Tag Archives: streaming

When Your Favorite Streamer Becomes an Only Fans Model

Movies, News, Relationships, Social Networking, Television, , , , , ,
An Only Fans model?

I’m a huge fan of Youtube creators, especially those who create videos about reviewing movies and television shows. I kind of got into watching this genre of Youtube shortly after my ASMR phase, which I originally got into because I had a lot of trouble getting enough sleep, or falling asleep initially.

Somehow, the Youtube algorithm made a recommendation to me years ago, pointing at a video that had some young woman reviewing a movie (probably Star Wars: A New Hope) and a relationship was born. I think I saw the actual movie three or four times in the past (right from when it was released) but since focusing on Youtube reviews, I’ve probably seen cut-up versions of that movie over one hundred times.

I should explain how a review works on Youtube. They can’t show the whole movie (as that would be illegal), but over the years the formula has been to show about forty minutes of a 90 minute to 120 minute film in a cut-up fashion with the “creator” commenting and reacting throughout that time, sometimes as additional footage or with commentary while pieces of the movie play in unison with the commenter. It’s about the next best thing to sitting in a theater with some loud individual who makes comments as the film is playing overhead. And this way, you don’t get shooshed by random people in the theater because your date is being obnoxious.

You see, years ago, before Youtube even became a thing, I used to accompany people to the movie theater (usually a young attractive woman, but sometimes guy friends), and as long as that person hasn’t seen the movie already, I seemed to be in a bit of heaven myself. I love watching the reaction of someone I’m friends with (or attracted to) as they watch a movie I’ve seen, especially if it’s their first time.

This has developed a community of commenters who make content which usually has the words “First Time Viewing” in their titles. This tells people like me that they’re discovering the magic of a movie while I get to watch their reactions. I can’t tell you how thrilled I get when I watch someone discover something for the first time (like…spoiler incoming for the two people in the universe who don’t know this already…that “Luke, I am your father! (a misquote from the movie, but you get the point.))

Over the years, I have found myself more interested in young, female reviewers, which makes a bit of sense because I’m a guy, and I just enjoy watching beautiful women more than some other guy. I don’t apologize for that.

But because of this consistency, what I have started to observe is a phenomenon that happens within this community: I’m not the only guy who also becomes fans of these young, attractive women. When I first started watching these reviews, they would generate hundreds of views whenever they plopped out another video. As time went on, the more attractive of them would tend to gain more and more followers as they released more videos. Whereas they first started out with hundreds of views, now they get tens of thousands of views, and their subscriber counts have gone from hundreds of followers to tens of thousands of followers as well. Some even higher than that.

So, it probably shouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that because these young women get a decent amount of money in revenue sharing payments with Youtube, they start to realize that they can make a great deal of money. In the beginning, it might be enough to add a substantial amount of money to their monthly paychecks they would get from a regular job to being enough to survive on this income alone. And then as they gain more followers, they start getting offered sponsorship deal (like a professional athlete) to sell brands to their followers, which makes the money flow even better, so that they start to think of themselves as some sort of rock star, bringing in more money than they ever could raise just doing regular work.

The same thing happened with some of the ASMR stars. They became huge stars and made a great deal of money for themselves. It was a different sort of influencer community, but lucrative.

However, one of the things I started to notice is that this coincided with the advent of the adult work community. Only Fans became a thing at this time, which I don’t think was much of a coincidence. Before that, the sponsorship “deal” was the general ending of the road to fame in this crowd. But then, after Only Fans, suddenly there was a much more lucrative direction one of these creators could latch onto going forward.

When this tie occurred in the beginning, a young woman would link her Only Fans connection in her videos, and her income stream would increase dramatically. However, at some point Youtube struck back against this and started removing content of young women who tried to link their dirty content with their wholesome Youtube videos. So, they had to become a bit more elusive about such connections.

But the fact that they made such great strides with Youtube served to funnel young boys and men into their adult content, and some of them really wanted to build such connected communities. And usually they did that by linking their Youtube content to their own web sites, which then had the linkage to their Only Fans content.

