OnlyFans, Sugar Babies and the Boyfriend Sleeping Next to Sephora

Is OnlyFans a real job? Is influencing a career? Is a sugar baby a girlfriend or an employee? And when every young woman on your feed looks like a filter, what is it costing her to keep it up?Party's Over is back at the TCL Chinese Theater, a place built on ambition, image and people trying to make it, which made it the perfect room for this conversation. Attention has become a business model. People are making money from content, visibility, access and sometimes intimacy. Sandra Lena Silverman and Veida Horn ask what counts as work now, and why some ways of making money still make people so uncomfortable.They start with OnlyFans. Sandra points out that some women on the platform are only showing their feet or their hands. Veida agrees it is work, and says plainly that she does not agree with it. Go wait a table, she says. Go clean a toilet. Sandra gives her a harder case: a woman with two small kids, no childcare and no degree, who has to work from home. Isn't showing her feet better than the stripper pole, or a webcam? Veida says of course it is the lesser evil, but asking which is better is like asking whether you would rather do crack or heroin. She calls it the lazy way out and says her mind is not going to change. She also says she understands what drives somebody there and is not minimizing it.On influencing, they are on the same page. Veida calls it a full time job and a legitimate profession that is much harder than people realize, and says influencers take a lot of flak for putting themselves out there. Her worry is the audience. Influencers are the new Saturday morning commercials, and people buy something because they think the person loves it without understanding the person is being paid. Sandra reminds listeners that paid posts are supposed to say paid advertisement. Veida points out that on the smaller deals, sometimes they do not.Then sugar babies, who Veida calls workers disguised as non-workers. Sandra explains how it works, with girls advertising on Instagram, men sliding into their DMs and dedicated websites, and dinners that can pay around $1,000 whether or not anything else happens. Veida raises the part nobody talks about. When 20 year olds are dating 50 year old men, who are single women over 50 supposed to date? Sandra says that is exactly what is happening in her age group. Veida wants to know if the men are sending 1099s.Sandra shares a story from a friend in Miami who just rented an apartment to a 23 year old. The boyfriend pai