On the flip side, if the genders were changed in this situation and the guy only wanted the woman because of superficial reasons like she was attractive or popular, how many people would be saying "he got what he deserves"
This is definitely one of those double standard situations. While we shouldn't be victim blaming, I think there's something to be said for calling out people who are willing to throw away an existing relationship or form a new relationship just because an "influencer" came up to them and they thought they were rich. And I think that's what the poster you are responding to was getting at.
I think it's completely fair to have an honest conversation about what could cause someone to be enticed by a large number of followers, but I don't think that OP was making space for that conversation. It came off as victim blaming because there was no attempt at nuance or unpacking the fact that these women were targeted by a conman and that we really shouldn't be blaming them at all.
Again, can we please not victim blame? Calling this a failure, saying that they must be "so shallow" to fall for a fame scam is analogous to saying "she was asking for it because of the way she was dressed" to a rape victim. Being a human is complicated and there are many reasons a victim can fall prey to a scam. It's not as one dimensional as you're painting it and regardless of how shallow a person is, no one deserves to be taken advantage of. The focus of discussion here should not be the victim, but rather the perpetrator and the fact that they are out to take advantage of others. That's abhorrent behavior and we should keep the focus squarely on them.
I don't want to blame just the victim, I want to blame everyone, society included.
Also I don't think that someone's behavior choice is comparable to their clothing choice, and I see much more than a single problem in this whole situation. It also isn't any inherent weakness or any sort of coercion that are getting exploited, everyone is free to leave at any moment.
no one deserves to be taken advantage of
Agreed.
The problem is that everyone in this case is trying to take advantage of someone, they just differ in what they want:
one wants money
another wants sex
last one wants clout and money
We can agree that the main instigator is the seller, taking advantage of the others, but that doesn't mean the others are completely innocent; they can't be, or the whole scheme wouldn't be possible in the first place.
(in a sane world, I'd expect the only one to get scammed would be the buyer... but I know that groupies are a real thing)
I think we should ask why each one of them wants what they want, and why are they ready to jump at the opportunity of taking advantage of someone else in order to get it.
Then we could ask what could be done to prevent the whole situation from being possible, at every level.
PS: in some jurisdictions, there is a "funny" situation where lying to get sex is a felony up to certain age... but once it's between "consenting adults", lying to get sex is perfectly fine! 😒 We could also take a look at that, how is it possible to give consent while being lied to.
I don’t think that someone’s behavior choice is comparable to their clothing choice
I completely agree, but victim blaming across choices and especially towards women and POC individuals is part of the reason we have really shitty reporting of fraudsters. Creating an environment which discourages them from speaking up is harmful to society as a whole.
everyone in this case is trying to take advantage of someone
We don't know this, and we shouldn't assume this of the victim. I think it's a reasonable hypothesis, but focusing on talking about the victim here when there are actors which are clearly out to harm or take advantage of others is harmful framing. If this is a discussion you wish to have, I personally believe the appropriate framing is necessary - we must acknowledge the existing structure of power and how it silences certain people and also blames them before talking about potentially problematic behavior. But even then, it's kind of jumping to conclusions about the victim here and I'm not so certain it's a discussion that should even be entertained.
victim blaming across choices and especially towards women and POC individuals
I don't know about the US, here in Spain the love scams, and fame scams, are a thing across all genders and orientations, with low reporting of scams in general being attributed mainly to shame of the victims for having fallen for a scam.
People like to think they're smarter than most other people, and the more sure they are of that, the easier they are to fool. I think it's no wonder they don't want to acknowledge it afterwards.
everyone in this case is trying to take advantage of someone
We don't know this, and we shouldn't assume this of the victim.
I don't see how else it could work... but I'm open to hearing alternatives?
we must acknowledge the existing structure of power and how it silences certain people and also blames them
Fair.
A relevant aspect I can think of, is the part about it being fine to lie to have sex between "consenting" adults. How can there be consent, when one or both parties are misleading the other? Sounds like an officially codified permission to abuse.
I don't get what people see in fame or clout, it looks like lying and argument of authority to me. The fact that anyone would pursue or get influenced by either, seems to me like ingrained predisposition to getting abused (by authority figures). Not sure how much of that is inherent, and how much social.
A clearly perverse incentive in the whole scheme, is money... but that's kind of unavoidable in any money based society.
The elephant in the room, is sex itself: how can it, on one side, make someone pay and lie for it, and on the other side be used as a bargaining chip. Is it a purely hormonal catalyst for the whole scheme, or a proxy for a power play?
