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Everyone’s Doing It! How OnlyFans is Remaking Porn
MARIANA: Warning: This podcast includes sexual themes and explicit language. Discretion is advised.
AMI: I do identify myself as a sex worker because although I'm ,like, posting like, cosplay and lingere, I am, like, posting nudes, and making, like, explicit videos and stuff.
MARIANA: In the last episode, we heard from Ami Unagi, who has made $40,000 on OnlyFans in three years. That may sound like a lot of cash, but it’s definitely not enough to live on.
AMI: So, okay, so a little backstory, like my OnlyFans, it's not my main income.
MARIANA: Ami dedicates one day a week to creating content for her OnlyFans, but still has a 9-5 job.
AMI: I'm just glad to have the extra income, and, and plus I enjoy doing it. So it's been fun.
MARIANA: As we noted in the previous episode, the extra income that Ami talks about actually helped her get a master's degree.
AMI: In 2021, I graduated with my master's in accounting, which was, oh my gosh, I, like, I barely made it. It was so hard. Like I was barely making it and I got put on academic probation. And once you’re put on academic probation, you don't qualify for no financial aid.
MARIANA: Without access to financial aid, Ami paid her tuition with the income she made from OnlyFans. Then, after she got her full-time job, she kept doing it. Her hope is to make enough money doing OnlyFans so she can quit her day job.
AMI: It would be nice for my OnlyFans to grow to the point where, you know, that would be like my main income.
MARIANA: In this final episode, we talk to our creators about what the future holds for them with OnlyFans. Is it working for them? We also talk to experts about whether OnlyFans is less exploitative than traditional porn. Or does it have its own, unique problems?
MARIANA: I’m Mariana Escoto, and this is Everyone’s Doing It: How OnlyFans is Remaking Porn.
MARIANA: People can post on OnlyFans when and how they want. It’s as user-friendly as any social media platform. That’s part of what led to lots of everyday people trying it out.
MARIANA: Some experts believe that the internet lets non-traditional creators succeed in the porn industry–since it opens the doors for plus-sized, queer, and older creators who have had a harder time being successful in mainstream porn.
LYNN: It's made it more accessible, more affordable. And, and I think that more people have taken advantage of that and stepped into this space.
MARIANA: That’s Lynn Comella again, the Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Nevada.
LYNN: It has allowed, I think, uh, more diversity within the creator-performer realm for sure. And I think showcasing all sorts of things, you know, greater kind of ethnic and racial diversity, um, you know, certainly showcasing different body sizes, different gender presentations, different sexual acts and practices.
MARIANA: This idea of more diversity in porn content is a big draw for some creators and subscribers. That’s because the traditional porn industry tends to push actors to play recurring characters that fit into certain tropes. Many of these roles end up reinforcing racist or sexist stereotypes.
MARIANA: Some people refer to these as “pornotropes,” coined by Black Feminist Hortense Spillers. A “pornotrope” works to “transform a person into nothing more than a physical body, enslaved to gratify violent or sexual impulses.”
MARIANA: Used in a sentence: “Mainstream porn is full of fucking pornotropes.”
MARIANA: Gail Dines is an emerita professor of women’s studies at Wheelock College in Boston. Our producer Julianne talked to her.
GAIL: Racism is rife in all pornography … So pornography gets a pass for racism that no other media genre does.
JULIANNE: Why is that?
GAIL: Because it's sexualized. And when you sexualize racism, you render the racism invisible.
MARIANA: She is the founder of Culture Reframed, an organization that works against what she calls “the porn crisis” and she is a self-proclaimed radical feminist. She’s what people in the field refer to as an anti-porn activist.
MARIANA: Some experts say sites like OnlyFans give the power back to the creator, as a solution to mainstream porn. Gail is not one of those experts. She is not a fan of OnlyFans. But more on that later. Here’s David Church again, the professor who specializes in the history of porn.
DAVID: OnlyFans because it is so much driven by and shaped by the choices that the producer themself wants to make. They, they might be able to, to put their own identity, their own sexual tastes, practices, and so on out there in ways that, that allow them to be a little more creative and be a little more sort of authentic to themselves compared to the sort of narrow range of boxes that more professional pornographic productions might sort of slot them into.
