Edge #25 - OnlyFans here to stay?

What I’m watching

A video about the traditional Japanese Urushi lacquering. The whole process, from painstakingly extracting a tiny amount of sap from trees to the months-long curing process, is extremely labour intensive. It can be used for bowls, cups, and fountain pens to preserving historical artefacts and goes back to a time when things were made to last.

Resource of the Week

Apple’s Final Cut Pro is the software I use to edit all of my videos. The fact that this cost £250 and is pretty much limited to Apple users makes it a niche recommendation but I prefer a one-time payment compared to something like Adobe’s Premiere Pro on a monthly plan.

If you’re in the Apple ecosystem, it’s a no-brainer.

There isn’t any one thing that Apple is groundbreaking in or they do that other brands can’t do, but the power is very much in the ecosystem and how everything works together. (It does also make it almost impossible to leave! So non-Apple users need to account for).

Quote

“Don’t believe everything you think”

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Thoughts

I read in a BBC article last week that OnlyFans creators were reported to have made $ 4 billion in revenue for the company in 2021. This is absolutely ridiculous. I always thought it was a niche thing but the numbers suggest otherwise. Afterall, similar services like webcamming have been around long before OF.

I think it demonstrates the power of social media. To be fair perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised as I had an OF creator reach out to me recently to enquire about property investing saying she was averaging $30k a month.

(And no, I didn’t ask for any freebies). All jokes aside, this ties in with multiple other sources. The Rise of Lonely, Single Men article that went viral recently, and this chart I saw a few years back.

This surprises most people as there is a sharp increase of young men reporting they’ve had no sex in the past year and it pretty much exactly coincides with the rise of online dating apps. So Tinder isn’t making everyone get lots of action, the opposite, who would’ve thought.

I don’t really know why, but it’s an interesting phenomenon. I think loneliness is definitely a factor, is it the illusion of choice these apps give us? Is it because of the rise of the digital age, that people are becoming more secluded?

What do you think?

Hans