I understand a fantasy and a one time thing like tipping on a guys night out at a strip club, but some of these guys think they are in a relationship with someone they will never meet and don’t even know their real name or life details.
Well, they may like the attention and validation it brings. I knew someone who was asexual that had a lot of dotcom money. He loved to go to Vegas and gamble. He knew the house was stacked against him. He knew that the girls who sat on his lap only liked him for his money. He still loved the attention he got when he tipped big. I saw him tip a waiter $200 on a $150 meal. He LOVED it. And why?
“I used to be poor. I was a nobody. Now I make people happy with my money, and I feel good about myself.”
Can’t beat that.
This is going to sound weird but I kinda get it.
I’m not rich at all. But I have a really high paying job. And I tip 25-40% because I used to work at restaurants and coffee shops if they are mildly pleasant. During the holidays, I easily drop 100% tips at like a small sandwich shop.
I’m definitely part of the problem with tipping. But it makes me feel good to give a small coffee worker $5 for their hard work.
You’re not at all part of the problem. The problem is entirely concentrated in the employers’ unwillingness to pay workers a living wage. It’s not like they’d start if you stopped tipping; they’d be legally required to backfill some of the shortfall, but not enough that the person could actually survive.
Rest assured. You are not a part of the problem.
As someone who has done tipped labor before: the bigger problem is the entitlement of the people who come to expect tips and negatively judge anyone who doesn’t.
I once got shat on for saying I reduce my typical tip of 25%+ down to 15% for waiters who were particularly bad at interactions, in a thread where a bunch of waiters were patting themselves on the back for forcing bad-but-fast interactions that allowed them to give the appearance of service.
Such as avoiding eye contact, ignoring gestures from a distance, and leaving a table fast to give them as little time as possible to put in follow-up requests, or waiting until someone’s mouth was full or with a glass up so they couldn’t elaborate, and some other stuff I don’t care to remember.
I was called “shitty” for “witholding tips”.
That’s so sad, you weren’t even doing a “No tip” just a “reduced tip.” Like, isn’t that how tipping is supposed to work?
I’ve faced it too, coworkers would tell me things like “we have a spray bottle with water so you can look like you’re sweating and working really hard and more likely to get tips.” Cool, because gaslighting people for money isn’t fraudulent or scammy at all??
The entitlement is crazy. I remember literally arguing “it’s not their responsibility to cover the gaps in our pay that our employer refuses to cover” and them acting like I was crazy to expect our employer to pay us a living wage when we could be raking in cash from tips.
Seriously, the tips were insane, but it wasn’t enough for these people. We could be getting enough in tips to be making $30+/hour each night, but apparently that’s not enough and entirely the responsibility of the people who come to our restaurant.
Yeah, I’m pretty convinced that the worst tipping culture comes from the people who act like not getting a tip is fucking blaspheme that should be punished by God himself.
Yeah, like I’ve always tipped the “standard” (15% here) as the minimum in the worst cases, my standard is 20-25% or more depending on the bill and time of service, et cetera; and they still had their panties in a wad over the idea that their brilliant shortcuts weren’t that brilliant and that someone might still see through them or at least appropriately judge their service over them, intentional or not.
edit: at the time it was 25% or more; I’ve only adjusted it slightly because I don’t make as much anymore, and even then it’s mainly when it’s a large bill, and I’m by myself, and either the service was just sub-par, or it was a very fast but expensive meal. Good eating is my vice.
I don’t enjoy restaurants. For travel only. Rather just cook it myself.
Lots of jobs fully need a living wage and are for spare cash mainly. Your son delivering papers certainly doesn’t. I think we need to evaluate in that some.
“let’s continue to devalue labor because some margin cases might 😱 end up with disposable income derived from a more fair compensation for that value”
Oh no some kid might be doing pretty well for a month or so better grind everyone into poverty so boomers like @zippy have it fair
There are a great number of jobs that pay a living wage. Working on a convenience store or Walmart does not need to be one.
And a living wage does not mean you should be able to live alone with your own kitchen and bathroom without roommates. Something past generations certainly need to do. Those single member working families that were paid s high wages typically worked in a mine or a higher paid job. No one could work at the convenience store and support a family alone.
So you think the parents of younger employees should subsidize Walmart’s business?
Even if you say that’s fine, there’s a deeper problem.
Let’s look at the most recent census: as of 2022, there are about 20 million people in the US between the ages of 15 and 19. Now that particular range is a little young, but that’s the breakdown the census gives us; and the cohorts on either side are about the same, so we can probably assume pretty safely that there are also about 20 million people in the US between the ages of 16 and 20 as well.
Since the end of the pandemic, about 20 million people in the US are getting paid below the almost-living wage of $15/hr. Cool, problem solved then, right?