I’ll be honest. While I tended to flock towards young, attractive streamers, I have never been a fan of adult content. I appreciated them for their content reviews, and I have had no desire to see them naked or worse. Now, I understand I don’t speak for the majority, but I am capable of speaking for me. I have a lot of respect and admiration for those who create those videos, but once they cross that line, my immediate (and unchangeable reaction) is to unsubscribe to them on Youtube. And even though the algorithm tries to recommend their content a few times after, once the algorithm discovers that I don’t go back down that rabbit hole, I never see anything about, or from them, again. A year or so down the line, the algorithm might try to recommend them to me again, but once I don’t follow that suggestion, they disappear from any of the movies offered to me.

One of the things that I hate more than anything is when a young woman decides to go down that route. I completely lose respect for her, and unfortunately, it’s something that never comes back.

It’s very similar to the struggle many young women are discovering today. They see Only Fans as an easy way to make money. A lot of money. But once they’ve gone down that road, they can’t ever gain those fans and followers again. It’s the same thing with relationships. No matter how attractive she is, once she takes that road, she has serious trouble ever finding someone to date for the future. Oh, she’ll get a lot of guys interested in her, but definitely not interested in an actual relationship. And that’s something they discover when it’s too late to turn back. Higher quality guys, discovering even a hint of such a promiscuous back ground, want nothing to do with them no matter how much they wish it wasn’t that way.

I’m the same way with the videos I watch on a daily basis. And it’s not like I intend to date or marry any of these women; I mean, honestly, they have no idea who I am in real life, so it’s not like we were dating with the possibility of ever being married.

I just don’t invest my time in someone who goes that direction. And that means even in watching their videos.

I don’t indulge in paying any attention to porn stars, so why would I invest in knowing anything more about an Only Fans model? Just not my thing.

And as it’s me investing my time, I prefer someone who appears much more wholesome than that. And because it’s my time and my dime, it’s my choice.

It was her choice, too. And as I read through the comments in their videos, I realize I’m not the only one.

I’ve also noticed that when I read such comments after their videos, those comments quickly disappear. Which means women creators care, too. But by then, it’s too late.

About to Launch My New Streaming Service

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It’ll look a lot like this except make more sense

The other day, I was watching television and realized I had nothing to watch. There was nothing new on Hulu, Netflix, Disney Plus, Apple Itunes (or whatever it’s called), Amazon Prime, HBO Go (or is it Now?), CBS All Access and Telemundo. Okay, I don’t even know if I have Telemundo, but I bet if I did, there would be nothing new on it.

I’ve reached that era of humanity in which I’ve watched everything I can possibly imagine, leaving me staring at my television screen with nothing to do. Yes, a real first-world problem, eh?

So, rather than try to find another source of television, I’ve decided it’s time for me to just launch my own streaming service, something that caters specifically to Duane. I know the whole world has been waiting for this, as I’ve queried my various stuffed animals, and they nodded emphatically (or they just stared back at me with blank faces, but I’m pretty sure they were enthusiastic).

So, I’ve decided that in order to launch my new service, I need to feature premiere Duane-programming, which means 24/7 Star Trek (but only the shows I haven’t seen yet, which limits it to, um, none of them cause I’ve seen them all, twice, plus that one where Kirk fights the lizard guy probably at least five times; I mean, quality is quality, right?).

But the shows are going to have to be really cool, so as I’m a huge fan of twists and mysteries, we’ll have to focus on a lot of those, except every now and then they’ll have to not have a twist or mystery (being the twist and mystery itself). There should also be absolutely no sports whatsoever, because I don’t like watching shows where people can do all sorts of athletic things I can’t do, like breathe normally, or anything more strenuous than that.

I also don’t want romances because they’re not believable. Never once in my life has a woman knocked on my door and then wanted to make mad passionate love to me. Nor go on a second date. Perhaps there’s more than just a coincidence there.

I don’t like reality programming because I refuse to believe that 37 teenagers can live in the same house without an adult and somehow still manage to end up with beer in the refrigerator. And people laugh at me for liking science fiction?

So, the kinds of shows we’ll have to have will be the very high-tech science fiction shows with laser battles and really cool cars that talk to the actors, saying really funny things that people don’t actually say in real life, because that would be too scripted. But they still have to sound all natural, like it’s the right thing to happen at the most inopportune times.

And ninjas. You kind of need ninjas in most shows. Which now that I think about it, perhaps romances would be okay, as long as it was a romance between two ninjas (who throw laser ninja stars at teenagers who live in apartments with no beer). I’m not really sure where I’m going with this one, but something tells me I’m on a roll.