You might be fine with having erotic materials made of your likeness, and maybe even of your partners, parents, and children. But shouldn't they have right not to be objectified as wank material?
I partly agree with you though, it's interesting that making an image is so much more troubling than having a fantasy of them. My thinking is that it is external, real, and thus more permanent even if it wouldn't be saved, lost, hacked, sold, used for defamation and/or just shared.
Imagine someone would sneak into your home and steal your shoes, socks and underwear just to get off on that or give it to someone who does.
Wouldn't that feel wrong? Wouldn't you feel violated? It's the same with such AI porn tools. You serve to satisfy the sexual desires of someone else and you are given no choice. Whether you want it or not, you are becoming part of their act. Becoming an unwilling participant in such a way can feel similarly violating.
They are painting and using a picture of you, which is not as you would like to represent yourself. You don't have control over this and thus, feel violated.
This reminds me of that fetish, where one person is basically acting like a submissive pet and gets treated like one by their "master". They get aroused by doing that in public, one walking with the other on a leash like a dog on hands and knees.
People around them become passive participants of that spectactle. And those often feel violated. Becoming unwillingly, unasked a participant, either active or passive, in the sexual act of someone else and having no or not much control over it, feels wrong and violating for a lot of people.
In principle that even shares some similarities to rape.
There are countries where you can't just take pictures of someone without asking them beforehand. Also there are certain rules on how such a picture can be used. Those countries acknowledge and protect the individual's right to their image.
Just to play devils advocate here, in both of these scenarios:
Imagine someone would sneak into your home and steal your shoes, socks and underwear just to get off on that or give it to someone who does.
This reminds me of that fetish, where one person is basically acting like a submissive pet and gets treated like one by their "master". They get aroused by doing that in public, one walking with the other on a leash like a dog on hands and knees. People around them become passive participants of that spectactle. And those often feel violated.
The person has the knowledge that this is going on. In he situation with AI nudes, the actual person may never find out.
Again, not to defend this at all, I think it's creepy af. But I don't think your arguments were particularly strong in supporting the AI nudes issue.
In every chat I find about this, I see people railing against AI tools like this but I have yet to hear an argument that makes much sense to me about it. I don’t care much either way but I want a grounded position.
I care about harms to people and in general, people should be free to do what they want until it begins harming someone. And then we get to have a nuanced conversation about it.
I’ve come up with a hypothetical. Let’s say that you write naughty stuff about someone in your diary. The diary is kept in a secure place and in private. Then, a burglar breaks in and steals your diary and mails that page to whomever you wrote it about. Are you, the writer, in the wrong?
My argument would be no. You are expressing a desire in private and only through the malice of someone else was the harm done. And no, being “creepy” isn’t an argument either. The consent thing I can maybe see but again do you have a right not to be fantasized about? Not to be written about in private?
I’m interested in people’s thoughts because this argument bugs me not to have a good answer for.
If we go down the path of ideas in the mind and the representations we create and visualize in our mind's eye, to forbid people from conceiving of others sexually means there really is no justification for conceiving of people generally.
If we try to seek for a justification, where is that line drawn? What is sexual, and what is general? How do we enforce this, or at least how do we catch people in the act and shame them into stopping their behavior, especially if we don't possess the capability of telepathy?
What is harm? Is it purely physical, or also psychological? Is there a degree of harm that should be allowed, or that is inescapable despite our best intentions?
The angle that you point out regarding writing things down about people in private can also go different ways. I write things down about my friends because my memory sucks sometimes and I like to keep info in my back pocket for when birthdays, holidays, or special occasions come. What if I collected information about people that I don't know? What if I studied academics who died in the past to learn about their lives, like Ben Franklin? What if I investigated my neighbors by pointing cameras at their houses, or installing network sniffers or other devices to try to collect information on them? Does the degree of familiarity with those people I collect information about matter, or is the act wrong in and of itself? And do my intentions justify my actions, or do the consequences of said actions justify them?
Obviously I think it's a good thing that we as a society try to discourage collecting information on people who don't want that information collected, but there is a portion of our society specifically allowed to do this: the state. What makes their status deserving of this power? Can this power be used for ill and good purposes? Is there a level of cross collection that can promote trust and collaboration between the state and its public, or even amongst the public itself? I would say that there is a level where if someone or some group knows enough about me, it gets creepy.
Anyways, lots of questions and no real answers! I'd be interested in learning more about this subject, and I apologize if I steered the convo away from sexual harassment and violation. Consent extends to all parts of our lives, but sexual consent does seem to be a bigger problem given the evidence of this post. Looking forward to learning more!
