>As an aside, for as long as my fake escort page was up, I was getting text messages to the GV number from guys in this other state trying to set up dates. would run their phone numbers and find out who they were, it was amazing how much some of them stood to lose if they were caught.
It's incredible to see cops just openly bragging about abusing the access they have.
That screenshot was really high on the "weird dude power fantasy" scale. I find it very hard to believe that a cop could waste that much effort trying to burn a single prostitute.
Being a cop is a job, and at your job your boss is on your case about productivity and numbers. "I'm setting up a fake john in a different state to try to snare a single lady for prostitution" just does not move the needle enough to justify the effort
But as a "I hate whores and dream I was a cop with the power to mess with them" fantasy that screenshot works really well
It's not a "a job". As an institution police spend a lot of effort and resources to make sure that the stuff they do is perceived as a kind of calling and very special, which is important to foster loyalty between cops and helps them psychologically endure exposing vulnerable people to violence and incapacitation.
Legally they're in a protected category and 'above the law' in many ways. They get to break into other people's homes, dig through their stuff, spy on and hurt them. Commonly they're told that these actions are what keeps society from hurtling into barbarism.
Being told you are superior to others is not psychologically innocent.
They might be above the law, but nobody is above middle management. Even cops are subject to "you spent HOW much hours trying to burn one internet prostitute?"
They do that kind of thing all the time. The institution as such does not get money based on some performance metric or other, it's usually politicians wanting to look one way or another in the press that determine their budgets.
He explains she was in the Chief of Police's neighborhood with irate neighbors, so he clearly had leeway to expend all resources needed to get it done.
Most cops do not see their job like this, and mostly just want to get home at the end of the day. Yes, they probably have more than their fair share of weirdoes (in the same way most uniformed institutions disproportionately filled with young men tend to), but you know, mostly it's a job (though the US is weird).
It's not a job. Every cop is a weirdo, they looked for opportunities to exert dominance over other people and decided against becoming social workers, medical practitioners or somesuch. Instead they joined a paramilitary force in peace time.
> It's not a job. Every cop is a weirdo, they looked for opportunities to exert dominance over other people...
Stereotype much? Crime is actually a thing that happens. There are definitely cops that have the wrong attitude, but the function is necessary and warrant that kind of stereotyping especially if you want it to be better.
Like, here's a recipe for making policing worse: heap on so much steotyping and abuse onto the profession that you scare away all the people who aren't "look[ing] for opportunities to exert dominance over other people." Don't create a filter that only selects "bad apples."
I have trouble figuring out what argument you're making. My position is that every person who wants to be a cop has "the wrong attitude". It is a mid- to late modern phenomenon so the claim that it is necessary seems rather weak.
Who would avoid becoming a cop if I changed my rhetoric to yours? Do you believe that your "bad apples" would stop becoming cops if more people said that they "really like the cops"?
My point is you don't want cops with "the wrong attitude," so don't do things that exacerbate that, like wanton stereotyping.
> Who would avoid becoming a cop if I changed my rhetoric to yours? Do you believe that your "bad apples" would stop becoming cops if more people said that they "really like the cops"?
No, I believe: 1) Your "position ... that every person who wants to be a cop has 'the wrong attitude'" is wrong (it's got a strong smell of overgeneralization and black-and-white thinking). 2) The actions you're taking are (in a small way) encouraging and perpetuating the situation that neither of us want.
You and I want cops who are not "look[ing] for opportunities to exert dominance over other people," but that's exactly what you'll get if you create and spread the impression that policing is only a job for people who are "look[ing] for opportunities to exert dominance over other people." To actually fix the problem, you need to encourage other types of people to become cops. Like protests against police brutality should have a booth for protesters to sign up for the police academy.
There's too much counterproductive cathartic anger going on in this society, where people get mad and say and do things to just express that anger and actually make the problems they're angry about worse.
I don't want cops at all. These institutions typically grew out of violent strike-breaking, slave catching, headsmen and the like. They're shaped like a mafia but often better armed, having little to no democratic oversight.
Do you seriously think that cops spend more time being affected by their feelings regarding stereotypes than the structures and ideology of the institution? They're trained to not care what regular people think about them, because they have to learn this to able to execute violence against vulnerable and ill people.
I'd say there isn't enough anger. Contemporary states, like the US, UK and Germany, engage openly in genocide, neo-colonial endeavours and hybrid warfare against their own populations. This should reasonably cause a deep rage in any sane person.
> I don't want cops at all. These institutions typically grew out of violent strike-breaking, slave catching, headsmen and the like. They're shaped like a mafia but often better armed, having little to no democratic oversight.
Trump and MAGA thank you for helping them win elections.
I don't think the European cops are all that much better people, even if not as murderous.
Living in Paris a couple of years ago I used to regularly see cops street racing to a local restaurant for lunch with their sirens on. Their driving style was basically exactly what you'd expect street-racer kids in Eastern Europe.
That kind of casual abuse of power is very telling.
I live in northern Europe. It's not uncommon that our cops carry submachine guns and their cars are massive. Your generic middle eastern or african paramilitary would be rather jealous of their equipment.
I've rarely met a cop who didn't believe they were in a special profession, above most of the rest of us.
I know from prostitutes that cops routinely abuse them in many different ways. They use intimidation to coerce "freebies" (which is rape, plain and simple). They "befriend" them and become their "boyfriends", which is of course just a lie to get a side piece. When they arrest them, they sneer and insult them as "whores".
> It's incredible to see cops just openly bragging about abusing the access they have.
