
Ask HN: How do I cope knowing people make more than me on onlyfans? - brutal_assault
My cousin has been on only fans since the start and she’s making almost 10k a month, she has not put in 1% of the effort I have in life and it’s making me depressed. I know money isnt everything but it’s one of the biggest parts in quality of life and I feel like I wasted my time going to university, interview prepping etc when I could have just dressed up and showed the occasional cleavage<p>Edit: just so I make it clear, I don’t hate her for it. I just have a hard to accepting it but i guess life isn’t fair.
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bigiain
It'll probably help to think longer term.

Your education/interviews/early career are adding value to your skills and
remuneration, if you follow the most typical paths, each year you will make
more money than the previous year - occasionally in small payrises, sometimes
in big steps as you shift jobs to better ones thanks to the
experience/skills/network you gained in earlier roles. This will mostly "just
happen" unless you fuckup or sabotage it big time. It'll be the assumed
progression for you by your managers, recruiters, lenders, partners, "the
world".

Your cousin does not have that. In five years, you'll be well on your way to
her $10k/month, if not beyond already. And you'll be wondering to yourself
"are they gonna try and stiff me with just a single digit percent payrise
here, cause I have a bunch of recruiter calls I'll letting go to voicemail I
could start picking up on.." What's your cousin going to do when her
admittedly valuable youthful beauty inevitably wanes? What's her $10k/month
Instagram influencer income going to look like when she's 25? Or 35? or 50?

Be happy for her that she's taking advantage of what she's got. Be generous
with any advice you can offer her about planning for her future, when some new
pretty young things come up underneath her and leave her wondering where all
that money went...

~~~
sgeorge96
>What's your cousin going to do when her admittedly valuable youthful beauty
inevitably wanes?

retire after becoming a millionaire? It's ridiculous how some of these people
make a month. Take a look at this calculator on this page:
[https://onlyfans.com/how](https://onlyfans.com/how)

~~~
bigiain
$10k/month might sound like a lot of money (and for a lot of people, it
genuinely is), but it still takes a _long_ time to become a millionaire at
that rate. 100 months or ~8 years if you save every single cent you earn. Pay
tax on it and you're up to 11 or 12 years. Pay rent/bills/groceries and you've
probably doubled that again to 20-25 years, even if you're super diligent
saving and live very frugally (maybe significantly less than doubled if you
like somewhere very inexpensive, but it'll still be more than 12 years.)

"Youthful beauty" doesn't last 20+ years. She needs another plan.

------
Kaze404
You put in 1% the effort of waiters, janitors, high school teachers,
fishermen, kids working at the age of 9 so their family can eat at night.
Pardon me if I'm not crying over a stem major making a couple less grand than
they think they deserve.

~~~
brutal_assault
Can’t believe you’re comparing my achievements to being an onlyfans user.
Disgusting.. thanks for ruining my mood even further!

~~~
octygen
Keep the ego in check, brother, else it will hit you hard later. Your degree
or knowledge makes you superior to absolutely no one.

------
octygen
A few angles:

1) Somebody wise once said: "Only look in another persons bowl to see if they
have enough to eat." Not doing this will cause you to ruminate on all kinds of
people's wins at life. In turn, this will cause you, over time, to actually be
"depressed" which I don't think you mean to say.

2) She has strengths\talents x and y. You have strengths\talents a and b. She
uses hers wisely to make $. Use yours wisely and build something that will
stand the test of time way past her ability to use her strengths.

3) She's family. Help each other out. If she's making only $10k a month, why
not help her somehow make more? Maybe what you build can help her do just
that.

------
artfulhippo
How do you cope knowing that people inherit money from their parents?

How do you cope knowing that people win the lottery?

How do you cope knowing that janitors often work harder than landlords?

------
smt88
What about people born with a $100M trust fund?

Comparing yourself to others or seeing the world as a meritocracy is always an
exercise that will make you upset. There is always someone luckier than you.

Remember that your cousin likely won't want to do this forever, and she'll end
up far behind in the job world. She's sprinting and you're running marathon.

------
downshun
Assuming this post is genuine,

Coping is an interesting word choice. It hints at perceived wrong.

Internalizing an injustice can force one to confront morality.

It is complicated. I only want to present a different case.

There was a recent report on charges against a sex-trafficking ring where the
victims were "rescued"... but later were re-victimized. Turns out the
undercover officers in the investigation reportedly had paid and participated
in sexual acts with the victims which eventually lead to a dismissal of
charges due to entrampment laws.

1\. Decisions matter in this sense.

2\. Consequences are often not directly measurable

(Does sexual freedom come with hidden costs to us, such as porn addiction
effects, prevalence of STDs, etc?) (Is supporting abortion or 'reproductive
rights' of disadvantaged groups different from genocide?) (A recent example:
does the positive of lives saved by the pandemic lockdown balance with the
negatives of its economic impact?)

3\. An easy answer is not in my HN comment.

------
armenarmen
You’ll never have the worries about your potential future children’s friends
finding out about your stint in porn and torturing your offspring with that
knowledge

~~~
runawaybottle
Ripping the hearts out of your parents, significant others, and your children.

You have to be mentally gone to not understand the emotional consequences of
heading down this path.

Selfish is an understatement, pathological.