I think we’ve just stumbled on an issue where the rubber meets the road as far as our philosophies about privacy and consent. I view consent as important mostly in areas that pertain to bodily autonomy right? So we give people the rights to use our likeness for profit or promotion or distribution. And what we’re giving people is a mental permission slip to utilize the idea of the body or the body itself for specific purposes.
However, I don’t think that these things really pertain to private matters. Because the consent issue only applies when there are potential effects on the other person. Like if I talk about celebrities and say that imagining a celebrity sexually does no damage because you don’t know them, I think most people would agree. And so if what we care about is harm, there is no potential for harm.
With surveillance matters, the consent does matter because we view breaching privacy as potential harm. The reason it doesn’t apply to AI nudes is that privacy is not being breached. The photos aren’t real. So it’s just a fantasy of a breach of privacy.
So for instance if you do know the person and involve them sexually without their consent, that’s blatantly wrong. But if you imagine them, that doesn’t involve them at all. Is it wrong to create material imaginations of someone sexually? I’d argue it’s only wrong if there is potential for harm and since the tech is already here, I actually view that potential for harm as decreasing in a way. The same is true nonsexually. Is it wrong to deepfake friends into viral videos and post them on twitter? Can be. Depends. But do it in private? I don’t see an issue.
The problem I see is the public stuff. People sharing it. And it’s already too late to stop most of the private stuff. Instead we should focus on stopping AI porn from being shared and posted and create higher punishments for ANYONE who does so. The impact of fake nudes and real nudes is very similar, so just take them similarly seriously.
What I find interesting is that for me personally, writing the fantasy down (rather than referring to it) is against the norm, a.k.a. weird, but not wrong.
Painting a painting of it is weird and iffy, hanging it in your home is not ok.
It's strange how it changes along that progression, but I can't rightly say why.
Yeah this is one instance where I don't care that the human bots are being replaced with AI bots. I mean, it's even worse than before, but those "workers" don't have my support here.
Astroturfers losing their jobs to AI. I imagine some poor guy coming home after a long day of warmongering and promoting nuclear energy, hanging up his coat: „honey, I’m home“. And the wife has prepared a beautiful dinner, it could be a wonderful day. „How was work today?“, the wife asks. And the guy has to tell her how he lost his job to the evil twin brother of ChatGPT because corporate has done the math and they realized that a bot can replace possibly hundreds of humans. It’s a tragedy really, how is the guy going to pay for his mortgage? How’s he gonna feed his family? I think astroturfers should unionize to combat this kind of automation. It creates harm to society.
I‘m from Germany so had no idea about Kurt Vonnegut, just read through his biography and work and I think that’s the kind of story I had in mind. Definitely gonna read some of his work, seems highly relevant still nowadays.
That might work for now, but AI bots can easily create more content faster than human moderators can go through. We will need mechanisms to prove humanness.
Yea, it will be a hard problem to solve. There’s no good solutions right now. Hopefully someone with the creativity and skill will come up with something.
It becomes a pain vs gain problem. How hard do you make it, also balancing the inconvenience.
You could easily force users to enter a one time code via email every 3 months (or more or less time). This would be hard to automate and if you changed it up even more so.
Yea, but AI bots do it at an unprecedented scale. The price of generating bullshit is practically 0. There is already cheap AI content every where and people are already getting tired of it. It’s true that human actors has done something similar for a long time, but now AI will make the process so easy that AI junk will be everywhere. Look at Google search results, it’s already filled with blogspam generated by AI. Blogspam was a problem before, but now it’s insufferable. Cheap midjourney “art” is showing up in search results even when you search for real classic artist, you get these ugly AI copies. Generative AI is the ultimate bullshit and spam machine.
I can't help but wonder how in the long term deep fakes are going to change society. I've seen this article making the rounds on other social media, and there's inevitably some dude who shows up who makes the claim that this will make nudes more acceptable because there will be no way to know if a nude is deep faked or not. It's sadly a rather privileged take from someone who suffers from no possible consequences of nude photos of themselves on the internet, but I do think in the long run (20+ years) they might be right. Unfortunately between now and some ephemeral then, many women, POC, and other folks will get fired, harassed, blackmailed and otherwise hurt by people using tools like these to make fake nude images of them.
But it does also make me think a lot about fake news and AI and how we've increasingly been interacting in a world in which "real" things are just harder to find. Want to search for someone's actual opinion on something? Too bad, for profit companies don't want that, and instead you're gonna get an AI generated website spun up by a fake alias which offers a "best of " list where their product is the first option. Want to understand an issue better? Too bad, politics is throwing money left and right on news platforms and using AI to write biased articles to poison the well with information meant to emotionally charge you to their side. Pretty soon you're going to have no idea whether pictures or videos of things that happened really happened and inevitably some of those will be viral marketing or other forms of coercion.
