Fitness, porn imagery, and culinary art are all mixed together. OnlyFans is a social network where celebrities and girls next door share erotic and related content with subscribers, who are mostly male. The success that this platform acquired in the last year revives questions about the sexual dimension of work, in general, and that of influencers, in particular. And it also opens discussions about the precariousness and clandestinity to which sex work is tied.
“You’re no longer you, now you’re a brand.” Whether it’s launched as an invitation or a threat, that’s undoubtedly one of the big premises of the platform world, even for those who have not considered obtaining money from the use of their profiles in networks or accessing the glory of life in exchange hotels.
In times when life and work profiles merge irremediably, the avatar with which each of us inhabits the web takes the form of a product that must be tuned to be liked. And feed to grow. And it can even be kept in airplane mode when you need a breather, just a break to come back. If I show more, they follow me more? Does that “more” find a limit in careless nudity? Or does it find a climax there? Is the limit moral? Or is it imposed by the semi-automatic censorship of each platform? The popularization of OnlyFans, a social network that relies on content creators – primarily erotic – and subscribers who pay a fixed monthly sum to see “a little more,” enables these questions.
It is a kind of streaming
OnlyFans Nudes is a kind of streaming. In this case, it is personalized content, aimed at users, mostly male, who pay to access photos and videos. It also has a chat through which tips can be paid. The original idea, according to those who invented it, was that artists and designers would publish works reserved for their fans in exchange for money and the site would keep 20% of the transaction. Today the platform is famous for its porn content and has more than 120 million users. Only 10% of those people generate content. The rest watch.
But, nudes more, nudes less, is there that much difference between what the creators -some of them, very famous- do in OnlyFans and what they do on other networks like Instagram? Isn’t it also a form of “sensual work” all that effort of exhibition and creativity that the platforms push us to? Could it be that the corporal dimension is part of the work as long as you put your back to put something on the table?
The direct monetization of something that cannot be defined as prostitution, but that at the same time supposes the transaction on a libidinal flow, such as the photos and videos that users upload to OnlyFans, forces us to discuss the role of the libidinal in all our transactions in networks. Not only that: it forces us to ask ourselves about the libidinal as a driver of popularity, first, and of the circulation of money, later. In this case, moreover, those who generate income with OnlyFans often oppose these earnings to those they obtain with their regular jobs that have nothing to do with libidinal flows. And these regular jobs are at a significant disadvantage. When the exploitation of one’s own sexualized image is also positioned as the ‘fast track’ to a better life, what is produced is a shock to the moral vectors that still guide the life of our societies.
An alternative
OnlyFans offers an alternative to being able to continue doing sex work and selling erotic content. One of the virtues of OnlyFans is not being exposed to police violence. But there are also disadvantages, especially in terms of “being able to access the money they deposit”. We have had colleagues who have demanded assistance so as not to lose the money in dollars that had been deposited with them. The most recurrent complaint among the OnlyFans content creators is undoubtedly the difficulty of collecting their money. Learning to do so, they say, is almost like obtaining “a libertarian PhD”, which includes several instances of juggling with cryptocurrencies and virtual wallets.
It is a new way of exercising sex work
Another advantage is that it allows you not to show your face but to play with it a bit, and it allows you to choose the audience you want your content to reach. You can also block it from being seen in your country so that your environment does not find out about it. There are colleagues who only show their feet, others who make porn-feminist content, others who sell content by adding their knowledge, and others who add yoga classes or cook. It is a new way of exercising sex work that reflects the market’s amplitude and also the enjoyment, which is always associated, in our patriarchal society, with penetration, to male enjoyment.
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