~~~
Kaze404
Yeah, it's definitely a selfish act to be vilified for no reason.

~~~
runawaybottle
So, everyone is above judgement and vilification completely?

I gave you the emotional ramifications of taking part in Onlyfans, the impact
it can have on everyone you love. Do you disagree with this?

We don’t live in a magic inconsequential world.

~~~
Kaze404
Right, but we live in a world where we can hold the guilty accountable for
their actions, not the victims. If you want to blame someone for those
emotional ramifications, blame the people who cause it in the first place.

------
cocktailpeanuts
Assuming she's using the site to make money how most people use Onlyfans, She
probably has at most 10 years to make money that way.

Most adult industry workers burn out quickly and move on to other things. But
if your cousin manages to stay in the industry for even 10 years and still
keep making more money that way (or if she uses the money she made through
onlyfans and moves on to make more money through other means), then she
probably deserves it since it's not easy to pull off.

Assuming you make money with your brain, you probably have decades ahead of
you. Plus, you can expand your horizon (for making money) in various ways,
while your cousin probably has only one way to make money which depends
heavily on looks, which is a depreciating asset.

~~~
Memosyne
> Most adult industry workers burn out quickly and move on to other things

Do you have any data on what they end up doing? I'm curious because I haven't
met anyone unsuccessful who admitted to working in the adult industry when
they were younger. I don't think a woman who is attractive enough to make 10k
a month is going to end up struggling to pay rent when they're 30.

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
I personally know some ex-pornstars. They don't end up homeless, but they do
live lives that are less than glamorous when they're past their prime.

And this is becoming more and more severe because the competition is becoming
exponentially fierce thanks to online porn websites.

But you seem to be asking whether attractive females can do well in their
life, and yeah of course attractive females do have competitive advantage in
life, but that has nothing to do porn. That's reality.

~~~
Memosyne
Well, yeah of course and I wasn't suggesting otherwise. I was replying to how
you mentioned attractiveness being a depreciating asset and pointing out how
that asset can carry them well into their 40s -- by which point I'm sure they
would have another reliable source of income. Will they be living glamorously
in their 40s? No, but then again neither will most programmers or even humans
for that matter. The point is that they get to spend their 20s in luxury and
then spend the rest of their lives in relative comfort.

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
Remember that these pornstars rarely can have a normal life and can not really
easily get a "normal job" when they decide to move on.

Also, your video being out there online forever means even if you try to start
a new life it will be increasingly difficult to do so.

That's a huge price to pay IMO. Most people never experience this type of
situation in their lives so don't understand how much sacrifice this is, but
it is.

------
Nextgrid
OnlyFans is a temporary fad that will quickly go away as more people start
doing it. It used to be that in the early days of YouTube you could make
insane levels of money just by playing games. The same applies to Twitch and
the live-streaming services, or even drop-shipping Chinese goods with social
media advertising. All the success you see on these platforms is because the
creators are exploiting a temporary gap in the market - more demand than
supply - but little actual skill is involved and the market will re-adjust as
more people start doing it (because very little skill is involved so pretty
much anyone can do it).

------
OnlineCourage
Onlyfans will commoditize what your cousin is selling in short order, just
like early adopters on Uber, Airbnb, Ebay, etc...the laws of supply and demand
will only allow this to last a couple years, tops! Then what will she have
learned and what skills and experiences will she have to be ready for the
following two years? What skills and experiences will you have at that time?
Easy come, easy go.

Also, "depressed," is different than, "discouraged." Careful of your word
choice and make sure you are labeling your emotions correctly.

------
theonemind
You already went to university, so you get nothing for second-guessing how you
might have spent the time. You should concern yourself with what to do going
forward.

You make it sound like you can still do the onlyfans thing. If so, nothing
prevents you. You can do it as a side job/gig and stack up twice the cash. I'd
guess that if you seriously consider it, you will find that you don't actually
want that and you have probably gotten envious over something you don't
actually even want. You see easy money, but you haven't factored in the
opportunity cost and probable hit to self-respect. You might endanger your
current career by getting found out, and your current career should probably
last longer.

Really, I think the whole thing should evaporate if you think about it all and
understand it. As mentioned elsewhere, most people don't want to get to your
cousin's position, they find themselves there for lack of options, lack of
discipline, lack of understanding consequences, etc.

------
cududa
You went to college for computer science, something you perceived would make
you prestigious. Someone in a field of work that you look down on makes more.

You don’t need to cope with anything, you need to learn to check your own ego
and not judge other people.

------
NicoJuicy
Don't look at others, just look at yourselve.

How do you think rich people cope with a friend earning more. They don't,
since they ( mostly) don't care. As long as we both are good off, it's good
for our friendship.

Balancing a friendship between poor/rich is much more difficult/fragile
because of possible jealousy. When you are in the same boat ( eg. We are both
doing fine), it's much easier and it's insane how easier friendships become,
just because of that "simple" thing.

------
runawaybottle
You can’t internalize that you don’t have to sexually whore yourself out to
strangers?

No one looks at that kind of stuff and goes ‘that’s inspiring, I aspire
towards that’.

It’s the same for drug dealing. This is uninspiring, shameful stuff.

