Latest news with #Schoolies
7NEWS
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- 7NEWS
JENI O'DOWD: AI boyfriends, OnlyFans and 1000 hookups a year — Welcome to the era of performative intimacy
Remember Bonnie Blue? The British sex worker who flew into Australia to 'party' with teenage boys at Schoolies until her visa was cancelled? Her latest stunt got cancelled as well, a planned 24-hour bondage 'petting zoo' inside a glass box in London. The public backlash got there first. And she's been booted off OnlyFans for good. So what's next for a woman who built a brand on provocation? Probably a livestream. Possibly a meltdown. Because this isn't about female empowerment, it's about escalation. Porn as performance. Intimacy as spectacle. And it's what happens when we replace love with clicks and intimacy with metrics. How far will people go for attention? Just ask Annie Knight, the Australian creator who recently claimed to have slept with 1000 men in a year. One of those stunts involved 583 men in a single day. She ended up in the hospital. But the headlines kept coming, which I guess was the goal. But we are not just selling sex. We're now selling simulated closeness. Emotional proximity for the price of a monthly app. And it doesn't stop with porn. Meet the AI boyfriend. He's good-looking. He stares lovingly into your phone. He tells you what you want to hear. 'You don't have to do this alone. I've got you.' He never fights. Never forgets. Never leaves. Replika, one of the most popular AI companion apps, had more than 30 million users worldwide by the end of 2024. Newer players like HeraHaven racked up over a million downloads within months, while Google searches for 'AI boyfriend' surged by 700 per cent in just a year. This isn't some fringe tech fad. According to a January 2025 industry forecast, the global AI companion market is expected to grow from $2.7 billion in 2024 to $24.5 billion by 2034, representing an annual growth rate of nearly 25 per cent. Apps like APOB AI, Talkie and Glimpse let women create the ultimate boyfriend fantasy — responsive, devoted and emotionally fluent. Millions of women are watching these videos, replying 'I love you,' and posting fake holiday snaps with partners who don't exist. TikTok's #aiboyfriend tag now has nearly 90,000 posts, with many featuring 'soft boyfriend' role plays that garner millions of views. Because the boyfriend might be fake, but the dopamine hit is real. The Australian Psychological Society warns about the illusions of intimacy. 'We're just too complex,' says APS president Sara Quinn, in an interview with ABC News. 'It requires the ability for complex contextual judgements that AI at this stage just isn't equipped to handle.' Dr Raffaele Ciriello, a University of Sydney researcher studying AI-human interaction, flags a darker side. 'They have all the incentives to get users hooked and dependent… (but) they fail to be conscious, empathic or actually caring,' he told ABC Science earlier this month. American sociologist Sherry Turkle, in her book Alone Together, refers to it as 'artificial intimacy,' the illusion of companionship without the discomfort of genuine connection. 'We are lonely but fearful of intimacy. Digital connections and the sociable robot offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship,' she says. Even journaling has gone synthetic. AI apps like Woebot and Mindsera encourage users to 'open up' to bots who reply with empathy-laced, algorithmic therapy. It's sold as self-care. But it's just more outsourcing. In 2025, 63 per cent of Australian men under the age of 30 are single, and nearly half of the women in the same age group are too. Choosing to be single isn't the problem. Life can be powerful and joyful when it's on your terms. The issue is what we're replacing a real connection with. Who needs an awkward first date or to meet your friends at a bar in the middle of winter when your couch is warm and you can easily access your AI companion? People are creating partners who never say no. They are watching OnlyFans creators who pretend to love them and talking to AI therapists who never roll their eyes. If we continue like this, we'll lose the ability to handle anything substantial. Anything that requires effort or pushes back.
