I’m an admirer of Paul Joseph Watson. He’s done many excellent, entertaining-while-informing videos on various aspects of our milieu. Moreover, now and then he touches on something that would otherwise escape the notice of someone like me (i.e., an old fart who sits at a computer whenever he’s not laboring over his house and grounds). The video below is a fine example thereof:
Yes, it’s ten minutes long. Yes, the informational message is relatively compact. All the same, this is both newsworthy and thought-worthy. And no, you don’t need to be an OnlyFans customer to appreciate its significance.
We’ve heard a lot about the contemporary problem of male loneliness. It’s real; it’s significant; it mars a lot of lives. Its genesis is multicausal, and quite possibly beyond remediation without extensive changes to the social order that cannot be brought about by anyone’s intention. And it plays a part in the OnlyFans phenomenon.
But OnlyFans reveals more than the unfulfilled and unfulfillable fantasies of lonely men. Indeed, it’s worthy of deep study. (No, not by marathon-viewing the various models that cater to your fantasies while hoovering your wallet.)
The bare bones of the thing appear to be just one more Twenty-First Century form of video porn. And I’m sure that for some OnlyFans customers, that’s all it is. But it also caters to aspects of men’s lives that are distinct from sexual fantasy. One of them is the loneliness problem.
As I wrote above, men’s sense of disconnection from society has several roots:
- Contemporary women’s shameful treatment of men.
- The decline of male churchgoing and charitable involvement.
- The diminution of families and of fathers’ interactions with their children.
- The cancerous “work till you drop” culture that’s overtaken other priorities.
- The loss of “back-fence society,” which fueled community interaction in earlier times.
There are others. Listing them doesn’t soften their influence over men’s lives. And in all justice, it must be said that the items above are not primaries; each has roots in other cultural, economic, and political pathologies. Hans G. Schantz’s brilliant elucidation of a number of those pathologies is highly relevant. It’s within the analytical powers of any Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch to draw the necessary connections.
To be happy, one must have a sense that one’s life is of some value to others. That value must go beyond one’s ability to earn. A great many men in our time lack that sense.
The life of the typical middle-class American man has developed so many isolating tendencies that it’s a wonder we don’t have a rash of loneliness-motivated suicides. The consciousness of the lonely man is dominated by a single thought: “I don’t matter to anyone.” And he might be right.
When real life becomes bleak, the tendency is to take refuge in fantasy. OnlyFans responds to such fantasies, even if monochromatically. The OnlyFans model lures the male viewer by offering him something he can’t get in real life – and the sexual aspect is only one component. Whoever she is, she gives him what he wants. For a monthly fee, he can imagine that he’s the center of her world. The woman in his real life won’t do that. Quite probably she can’t, as she too is burdened in ways unique to our time and place.
Mull that over for a bit while I put up a fresh pot of coffee.
Fantasy has no natural boundaries. In a fantasy, the rules are whatever the author decrees them to be. He can create a realm in which conditions are exactly as he’d like them to be. He can make himself whatever he would most like to be…and then do whatever he likes, even if he could never do it in real life. A lot of modern fantasy is written in the first person for that reason among others.
Generative AI can cater to those desires in ways the real world cannot. The surprising advances in AI-generated photos and videos enable it to go beyond what any real woman can offer: unchanging physical perfection, perfect conformance to the viewer’s fantasies, and an unmatchable degree of immersion. Granted that it’s a difference in degree; as Paul Joseph Watson notes in his video, it’s sufficient to make real OnlyFans models look to their levees.
Needless to say, no one can live full-time in a fantasy realm. The demands of the real world are imperative and unrelenting. They don’t show consideration for anyone’s preferences. He must answer to those demands whether or not he likes the idea. But then, so must she. Real women are slowly becoming aware that men’s sense of disconnection isn’t men’s problem alone.
There’s a self-reinforcing attribute to alienation. He who feels disconnected gradually closes himself off to his remaining opportunities for connection. His conviction that “I don’t matter” leads to his mattering ever less to ever fewer people. The multitude of escapes into fantasy the Internet provides accelerates that process. And the more certain he becomes that he doesn’t matter to them, they will cease to matter to him, with the concomitant reduction of his attendance upon his responsibilities.
More anon.
1 comment
I didn’t see this before posting my own stuff today. Yeah, the AI Thotty caught my eye, too.