It's kind of hard to see all these misuses of information and technology, especially ones like this which are clearly malicious in nature, and the complete inaction of government and corporations to regulate or stop this and not wonder how much worse it needs to get before people bother to take action.
I believe Tim means to say that the spread of misinformation can be linked to the rise of Flat Earthers. That if we can only trust what we see before us, and we see a flat horizon, we can directly interpret this visual to mean that the Earth is flat. Thus, if we cannot trust our own eyes and ears, how can future courtroom evidence be trusted?
"Up to the Twentieth Century, reality was everything humans could touch, smell, see, and hear. Since the initial publication of the chart of the electromagnetic spectrum, humans have learned that what they can touch, smell, see, and hear is less than one-millionth of reality." -Bucky Fuller
Two to three times a month, I need to fight with Amazon over negative reviews that get spammed on multiple books because an author got upset about a story being rejected. Or I get some snark response back about how my reviewers need better training, or that I am not a "real" editor, or something outright vulgar. Or I get a prank call to my phone. These sort of people have always lurked around the industry, so I am not unaccustomed to dealing with them. But it seems like they have grown more emboldened, and there seems to be this weird social currency tied to the bad behavior now.
Dawson really nails down something that has been bothering me a long time. I think she's absolutely right that people with bad behavior are emboldened and that there is this weird social currency among the people exhibiting this behavior. It's been the downside of the internet, it seems like the biggest bullies and people with the worst behavioral problems have all found each other and decided to pump each other up about being total pieces of shit. It's maddening.
I see this in my day job, too. When I'm in a charitable mood, I chalk it up to pandemic trauma. But more realistically, I think it is a real change in our society's ability and willingness to compromise and see the world through the eyes of others. People want what they want and they don't give a fuck who they have to roll over to get what they want. They treat getting what they want as a matter of principle.
The only change I've seen in this regard is a dramatic reduction in people's willingness to tolerate these people. They've always been here and always been like this, but we as a society used to just let them have their way to make them go away.
So I see articles like this as being nothing but good news.
Even worse, negativity increases engagement on social media. So instead of shutting it down, it's more profitable for them and the algorithms encourage it.
It's this. I know I've become angrier, bitter, and even more misanthropic because of the uptick of people that have been massive pieces of shit since he took office. I think I developed a "fuck you" attitude as a self defence mechanism and I've lost all my empathy.
It didn't start with Drumpf, but his indelible slime trail certainly coated the way for them to wiggle out further than their known fetid shit puddles of yesteryear.
I remember when I first started noticing bots bad was in 2016. They have been there for a while now. It's advertisers turn now though. It's at the end stages
Comrade, Gulag is wonderful place, many nice people and beautiful beaches. Food is amazing and lots of beautiful women. You get a new set of clothes and your very own room, which is very secure. You will have the best time!
What? This is saying that the dudes already so detached from reality that they don't find any women should even further detach from reality. If you are an open-minded cis dude who respects women and sees them as equal human beings you'll have no problem finding anyone.
It seems very annoying to me when cishet dudes whine about how hard they have it. It might be true, but the problem is usually that they've been brought up with a misogynistic worldview and hegemonic masculinity. That's what I referred to by calling them detached from reality.
It is like a narcissistic person telling you how hard their life is while abusing you. You can empathize with them because they sure have a hard life. But as long as they're not self-aware and reflect on their doings, I won't have much empathy with them. Same goes for cis men.
Nope, I disagree. I see shades of gray and have some few friends that happen to be cishet guys. But I know very few cis men that are not bigots, feel entitled, treat women like inferiors, etc.
But, do you agree with the original statement I replied to?
Narcisstic Personality Disorder is a lifelong disability with no cure. You can be a nice person with NPD. You can be a wise person with NPD. You can even be a healthy person with NPD, because disorders and illnesses are two different things. Having NPD is like having type 1 diabetes. You can live a normal life, but it's still going to take constant attention to treat, and some stuff is always going to be just a bit harder for you. The myth that people with NPD are abusers is pseudoscientific bigotry. There are plenty of self aware people with NPD and there are plenty of non-abusers with NPD. People with NPD are most likely to be the victims of abuse compared to the abuser, but the kind of people who prey on the disabled to satisfy their own desire for cruelty don't want you to believe that.