How is it abusing access? They setup an ad for prostitution, which I presume is illegal, and were getting contacted by people interested in committing a crime. It seems legitimate investigative activity to look up the numbers. Even if the johns were in another state, I suppose they could forward the information onto the police in that area.
I don't know who these "people" are, but it's logical that people who have a dislike for police would call them bastards, no matter if the police are bastards or not...
Which professions are similar on mileage here? I think Chappelle was spot on, when he used the book ‘The Story of My Life by Iceberg Slim’ to confront the entertainment industry highlighting a concept from the book regarding "mileage on a hoe" (prostitute). He explains that a pimp understands there is a finite amount of "bad things" or work a person can endure before they "lose it" or break down.
I'm not sure how to begin to describe the feeling of reading an analytical take on working as an escort. Weird.
Side note: Every single AMA/QA with a prostitute I've seen I've posted a question I'm anxious to know the answer to, but my question has consistently not received any reply. In essence; Every single job I've ever had has left me with a little bit of muscle memory - a key combination here, a routine there. When working as a prostitute, what are the small little things you're left with that might stay with you for quite a bit after your... career has moved on?
Alas, I suspect there's no easy answer to it, considering, well...
I'm not a prostitute, but I'd guess you'll develop muscle memory for the condoms. Sure, you can get better at sex too, but it's going to be difficult to put most of those lessons into words.
As a woman, you're likely to end up learning a lot of things about personal hygiene that'll stay with you.
Isn't making 1200$/h while being self employed the goal for HNers ? Isn't HN supposed to be open minded ?
This is the most HN post we saw ou there in a while.
As if boasting how code was improved at GAFAMs despite actually thought challenging social implications, reduced wages and layoffs was the only point of this board.
Thank you so much for reviewing flagged content and giving a second chance to this post
As a rare contributor to these sites, I often feel blunt and unbalanced when some old users just flag your work made with good intents so that it vanishes, without taking any time to even comment why, fix it, or think about prejudices for the platform (which it not just their bubble) and users.
My first new page on wikipedia was immediately marked for deletion as some random user who wouldn't bother message me, reference it on related articles or contribute just flagged it for being orphaned and bad. I won't bother creating pages anymore. (While OSM has forums to discuss things and is overly chill about learning to contribute on the actual map)
I will not complain that this happens often on HN as it does not. Most users are kind and curious. * Flags aren't overwhelmingly abused. *
However, this particular story is about sex workers who opened up, giving rare accounts that you won't find anywhere in a way that not only agrees to guidelines but looks like any popular story here.
Sex workers are often discriminated against in a lot of places. Flagging this story could warn that HN is public places and everyone isn't that safe or open minded.
Any actual discussion shouldn't be trapped in private Discord servers, this site should remain the place to challenge your technical, sociological and business related perspectives.
I hope this was already clear, but in case not: we don't have any problem with the OP and did turn off the flags on it. Same as the last time it was discussed:
Btw I do think that some of the flags may have been because of the "whorelord" bit in the title, which counts as linkbait in HN's sense (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). That's why we took it out.
dang, it's not like I don't understand what HN is trying to do (...on paper, at least). I know how it works (or, how you wanted it to work).
The problem is that there is a fundamental tension between an user-controlled ranking system and an editorial board.
And make no mistake, the mod team + few (trusted) people that flag stories constitute an editorial board.
I would be very happy if HN would plastered somewhere, really visible, the fact the content is editorialized and, while the upvotes matter, they're not the whole story. Not that I can see that happening, I can imagine the shitstorm coming from the wider (more naive) audience.
In the end, as the audience grows, it will become harder and harder to reconcile this two systems. People will grow angrier and angrier as they are unable to discuss the things they want to discuss. Not that they can leave, everywhere else is shit. And so, the grumbling will continue, and the huge war-chest of good you amassed these past years will slowly go down until there's nothing left.
High-end SW who advertise often give prices of $500-$800/hr; like any "luxury service", there are undoubtedly those who amplify their desirability by not advertising and charging even more.
But $10,000 for 15 minutes is a pretty outlandish scenario. It might have played out somewhere in history, sure.
I wouldn't be surprised if they interacted with a Saudi prince or something who threw $10k at them for 15 minutes as a power play, but that's likely a one-off kind of thing
Why wouldn't she? That's hardly crazy for any bigger city, and she's got a massive online following.
Even if she looks a bit more plain than the average girl charging that much, there's a plenty of customers who want just that and her platform is massive.
GP seems to live in a small European city with a pretty small market for this stuff. I seriously doubt there are any Zurich-based escorts earning $1200 hour.
In London anything between 200 and 1000GBP per hour is completely ordinary, there will not even necessarily be a strong correlation between pricing and the quality of service. It is not super unusual to see people charging more than 1000GBP/h either.
There's a huge discovery problem in the prostitution market, it's really hard for a customer to differentiate between providers without actually visiting them. In many places it's hard to find useful reviews, so you're stuck choosing a provider based on heavily photoshopped photos and hoping for the best. Charging more is probably a good strategy to differentiate yourself.
After I learned about her childhood, a lot of her most odious writing online, particularly coming up with poll after poll about hypotheticals in which it might be ok for an adult to have sex with a child [1] [2] [3], made much more sense. She is still dealing with the trauma, trying to bargain with it (the polls on Twitter), trying to gain control over it (much of her personal sexual expression involves simulating what happened again in a controlled setting), and completely in denial about it which means that she's causing harm to people who read these kinds of discussions and don't know this, whether she understands it or not.
