LonelyFans

LonelyFans

An exposé through the looking glass of the social media sex business.

TIM STOKELY, FOUNDER OF ONLYFANS

THE SET UP

Much has been covered (or uncovered) about the world of social media.

from fashion, to beauty, to health, pharmaceuticals, music, food— the list is endless.

From accounts by the actual creators of the most popular apps detailing how they were instructing to make intentially addictive apps using scientific algorithms to trigger dopamine responses in users, to stories about bubble-headed “non-celebrities” becoming famous for doing nothing more than posting a picture of themselves or a dish of food or opening up a box to the worst of it, where young people have committed suicide from depression caused by comparing themselves to faux, curated versions of others on apps like Instagram.

The public have a good general sense of of all this, which is why we see more and more, young people pivoting from traditional paths— a college education, a vocation, an entry into a the corporate world— to more entreprenurial ventures all using social media to get their message across.

But our story is not that...

Ours story is focused on the economy that is created by these apps and their users.

Influencers making millions of dollars a year endorsing products, businesses, in all areas

The more controversial of these is relegated to the sex trade. The most famous of these apps is OnlyFans, where women AND men, create social accounts where “fans” can sign up (for a fee) to engage in anything from text conversations, to exchanged nude photos and videos, to fulfilling fetish requests.

OnlyFans describes itself however in the most broadest of terms—“we are subscription website that encourages content creators – including those with adult themes – to build a paying network of subscribers.”

There are many OnlyFans-type sites and apps out there, we will be looking into several others to see how they all compare and contrast.

OnlyFans recently stated that they would be banning all pornographic material from their site and its creators, but has since walked that back...

It’s a billion dollar industry with some “Creators” making millions of dollars a year.

Recently, New York Times reporter Ezra Marcus, penned an aritcle entitled “The ‘E-Pimps’ of OnlyFans,” where he takes a deep dive into the true machinations of how these sexually-driven social media apps truly operate.

This will be our entree into our story.

$292K/MONTH

$151K/MONTH

PART 1.

OnlyFans started in 2016, and has since emerged as the top platform worldwide for creators to sell monthly subscriptions for self-produced erotic content.

The platform has become synonymous with this sort of business, though some use it for other purposes.

It served as a financial lifeline for many in the pandemic, allowing people to monetize time spent indoors. In 2019, there were reportedly 120,000 content creators using the platform; by December 2020, that number had risen to more than a million.

concerted engagement than simply posting to a feed.

This can be extremely time-consuming: an OnlyFans creator said she spends six hours a day just sexting with subscribers. But these relationships are important to cultivate.

ONLYFANS CHANGED SEX WORK FOREVER. THEY’VE PUT X-RATED ENTERTAINMENT IN THE HANDS OF ITS ENTERTAINERS. CALL IT THE PAYWALL OF PORN.

Many creators on the site aren’t just posting nudes. The real product is relationships.

In a blog post on its website, OnlyFans encourages creators to cater to their “superfans,” who pay for custom content and will “give more if they feel they’re getting something special.”

Money from subscriptions can be trivial compared with the profits earned by selling custom videos, sexting sessions and other forms of fan interaction that require more

Subscribers — mostly male; straight, gay and beyond — pay models and social media influencers a fee, generally $5 to $20 a month, to view a feed of imagery too racy

for Instagram. With that access, subscribers can also direct message and “tip” to get pictures or videos created on demand, according to their sexual tastes.

At a time when anyone with a smartphone or small studio can become his or her own pornographer, and content is often free, the hottest site in the adult entertainment industry is dominated by providers who show fewer sex acts and charge increasing fees depending on how creative the requests get.

“Basically, OnlyFans is online go-go dancing,” said Matthew Camp, a 34-year-old model on the men’s side who broke into the business a decade ago writhing on platforms around downtown Manhattan for the party promoter Susanne Bartsch.

OnlyFans made a whopping $1.2 Billion dollars last year!

$ $ $

PART 2.

