My Love/Hate Relationship with OnlyFans
The content-behind-a-paywall platform that is held up by sex workers and also kicks them off when it's convenient??? Idk, it's complicated. Here's what I think based on what I know.
Hey! Happy Monday y’all.
Excited to finally get this piece out. A loooong time ago, B.Q. (beginning of quarantine), one of my best friends texted me asking for my thoughts on OnlyFans. In case you haven’t heard of it, OnlyFans is a digital platform where creators charge their fans a subscription to view the content they upload to their profiles. As one of the only platforms that allows X-rated content, OF has become a place where creators can make a few extra bucks by shedding a few extra layers.
So yeah, back in March, OnlyFans was in the news a bunch. Queen Bey also gives them a brief but notable shoutout in “Savage” remix. Here’s my lil analysis of what’s up.
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… and please feel free to share ‘Sextech with Val’ with anyone🤩
PS: Hey Bettina! Sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you on this… here ya go! <3
Let’s get into it..
Apparently OnlyFans Wasn’t Built for the Adult Industry
But let’s examine its history a bit… I didn’t write my thesis on the history of porn for nothing.
OnlyFans’ founder, Tim Stokely, is a technologist with a background in the adult industry, first building a soft-core site called GlamGirls then transitioning to a site called Customs4U—which seems to be an ancestor of OnlyFans by allowing fans to interact with performers and request specific scenes from them.
Although Stokely and his team insist that OnlyFans was not built specifically for sex workers, it quickly became an important development in the adult space for a couple of reasons.
First of all, starting in the early 2000s, the industry saw an increased demand for—and corresponding market shift towards—more personalized, intimate experiences between performers and viewers with the rise of camming. As compared to traditional porn, camming closed the gap a bit between worker and client. New forms of labor emerged: cam models were expected to communicate directly with viewers, give attention to their specific desires, and, in many instances, build a genuine care for and relationship with their clients. The growing demand for this intimacy made this labor necessary if the performer wanted to keep clients satisfied, engaged, and, most importantly, paying. The documentary “A Cam Life” is a really fascinating look at the experiences and careers of cam girls as told by a few models themselves.
OnlyFans catered to this exact shift with its UX (user experience design) by giving each creator their own, unique page where they upload content. Viewers who desire access to this content must subscribe, usually for somewhere between $5-$20/month, and once they do so get access to the creators’ private digital gallery and community. Not only can they view intimate content, but they can also message the creator directly, and can be confident that their money goes straight into the creators’ pockets.
This brings me to the second reason why OnlyFans attracted many adult performers: it suddenly gave them the opportunity to monetize digitally and directly from their consumers, rather than through a third-party porn site (many of which are owned by MindGeek, aka “Big Porn”). On many traditional porn sites, users are bombarded by unwanted ads and free, often pirated content, so even if they have the option to pay and subscribe, they are unmotivated to do so.
Fair compensation for sex work has been an issue within this industry for decades. On the production side, there’s a history of exploitative labor practices; on the consumption side, there’s high demand but low willingness to pay due to shame, stigma, and a lack of value for sexual services. Therefore, the call to #PayForYourPorn has resounded from the industry for decades, and a platform like OnlyFans has made it easier to do so.
Now Enter Covid-19 and the Economic Downturn
OnlyFans as a platform—despite what its founders might want us to believe—hosts the buying and selling of sex, and it has rightfully earned that reputation exactly.
Before March, the site was populated by content creators who would (and do) call themselves sex workers along with creators who’d probably try to avoid that title or association—models, reality tv stars, former beauty queens, and fitness models for example. Personally, I’d argue that selling sexually suggestive content makes you a supplier within the economy of sex: therefore a sex worker (and in denial). But we return to this later on.
Through March and April, however, the site began garnering around 200,000 new sign-ups every day and a whole lot of media buzz—like memes and Beyoncé—only further instigating this spike. As people lost their jobs, OF appealed to anyone who was just hearing about it an opportunity to generate alternative revenue streams. I mean c’mon, we all at least considered starting an account at some point, right?
However, bad press also emerged during this time. Sex workers began experiencing issues with their accounts and were reporting being randomly suspended by the platform. This phenomenon had apparently been happening for years but was being exacerbated by the increasing new creator sign-ups. Although the platform blamed the overwhelmed moderation algorithms and team, sex worker were suspicious given how much effort OnlyFans execs put in to trying to deny their association with the adult industry—even disguising it through their marketing.
So here’s where my love/hate dilemma begins… and I’ve broken it down into OF as a digital platform & company and as a cultural phenomenon. Enjoy!
Art courtesy of Mia Feitel via Getty Images.
Only Fans as a digital platform & company.
My thoughts here come from my research on designing digital platforms for marginalized communities, which you can read about here.
What I love:
Spaces on the internet where people can express sexuality are important to women & the LGBTQIA+ community. OF has become a safe outlet for people to explore sexual content in more discreet, honest ways.
Enables creators (and especially sex workers) to monetize their physical and emotional labor, giving it real $VALUE$. Physical labor = content; emotional labor = engaging with customers. #PayForYourPorn.
Cultivates more intimate experiences, honest conversations, and supportive communities than mainstream platforms—due, I believe, to the fact that it is sex-positive (or at least permits sexual content).
What I hate:
Almost all money is made by the top creators. The top accounts make something like $100,000 a month, while the median account makes $180 a month. The Gini index (measuring inequality) of OnlyFans is 0.83. The most unequal society in the world, South Africa, has a Gini index of 0.68.
Limited discoverability features—the platform’s business model rests on the success of its most popular creators, doing little to help smaller creators become successful. This gives creators a lot more work such as continuously posting on other platforms and directing customers to OF as an external site (which can be a challenge).
Has experienced content leaks due to security / privacy holes in its distribution model.
External messaging and marketing tries to avoid adult industry associations, perpetuating sex / sex work stigma.
“In their advertising, they focus on chefs, for example, or yoga instructors,” Allie Awesome, an adult content creator, told Rolling Stone. “They never have, say, a porn star.”
Only Fans as a cultural phenomenon.
The mainstream attention that OnlyFans has received works both in favor and against the betterment of our society’s sexual culture, IMO.
What I love:
Demonstrates just how pervasive sex work is—whether you want to call it that or not—which helps to destigmatize it and delegitimize legislation that criminalizes it. #SupportDecrim
Art courtesy of @jacqthestripper.
Mostly believe that increased dialogues about sex—in any or all of its facets ie. sexuality, sex work, porn—are good for us on the whole.
With more people participating in the economy of sex, more money falls into the hands of sex workers ✅.
What I hate:
The hype around OnlyFans has caused a supply flood, crowding out the market and harming sex workers and their businesses.
These non-sex-working people (including celebrities like Caroline Calloway) make accounts, post sexually suggestive images, drive traffic to their sites, and then do not admit to doing sex work and/or support sex worker causes??? 🤬 Call it what it is. Support sex workers.
There’s definitely more I could say on this but what I love most about OnlyFans is how it’s making a whole lot more people confront sex work—on both the labor and consumption sides. This, I believe, is a good thing and helps more of us shift into a politics that supports their rights. Here’s more info on the Decriminalization of Sex Work from Human Rights Watch.
If you have any questions, thoughts, or are interested in discussing anything here further, reply to this email! But this will do for now.
Have a great week everyone! 💕
xx
Val