You don't think that being molested by your grandfather might have something to do with replaying that molestation obsessively throughout your life, and trying to come up with hypotheticals in which it can actually be ok?
I'm just operating at the preponderance of evidence level here, and it seems far more likely to be to case that extreme childhood sexual caused the extreme sexual deviation. Do your P(A|B) work here, it's not hard, given the small probability of both of those things.
Even if you're correct that her being abused in her childhood is related to her choice of career, what do you think you're adding to the conversation by bringing that up?
What are you actually trying to do here besides shame her for having been abused as a child? That's really the only takeaway from your comment here, that people shouldn't read her writing about prostitution as a business because she was abused as a child. That seems particularly nasty on your part, even if unintentional.
>Warn others that she is dangerous and shouldn't be taken seriously.
Is this post dangerous? You certainly didn't refer to any particular dangerous content, just shouting about a couple of weird tweets doesn't seem very useful.
I really don't get it, unless you're specifically upset by her quite reasonable post about AI generated child pornography, but that'd be weird.
> However, the science is that childhood sexual abuse is an antecedent to prostitution.
Even if a causal relationship has been proven, that doesn't mean any correlation implies causation.
It's a bog-standard guide to escorting, similar to how some people post how-to:s on LinkedIn or corporate blogs.
You can find hundreds or thousands of these floating around, commonly among ex-escorts who are trying to pursue some adjacent but less corporeal career.
I'm sure some of these are written by more sensible people.
>Even if a causal relationship has been proven, that doesn't mean any correlation implies causation.
This is HN, not a psychology conference or a therapy session. Feel free to accept or reject my level of epistemological rigor. I just know my priors, and honestly I don't see the value in continuing this conversation if you don't (or pretend you don't). If a lifetime alcoholic died of liver failure, it's entirely possible that he got hepatitis, but I'm going to go ahead and say it was the alcohol and treat any quibbling about causation and correlation as an irrelevant diversion.
Regardless of whether or not your assessment of her internal mental state is true (and I think this is a very hard thing to be sure you're assessing correctly), I don't think that anyone is harmed in any meaningful way by reading her discussions about hypothetical sexual situations, even if you personally find them distasteful.
>I don't think that anyone is harmed in any meaningful way by reading her discussions about hypothetical sexual situations
She advocates for the value of AI generated CSAM, and her hypotheticals are attempts at deluded rationalization, the rationalization of could easily sway the actions of others. When I read her rationalizations and hypothetical moral scenarios, I am just reminded of the arguments from the New Left, including many of the voices of the French petition to remove the age of consent, that offered specious sophistry to not just sway others into allowing them to prey on children, but to encourage others with similar predilections to do so without moral qualms.
A good specific example was the placing of orphans in the homes of known sex offenders in East Germany, with the rationalization that it's better than the orphans endure a bit of sexual impropriety than to suffer negligence, which is a very Aella style argument.
You think Aella lived in East Germany? Obviously I was giving an example of a different situation in which her kind of specious moral reasoning resulted in the enablement of child sexual abuse.
If you cannot see the shared characteristics of the two cases, then I really have nothing to say to you. It would be impossible to sufficiently simplify the analogy.
In the future, if you don't understand, ask for clarification rather than wasting my time with a disingenuous question that requires a full comment round trip to get past.
> She advocates for the value of AI generated CSAM, and her hypotheticals are attempts at deluded rationalization, the rationalization of could easily sway the actions of others.
You have no idea how many men are going to find this and be emboldened by it. Men seek permission from women when it comes to pushing sexual boundaries.
I don't care what her mental state is. She needs to be banned from the Internet.
Ignoring that I think spending money on prostitutes is unethical as labor is coerced (either work or starve), meaning that sexual labor is sex obtained through coercion (there is a terser name for this), the things Aella likes to defend include things like AI generated CSAM, as well as trying to push the boundaries on what might be considered ethical ways to engage sexually with children. I have said it elsewhere, but this kind of specious moral pondering was employed extensively by groups like NAMBLA and others in the 20th century to provide moral cover for themselves.
> meaning that sexual labor is sex obtained through coercion (there is a terser name for this)
In a world where all labor is slave labor, rape presumably isn't particularly frowned upon. If I'm going to accept your premise that basically everything I have in life is obtained through coercion, why would I object to obtaining sex that way?
> the things Aella likes to defend include things like AI generated CSAM, as well as trying to push the boundaries on what might be considered ethical ways to engage sexually with children
One of these is not like the other. People advocating for AI generated child pornography are generally doing so as a means of reducing the frequency of people actually having sex with children.
"AI generated CSAM" is an oxymoron FWIW, it's impossible to sexually abuse a child which does not exist.
The problem with your argument is that you could have made the exact opposite argument in reverse as well, e.g. saying that all work is sex work, since the only goal of work is to reproduce.
The coercion framework is useless, because you don't actually care about coercion at all. If there is a parallel world without coercion but prostitution, you would probably still argue that prostitution is coercive.
This is because your argument fundamentally rests on the idea that you can just pick whatever situation has the fitting "moral consequence" and ascribe it to the thing you don't like to hide your own subjective opinion under the pretense of objectivity.
What reality tells us is that prostitutes don't need help getting their profession banned. They need help with switching careers and since society is built on musical chair economics, there aren't enough chairs to for them to sit on.
>If there is a parallel world without coercion but prostitution, you would probably still argue that prostitution is coercive.
