At OnlyFans you're paying for a video feed, and computers are pretty good at producing convincing video feeds now.
I'm married now, and never used any parasocial platform OnlyFans or another, but trivializing the problem of young adult loneliness is either ignorant or condescending.
A large fraction of young males don't have anyone to "take out for a dinner", or at least have no idea how to initiate that. You may scoff at that, but I certainly wouldn't know how to do it, and money was not a problem. Paying for human connection, especially online, was tempting.
Which is probably fine if you're a successful man in his 40s who has more time than money and treats escorting as a shortcut. Not so fine if you're a man half his age who is struggling to find a partner.
Escort services are still a very niche interest in most of the world.
And they provide a simulacrum of human connection.
Whether they get strung along by a human, a chatbot, or a simple cronjob - does it matter?
We're literally killing our field by making the devices and internet so repulsive that people are actively unplugging. You can't hear about this online because the bot generated content is filling the gap and the people doing it aren't online to tell you about it.
Children are getting addicted to everything because the internet has killed any sense of self-stimulation and they are growing up into gamblers with cards, sports, and prediction markets or rage-addicted media consumers.
There is plenty of human connection to be had out there, it is free, and all you have to do is put down the phone or computer. It is getting extremely compelling as an alternative for increasing large groups of people.
The tech industry is energetically strangling its golden goose.
I wish someone would create a business that profits from people forming actual connections with each other, but every opportunity has been displaced.
Dating sites replaces meeting IRL, and foster superficial relationships anyway. Bars are passé. Social clubs, golf clubs, etc, seem to belong to a past generation. Social media killed the social part. The damage to society is real.
There are almost no spaces left which are easily discoverable by "analog" means without relying at all on social media.
The UK used to have a very strong pub and club culture. That's been collapsing for most of this century - some of it helped by government legislation.
This hasn't changed direction recently.
https://www.stevestewartwilliams.com/p/graph-of-the-day-how-...
Omegle wasn’t known for making BFFs.
Comically, Facebook sort of serves this way as well by brining together hiking clubs and d&d groups.
Edit: Right, 'beside', 'outside', like in paranormal. Now, are parasocial relationships "human connection"?
> The most remote and illustrious men are met as if they were in the circle of one's peers; the same is true of a character in a story who comes to life in these media in an especially vivid and arresting way. We propose to call this seeming face-to-face relationship between spectator and performer a para-social relationship.
They contrast para-social relations with face-to-face ones, which they call ortho-social:
> The crucial difference in experience obviously lies in the lack of effective reciprocity [...] To be sure, the audience is free to choose among the relationships offered, but it cannot create new ones. Whoever finds the experience unsatisfying has only the option to withdraw.
> ...the media present opportunities for the playing of roles to which the spectator has–or feels he has–a legitimate claim, but for which he finds no opportunity in his social environment. This function of the para-social then can properly be called compensatory, inasmuch as it provides the socially and psychologically isolated with a chance to enjoy the elixir of sociability.
It's a brisk accessible read, and spookily still relevant. Thanks for the impetus to dust it off :)
Anyway—in the 2010s, social scientists began to use the idea to think about the emerging class of even-more-intimate, confessional celebrities—like the Kardashians—as those celebrities started to use the socials ‘round the clock and to broadcast seemingly intimate, unguarded moments [1]. “Healthy” doesn’t seem to be the word the researchers and clinicians tend to choose...
[0] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00332747.1956.11...
[1] e.g. https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research_all/7/
Parasocial itself means “one-sided” in a relationship [1].
It's often applied to one-sided relationships with celebrities, where you feel a personal connection to them but they literally don't know you exist.