Some kids loved to draw. So researchers gave them a gold star each time they drew. Two weeks later, those kids were drawing about half as much on their own. The reward had killed the fun. This was 1973, and it keeps happening to grown-ups who make things for a living.
It is one of the most stubborn findings in psychology. Pay people to do the thing they already love, and the love quietly leaks out of it. Once the prize is the reason they show up, the whole thing turns from a treat into a job.
Take poetry. In 1985, a researcher named Teresa Amabile gathered 72 people who took poetry seriously and asked each to write two short poems. Right before the second poem, she had one group spend a minute writing down why they bother writing at all: things like money, praise, getting into a good school. Those poems came back rated less creative than the rest. These were the same writers, sitting in the same room, just as good as they had been ten minutes before. All that changed was a minute spent thinking about the payoff.
It showed up again with painters and sculptors. Amabile and two colleagues asked twenty-three working artists to each hand over twenty pieces, ten they had made on order for a buyer and ten they had made purely for themselves. Then a panel of gallery owners and curators scored every piece, with nobody told which was which. The work made on order came back clearly less creative. The skill in it was every bit as sharp. What went missing was the originality, and the artists themselves said the paid jobs had felt more cramped.
By 1999, one review had pulled together 128 separate versions of this experiment. They nearly all landed in the same place: put a reward in front of something a person already wants to do, and the pull to do it starts to shrink.
So making something only to satisfy yourself, tuning out the applause and the critics and the algorithm and the money, has fifty years of hard evidence sitting under it. The work you build just to live inside, with nobody watching and nothing to win, is usually the best you have in you. The crowd you bend over backwards to please can quietly be the reason the work comes out worse.
These tips are invaluable, and I am so grateful for how much you put out for free. I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and still see information that is new and helpful for me.
I’ve had a system for storing content for years, but the fast recall needed on OF is another level.
The order you store your adult content is the order you can post it. Most creators never make that connection.
After a shoot, I send content into my Telegram channel in the exact sequence I plan to publish it. Safe for work image first. Then the teaser. Then the explicit still. Then the full video going out as a locked PPV. That sequence goes into the channel in that order, every time.
Later, when I open Telegram on my laptop to schedule, I download the content in sequence and drop it directly into my posting queue. No reorganizing. No trying to remember what was supposed to go where. The work at upload time removes the work at publish time.
What you do when you store something determines how much effort it takes to use it.
May is closing with one of the most captivating celestial events visible to the naked eye. On the night of May 30–31, the second full moon of the month will rise, creating what is known as a Blue Moon.
This will be the first Blue Moon since August 2023, with the next not occurring until December 2028. But this year’s event is especially memorable because it coincides with a beautiful alignment of planets.
As the Blue Moon shines, all four of the brightest planets visible from Earth, Venus, Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn, will also be on display. Before sunrise on May 31, Mars and Saturn will glow low in the eastern sky. After sunset, Venus and Jupiter will shine brightly in the western sky, with the full moon dominating the night.
Despite the name, a Blue Moon is not actually blue in color. The term simply describes the second full moon within a single calendar month. Because the lunar cycle is approximately 29.5 days, two full moons rarely fit inside the same month. On average, a Blue Moon occurs only once every 2.5 years.
The planetary “lineup” is an impressive sight created by perspective. While the planets are separated by hundreds of millions of miles in space, from our viewpoint on Earth they appear to line up across the sky alongside the brilliant Blue Moon.
A perfect opportunity to look up this weekend and enjoy one of nature’s rarest sky shows.
@ChelseaPoe666 As I became a veteran myself I realized it’s a privilege to not have to toe a line to keep my paycheck. It’s our duty to call shit out for the next generation who can’t ruffle feathers without being deemed too difficult to work with.
@ChelseaPoe666 This industry has the same trauma response as many marginalized groups. Like we aren’t allowed to talk about the negative things because they might bring unwanted scrutiny. But that’s also how abuse runs rampant. I don’t know a single industry veteran who couldn’t light shit up.
@JDoE_Business_x@brynnbijou@sexworkceo As a 20+ year veteran myself, you sound bitter and incredibly outdated, but okay go off sir. No one has worn one hat for YEARS. Maybe just appreciate someone treating the industry like a business for once and not a joke.
men that are truly comfortable in their masculinity have no problem showing off how they worship their women, and women comfortable in their femininity have no problem being worshipped.