Oh hello, you again! Sorry, won't discuss with you any further about this topic. Nothing new to be said and you newer replied to all the scientific studies I gave you why a high percentage of pwNPD tend to abuse others.
If you are an open-minded cis dude who respects women and sees them as equal human beings you’ll have no problem finding anyone.
It's not always that simple. For example, I cared for my Dad 24/7 which involved a convoluted pill regime (and a series of alarms throughout the day). My social life took a real hit. There are also mental and physical health issues, as well as financial aspects.
All that said, anyone thinking this is the solution deserves to be scammed because it is hardly informed consent.
OK, let me rephrase this into "if you are ... you will be as likely as cishet women to find someone to date". My point was that cishet men may have it hard to find someone because they are not catching up with progressive and emancipatory values. There are many many heteropessimisstic or otherwise frustrated women out there searching for a guy that does not treat them like shit.
But sure, if you don't have the capacity for a social life or for dating then obviously this won't be as easy. My comment was a response to the premise that cishet guys have it harder in dating and that they should be allowed to scam people.
My point was that cishet men may have it hard to find someone because they are not catching up with progressive and emancipatory values.
It's worse than that - things seem to be regressing, with a widening political divide between men and women, especially noticeable in the younger adults.
It definitely feels like the modest progress that was made is now being eroded away
Yeah, it's pretty disheartening and even frightening. I don't know how to educate men on feminist ideas and get them on board. And being antifeminist doesn't even benefit them that much. There are so many men living their life miserable and ending up in jail because of their toxic masculinity and societal expectations of men. And I'm certainly interested in helping cis men get better, reconnect with their emotions and learn about emancipation. But at the same time I don't see how people who are not cis men can do so much to really help them. We are pretty busy surviving them and supporting each other.
And being antifeminist doesn’t even benefit them that much.
The only people benefitting are those peddling the lies to disgruntled young men, partly as a grift and partly as misdirection from the real sources of their issues.
But at the same time I don’t see how much people who are not cis men can do so much to really help them.
And it shouldn't be your job to fix young men but I am as stumped as you and I worry about people like my nephew who is early teens.
There's !mensliberation but I don't know if that's not just preaching to the converted.
Yes, it is really a frustrating situation. Since you seem to be a man, maybe you can be a good example to your nephew? But well, not so easy either unfortunately :(
I'll never understand the people that fake these kinds of things. Fake watches, fake followers, fake views, fake likes, fake jobs. Why?
What's attractive about likes and views anyway? Why would I care that my date has 0 followers or a million followers? If anything it means they'll constantly be busy streaming.
I'm a very private person. I barely use any social media where I'm not anonymous, and I wouldn't want my wife to be famous either. So take this with a grain of salt, but I think it's about winning the trophy. A million people like this person well enough to watch their content all the time, but they are with you? I can imagine that would be flattering to a certain kind of personality.
Being popular sounds wretched to me, but people chase it all the time.
"Maybe if I date someone who's famous, they'll have enough money that I won't have to worry about paying for medical bills or groceries anymore. Gee, maybe we could even buy a house and raise kids."
We live in a capitalist hellscape where such things are no longer taken for granted, and are now associated with the heights of success.
They're insecure and hate the real version of themselves is my interpretation. Instead of confronting that and moving forward with work to become a better person they instead put up a facade, often justifying the harm they do to the people who believe in the facade by convincing themselves that these facades are common to all people, and everyone is fake
I remember reading a melodrama from the 1800s where the protagonist, a failed writer, makes a deal with the devil to have a bestselling book. In the second half he becomes wildly successful, but is tortured by the knowledge that he is genuinely mediocre. It always stuck with me. Reminds me of people buying Likes.
This seems to be sleazy conmen faking interactions with women to convince wannabe pick-up artists to pay for their app. It's like some new circle of Hell.
Really the only trick they missed was turning it into a pyramid scheme but that might sneak in if you use the app a lot, although imagine the "success rate" on this is abysmal and a lot of users will drop out quickly.
The "thousands of people" watching your "stream" are bots. They can respond to what's going on in the video in real time because they're bots. Actually I technically think this would be more efficient and therefore is probably designed so that it's only one LLM pretending to be thousands of people, but I'll call it bots because that's easier to visualise. The bots know what's going on in the "stream" because they can understand what the "streamer" is saying, which means the pickup artist can put on a convincing performance to trick the mark. If it was just a recording, it wouldn't be able to respond to novel situations caused by the mark's behaviour.
I don't actually know if this technology even works, but that would be the intent used to sell it to pickup artist bros.
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