If no one needed to work to survive and live a dignified life, then I would not think seeing a prostitute was an act of rape, yes, but I would expect a dramatic drop in people who choose to have sex with random strangers in exchange for resources without those motivating needs.
>This is because your argument fundamentally rests on the idea that you can just pick whatever situation has the fitting "moral consequence" and ascribe it to the thing you don't like to hide your own subjective opinion under the pretense of objectivity.
Aww, you've discovered the is-ought problem. Spoiler: Every moral judgment has this problem.
>They need help with switching careers and since society is built on musical chair economics, there aren't enough chairs to for them to sit on.
I guarantee that in developed countries, there are enough chairs. The main obstacles are mental illness (often as a result of childhood trauma) and substance abuse stopping them from engaging in the economy legally. Instead, they end up joining the lumpenproles, just like men in similar situations turn to various petty crimes.
>If no one needed to work to survive and live a dignified life, then I would not think seeing a prostitute was an act of rape, yes, but I would expect a dramatic drop in people who choose to have sex with random strangers in exchange for resources without those motivating needs.
If a prostitute is charging $1000 per hour, are they only being raped for the first couple of hours in a month?
No. They are being raped for the entirety of it. They need to not just make ends meet, but ensure they'll be able to survive the rest of their life when the prime earning years are past.
Even when they're spending most of their income on luxury holidays, designer bags, clothes and shoes? In my experience that better reflects the typical lifestyle of an higher-end escort.
Someone who's good can relatively easily manage a 20 year career at well above $500k/pa, it's really not that unattractive gig. A big chunk of that will also tend to go unreported and remain tax-free.
I don't believe for a second that any high-end escorts are doing the job to "survive", those girls will be charging far less.
This is an awful lot of very puritanical armchair psychiatry from a random man on the internet. She's doing something she finds interesting, in a surprisingly data driven way, and seemingly not harming anyone, you can put the pitchfork and handmaid's tale fantasies away.
If you think posting sporadic 4 choice polls about sex to a population consisting of gooners following a porn actress and prostitute on Twitter constitutes "data driven", then I can see how you would find Aella to be an intellectually engaging person.
Yes that constitutes being data driven, why wouldn't it? It's tautological that if a person who works as a porn actress and prostitution puts out polls on Twitter, the population of people who answer those polls will consist of people who follow a porn actress and prostitute on Twitter, but why does that affect the quality of the data? How can you evaluate whether someone counts as a "gooner" or not based on whether they follow a specific person on Twitter or answer a poll about sex?
If I poll only insurance company executives on whether the country should do away with private insurance and switch to universal healthcare, I haven't really done anything "data driven", have I? Taking a fat shit in my toilet "generates data", but I wouldn't call that visit to my bathroom "data driven", would I? Collecting sex poll responses from people who follow porn stars who specialize in rape and similar fantasy porn does not collect any data except what extreme porn consumers think about sexuality, which is of little use to making generalizations.
>How can you evaluate whether someone counts as a "gooner" or not based on whether they follow a specific person on Twitter or answer a poll about sex?
Following porn stars is absolutely gooner behavior, so yes, it makes a person a gooner.
Thought that this Aella at first, too bad that this is indeed her. Pretty sad and bleak story, hope her life will become better and more fulfilled, I genuinely do.
Damn, that's a damning screenshot from the cop forum https://i0.wp.com/knowingless.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10...
>As an aside, for as long as my fake escort page was up, I was getting text messages to the GV number from guys in this other state trying to set up dates. would run their phone numbers and find out who they were, it was amazing how much some of them stood to lose if they were caught.
It's incredible to see cops just openly bragging about abusing the access they have.
That screenshot was really high on the "weird dude power fantasy" scale. I find it very hard to believe that a cop could waste that much effort trying to burn a single prostitute.
Being a cop is a job, and at your job your boss is on your case about productivity and numbers. "I'm setting up a fake john in a different state to try to snare a single lady for prostitution" just does not move the needle enough to justify the effort
But as a "I hate whores and dream I was a cop with the power to mess with them" fantasy that screenshot works really well
That forum post was made by George Erdel of the Beaufort Police Department, an actual cop.
Also, an actual predator and power abuser.
It's not a "a job". As an institution police spend a lot of effort and resources to make sure that the stuff they do is perceived as a kind of calling and very special, which is important to foster loyalty between cops and helps them psychologically endure exposing vulnerable people to violence and incapacitation.
Legally they're in a protected category and 'above the law' in many ways. They get to break into other people's homes, dig through their stuff, spy on and hurt them. Commonly they're told that these actions are what keeps society from hurtling into barbarism.
Being told you are superior to others is not psychologically innocent.
They might be above the law, but nobody is above middle management. Even cops are subject to "you spent HOW much hours trying to burn one internet prostitute?"
They do that kind of thing all the time. The institution as such does not get money based on some performance metric or other, it's usually politicians wanting to look one way or another in the press that determine their budgets.
He explains she was in the Chief of Police's neighborhood with irate neighbors, so he clearly had leeway to expend all resources needed to get it done.
How very convenient for the story
Most cops do not see their job like this, and mostly just want to get home at the end of the day. Yes, they probably have more than their fair share of weirdoes (in the same way most uniformed institutions disproportionately filled with young men tend to), but you know, mostly it's a job (though the US is weird).
It's not a job. Every cop is a weirdo, they looked for opportunities to exert dominance over other people and decided against becoming social workers, medical practitioners or somesuch. Instead they joined a paramilitary force in peace time.
