Men are turning to OnlyFans for emotional connection — and experts are split over its impact on loneliness
OnlyFans is not just about adult content. It has become a place for more intimate connection and belonging for fans across the globe.
DeVille had formed a relationship with Simon on the subscription platform for two years, chatting with him regularly — often daily. She helped him bring his sexual fantasies to life but also discussed his everyday life, his hobbies, and his terminal cancer diagnosis.
"He'd request videos of us saying, 'Fuck cancer, we love you,'" DeVille said, referring to herself and other creators Simon interacted with on the platform.
In May last year, a few months had gone by without hearing from him. DeVille searched for him on Google and found out he'd died.
I knew this article was going to be sad. But not this kind of sad. Come on! You can’t hit me with stuff like this!
Sex workers offering emotional support is an old trope, so I guess it was always part of the job. What bothers me more is AI joining the game and how widespread loneliness seems to be, especially among men.
Loneliness seems more connected to late stage capitalism to me. Individualism has been pushed too far. The quest for a glorified independancy and the monetizatization of everything is destroying social links. There are many other things that capitalist culture favor, and they're all as damaging to socialisation and society.
Particularly in America, it's become blatantly clear how late capitalist alienation is driving the "Loneliness Epidemic." With "rugged individualism," car culture, suburbanization, and the loss of third places, it's really no wonder people are lonely. Any analysis of the "Loneliness Epidemic" that fails to incorporate capitalist alienation as the root cause feels pretty ridiculous to me at this point.
I don't fully agree, before we were often forced into specific rather small and closed social circles, now at least in most parts of Europe people are more free to choose and build those circles for them selves. While I will agree that capitalism in it's current form does not make it easy.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
That sentiment appears widespread: Nine of the 10 OnlyFans creators Business Insider spoke with for this story said they'd had long-term digital relationships with fans that extended well beyond sexuality.
A 2023 study found that responding men and women reported improvements in real-life relationships — including better communication, greater intimacy, and clearer boundaries — after using OnlyFans.
Minutes after the OnlyFans creator Amber Sweetheart's alarm goes off — before she walks her dog or heads to the gym — she grabs her phone to film personalized "good-morning" video messages for her four "boyfriends," subscribers who've been chatting with her regularly, sometimes every single day, for years.
The idea of finding companionship in sex work is nothing new, and many experts said that OnlyFans is an evolution of phone-sex lines, strip clubs, and chatrooms — all places where men have sought connection.
The difference with OnlyFans, though, is the accessibility: No longer do people have to hide in bathrooms with a running faucet to call a phone-sex operator or sneak out of the house to go to a strip club.
Now that Candice, a New York-based creator on OnlyFans since 2020, is making enough money on the platform to feel comfortable, she's started to restrict clients who rely on her too much or go down dark paths.
The original article contains 2,284 words, the summary contains 216 words. Saved 91%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
The internet lets you live a life no men in history before has ever had. Before you accepted your lot in life that you lived and died in your own little village within your respective social cultural boundaries. The internet lets men interact with women they would otherwise never have a chance of even being in the same room with in real life.
On the flip side of the same coin it has given men illusions that such rigid social cultural customs might not exist in real life anymore either. The so called loneliness epidemic is a cognitive dissonance between the real and virtual worlds.
That conception of life both in an agrarian society or Neolithic society is itself a myth.
The "so called" loneliness epidemic is that lots of people are lonely.
The explanations for it vary, but I guarantee any truthful explanation will not be so poetically digestable.
The article mentions how men are having a harder time finding relationships. It's the Andrew Tate loving, Republican a-holes that are having trouble finding women, everyone else is fine.
Men, if your struggling with the ladies, start respecting women and don't take away their rights and they will like you alot more.
There's a lot more to successfully finding and maintaining romantic relationships with women (or anyone else) than showing bare minimum levels of respect, and assuming otherwise is both counterproductive and offensive.
This is some hateful and reductive bullshit.
