If a family is ripped apart because a member is using OnlyFans then that's that family member bears responsibility. OnlyFans didn't invent pornography. And on the model side, it allows cutting out a whole industry of truly skeezy, immoral middlemen distributors.

I do dislike the effect OnlyFans has had on society but I think it's a symptom, not a cause.

Disagree. Personal responsibility should never be publicly discussed. It’s personal.
The family of the OF user is not the only family affected by this general decay. Indeed, when you normalize sex work, some families never even form. There's such a thing as a social fabric.

Libertarianism is willful ignorance, and taken this far, it's a brain disease.

> cutting out a whole industry of truly skeezy, immoral middlemen distributors

This argument only makes sense if you blindly model the amount of degrading dreck as a constant, unaffected by technology and opportunities. Again, brain disease.

Oh, and before OF, Radvinsky was facilitating child porn and bestiality. Were the children and animals being empowered, too? Should they have taken responsibility?

> Oh, and before OF, Radvinsky was facilitating child porn and bestiality.

I have no idea if that's true but it's irrelevant, those are illegal. Porn is not illegal. You may wish to make porn illegal but so far society has not agreed with you on that.

> Porn is not illegal.

Do you believe that there is anything that is legal yet immoral? If an industry is legal, is it automatically good to dedicate your life to growing and spreading it to all corners of society, so long as it makes you money? Do you think this guy left the world a better place?

Less polemically...

> I do dislike the effect OnlyFans has had on society but I think it's a symptom, not a cause.

What do you think is the underlying cause or causes?

Is this the "every sperm is sacred" argument?
You nailed it! The only way I could possible believe in any constraints on the free market is that I am Monty Python's cartoon of a Catholic. Well done.

There is no such thing as a healthy or unhealthy society. Only money. This guy made a lot of it. What a hero. All of us here on the orange site should aspire to his level of genius. Ha ha ha funny songs, silly walks.

How was he ripping families apart?
Lol, you did the meme. "Pretending not to understand things, thus making discourse impossible".
Asking you to explain your position more thoroughly is making discourse impossible? Your dedication to communication is laudable.
He provided a way for many people to earn a living from the comfort of their homes and saved them from people that can exploit sexual workers (economically and worse).

If you find sexual work a despicable thing it's your right, but the people that are doing it through Onlyfans have it better than in other ways.

Does OnlyFans have an extensive anti-trafficking program to prevent one typical method of exploitation? If not, it's just proving a platform for the traffickers to make money from the comfort of a safe jurisdiction.
Bought a service (2018) and changed the model to one where it was collecting compromising adult-oriented content from random people. That content can be used to try to shame them into avoiding the limelight later in life. I guess with Epstein out of the way (2019) they needed something else for blackmail material.

Made billions from OnlyFans and then made a large donation to AIPAC. Wouldn't admit it.

The Reuters story linked is substantially the same as this one but omits the AIPAC link. I wonder why.

[0] https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/leonid-rad...

I’m convinced this platform is used for money laundering, by someone; not accusing Radvinsky, but if you wanted to create an opaque money transmission system, you’d design it close to what OF is.
If you want to launder money you don’t usually do it with credit cards.
Also OF’s fees would be a killer.
I have zero love for OF, but shouldn't your reasoning also apply to Patreon, Gofundme, and so on? They all let you collect small fees for completely unverifiable services.
I remember hearing about money laundering via Steam item trading years ago. There seem to be some recent articles as well, but this is what I remember: https://web.archive.org/web/20140523053405/https://www.polyg...
paypal, heck every retail gift card too.
Retail gift cards are very much known for use in money laundering, so...