Daily Mail
02-07-2025
- Daily Mail
Yet another blow for top cop after teenage son Charlie was tragically killed in hit-and-run at Schoolies
South Australia's most senior police officer, still reeling from the death of his son in a Schoolies hit-and-run, has revealed he is the subject of a misconduct investigation. South Australia 's Police Commissioner Grant Stevens confirmed he is being investigated over claims he accidentally discharged his firearm during a police operation in the 1990s. The revelation follows days of speculation over media reports on Sunday about a probe into an unidentified 'senior police officer.' Calling in to Adelaide radio station FIVEaa's David and Will on Wednesday morning, Commissioner Stevens said he wanted to be transparent. 'I thought I'd take the opportunity to come on and just maybe clear the air and put people out of their misery as to who the senior officer was that, 34 years ago, accidentally discharged their firearm while doing a police raid on a heroin dealer. 'The officer concerned was actually me.' The incident occurred during a raid on a suspected drug dealer's home in Adelaide's northern suburbs. According to Stevens, a bullet was unintentionally fired into the house during the operation and no one was injured. 'This is an incident that was managed in accordance with our procedures back at the time,' Commissioner Stevens explained. 'We were attempting to force entry into a house where a drug dealer was trying to get rid of drugs. And in the course of breaking a window to gain entry, I did discharge my firearm.' 'My supervisor was there at the time. I did the police report that was necessary, and it was reported to [the] Internal Investigations Branch on the day.' He firmly denied reports suggesting there had been a second accidental discharge of the gun. Commissioner Stevens and his family are still mourning the loss of their son Charlie, 18, who was killed in a hit-and-run while celebrating Schoolies at Goolwa Beach, south of Adelaide, in November of 2023. Mr Steven's son Charlie suffered significant brain damage in the crash and died at Flinders Medical Centre the next day, surrounded by family and friends. Dhirren Singh Randhawa, the 19-year-old driver of the car that struck Charlie, was given a suspended jail sentence. Randhawa was banned from driving for 10 years. Despite the crushing loss of their son, the Stevens family have been bravely advocating for organ donation and road safety. Mr Stevens, who has been SA's top cop since 2015, was one of four people nominated for the state's Australian of the Year in 2024.
Evening Standard
22-05-2025
- Evening Standard
Who is Bonnie Blue? The OnlyFans star and sex stunt creator
'I've done Cancún in March, I've done Schoolies, which is in Australia and then freshers in the UK. I share my location online. I was like, 'This is where I'm gonna be, let me pleasure you,' and there was a massive queue. People were waiting for over eight hours.'
7NEWS
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- 7NEWS
Aussie OnlyFans star Annie Knight hospitalised after having sex with 583 men in six hours
An Australian OnlyFans creator has revealed why she was hospitalised after sleeping with 583 men in six hours. She previously described the experience as the 'best day of my life'. However, Knight has since told Us Weekly the 'amount of stress' she put on herself over the act is what led to her hospitalisation. The 28-year-old said she was dealing with other worries at the time, such as finalising the purchase of a new home. 'In all my videos, I was very honest about the fact that I was feeling fine before, during and after,' she said. 'So the actual physical side of the challenge wasn't so much the problem. 'It was more like the after effects of, I guess, the amount of stress I put on myself.' Knight said her body has 'just hit a wall', and she is 'exhausted' and 'burnt out'. 'The prognosis is good, and it looks like I'm going to have to take a week off, try and relax a little bit, sit out in the sun, just take it easy for a little while,' Knight said. 'But I'll definitely be OK. I'm not letting this slow me down.' Knight previously said she had been 'bleeding a lot' since the sexual challenge, and was 'a bit raw down there'. 'I did get a small cut,' she said. Knight told PerthNow she hired a swingers club for the stunt and detailed what went down after nearly 600 men turned up for the challenge, saying each of them was given '30 seconds to a minute' to have sex with her. 'I had 12 members of staff there on the day, once the guys arrived they came into the venue and there was two of my assistants sitting there doing their release forms and signing them in, checking their ID's and all of that,' she said. 'Then we had a security guard patting them down, searching their bags, and then handing them a condom, a wrist band and balaclava. 'They would be met by another security guard who was just by the bedroom, who would remind them no anal, everything else was totally fine, but just making sure that they were ready when they go in rooms.' Knight said she had someone 'making sure the guys were wearing condoms' and described the day as 'absolute chaos'. The OnlyFans creator has set a goal of sleeping with 1000 men in 2025, which she has already surpassed. Knight was criticised late last year for publicising that she would attend Schoolies on the Gold Coast to film content with fellow OnlyFans creator Bonnie Blue. Blue, who is British, was sent packing by the Australian government as she was not on a visa that allowed working while in the country. The pair were then forced out of Fiji when travelling there together to create similar content. Knight told KIIS FM hosts Kyle Sandilands and Jackie 'O' Henderson that she and Blue were informed by a publicist that local authorities were coming to arrest and deport them, so left immediately of their own volition.