> It's not a job. Every cop is a weirdo, they looked for opportunities to exert dominance over other people...
Stereotype much? Crime is actually a thing that happens. There are definitely cops that have the wrong attitude, but the function is necessary and warrant that kind of stereotyping especially if you want it to be better.
Like, here's a recipe for making policing worse: heap on so much steotyping and abuse onto the profession that you scare away all the people who aren't "look[ing] for opportunities to exert dominance over other people." Don't create a filter that only selects "bad apples."
I have trouble figuring out what argument you're making. My position is that every person who wants to be a cop has "the wrong attitude". It is a mid- to late modern phenomenon so the claim that it is necessary seems rather weak.
Who would avoid becoming a cop if I changed my rhetoric to yours? Do you believe that your "bad apples" would stop becoming cops if more people said that they "really like the cops"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX_EHeCbMqc
My point is you don't want cops with "the wrong attitude," so don't do things that exacerbate that, like wanton stereotyping.
> Who would avoid becoming a cop if I changed my rhetoric to yours? Do you believe that your "bad apples" would stop becoming cops if more people said that they "really like the cops"?
No, I believe: 1) Your "position ... that every person who wants to be a cop has 'the wrong attitude'" is wrong (it's got a strong smell of overgeneralization and black-and-white thinking). 2) The actions you're taking are (in a small way) encouraging and perpetuating the situation that neither of us want.
You and I want cops who are not "look[ing] for opportunities to exert dominance over other people," but that's exactly what you'll get if you create and spread the impression that policing is only a job for people who are "look[ing] for opportunities to exert dominance over other people." To actually fix the problem, you need to encourage other types of people to become cops. Like protests against police brutality should have a booth for protesters to sign up for the police academy.
There's too much counterproductive cathartic anger going on in this society, where people get mad and say and do things to just express that anger and actually make the problems they're angry about worse.
I don't want cops at all. These institutions typically grew out of violent strike-breaking, slave catching, headsmen and the like. They're shaped like a mafia but often better armed, having little to no democratic oversight.
Do you seriously think that cops spend more time being affected by their feelings regarding stereotypes than the structures and ideology of the institution? They're trained to not care what regular people think about them, because they have to learn this to able to execute violence against vulnerable and ill people.
I'd say there isn't enough anger. Contemporary states, like the US, UK and Germany, engage openly in genocide, neo-colonial endeavours and hybrid warfare against their own populations. This should reasonably cause a deep rage in any sane person.
> I don't want cops at all. These institutions typically grew out of violent strike-breaking, slave catching, headsmen and the like. They're shaped like a mafia but often better armed, having little to no democratic oversight.
Trump and MAGA thank you for helping them win elections.
It's not like the other faction in the US one-party system is much better.
God, why do americans assume everywhere is like their weird place. Most countries designed their police to very specifically be civilian.
I don't think the European cops are all that much better people, even if not as murderous.
Living in Paris a couple of years ago I used to regularly see cops street racing to a local restaurant for lunch with their sirens on. Their driving style was basically exactly what you'd expect street-racer kids in Eastern Europe.
That kind of casual abuse of power is very telling.
I live in northern Europe. It's not uncommon that our cops carry submachine guns and their cars are massive. Your generic middle eastern or african paramilitary would be rather jealous of their equipment.
Where!?
Sweden.
I've rarely met a cop who didn't believe they were in a special profession, above most of the rest of us.
I know from prostitutes that cops routinely abuse them in many different ways. They use intimidation to coerce "freebies" (which is rape, plain and simple). They "befriend" them and become their "boyfriends", which is of course just a lie to get a side piece. When they arrest them, they sneer and insult them as "whores".
What does BP mean, in the context of the screenshot?
BP stands for Backpage, a now defunct online classifieds site, which was utilized by sex workers of all kinds in its heyday.
backpage.com
> It's incredible to see cops just openly bragging about abusing the access they have.
How is it abusing access? They setup an ad for prostitution, which I presume is illegal, and were getting contacted by people interested in committing a crime. It seems legitimate investigative activity to look up the numbers. Even if the johns were in another state, I suppose they could forward the information onto the police in that area.
This is happening in a different state, there's no possible legitimate interest as to who those numbers belong to.
>I suppose they could forward the information onto the police in that area.
Sure, but there's absolutely no reason for them to be looking up those numbers before handing them over.
[flagged]
I don't know who these "people" are, but it's logical that people who have a dislike for police would call them bastards, no matter if the police are bastards or not...
Yeah, but you don't see anyone saying all EMTs are bastards.
Which professions are similar on mileage here? I think Chappelle was spot on, when he used the book ‘The Story of My Life by Iceberg Slim’ to confront the entertainment industry highlighting a concept from the book regarding "mileage on a hoe" (prostitute). He explains that a pimp understands there is a finite amount of "bad things" or work a person can endure before they "lose it" or break down.
I'm not sure how to begin to describe the feeling of reading an analytical take on working as an escort. Weird.
Side note: Every single AMA/QA with a prostitute I've seen I've posted a question I'm anxious to know the answer to, but my question has consistently not received any reply. In essence; Every single job I've ever had has left me with a little bit of muscle memory - a key combination here, a routine there. When working as a prostitute, what are the small little things you're left with that might stay with you for quite a bit after your... career has moved on?
Alas, I suspect there's no easy answer to it, considering, well...
I'm not a prostitute, but I'd guess you'll develop muscle memory for the condoms. Sure, you can get better at sex too, but it's going to be difficult to put most of those lessons into words.