MARIANA: That’s exactly how LJ and her partner Kayela used the platform.
MARIANA: They didn’t start doing bondage and recording themselves during sex for OnlyFans – it just sort of worked out that that’s what got them a following. Here’s a clip of Julianne and me interviewing them.
MARIANA: What went into like preparing for a scene or was it like spontaneous?
LJ: Very spontaneous. It was usually when we're already like by round three. Round three. Round three. We're getting a little tired. We're like “Let's spice this up. Put the camera up. Go for it.”
LJ: I don't think we bought anything for OnlyFans. Like she said we're definitely like inserting a lot of different things. We definitely were buying, like, lots of stuff. But it was really “Oh, what do we have lying around? What's here?” Because our, like, we have a whole sex bag now.
MARIANA: We saw the sex bag.
LJ: We have the, two different vibrators. Two different dicks and strap-ons. We have three?
KAYELA: Four.
LJ: Four? We have three – what’s the third one?
KAYELA: The dickarang.
LJ: The what?
KAYELA: The dickarang.
LJ: What’d you say?
KAYELA: The dickarang.
LJ: I have a two-sided dildo! The dickarang! I love that thing.
KAYELA: Pride and joy.
LJ: I love bringing that thing out! Dickarang, dude, it’s, like, 50 inches long!
KAYELA: It’s not that long.
MARIANA: David explains that a lot of queer creators – like LJ and Kayela – have been drawn to OnlyFans because they get to play by their own rules.
DAVID: So for queer folks, for nonbinary folks, trans folks, OnlyFans has become, I think, a really interesting and exciting place precisely because it allows them to sort of be themselves a little bit more.
MARIANA: Not everyone agrees that OnlyFans is revolutionizing porn. Gail, the anti-porn feminist, says it’s the same thing in a new package.
GAIL: OnlyFans is a pimp site. So first of all, the women have to give a percentage of their earnings to OnlyFans, I think it's 20%.
MARIANA: We confirmed this with the creators we interviewed. It’s 20%.
GAIL: So, they’re pimping out the women, they're making money off women doing porn.
MARIANA: Gail didn’t sugarcoat a single word. She says that even if creators claim that they’re empowered by their content, she believes that they’ll end up regretting their choices in a few years.
MARIANA: Gail also says that the idea that creators can make lots of money off OnlyFans as independent business people is a myth.
GAIL: We think of this image of the porn star raking in millions of dollars being famous.
GAIL: You have a few who make millions, but that's very, very few.
GAIL: The average woman on OnlyFans makes $186 a month.
MARIANA: We could not confirm this number. And when we asked Gail for her source, we didn’t hear back.
MARIANA: Who are the people that Gail says are making millions of dollars as content creators on OnlyFans?
MARIANA: The tabloids say it’s celebrities. Stars like former child actress Bella Thorne, Australian rapper Iggy Azalea, and influencer Blac Chyna have been some of the most successful creators in OnlyFans history.
MARIANA: Thorne even raked in $1 million within 24 hours of joining the platform. But multiple media sources have reported that Thorne never posts nude photos. So, most of the money she’s making is off of her celebrity. Meanwhile, the non-celeb sex workers who are on OnlyFans face bigger risks by actually being naked and posting explicit content.
GAIL: And, you know, we know that women on OnlyFans are, uh, we know that they're doxxed, we know that they are stalked.
MARIANA: We did find news reports that people are able to track down creators’ locations from details like their content’s background. But none of our sources told us that this has happened to them.
MARIANA: Doxxing is when someone’s personal information, like their address or phone number, is posted online without their consent. Doxxing is not the only thing people are worried about. Trafficking and sexual abuse against minors are other dangers of any type of online pornography.
KENDRA: There's a very big demand for people who look younger or for children.
MARIANA: That’s Kendra Davis, an executive at a non-profit organization in Fullerton, California, that supports survivors of trauma. She says trafficking doesn’t necessarily equal porn, but it’s one way abusers can harm or use their victims.
KENDRA: Human trafficking involves coercion and an exchange of something. It doesn't have to be money. It's coercion and manipulation.
MARIANA: ABC news reported that traffickers have used OnlyFans for illegal activities in the past.
