Ask A Genius 1329: OnlyFans, Digital Porn, and AI Entertainment Are Replacing Real-Life Intimacy

Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/04/01

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Here’s the question: Can the decline of Hooters be correlated with the rise of OnlyFans?

Rick Rosner: Yes, to some extent. It’s increasingly challenging, awkward, and less emotionally stimulating for many people to seek sexual or romantic attention from others in person, compared to the instant gratification of consuming digital content—particularly pornography. In recent years, Hooters has experienced a decline in its number of locations, with multiple reports confirming closures across the United States. While the company has not declared bankruptcy, it has downsized significantly.

At Hooters, the appeal traditionally combined food, sports, and flirtatious service from women in revealing uniforms. While not overtly sexual like a strip club, the environment was designed to be suggestively playful. These interactions, however, can be emotionally taxing for men who are socially anxious or inexperienced. Many sense that friendliness is performative and part of the job rather than genuine interest.

In earlier generations, many men would overcome social discomfort and fear of rejection to form romantic relationships. That social risk-taking was part of the courtship norm. Today, however, there is a noticeable increase in the number of men who remain single, particularly younger men. Multiple studies have shown declining relationship and sexual activity rates among men aged 18–30.

A variety of reasons contribute to this shift: The easy availability of online pornography, including platforms like OnlyFans, allows creators—mostly women—to post adult content directly to paying subscribers. As of 2023, OnlyFans had over 3 million content creators worldwide, a substantial number based in the United States.

Abundant digital entertainment options make staying home more appealing than going out to meet people. The rising costs of dating and relationships and economic challenges have grown wealth inequality, with older generations holding a large majority of private wealth. In many cases, the gig economy or part-time work has often replaced the erosion of stable, middle-class jobs. Hyper-exposure to highly curated images of attractiveness in media and social media creates distorted expectations and reduces willingness to “settle” in real life.

Reality TV, dating apps, and influencer culture reflect and exacerbate this trend: people become pickier, sometimes unrealistically, because they are saturated with visual access to idealized partners.

A century ago, the average distance between marriage partners was under a few miles, as people largely married those in their immediate social or geographic circles. Now, dating is global, options are seemingly endless, and paradoxically, this abundance can make commitment harder.

The result? Many people choose sexual gratification via online means over real-world interaction. Real-world relationships require emotional labour: saying the right things, being interesting, being kind, and tolerating quirks. That’s effort—and many people are increasingly reluctant to invest that effort, especially if there is a less vulnerable alternative.

So yes, the rise of platforms like OnlyFans—along with broader technological, economic, and cultural changes—has contributed to a decline in the appeal of real-life social spaces like Hooters, where the fantasy of flirtation used to be a main draw.

What about you?

Jacobsen: As for me? I’m a neutral party. I’m not pushing an agenda here—just observing the shifting landscape.

We live in a free society. People should do what they feel is best for their lives without coercion. But I’m sitting here comfortably as a man—and yes, there are pressures—but I don’t think I experience the worst of them. Women face a lot more pressure.

Our society has been set up to offer advantages to gender and otherwise conforming people. It treats those who don’t conform terribly, especially in relationships and family structures. 

Rosner: But those advantages are eroding, and societal disapproval of people who aren’t coupled up is also decreasing.

When Carole and I married, we had a net worth of about zero. Our parents helped us out—they gave us some things or a sweet loan deal to buy Carol’s grandparents’ condo after they aged out of it.

Working as a couple, we accumulated assets, had a kid, and took turns working—sometimes one of us, both. Sometimes, one of us had a pretty good job. We got lucky, and maybe we were good at certain things.

Being coupled up also kept us out of trouble. We limited the number of kids we had to one. That was part of the engine for stability—plus a ton of luck—and the fact that our parents and grandparents had lived frugally. That put us in a good position. But those factors aren’t available for most people anymore, or at least not as often as they used to be.

It’s also nice to have someone I get along with most of the time to go through life with. Studies have shown that not having that can make life harder—more friction, stress, and risk of breaking down under pressure.

I was looking at fertility stats. According to the most recent estimates, the U.S. has a fertility rate of 1.62 children per woman. The replacement level is 2.1 per woman to sustain the population without immigration.

I was also looking at Japan. I saw 0.75 children per woman, which is extraordinarily low. That’s only 36% of the replacement rate. In some large European countries—Italy, for example—the fertility rate is around 1.2, just over 57% of replacement.

Unless these countries allow significant immigration, their populations will decline over time. Elon Musk thinks this is the worst thing in the world, but it’s not.

We have more people alive right now than ever before. The global population is over 8.2 billion and has only crossed the 8 billion mark since November 2022.

To put it in perspective: Around the time of Jesus, roughly 250 million people were on Earth. At the time of the Renaissance, about 500 million. Now, we’re at over 8 billion.