Except no. The demographics are all over the place. First of all, not everyone between the ages of 16 and 20 are employed full time; in fact, almost 60% of them are not. Which means that, of those 20 million people making below $15/hr, only about 8 million are kids under the age of 20 who could reasonably expect to be able to live with their parents. Which means that 12 million of the people who are getting paid less than poverty wages for full time work are fully adults. That’s five percent of the US population.
“Ok so get roommates” you say. But the housing stock isn’t set up for that; in order to pay appreciably less in rent, you have to cram more than one person into a space originally only meant for one; often this is not allowed by the property. Plus, when you’re talking about people over the age of 20 (particularly once you approach 25), you’re increasingly talking about people with children; particularly in the demographic that works at a low-wage hourly job. In most cases, including roommates in that scenario would be inconvenient at best; and prohibited or even unsafe at worst.
“No one could work at a convenience store and support a family alone” you say—but again your assertion doesn’t line up with reality. According to a BLS report from 1975, “basic rates for grocery store employees averaged $5.19 on July 1, 1975”—that’s $29.46 in today’s dollars, and about 75% of the median household income across the country. Couple that with the fact that housing prices adjusted for inflation have more than doubled since the 1980s while wages have stagnated (median household income in 1970 was a little over half of the median home price; today it’s less than a fifth), and you see that, yes, a head-of-household could indeed have supported a family on a grocery store worker’s income. It wouldn’t have been easy, they wouldn’t have lived in luxury, but they would’ve been safely lower-middle class.
It’s also important to realize that when it was originally proposed, the minimum wage was intended to be a living wage. Roosevelt said, “It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By ‘business’ I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white-collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level—I mean the wages of decent living.”
(Sources are CPI, BLS, and the Census Bureau.)
Minimum wage in 1975 was around 2 dollars and many rentals are two rooms or more. Grocery store may have averaged higher as most included meat cutters on prepared products and I bet that includes management. The shelve stocker likely getting 2 dollars an hour.
Ya let us value that the same as a guy working in a mine or someone developing software. Get serious people. We are paying to subsidize someone to work at Walmart is because we choose to do this. And why wouldn’t a person want to work a higher value job if the government is willing to top them up to a higher rate?
A living wage means exactly that boomer.
Not a boomer but not all jobs are valuable enough not do they need to be to be paid a living wage. Your 16yo babysitter doesn’t need to be paid a living wage while she lives at home. It is goofy how people think like this.
Your go to is delivering papers is telling. I will send you a fax about it later.
You do realize this is still a job and it still exists or is it not important enough for your to consider it one?
Removed by mod
You are such a witty person. Seriously that is really witty. I never heard anyone suggest fax before. Where did you develop that skill or come up with such a novel expression? Do you get to say that often? It must be a real exciting moment when you can fit that into a conversation?
So many questions.
I do the same. It is one of the few things that really cheers me up sometimes.
I don’t necessarily do it with tips, because I don’t really know those people, but I have a similar situation. I make good money at work and am very lonely/isolated in my social life, so I don’t have a lot of places to spend my money. But around the holidays I like giving big expensive gifts to my family and the few other important people in my life. They always think it’s overboard in terms of what I spend but I just really like the feeling that my money is going to make someone happy since it doesn’t really do much for me. I make sure to remind them that I’m not keeping score and not expecting them to give me something of equal value. I just like the experience of gift-giving.
I would not feel good about myself in that situation but I guess I understand…
For me it’s a slightly disgusting to pay money to another human being for fake attention, it’s very superficial and animal-like. But I can see how it can make some guys happy.
Given how dumbed-down, animalistic, and impulsive sexual interactions can be, it makes a lot more sense in that state of mind.
It’s always been this way and yes they do.
In the 50’s, women artists were literally expected to hide their partners. Dolly Parton famously got married against the wishes of her managers/producers, because she was a bad bitch who wasn’t going to be pushed around and denied her own life. She was a rarity at the time.
The number of OF models who have boyfriends who never appear on cam is high. This isn’t new for women in porn, this has pretty much how it has always operated. Men don’t like their fantasy being destroyed by pesky details like a boyfriend.
In Kpop its definitely still a thing, and it seems like the young male fans flip the fuck out when they find out one of the women they’re idolizing already has a boyfriend.
It’s capitalism, baby. It teaches young men that human relationships are a financial transaction and nothing more. They absolutely do think the money they spend means something, even if they aren’t an outright Incel.
Many of them will end up furious eventually, once it becomes clear they will never make it anywhere with this woman.
*shrugs
A few years back on Reddit I remember stumbling my way into a comment thread discussing some camgirl or Instagram model, or “influencer” or something along those lines. The OP was a gif of her bouncing her boobs (and I’m not gonna lie, I clicked into the thread because boobs)
Overall the comments were pretty much what you’d expect, but one dude in particular stood out to me.
