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The people in the DMs tend to be the whales, the top 0.1% of spenders that get you most of your income. That the "unwashed masses" that pay a subscription and leave some comments don't have a real relationship is clear, but once you are at DMs there is the expectation of at least real engagement with the creator.

Of course big creators have long outsourced this. You aren't writing with them but with someone entirely different who gets paid to answer messages. Using AI is just the next step in enshittification of something that's pretty exploitative to begin with.



One of the top models on OF has a single subscriber that's given her $4.7mm in donations.

just to put "whale" in perspective, here. We're not talking about a thousand or two.


What do you think the long tail of whales looks like? It must drop to 1000 USD pretty quick.




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