Of course, there’s no way to really talk about this without mentioning price. I figure $3.00 a month is appropriate as long as the entire world seems interested in subscribing. Considering there’s about 340 million people in the US alone (on any Tuesday, although Wednesdays and Fridays our numbers dwindle horribly), that would be (gets out calculator…at least three dollars times 340 million, which my two years of second grade math instruction comes out to about at least a million dollars). So, yeah, this would be really profitable.

I was going to say that my streaming service should have hot cheerleaders and Scarlet Johanssen but that was much more relevant when I was a teenager, so let’s just say that as long as we’re meeting the ninja demographic, we’re probably okay.

I haven’t figured out exactly when I’m going to be launching this new streaming service, but it may have to wait until after I’m finished watching the latest season of The Expanse, on Amazon Prime. Or was it on Starz? One of these days I’m going to have to figure out where my stuffed animals have hidden the remote.

Netflix drops Quikster but Duane really doesn’t care

Business, Movies, News, Technology, Television, , , , , ,

I received an email today from the CEO of Netflix. How nice. Not long ago, I received another email from him, indicating that he was raising the price of Netflix by a LOT. And then he sent me another email explaining that he was going to be splitting up Netflix into Netflix and Quikster, basically forcing me to have to use two different services to get the same service I get in one place previously. And then he went on the news and started talking to Netflix customers like a mother talking to a five year old kid who doesn’t understand why mommy and daddy are splitting up, and then decides to explain it by saying that daddy is leaving mommy because you were bad.

Anyway, so this latest email was explaining to me that he decided NOT to split up Netflix into two companies, but sorry about the price increase. That’s sticking because Netflix needs to make a profit, and I’ve been getting too good of a deal from Netflix. Well, he was right. But when he sent me those rude emails a few months back, I did what came naturally. I cut off Netflix for good and decided while it used to be a good deal, I kind of wanted to do business with companies that don’t make me feel like a five year old kid. Yeah, I threw a temper tantrum, like a five year old kid. And I left Netflix. Not coming back, so their CEO can send me all sorts of emails about how he’s changed and isn’t going to hit me any more, but our relationship is over.

I moved on. It’s not me. It’s you. Sorry. And please stop hitting mommy. The neighbors are getting tired of banging on the walls.

Netflix is starting to realize you can’t be a people business & piss off your customers

Business, Movies, News, Technology, Television, , , , , ,

 

Netflix is in a bit of a bind, but you wouldn’t know that from paying attention to anything the company is saying. Earlier in the year, they came up with the brilliant idea of raising their prices by cutting their services in half and charging customers for both (where they used to get both for the same price). Customers got angry. Netflix acted like the knowing parent, coddling children who are upset that they weren’t chosen for the football team (or to be cheerleaders). Customers got pissed because they really don’t like being treated like children when they’re actually customers.

I kind of got pissed, too. The patronizing remarks from Netflix’s leadership surprised the crap out of me to the point where I decided that if it benefited me in the long run, I’d jump ship at the first opportunity. I, too, hate being treated like a little kid, even when I might act like one.

To see it from the viewpoint of all of the analysts, the same point keeps being made: If there’s no viable alternative to Netflix, then Netflix can pretty much crap on its customers, and it’s still going to be all right. The more you read of this kind of stuff, the more you start to wonder if the reviewers are in the same world as the rest of the people who happen to be customers of Netflix.

What no one has addressed, and I find this probably the most significant factor, is that Netflix offers a service that is a luxury, not a necessity. As most Americans are seriously aware of economic constraints in a recession era, the idea that streaming video and mailed dvds are an added luxury might just be enough to cause a potential customer to think that perhaps the money might be better spent on other pursuits. After all, no one really needs movies and television shows. They’re nice and fun, but they are entertainment, not food staples or part of one’s housing needs. On the whole Maslow heirarchy needs thing, Netflix comes long after most of the other needs and desires have been met.

And that’s what I’ve started to realize recently. As I watch through the fifth season of Star Trek Voyager, a series I’ve seen a long time ago when it actually aired on television, I realize that I don’t really need to watch it. It’s an interesting way to occupy time, but I have computer games, writing, my health club membership, an untapped drug habit I could start at any moment, and all sorts of other activities that have been available a long time before television ever emerged. I could even watch network television (or whatever is on the free cable I receive). The need for Netflix is pretty low on the overall scheme of necessities.