MARIANA: They reported on a couple who had trafficked multiple women and were forcing one to create OnlyFans content.
MARIANA: OnlyFans has a verification process for creators to prevent people from using the platform to exploit minors.
MARIANA: It takes about a week or two and includes paperwork, a background check, and taking a picture of your ID.
MARIANA: But it seems like you can get past this process if you really wanted to.
MARIANA: We reached out to OnlyFans for comment multiple times via email. We didn’t hear back. We did get a hold of the law firm that represents OnlyFans, but they declined to be interviewed for this story.
MARIANA: Even if creators aren’t facing direct danger, some say their time on OnlyFans could come back to haunt them. Here’s Gail again:
GAIL: Many of them go on to regret it because you can never remove those images – those images are up there forever. Following you wherever you go.
MARIANA: After talking with LJ, Kayela, Ami, and Gilbert, it doesn’t seem like any of them regret posting on OnlyFans – for now.
MARIANA: But for LJ and Kayela, the demands of their subscribers and the risks of having their accounts discovered by their families outweighed their kinky fun and extra cash. So after 6 months on OnlyFans, they deleted their accounts.
MARIANA: LJ works with kids at her current job, and Kayela’s family is pretty tech-savvy, so keeping up with OnlyFans as their account grew wasn’t just more work – it was becoming risky. LJ didn’t have to worry about her family finding out – In LJ’s words, her family is “computer illiterate.”
MARIANA: Ami was the most successful creator we spoke with, and she’s the only one who’s still on OnlyFans. For Ami, it’s still worth it to keep putting herself out there and make money. She’s 30 now, and she plans to stick with OnlyFans until she’s ready to settle down and have a family.
MARIANA: Plus, her boyfriend is more than alright with her side hustle.
AMI: He likes the fact that other guys desire me. Um, I, I guess that's his own little thing that he likes.
AALIYAH: No, yeah.
AMI: I think he, he likes that other guys desire me because it’s like, the way he thinks about it, “I have such a good-looking woman, and all these men want her, but they can’t have her.”
MARIANA: As for Gilbert, he never showed his face in his content, so he doesn’t risk running into someone at the grocery store or in a job interview who recognizes him.
MARIANA: But in the end, OnlyFans took him to some uncomfortable places that he says were not worth it.
MARIANA: One guy offered Gilbert $1,500 to come over to his house to have sex with him – for Gilbert, that felt like it was crossing the line.
MARIANA: He wasn’t willing to do whatever it took to earn more money, and he ended up deleting his account.
GILBERT: The money became stagnant. The, I didn't feel like I would, I didn't want to pursue it. I wasn't like, “Oh, I need, I need to get my clientele back up. I need to get this money.” I had a job. I was working. I wasn't like, I wasn’t, again, I wasn't doing it for a source of income. It was more just like, “Let's just see what happens.”
MARIANA: We asked how much he made in total for the few months he did OnlyFans.
GILBERT: A whole $68.
MARIANA: Sixty. Eight. Dollars.
GILBERT: I saw what happened. And I was like, “Cool. It's an avenue. It's a possibility.”
MARIANA: Maybe we want to believe in a world where a platform like OnlyFans makes it that easy to get rich, but for most people, that's just not real.
MARIANA: The porn wars have divided the country for decades, but it’s still not clear if OnlyFans is solving any of those issues.
MARIANA: It doesn’t matter which porn revolution we’re on … there’s gonna be consumers, creators, and us … the people who talk about them.
MARIANA: This podcast was written, reported, and produced by me, Mariana Escoto, Aaliyah Skipper, Julianne Le, and Gerardo Chagolla. Original score was composed by Andy Van Driesen.
MARIANA: Additional audio editing by Jenny Kim.
MARIANA: Our editorial advisor is Jessica Langlois. Jill Replogle is our audio storytelling consultant. Additional technical support was provided by Joseph Pavlenko and Ryan Osborn.
MARIANA: This project was supported by California Humanities Emerging Journalist Fellowship Program.
MARIANA: For more information, visit www.calhum.org. It was produced in the Fullerton College student newsroom and radio studio.
MARIANA: Any views or findings expressed in this podcast do not necessarily represent those of Fullerton College, California Humanities, or the National Endowment for the Humanities.