THE INTERNET DESTABILIZED PORNOGRAPHY From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, dreamers in the porn industry, centered in the San Fernando Valley of California, openly described their multi-million-dollar futures in the business. There was actually a history of this happening, at least for a small number of models signed to lucrative long-term contracts with studios like Vivid and Wicked.

Times best seller. The title turned out to be eerily prescient. As its publisher, Judith Regan, pointed out: “Porn went the way of all media.” It turns out, everyone could do it.

natural bolt-on to the influencer’s existing social media. A free feed on Instagram or Twitter could promote and drive traffic to the subscription-only feed on OnlyFans.

Except that because porn was an industry of people already living on the margins of society, the effects for the performers were in many ways worse.

They could make north of $5,000 a scene and shoot a couple of those each week, according to Brian Gross, a well-known industry publicist. That income could be supplemented with five-figure sums doing nightclub appearances around the country on the weekends, he said.

The primary culprits were so-called tube sites: YouTube-like platforms that aggregated stolen pornographic content, disseminated it for free and sucked up revenue from banner and video ads.

80% of the fees collected for each feed would go to the provider. 20% would go to OnlyFans (although after merchant and processing fees, Mr. Stokely says its take is around 12%). This is roughly the same arrangement Uber has with its drivers, except that OnlyFans didn’t push performers toward poverty by dictating the prices they could charge.

Jenna Jameson — the Julia Roberts of straight porn — even parlayed her notoriety into a memoir released by HarperCollins, “How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale,” which was a New York

Mr. Stokely had his light bulb moment: Why not find a way for influencers to directly monetize their content. The platform—OnlyFans—would be similar to Instagram or Twitter except fans would have to pay a monthly subscription to view influencers’ content and interact with them. It would therefore be a

Mr. Stokely is eager to take OnlyFans out of the pornography niche and make it a platform for all sorts of influencers and audiences.

One hurdle is that there is no iPhone app.

The platform as it exists now likely runs afoul of Apple’s restrictions on “overtly sexual or pornographic material,” Stokely said.

HOW HACKS MINDS

PART 3.

DIRTY LAUNDRY OnlyFans stars hire professional ghost writers to send their X-rated texts. Some of the most popular content creators on OnlyFans secretly hire teams of professional sexters to send X-rated messages to their thirsty followers.

reaching out to new subscribers, trying to coax them into buying expensive pay-perview videos. They tell particular subscribers that a video was recorded just for them; in fact, the same clip might be sold to dozens of people.

OnlyFans subscribers currently fork out as much as $49.99 a month for exclusive access to videos made by adult entertainers. Some of the sexy stars offer the option for paying customers to exchange racy private messages with them, increasing intimacy and connection.

Earlier this year, one man took to Reddit to reveal that he had a side gig sexting for a female OnlyFans star.

However, many subscribers may not actually be sexting with the stars themselves—but rather a team of hired professionals, many of whom are schlubby men.

The ghostwriters—known in the industry as chatters—will act as the model in private messages with the customers who pay to talk to her. These chatters work in shifts, responding to incoming messages and

“ONLYFANS GIRLS AREN’T MESSAGING YOU LIKE YOU THINK, IT’S DUDES LIKE ME GETTING PAID BY YOU. I LITERALLY GET PAID

BY DUDES TO MESSAGE THEM BACK. Their clientele—typically horny, lonely men —make it pretty easy. This desire, the post explains, is a pimp’s bread and butter, “e-” or otherwise: “Hustling simps has been an art since the beginning of time!”

The chatters earn a small percentage of sales, and the rest is split between the

agency and the model. The subscribers think they’re talking directly to the woman in the videos, and it is the job of the chatter to convincingly manifest that illusion.

This is not only deceptive—but a violation of the OnlyFans Terms of Service, which states that creators can’t allow others to access to their pages.

However, according to one former content creator, it’s common practice for stars to syphon off sexting to paid professionals: “Almost every creator that I know uses a management company,” says a creator.

Management companies handle every aspect of running the accounts. They market them on social media; write all of their daily posts; and handle direct messaging sales, impersonating the women in conversations with subscribers in order to sell erotic videos.