So, I’ve been thinking that once Voyager’s run is finished (there were 7 seasons), I’m dumping Netflix completely. You see, Netflix has this belief that people will “respond” by switching to either mailed disks or streaming only (what they wanted in the first place), but there are 12 million people who may choose my option: Cancel completely and never come back. I was charged my first increased charge this month, and while I can afford it, I’m still angry at Netflix for the way it treated me as a customer. Because of that, I, like I’m sure many others like me, will dump Netflix and wish them well. They’ve already indicated in all of their press releases that they could care less whether or not I stay with them (because they expect to make bank based on the rest of the people who will be unwilling to jump ship). Well, fine. I just suspect that they haven’t read the tea leaves well enough to understand that when you cut out your bread and butter, you sometimes go without food.

But what do I know? I’m just a stupid sheep guy who Netflix doesn’t take seriously anyway.

We Seem to be Running Out of Good Television Shows

Television, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Recently, I was looking for a good television show to watch on dvd. That’s kind of how I roll these days, watching dvd television series rather than original programming when it actually airs. What I’ve discovered is that everytime I watch a series that’s currently on, they cancel it. It doesn’t matter what it is, or how good it is, it happens to me all of the time. I mean, everyone has their complaint about the demise of Firefly, which was a great show for its time, but every other show under the sun as well gets canceled by today’s television networks. I started watching Star Trek Enterprise. Canceled. Watched The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Canceled. Jericho. Gone. Jeremiah. Gone before I even knew it. It seems no matter what I watch, it gets canceled.

I guess I could watch stupid shows like Two and a Half Men, but as much as I enjoy poking out my eyes with a spork, I just can’t watch that kind of garbage. An example is the sister show of that garbage one I just mentioned, Big Bang Theory. I bought the first three seasons of it for a pretty good deal at Best Buy, mainly because colleagues at work kept telling how funny it was. I think I chuckled every four episodes, and I finished watching the third season last night. Was not very impressed. It was like someone heard that geeks were funny, didn’t know anything about geeks and then wrote an entire series around what he “thought” geeks might be like if they were actually funny. Throw in a bunch of comic book references and various Star Wars/Star Trek-isms, and that’s pretty much the show. Oh, of course, you have to throw in a few hot females to exacerbate the whole idea that “geeks can’t get hot women” and then we’ve pretty much finished the triad of doom. Like I said, it had its moments of interesting jokes, but overall I keep wondering what happened to that last few weeks of my life. If I went with the premise of the show, it wouldn’t make a difference because geeks don’t have any worthwhile lives anyway, but let’s just say I’m not buyiing their nulled hypothesis.

Which leaves me searching through the Netflix queue hoping to find something, ANYTHING, to watch. I was in Best Buy the other day (when I bought the dvds for Big Bang Theory), and I noticed that Felicia Day‘s 4th Season of The Guild was out on dvd. I kind of wish I would have bought it then, but it was only 82 minutes, and I had been planning to spend a lot more time with a show. Should have bought it then. In case you’re not aware, Day’s series is a brilliant commentary of how actually to do geek humor, as it really gets it right and tells it from the perspective of people who ARE the geeks, in this case a guild of online gamers who have no other lives but the game. It’s completely believable and funny. An interesting ironic point is that one of the recurring characters (who showed up in the third season) is Wil Wheaton, the man who played Wesley Crusher when he was growing into adulthood. What makes it ironic is that he’s also a recurring character in Big Bang Theory, and I’ll go out on a limb and say that the few times he was in the show (as Sheldon’s arch enemy because he once showed up the main star of the series for a comic book convention signing) were the few times where I actually found myself enjoyiing the show. In those occurrences, Wheaton played essentially himself as a crass asshole of a person who may or may not actually be a lot like the actor himself, which surprisingly is not offputting, even though you would think it would be.

Unfortunately, I find myself unable to really find any great shows on television anymore. I sat down and watched on Netflix streaming the three seasons of Kyle XY, which was so much like so many other shows it was attempting to steal ideas from, like Roswell, the X-Files and even Buffy. So, until I find something decent, I’m kind of stuck waiting for Smallville to run out its final season before I’m left with nothing but these four empty walls of nothiness where my stuffed animals and I will finally realize we have very little to say to each other and lots of times to say it.

