Paying an escort to spend time with you certainly doesn’t come with the same sacrifices as an organic relationship. And, unlike chatbots, “nerdy escorts” are real people who can provide human perspectives on things like AI, crypto and economics instead of just echoing back a tech worker’s thoughts on such subjects.
Sex work back then was, I think, a lot more about the sex act. Today it’s focused on the escort side a lot, being a human being they can spend time with. Almost a social surrogate. I’ve known a lot of sex workers who said it was 50/50 on guys who wanted to fuck vs guys who wanted to cuddle/cry/talk. But in this case they’re being hired for their knowledge. I bet little of what’s happening here is actual sex. Which shows how broken and disconnected our society is - the people driving it, at the bleeding edge, need to pay big bucks for a IRL flesh-and-blood fix. We’re all cooked if we continue this timeline of loneliness and fragmentation.
Nah, there has been a sort of “escort / hooker distinction” forever. In ancient greece they had pornai who were mostly slaves used almost exclusively for sex, and hetaira who were educated and usually free(libra not gratis) and were even allowed in symposiums(salons). There’s always been class distinctions with sex work.