But humanity doesn’t need 8 billion humans to keep going. Even with the so-called baby-making crisis, the global population is still rising and is projected to peak at around 9.7 billion by the 2060s or 2070s before potentially declining. So yes, fertility decline is real and worth attention, but it’s not necessarily catastrophic. The context matters.

Around 2050 to 2060, the number of humans on Earth is projected to surpass just over 9 billion. After that, it will likely begin a slow and gradual decline. The global population growth rate has been steadily decreasing for decades and is expected to reach zero growth by the 2050s.

By 2100, the total population will still be huge—likely between 9 and 10 billion, depending on how things evolve—but not growing. So yes, it will still be a massive population, just not an ever-expanding one. It is not a population crisis in the way some people frame it. The bigger issue is that it may become an economic crisis or a structural challenge.

Our economic systems—capitalism in particular—have been built on the assumption of constant population growth. More people mean more workers, consumers, and taxpayers. If the population starts shrinking, it becomes harder for businesses to grow and governments to sustain programs and services as they’re used to.

So by 2100, we may face lower overall demand for labour unless something major changes. This is where universal basic income (UBI) comes in. Many people are starting to think seriously about providing people with the basics of life—food, shelter, healthcare—even if there is not enough traditional employment to go around.

Jacobsen: This is not new. Several countries—Finland, Estonia, Namibia, Kenya, and Canada—have been experimenting with it through pilot programs in Manitoba and Ontario. These experiments often involve selecting a few thousand or tens of thousands of people, giving them a set amount of money every month—no strings attached—and observing the effects.

Rosner: Does society fall apart? 

Jacobsen: No. At least, so far, the preliminary results are promising. People do not quit their jobs en masse or become idle. Many report better mental health, better family outcomes, and better decision-making. The worst-case scenarios—the collapse of motivation or social order—haven’t played out in these small trials.

Even António Guterres, the former Prime Minister of Portugal and the current UN Secretary-General, said something along these lines at the United Nations General Assembly about six years ago. He acknowledged that a gradual global population decline, increased automation, and rising inequality could radically reshape societies and that we would need inclusive policies to manage that.

Rosner: And yes, we hope humanity is not getting dumber, but we might be. It could be temporary. Maybe it’s not. The question is—what does that world look like?

You have a shrinking population, insufficient work, and many people receiving necessities without traditional labour. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence and the people who know how to work with it are getting smarter. AI gives us incredible new tools—extending lifespans, improving medicine, and creating entertainment.

Imagine taking any film, show, or video game and customizing it completely. You could become a character in your AI-generated movie or mash-up genres—action, romance, sci-fi, whatever. If you want to add adult content to it, you could. You could do that if you want the characters to be furries instead of humans: personalized and immersive.

So the economic questions, the cultural questions, and the tech all collide. We’re headed toward a weird, unstable, possibly amazing future—different from anything we’ve dealt with.

You can already do a lot of this stuff. A couple of years ago, there was a website called Endless Seinfeld. If you’ve seen every episode of Seinfeld more than once and wanted more, that site used AI to generate new Seinfeld scripts.

At some point, AI will start generating entirely new—probably crappy at first—episodes of Seinfeld. We’ve also talked about AI-generated movie trailers. You’ve probably seen fake trailers for Forrest Gump 2, Titanic 2, or other imaginary sequels. They’re either entirely AI-generated or produced by humans using AI tools. At first, these trailers are convincing—you think they’re real. Then you realize it’s all fake footage for movies that don’t exist.

If AI can already create two-minute trailers that fool people, it’s not a stretch to think that in a year—or maybe three—it will be able to produce full-length movies. And not terrible ones, either. That’ll trigger legal pushback from the movie studios saying, “Cut it out.” Will that work in court? I don’t know.

But people are going to be increasingly entertained and immersed. Some will choose to live virtually—we’ve talked about that. They’ll live in what I call racks—shabby apartment buildings for people who barely participate in non-virtual life. We’re talking 50-square-foot studio units with a VR rig and an ergonomic chair-bed setup.

These folks will spend 14 hours a day in digital space. Maybe the government will step in, requiring these rack facilities to have orderlies who pull people out of their chair beds to walk around, eat, and maintain basic hygiene—so they don’t rot and fuse to the furniture. But yes, some people will live like that. It’ll be a cheap way to live.

You’ll pay a lot for immersive entertainment but won’t be driving or commuting. Your sphere of non-virtual activity will be extremely limited. So, it’s a way to warehouse people, like The Matrix. In The Matrix, humanity was warehoused.

We never saw the accountants managing the Matrix, but I’m sure they were pleased with the cost-benefit economics of storing a bunch of humans and harvesting their psychic energy—or whatever the lore was. Thank you very much, and I’ll see you tomorrow at—the same time.

I might be a little later. Depending on how late Carole stays up and how early she gets up. The dog’s vestibular disorder returned, so we were trying to help her not fall down the stairs.

Jacobsen: Got it. Thank you, and good night.

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