As a woman, you're likely to end up learning a lot of things about personal hygiene that'll stay with you.
Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28924751
I know we are currently very early in the comment section, but I cant help compare and notice the shift in tone and response.
bots exist to poison discourse, and they work here too
2021
Why was this flagged ?
Isn't making 1200$/h while being self employed the goal for HNers ? Isn't HN supposed to be open minded ?
This is the most HN post we saw ou there in a while.
As if boasting how code was improved at GAFAMs despite actually thought challenging social implications, reduced wages and layoffs was the only point of this board.
It's obvious the flagging system is not working anymore, and still the mods are not doing anything
I addressed this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46378818, albeit more in the context of political stories—but I think the same point applies here too.
If you wouldn't mind reading that and letting me know if you still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be interested in hearing what it is.
Thank you so much for reviewing flagged content and giving a second chance to this post
As a rare contributor to these sites, I often feel blunt and unbalanced when some old users just flag your work made with good intents so that it vanishes, without taking any time to even comment why, fix it, or think about prejudices for the platform (which it not just their bubble) and users.
My first new page on wikipedia was immediately marked for deletion as some random user who wouldn't bother message me, reference it on related articles or contribute just flagged it for being orphaned and bad. I won't bother creating pages anymore. (While OSM has forums to discuss things and is overly chill about learning to contribute on the actual map)
I will not complain that this happens often on HN as it does not. Most users are kind and curious. * Flags aren't overwhelmingly abused. *
However, this particular story is about sex workers who opened up, giving rare accounts that you won't find anywhere in a way that not only agrees to guidelines but looks like any popular story here. Sex workers are often discriminated against in a lot of places. Flagging this story could warn that HN is public places and everyone isn't that safe or open minded.
Any actual discussion shouldn't be trapped in private Discord servers, this site should remain the place to challenge your technical, sociological and business related perspectives.
I hope this was already clear, but in case not: we don't have any problem with the OP and did turn off the flags on it. Same as the last time it was discussed:
Overly analytical guide to escorting - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28924751 - Oct 2021 (440 comments)
Btw I do think that some of the flags may have been because of the "whorelord" bit in the title, which counts as linkbait in HN's sense (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). That's why we took it out.
dang, it's not like I don't understand what HN is trying to do (...on paper, at least). I know how it works (or, how you wanted it to work).
The problem is that there is a fundamental tension between an user-controlled ranking system and an editorial board.
And make no mistake, the mod team + few (trusted) people that flag stories constitute an editorial board.
I would be very happy if HN would plastered somewhere, really visible, the fact the content is editorialized and, while the upvotes matter, they're not the whole story. Not that I can see that happening, I can imagine the shitstorm coming from the wider (more naive) audience.
In the end, as the audience grows, it will become harder and harder to reconcile this two systems. People will grow angrier and angrier as they are unable to discuss the things they want to discuss. Not that they can leave, everywhere else is shit. And so, the grumbling will continue, and the huge war-chest of good you amassed these past years will slowly go down until there's nothing left.
HN is pretty prudeish, which makes sense considering it's an American business forum.
She's not making $1200/hr. Total b.s.
Sounds normal to me... see Eliot Spitzer [0]:
> $4,300 is not an altogether alarming sum of money in the high-end sex market
> In New York, it’s not hard to find sex workers who charge $10,000 per “session,” which can last for 15 minutes or two hours.
[0] https://slate.com/business/2008/03/did-eliot-spitzer-get-cau...
"Can" is doing the lifting here.
High-end SW who advertise often give prices of $500-$800/hr; like any "luxury service", there are undoubtedly those who amplify their desirability by not advertising and charging even more.
But $10,000 for 15 minutes is a pretty outlandish scenario. It might have played out somewhere in history, sure.
I wouldn't be surprised if they interacted with a Saudi prince or something who threw $10k at them for 15 minutes as a power play, but that's likely a one-off kind of thing
Why wouldn't she? That's hardly crazy for any bigger city, and she's got a massive online following.
Even if she looks a bit more plain than the average girl charging that much, there's a plenty of customers who want just that and her platform is massive.
I know literally nothing about the financial aspects of the industry.
Can you expand the on that?
GP seems to live in a small European city with a pretty small market for this stuff. I seriously doubt there are any Zurich-based escorts earning $1200 hour.
In London anything between 200 and 1000GBP per hour is completely ordinary, there will not even necessarily be a strong correlation between pricing and the quality of service. It is not super unusual to see people charging more than 1000GBP/h either.
There's a huge discovery problem in the prostitution market, it's really hard for a customer to differentiate between providers without actually visiting them. In many places it's hard to find useful reviews, so you're stuck choosing a provider based on heavily photoshopped photos and hoping for the best. Charging more is probably a good strategy to differentiate yourself.
Per literal hour of work, not the average rate of a 40 hour work week.
After I learned about her childhood, a lot of her most odious writing online, particularly coming up with poll after poll about hypotheticals in which it might be ok for an adult to have sex with a child [1] [2] [3], made much more sense. She is still dealing with the trauma, trying to bargain with it (the polls on Twitter), trying to gain control over it (much of her personal sexual expression involves simulating what happened again in a controlled setting), and completely in denial about it which means that she's causing harm to people who read these kinds of discussions and don't know this, whether she understands it or not.
Best to just avoid her altogether online.
1: https://x.com/Aella_Girl/status/1643703433516441602
2: https://x.com/Aella_Girl/status/1721238228458430785
3: https://substack.com/home/post/p-161405272
Yeah, the polls are weird, but I'm not sure your armchair psychologists interpretation of her life is any less weird.