IIRC, someone made a comment about how her boyfriend was a lucky man or something to that effect, someone else commented that they had heard she was a lesbian, and that’s where this particular weirdo came in, saying something essentially like “nuh-uh, I talked to her cam-to-cam and she’s definitely straight.”
Like it genuinely never occurred to this person that someone might not be exactly who they present themselves as online.
Now I cannot claim to know anything about that girl’s personal life, she might be gay, she might be straight, she might be neither, but I can easily think of probably a dozen reasons off the top of my head why she might want to hide her sexuality, whatever it may be, from some stranger she was chatting with on the internet, ranging of fear of harassment to trying to get money out of him.
I tried to explain that to him, and he was like “yeah, I get it, but I talked to her and she’s a really genuine person”
Everything just went in his one ear and right out the other.
I hope that dude never made his way into a strip club, he’d get talked into so paying for many champagne rooms and then probably go home and brag about his new girlfriend.
It’s capitalism, baby. It teaches young men that human relationships are a
financialtransaction and nothing more.I really notice that idea in movies from the 80s and 90s. The love interest leaps into the dude’s arms at the end. They didn’t know each other an hour ago, but she’s the reward for the hero’s success.
That’s where I learned from, and I learned the hard way that the crazy antics in those movies just get you a restraining order!
There is nothing positive that comes from the existence of simps.
People be lonely, yo.
I’ve thought about it. It’s tempting because it’s simple. When you spend time and energy on your wife and she doesn’t give anything back, it’s very lonely. A cam girl is simple. Money goes in, attention comes out. It’s not exactly what I want but it’s got a higher success rate that what I’ve got now.
Divorce is an option.
Can’t afford it. I can’t afford the aftermath, keep my kids, and keep my sanity. I’ve thought about it.
Fair enough. Wish you the best of luck. You seem to have a good heart. You deserve better.
Thanks. :)
Thank god I dont have kids, and my wife isnt a bloodsucker. We tentatively agreed in principle to a divorce yesterday, and one of the first things she said was “Do we need lawyers or can we just sign the divorce application and be done with it?”
I hope that its over soon, quickly and cheaply. We are both so tired.
I knew a couple who did that. They had a mutual friend lawyer represent them both, lol. It was smooth to say the least.
Sorry to hear that, hope you can find a way out of that situation.
Thanks, I’ve become resigned to it.
I wish you strength, and hope you’ll find a good solution. Maybe it would be worth a thought of spending the money for couples therapy.
I’ve been asking for years. I can schedule an appointment, but they have to show up.
Go on your own. You likely know this, but saying it just in case.
I have. I’ve gotten what I can. It’s gotten me stable and surviving.
Hey can we spend some time together?
Get death glare
Fine, go back to your 9 hour streaming marathon. Sorry to bother you.
Quite a lot of the people that donate money to camgirls/OnlyFans models have learning difficulties. My special needs brother-in-law gets disability allowance from the state every month because he is too disabled to work and still managed to rack up a 4000 pound debt giving money to these “content creators”.
I think the concept you meant here is being neurodivergent. Learning disabilities are a related concept, but for example I doubt someone being dyslexic would make them any more likely to have a problem with this sort of thing. You’re talking about people with things like Autism, ADHD, etc. right?
I’ve heard “learning difficulties” used by Brits the way “intellectual disabilities” is used in the US, Down Syndrome for example. It’s not equivalent to “Learning disabilities” in the US, like ADHD or dyslexia.
Your BIL likely has an intellectual impairment to get those benefits. Learning disabilities are not typically severe enough to disable a person from working. An intellectual impairment is a much broader term that essentially indicates the person’s IQ is significantly lower than average, and this very often is disabling enough to prevent a person from working.
I’m sure many have that fantasy. I’d guess that others understand that it’s just a tease, and have enough disposable income that they don’t care. Same as strip clubs.
I’ve seen folks do the same with people who stream games.
An acknowledgement of your own existence is a powerful thing. I get it.
Grant Amato shot his father, mother, and brother Cody in the head at their home in Seminole County, Florida, while attempting to stage it as a murder-suicide committed by his brother before fleeing the residence.
Before the murders occurred, Amato had developed an infatuation with Bulgarian model and cam girl Silviya Ventsislavova (Bulgarian: Силвия Венциславова), who went by the alias “Silvie” online. Amato used some of his father’s and brother’s money that amounted to $200,000 to pay to attend her webcam sessions.
I’m not sure how that counts but it does add texture to the conversation.
God damn. Florida must have so much lead in the air and water.
Parasocial relationships are fucked and there’s lots of chuds out there hyperfocusing on all the wrong things.
I don’t think a blanket statement about parasocial relationships is warranted at all based on some outliers.
