Be my Only Fan | Jakub Kądzielski

Imagine this: you’re a skilled artist looking for a way to share your art with an audience. You’ve tried Facebook, Twitter, and other social media but you’re still not turning a profit. Suddenly, you come across this new platform, where fans can make a simple payment to unlock your various artwork each month. A perfect solution, isn’t it? The only problem: it’s filled with pornography.

OnlyFans.com is a content subscription service website. There, creators can earn money from viewers (“fans”) subscribing to their accounts and paying a monthly fee for their products. It also allows authors to receive funding from one-time tips and a pay-per-view (PPV) feature. Of that, the company retains 20%, with the rest going to the creator. Simple as that.

The site launched in 2016 and slowly but steadily gained more attention. Now, presumably owing to the ubiquitous social isolation forced by the pandemic, it has become an enormous platform with over 1 million creators and more than 50 million registered users. In early 2019, OnlyFans’ founder, Tim Stockley was quoted in The West Australian saying, "We are currently on-boarding over 3000 new content creators every week." Reportedly, the site has paid out over 2 billion to the creators and has been valued at around $900 million. Needless to say, it is BIG.

However, despite its popularity, OnlyFans is a controversial platform. As I have written, the site is filled to the brim with pornographic content. That is not to say that there are no safe-for-work creators on OnlyFans. Quite the contrary, it hosts numerous musicians, graphic designers, fitness trainers, influencers, and other artists – nonetheless, they remain a minority. Chances are, if you’re logging into the site, you’re looking for some smut.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with pornography and sex-working, malpractice and mishandle often sprout around them. OnlyFans is no exception. If you search through the articles about the site, you will see a number of issues crop up. From the unfair distribution of wealth (33% of earnings from the site go to the top 1% creators, with most accounts taking ‘home’ less than $145 per month) to unlawful practices (cases of false advertising, site capping on how much can a creator earn) or even cases of underage pornography, as was revealed by the BBC Three documentary #Nudes4Sale.

Even if you don’t watch it, chances are you are aware of the gargantuan amount of pornography on the internet. Free pornography at that. Why would anyone pay for a site like OnlyFans, when there is so much of the same free of charge? OnlyFans offers neither more nor better content than its competitors – it has fewer creators, doesn’t support 4K quality, and has restrictions on the type of erotica it offers, which “classic” porno sites do not have.

OnlyFans is so popular because it offers a human connection, or rather an illusion of it. The users of the site create a certain rapport with the creators they support, just like fans with their idols. (It is worth mentioning that OnlyFans community is predominantly heterosexual men paying to watch women, and this text will refer to such typical situation.) Paying on a monthly basis, you can follow the life of a given creator. What she does each week, what she likes, what are her hopes and dreams – you know it all. And if the tip is high enough, you can write personally, or even receive personalized content. If you’re the type of person who lacks human interactions or social skills, this drug was made for you.

And the creators know the game they’re playing. OnlyFans nailed the dopamine hook of social media and casinos that porn websites did not; the platform works like a gated garden. In the beginning, when you get to OnlyFans, you see only racy descriptions of photos. Once you subscribe, you get to see those photos, though some of them are blurred out. Of course, you can pay extra to unlock them. If you want to go deeper into the gated community you can request personalized content, but you need to tip individually for that. The mechanism of OnlyFans can be compared to the rush you get when someone sends you a text or a Snap, which you can’t open just yet. There’s mystery, you cannot stop thinking about it and it creates anticipation. We can contrast that with X-rated sites, where each mystery is immediately revealed. You see an explicit video with an explicit description and a thumbnail, and if you hover above the thumbnail you can glimpse various moments from the clip. OnlyFans works the other way round: everything is veiled and the only way to remove that veil is to pay. On top of that, the webcam industry (including OnlyFans’ sister site MyFreeCams.com) uses the same techniques as the gambling industry: keno, roulettes and content hidden behind paywalls. The amount of money needed to win is unclear. It is reminiscent of those game machines you can play in any tourist town, where the next coin could be the one to tip the whole game. Again, the prize in these games is the same as what is available on all of the classic porn sites, but it is the mystery and anticipation that drives this seemingly irrational behavior.

However, these practices are not the only thing that makes OnlyFans so successful. It’s the feelings of recognition, intimacy, and community that truly distinguish the site. The cycle begins on Instagram, where OnlyFans’ models post their photos available for everyone. The way these pictures are taken rarely makes the audience feel acknowledged, with models looking away from the camera and the viewer being more of a voyeur. This serves per as a gateway to more affectionate photos, which you can find exclusively on OnlyFans. There, you receive recognition, along with content that feels more personal and intimate. Creators often send direct messages, asking users to react to a recent photo shoot or texting “goodnight”/“good morning” messages, in which they claim to be thinking about them. In the photo descriptions on Instagram the words “you” or “us” are rarely used, while on OnlyFans creators use them repeatedly. This type of language creates intimacy. Relationships on OnlyFans mimic relationships in real life (especially long-distance relationships), at least at their face value. Going further down the rabbit hole: fans of a given creator tend to form friend groups of their own. They recognize each other on live chats, ask about personal life or react if they haven’t seen a person in a while. If the creator doesn’t stream though, the fans can’t meet each other on that day.

But it’s this last bit that makes OnlyFans potentially even more addictive than casinos: it sells guaranteed acceptance. Even if you behave in the most cringy and unattractive way, which usually would get you rejected on dating sites like Tinder or Bumble, you will not get left in the red. Every message gets a response, provided it is paid for or shows a prospect of turning up a profit. On OnlyFans you don’t need to be interesting for people to act interested. And the girls make sure that you will be interested in them, too; they fill their account descriptions with interests reliable to most young men: sports, computer games, comics, anime, and obscure philosophies. The number of women highlighting predominantly male hobbies is through the roof. Now, these women may genuinely hold these interests but they appear more often on OnlyFans than in real life. When talking to such a girl, you don’t need to make her interested in your hobbies or listen to what interests her. The burden of keeping the conversation going is lifted – women on OnlyFans will do it for you. And they will add naked photos to that. For a fee.

In that regard, OnlyFans offers something more than standard porn websites ever could. When talking to a girl you don’t need to fear rejection, even if you show her the most awkward, insecure side of yourself. For a couple of bucks, you can have a relationship that feels like a genuine bond. If porn offers arousal and orgasm, OnlyFans offers guaranteed acceptance. On top of that, your ‘girlfriend’ is crazy about sex, sends nudes and likes the things you like.

It is not a particularly healthy mechanism, in which we can swap cash for a simulation of a relationship. I believe it’s much more rewarding to look for genuine bonds in real life, even if that means risking rejection and/or hurting. It is that risk that helps us grow and change as individuals. If we just aim at safe, constant gratification, we’re missing out. So next time, let’s try spending that hard-earned cash on something that makes one grow, or swapping that online date for a real-life conversation with another person. Who knows, they may even become your only fan.

Jakub Kądzielski