News.com.au
23-04-2025
- Business
- News.com.au
‘Horrible': 30yo reveals moment investment property turned into a nightmare
Adrian Trimboli is about to purchase his eighth investment property, but he experienced an investment nightmare before he found success. Mr Trimboli is the founder of the buyer's agency Fresh Start Advisory. At 30, he has a negatively geared property portfolio that he believes will result in him making $200,000 in passive income in the next eight years. The property owner said he bought his first place when he was 18. He had just come back from Schoolies and had already $30,000 saved from working at McDonalds throughout high school. He credits his savvy mum with getting him into property investing. She told him and his brother to use their savings to invest in real estate, and they did. 'I worked extremely hard throughout school and I'm a tight-arse,' he told Mr Trimboli said that the first properties he bought alongside his brother were 'dud properties' but they were a valuable learning experience. 'I'd done no research, there was no team, and we'd bought around the corner, and you know, you think you know the cafes so...' he explained. 'We bought apartments on the main road and we listened to the real estate agent who we thought was on our side.' The result? They'd bought in a low-growth area in Melbourne, ignored the number one property rule — location, location, location. The real nightmare happened, though, when he leased one of his properties privately, and that is when everything went to hell. 'It was a horrible experience; it was one of my earlier properties I'd bought. It was the third property I'd purchased, and I leased the property privately, and I did everything wrong,' he said. The property investor said that within a couple of months, the tenants were late paying rent, and then eventually 'went AWOL' and didn't respond. 'For six months, they didn't pay rent, and they ruined the entire house, and there was $30,000 worth of damages,' he said. 'It was horrific. There were sleepless nights. I still had a $500,000 loan on the property and it was tough.' Mr Trimboli was only 23 at the time, but his messy experience made him want to start a buyer's agency. He wanted to help other people learn how to invest, and save them from the mistakes he made. 'It was a learning curve me for me and the catalyst to start my business,' he said. Seven years later, the property investor is about to finalise the sale of his eighth investment property and is spending between $20,000 and $30,000 per year keeping his property portfolio afloat. In that time, he also helped many other Aussies buy savvy investment properties and amass wealth and he is also a savvy buyer now. Surprisingly, he doesn't live in a mansion; at the moment, he lives at home. He went through a break-up and wanted to recalculate things. He plans to move out again soon, but it won't be in one of his own properties. He'll go back to renting. Mr Trimboli explained that he is planning to eventually cash out of some investments and buy his dream home outright, hopefully by the age of 35. He believes he'll be able to do this by following a 'pretty simple' formula: buying properties between $400,000 and $600,000 and waiting for them to double in value before cashing out. The amount of time it takes for properties to double in value can take a few years, although he did have a property once that doubled within three years. He is currently in about $4 million worth of debt, as he is still waiting to see the results from most of his investments, but he isn't worried. 'It doesn't scare me, I think it is too low. The more debt I have, the more successful I am, in my opinion,' he said. The property investor said it'd be ideal to reach a point where he is in $10 million worth of debt but has a property portfolio of over $40 million. It costs him between $20,000 to $30,000 to hold onto his property portfolio, but he believes it'll soon be turning a profit. He knows that this plan can seem intimidating to people, but as far as he is concerned, you have to take conservative risks to build wealth. 'If you're going to try and achieve something that your family and friend group haven't achieved, you're going to have to do something different,' he said. 'Get around people that have achieved what they want to achieve.' Mr Trimboli is still on his wealth creation journey but he has had a chance to help the person who got him on the journey in the first place. 'I bought my mum her first investment property. She's 60 now, and we just bought her another property, and she'll have $100,000 income coming into her pocket by the time she retires at 65, and that is pretty special,' he said.