You don't think that being molested by your grandfather might have something to do with replaying that molestation obsessively throughout your life, and trying to come up with hypotheticals in which it can actually be ok?
I'm just operating at the preponderance of evidence level here, and it seems far more likely to be to case that extreme childhood sexual caused the extreme sexual deviation. Do your P(A|B) work here, it's not hard, given the small probability of both of those things.
Even if you're correct that her being abused in her childhood is related to her choice of career, what do you think you're adding to the conversation by bringing that up?
What are you actually trying to do here besides shame her for having been abused as a child? That's really the only takeaway from your comment here, that people shouldn't read her writing about prostitution as a business because she was abused as a child. That seems particularly nasty on your part, even if unintentional.
>related to her choice of career
Didn't imply this. However, the science is that childhood sexual abuse is an antecedent to prostitution.
>What are you actually trying to do here besides shame her for having been abused as a child?
Warn others that she is dangerous and shouldn't be taken seriously.
>Warn others that she is dangerous and shouldn't be taken seriously.
Is this post dangerous? You certainly didn't refer to any particular dangerous content, just shouting about a couple of weird tweets doesn't seem very useful.
I really don't get it, unless you're specifically upset by her quite reasonable post about AI generated child pornography, but that'd be weird.
> However, the science is that childhood sexual abuse is an antecedent to prostitution.
Even if a causal relationship has been proven, that doesn't mean any correlation implies causation.
It's a bog-standard guide to escorting, similar to how some people post how-to:s on LinkedIn or corporate blogs.
You can find hundreds or thousands of these floating around, commonly among ex-escorts who are trying to pursue some adjacent but less corporeal career.
I'm sure some of these are written by more sensible people.
>Even if a causal relationship has been proven, that doesn't mean any correlation implies causation.
This is HN, not a psychology conference or a therapy session. Feel free to accept or reject my level of epistemological rigor. I just know my priors, and honestly I don't see the value in continuing this conversation if you don't (or pretend you don't). If a lifetime alcoholic died of liver failure, it's entirely possible that he got hepatitis, but I'm going to go ahead and say it was the alcohol and treat any quibbling about causation and correlation as an irrelevant diversion.
Even if you were correct, none of that really seems relevant wrt the actual content of this blog post.
Regardless of whether or not your assessment of her internal mental state is true (and I think this is a very hard thing to be sure you're assessing correctly), I don't think that anyone is harmed in any meaningful way by reading her discussions about hypothetical sexual situations, even if you personally find them distasteful.
>I don't think that anyone is harmed in any meaningful way by reading her discussions about hypothetical sexual situations
She advocates for the value of AI generated CSAM, and her hypotheticals are attempts at deluded rationalization, the rationalization of could easily sway the actions of others. When I read her rationalizations and hypothetical moral scenarios, I am just reminded of the arguments from the New Left, including many of the voices of the French petition to remove the age of consent, that offered specious sophistry to not just sway others into allowing them to prey on children, but to encourage others with similar predilections to do so without moral qualms.
A good specific example was the placing of orphans in the homes of known sex offenders in East Germany, with the rationalization that it's better than the orphans endure a bit of sexual impropriety than to suffer negligence, which is a very Aella style argument.
Can you link to the tweet / blog post in which Aella advocated for the actual placement of real children with known sex offenders?
You think Aella lived in East Germany? Obviously I was giving an example of a different situation in which her kind of specious moral reasoning resulted in the enablement of child sexual abuse.
Obviously I didn't think Aella lives in East Germany for a single moment.
I was interested in your reasoning as you appeared to be off on a tangent making what is known as a strawman argument.
If you cannot see the shared characteristics of the two cases, then I really have nothing to say to you. It would be impossible to sufficiently simplify the analogy.
In the future, if you don't understand, ask for clarification rather than wasting my time with a disingenuous question that requires a full comment round trip to get past.
> She advocates for the value of AI generated CSAM, and her hypotheticals are attempts at deluded rationalization, the rationalization of could easily sway the actions of others.
Why specifically is her argument wrong?
You have no idea how many men are going to find this and be emboldened by it. Men seek permission from women when it comes to pushing sexual boundaries.
I don't care what her mental state is. She needs to be banned from the Internet.
Emboldened to ... spend money on prostitutes?
Ignoring that I think spending money on prostitutes is unethical as labor is coerced (either work or starve), meaning that sexual labor is sex obtained through coercion (there is a terser name for this), the things Aella likes to defend include things like AI generated CSAM, as well as trying to push the boundaries on what might be considered ethical ways to engage sexually with children. I have said it elsewhere, but this kind of specious moral pondering was employed extensively by groups like NAMBLA and others in the 20th century to provide moral cover for themselves.
> meaning that sexual labor is sex obtained through coercion (there is a terser name for this)
In a world where all labor is slave labor, rape presumably isn't particularly frowned upon. If I'm going to accept your premise that basically everything I have in life is obtained through coercion, why would I object to obtaining sex that way?
> the things Aella likes to defend include things like AI generated CSAM, as well as trying to push the boundaries on what might be considered ethical ways to engage sexually with children
One of these is not like the other. People advocating for AI generated child pornography are generally doing so as a means of reducing the frequency of people actually having sex with children.
"AI generated CSAM" is an oxymoron FWIW, it's impossible to sexually abuse a child which does not exist.
This doesn't work. It instead creates normalization of the content and causes people with these fixations to obsess.