Being in a parasocial relationship is fine as long as both people are aware of this and feel comfortable with the position they’re in. It’s only when this isn’t the case it becomes a problem, this isn’t inherent to parasocial relationships and applies to a lot of relationships.
I have a parasocial relationship with a certain Twitch streamer. I have no delusions about what that relationship is or isn’t. I pay/donate because I value what this person adds to my life in the form of content and a community. The streamer is only vaguely aware of my existence and that’s fine. I do not want to be a part of his life except as a community member in general and all he brings to my life is the entertainment and a cool place to hang out. I see this as a win-win scenario.
Of course there are always whales who pay big bucks, but I feel most of them are like me, they just pay what they feel the value is. If I have a shitty week and the provided entertainment cheers me up, I might donate $10. If a rich whale has a shitty week and they get cheered up they might donate a 100 bucks. But there is no notice me senpai aspect or expectation this changes anything in the relationship.
A lot of it is buying the illusion/experience. They are helping that girl get back into veterinary school or are virtually rubbing her clit by making panties vibrate or whatever.
Also, it is generally not the same whale every night. Sometimes it is, but most models have a set of regulars.
And the other aspect to remember is the good old audience plant. Think of it like starting a hype train on twitch or getting the meter most of the way to the exposed titties goal or whatever. The idea is a friend or site employee uses cheap tokens to encourage others to use real ones.
I don’t think the type of person that gives cam girls tons of money is self-aware enough to realize the model doesn’t care if they are still breathing 10 minutes after the money hits their account.
They might think that, and they might be right. There have been multiple accounts from sec workers who feel friendly to their clients.
Think about any place you go regularly: you might have a friendly relationship with the cashier/waiter/barista/bartender/whoever. That relationship only exists because you are a customer, but that doesn’t mean they don’t feel genuinely friendly to you. When I’ve worked in service jobs, there were plenty of people I only interacted with because I had to, and there were a handful of people I genuinely liked seeing. Just because someone is selling images of their naked body and a sense of intimacy doesn’t mean the dynamic is fundamentally different on their side. For the clients, there is often a misunderstanding of what the boundaries are, which is why many sex workers are extremely direct with people.
They are lonely and desperate for any kind of interaction with another human. Because sex work is illegal and dangerous, it creates a market for this kind of stuff. It’s sad. People need attention, touch, and love from other humans as much as they need food and water. But many people are unattractive and/or socially inept… but do have some money. And society is largely cruel and heartless towards outsiders. It’s hard for most to accept, but many factors outside of a person’s control can force them into a lonely life of rejection and non-acceptance by average folks. People find all kinds of things to fill these voids. Paying cam models is just one of many coping mechanisms, and maybe not as self-destructive as drugs, booze, food, etc.
I agree with every single thing you said. But, I paid for a woman’s OnlyFans account for a couple of months.
She was wildly attractive to me, but the thing I admired the most was how artful she was in her nudes. The outfits and makeup and all that, simply artful.
She put real work into all that, and I so loved the effort. And besides, yikes, talk about my type.
$5/mo. for a couple of months, no big deal, and I was happy to help her out. But I had zero illusions, zero attachment, and I told her everything I’ve said here. She was very nice, chatted briefly a time or two, and didn’t try to suck me into some kinda pseudo relationship.
Not a shill, but if you like 'em flat as a board:
https://twitter.com/Princes_rosea
Go from there.
I’ve got a friend who’s into strip clubs, attempted to get me into them. They’re basically thinly veiled brothels. He absolutely believes that the women are into him. 100%
I used to go to strip clubs occasionally, I never had the delusion that any of the girls were into me, but for me that was kind of part of the fun.
It removes all of the pressure, you don’t have to worry about fucking up your chances with any of them because you never had any chances to begin with, and as long as you’re not a total creep and can keep the singles coming, you’re going to have a steady stream of pretty girls coming around and acting flirty with you, laughing at your jokes, generally paying attention to you, etc. and that can feel pretty nice.
Some people can get weird about it and have an unhealthy mental idea about what their relationship with the strippers actually is, but that’s not limited to strippers either, pretty sure that just about anyone who’s worked in a bar or restaurant for any length of time has probably had that one regular customer who was a little too buddy-buddy with you and seemed to think that you were their best friend even though you kind of hate their guts and are just nice to them because that’s your fucking job.
That doesn’t mean you can’t have the occasional genuine interactions with them, it’s kind of hard not to, at the end of the day we’re social creatures who want to connect with one another, but that doesn’t necessarily change the fundamental nature of your customer/service-provider relationship.
I assume it’s a form of the buzzword/phrase “parasocial relationship” and some if not most do actually think they have a chance. No real idea, but you can definitely see it even on twitch with female viewers and their rich viewers throwing money at them
