A recent problem in the porn industry: OnlyFans
By: Arielle Castro
Tags: Sex Work, Advertising, Sex Worker Rights, Porn Industry, Onlyfans

What a wonderful thing it is to be able to look back at your month and recount all the things you’ve learned in such little time. Everything we’ve been covering this past month has been fascinating, but I’d like to highlight one of my favorite things I’m learning about.

In ReStudio with Jesse, we are beginning our group project and I was fortunate to be placed with Natalie and Mateo. *I would have felt lucky to be placed with any of you talented fellows, but I just wanted to give a shoutout to my group members!* Our area of interest is in the future of human connection, so we dove into research and discovered some captivating problem spaces to explore. One problem space that significantly stands out to me is within the porn industry, and more particularly, with sex workers. Firstly, I think it’s extremely compelling and positive that the porn industry in general is drastically changing. This is due to the change in needs and mentality in (mainly) younger generations about porn and sex workers. This might be because of the rise in PC (politically correct) culture, but in any respect, it is change for the good.

For example, people aren’t as interested in free and categorical (e.g. “big boobs”) porn as they now are in (what I call) “intimate” porn. In other words, people aren’t as into sites like PornHub as they are into OnlyFans. I don’t see an actual term for this phenomenon yet, but I’m calling it “intimate” for a variety of reasons. Consider the following scenario: Sam knows Amy from high school. Amy is comfortable providing for herself via sex work. Amy begins to advertise on a medium like Instagram that she’s selling her more tasteful nudes on a platform like OnlyFans. Sam would rather pay for Amy’s nudes than go to a site like PornHub to view random people and not contribute to the sex workers. I call it “intimate,” then, because this is a vastly different mentality from what a general porn user would do. A user would, as discreetly as possible, go to a free site like PornHub, find their preferred category(ies), and dot dot dot… 🙃

There was no real thought about paying for the service, as shame and regret tend to remain central to this particular experience. If this is something you tend to do, don’t worry, I’m not judging or shaming AT ALL. I completely understand and empathize, as our generation(s) has typically grown up to be ashamed of being a porn user and want to be as discreet as possible — therefore, using free methods. I think porn is a great thing, as it is found to reduce the risk of rape, molestation, incest, etc. *Notice I said reduce, not end. I know these horrible problems remain.* Anyway, I’m just saying, consider beginning to pay for play, and don’t be ashamed of indulging in this practice.

I’m still not at the true problem space within this industry yet, but bare with me…

Back to the younger generations… they are growing up to be more open, unashamed, sex positive, sex worker positive, and PC than any previous generation. This has led to intimate porn growing in popularity, and sites like OnlyFans have reaped the benefits. For those who aren’t familiar with OnlyFans, it is basically a social media outlet for sex workers to promote their images/videos. A user is able to either subscribe to their page, or purchase individual images or videos. In addition, a user can “tip” as much as they want to contribute. Or at least they used to be able to…until a massive PR scandal occurred, allowing OnlyFans to change their rules because of such a loss of revenue.

Herein lies the most relevant problem within the porn industry… Bella Thorne, a famous actress/singer, promoted on her Instagram that she would be joining OnlyFans, and that she would distribute exclusive content to subscribers. This led to a surge of customers eager to subscribe when content wasn’t even released. She said she would be donating the proceeds, which is admirable, but irrelevant here. Bella Thorne, then, didn’t end up releasing the type of content subscribers expected. It is unclear if she/her team (let’s face it, famous people have teams of people advising them with what to do and how to do it) intentionally misled subscribers or if it was merely an accident. However, what occurred because of this indiscretion was a giant scandal. Countless disgruntled subscribers of Bella Thorne’s OnlyFans page demanded full refunds for misleading them. So, when Bella Thorne made 1 million dollars of personal revenue in one week, OnlyFans lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. *Probably more, but this is just conjecture.* This, in turn, led OnlyFans to change their rules and set a tipping cap for sex workers remaining on the site.

The tipping cap infuriated most sex workers because many of these individuals make their living from this site, and many of the less prevalent sex workers depend on this income to make ends meet. A great deal of workers decided to both severely bash OnlyFans on social media and leave the site in protest. Naturally, this led subscribers to also leave the site, and sympathizers to not be interested in joining/subscribing. Since this disastrous PR scandal occurred, now there remains a great need for this type of platform, but involving a business model that is both fair to sex workers and the average customer. The site that Amy would have chosen to advertise herself on is currently known for not being fair to sex workers and customers, so what should she do now?

What I know is that people want to love and be loyal to a particular brand. They also want to feel like they can trust the brand, and with sex work, trust is a fundamental aspect. This is what was so appealing to people about the OnlyFans brand (pre-scandal)…that it seemed to be in favor of the sex worker, and that a user could discreetly purchase content while contributing to a particular individual.

It is clear that all of these needs and frustrations persist, so this problem area was beyond intriguing for me to explore. I’d like to continue to remain problem-centric for a while longer, as we know how many great ideas can come when we try to stay in this space. Jumping into a solution is exciting and could lead to success, but I am motivated to explore other avenues and problem spaces to see what else could fascinate me/our group.

❤