The Music Industry Just Doesn’t Get It…They Lied to Us

Economics, Music, , , , , , , , , ,

You would think with the amount of money that goes into music studios that they would have actually hired someone who is capable of telling the executives what is really going on. Instead, we have a bunch of studio heads that are so convinced they understand the pulse of the consuming public that they don’t have to listen to anyone, and for some reason they’re losing more and more money every year.

The problem emerged in the beginning when music went from albums to CDs and then online. The old paradigm consisted of music studios finding talent, packaging it and then filtering it out to radio stations that then opened the doors for people to rush to record stores to purchase the brand new content. Well, somewhere down the line that model fell apart, mainly because a few little promises made never came through, and then the industry changed overnight as a result.

What I’m talking about was a promise that the music industry made to consumers when albums were on the out and CDs were coming in. The simple promise was that CDs, which were cheaper to make than albums, were going to be cheaper for customers. This was the selling point to get people to give up their vinyl albums and welcome CDs. The promise was that CDs would cost $9.99 all of the time. Well, when CDs first came out, that WAS the price, and then quickly they started to increase to $13.99 and other such prices. Now, if you’re lucky, a CD can be found “on sale” for $9.99 off of the retail price of much more.

We were lied to. Oh, the naysayers will claim such a promise was never made, but for those of us who were paying close attention back then, the promise definitely was made. Instead of following the plan, executives realized that consumers are stupid, or so they thought, so they just went back on their word and sold CDs for what they figured they could get, rather than for how much it was promised.

A funny thing happened right after that. The Internet showed up. You see, if that never happened, the music industry would still be the major entity it was a few decades ago. But no one anticipated that a couple of geeks at universities wanting to talk to each other would lead to something so powerful and so overwhelming. But the Internet happened, and the music industry was in the wrong place at the right time.

The consumer population was kind of pissed at the music industry at this time because of the whole lie thing, and then when the next generation realized that it could get all of this expensive technology for free, they jumped on it. So two things happened at once. The music industry cheated the older customers by lying to them while the younger customers grew up with a new paradigm where they got everything for free. You see, if the music industry hadn’t lied to the older generation, they might have actually had powerful allies on their side. Instead, they had a bunch of pissed off customers who decided to just let the music industry fend for itself. Where these people could have been the “moral” guides to the younger generation, who wants to be the moral guides to people who are doing something you figure the bad guys deserve anyway?

Well, the music industry sat it out, thinking things would fall back in place, but their real ally, musicians jumped ship on them as well. Oh sure, the established musicians were in their corner, but consumers are a fickle sort, dumping old artists for new ones because music really doesn’t have standards that are controlled by executives. Music is music and people will seek it wherever it can be found.

And a lot of future musicians realized that if they wanted to make it in the industry, there was a new direction to take, one that required they take their music directly to the people. This opened up the industry to everyone, and as more and more independent artists showed up, the music industry had less and less control over the content.

That’s kind of where we are today. The music industry is trying to save itself by reestablishing the controls, but no one really cares anymore. There was an attempt to force streaming content under draconian rules, but music executives are starting to realize that this isn’t leading to sales. What the music industry never realized was that the future was going to be somewhat of a free for all because if you can’t trust the industry to do what they promise, then you look elsewhere for results.

Recently, I bought a CD for the first time in about a year. Yeah, it’s been that long. I’m still pissed. It was Taylor Swift’s new album, and it was on sale for $9.99. Imagine that. Anyway, it’s a great CD, but it’s probably the only one I’ll buy for at least another year. I’m one of their solid customers, and it’s taken a long time to bring me back to the market. Before I stopped buying music, I used to buy three or four albums a week. They’ll never regain the market share they had before. It’s just not going to happen.

Like I said, the music industry lied back when it needed to win over its customer base. So, hopefully as these executives find new jobs mowing lawns, or whatever it is unemployed music executives are capable of doing, they’ll remember it was really their fault. And they should keep in mind that if they promise to mow someone’s lawn and then go back on their promise, they’re probably not going to get paid. The real world is kind of mean that way.