I'm not that deeply familiar on the topic, do you have any research to share on this?
'"AI generated CSAM" is an oxymoron FWIW, it's impossible to sexually abuse a child which does not exist.'
Would you agree that fictional stories about how blacks want to and commit rape and murder are fine?
Is it OK to 'grok' out simulated undressings of small children because the image technically no longer depict them and instead are fantasy?
>Would you agree that fictional stories about how blacks want to and commit rape and murder are fine?
"Fine" in what sense?
>Is it OK to 'grok' out simulated undressings of small children because the image technically no longer depict them and instead are fantasy?
Why would it not be OK? There is nobody being harmed.
Pick some sense you're comfortable with.
If I sneak a nude photo of you and use some "AI" to add a funny hat and then spread it, would you be OK with that?
>If I sneak a nude photo of you and use some "AI" to add a funny hat and then spread it, would you be OK with that?
How is this even vaguely related? I'm a real person, but we're presumably discussing people who do not exist.
And kids aren't?
No? That's the whole point.
The people advocating for AI generated child pornography are generally not advocating for AI generated child pornography portraying real children.
The problem with your argument is that you could have made the exact opposite argument in reverse as well, e.g. saying that all work is sex work, since the only goal of work is to reproduce.
The coercion framework is useless, because you don't actually care about coercion at all. If there is a parallel world without coercion but prostitution, you would probably still argue that prostitution is coercive.
This is because your argument fundamentally rests on the idea that you can just pick whatever situation has the fitting "moral consequence" and ascribe it to the thing you don't like to hide your own subjective opinion under the pretense of objectivity.
What reality tells us is that prostitutes don't need help getting their profession banned. They need help with switching careers and since society is built on musical chair economics, there aren't enough chairs to for them to sit on.
>If there is a parallel world without coercion but prostitution, you would probably still argue that prostitution is coercive.
If no one needed to work to survive and live a dignified life, then I would not think seeing a prostitute was an act of rape, yes, but I would expect a dramatic drop in people who choose to have sex with random strangers in exchange for resources without those motivating needs.
>This is because your argument fundamentally rests on the idea that you can just pick whatever situation has the fitting "moral consequence" and ascribe it to the thing you don't like to hide your own subjective opinion under the pretense of objectivity.
Aww, you've discovered the is-ought problem. Spoiler: Every moral judgment has this problem.
>They need help with switching careers and since society is built on musical chair economics, there aren't enough chairs to for them to sit on.
I guarantee that in developed countries, there are enough chairs. The main obstacles are mental illness (often as a result of childhood trauma) and substance abuse stopping them from engaging in the economy legally. Instead, they end up joining the lumpenproles, just like men in similar situations turn to various petty crimes.
>If no one needed to work to survive and live a dignified life, then I would not think seeing a prostitute was an act of rape, yes, but I would expect a dramatic drop in people who choose to have sex with random strangers in exchange for resources without those motivating needs.
If a prostitute is charging $1000 per hour, are they only being raped for the first couple of hours in a month?
No. They are being raped for the entirety of it. They need to not just make ends meet, but ensure they'll be able to survive the rest of their life when the prime earning years are past.
Even when they're spending most of their income on luxury holidays, designer bags, clothes and shoes? In my experience that better reflects the typical lifestyle of an higher-end escort.
Someone who's good can relatively easily manage a 20 year career at well above $500k/pa, it's really not that unattractive gig. A big chunk of that will also tend to go unreported and remain tax-free.
I don't believe for a second that any high-end escorts are doing the job to "survive", those girls will be charging far less.
This is an awful lot of very puritanical armchair psychiatry from a random man on the internet. She's doing something she finds interesting, in a surprisingly data driven way, and seemingly not harming anyone, you can put the pitchfork and handmaid's tale fantasies away.
>in a surprisingly data driven way
If you think posting sporadic 4 choice polls about sex to a population consisting of gooners following a porn actress and prostitute on Twitter constitutes "data driven", then I can see how you would find Aella to be an intellectually engaging person.
Yes that constitutes being data driven, why wouldn't it? It's tautological that if a person who works as a porn actress and prostitution puts out polls on Twitter, the population of people who answer those polls will consist of people who follow a porn actress and prostitute on Twitter, but why does that affect the quality of the data? How can you evaluate whether someone counts as a "gooner" or not based on whether they follow a specific person on Twitter or answer a poll about sex?
>but why does that affect the quality of the data
If I poll only insurance company executives on whether the country should do away with private insurance and switch to universal healthcare, I haven't really done anything "data driven", have I? Taking a fat shit in my toilet "generates data", but I wouldn't call that visit to my bathroom "data driven", would I? Collecting sex poll responses from people who follow porn stars who specialize in rape and similar fantasy porn does not collect any data except what extreme porn consumers think about sexuality, which is of little use to making generalizations.
>How can you evaluate whether someone counts as a "gooner" or not based on whether they follow a specific person on Twitter or answer a poll about sex?
Following porn stars is absolutely gooner behavior, so yes, it makes a person a gooner.
The 4-choice polls are not the "data driven" bit — she has run several much larger questionnaires that have had hundreds of thousands of responses.
I follow Aella on Twitter because I find her interesting. Not a gooner.
Finding Aella insightful is like finding Lex Fridman insightful or something similar. Being a midwit is as embarrassing as being a gooner.
Thought that this Aella at first, too bad that this is indeed her. Pretty sad and bleak story, hope her life will become better and more fulfilled, I genuinely do.