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WRITTEN BY GEORGIA HERRIOTT The recent announcement that OnlyFans was to ban sexual content from October was one met with a wide-scale public backlash, ultimately leading to an eventual U-turn. Many people came out to defend the rights of the (mostly female) sex workers whose livelihoods were being taken away and forced into more precarious places by the decision of entrepreneurs and bankers, who had exploited their content to grow the brand into a billion-dollar business, before cutting them off. The site had seen a huge rise in usage over the last year, with many struggling to make ends meet during the pandemic, and online sex work through its platform becoming a more accessible and safer option than ever. This mainstream popularity in turn seemed to be giving a new legitimacy to sex work and also a new dawn in the sexual liberation of women.
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Georgia Herriott is a literature graduate from the University of Edinburgh who ventured into the world of journalism in order to ensure women from a workingclass background like herself have a voice in society and media. She has a keen interest in wildlife journalism, feminist discourse and LGBTQ+ rights.
The ability for women to be their own boss while in control of their bodies has been a hugely popular reason behind the site’s success. However, it’s something that’s often forgotten when we think about who the site is benefiting, as it’s easy to think of it as just a new wave porn site providing content primarily for men’s sexual pleasure. In doing so however, we forget - as OnlyFans (and many others who mocked the women set to lose out by the rule change) did - about the t*ts behind the camera.
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LEFT PAGE: ‘T*TS’, BY SIRIA FERRER
As a young woman I have spent my whole life being exposed to sexually explicit behaviour and comments from men. Like most women, experiences such as wolf whistles have been a regular occurrence for me on walks home from clubs, work or even from school. I can’t begin to count the number of strangers on the internet I have blocked because of online abuse, sexually explicit comments and unsolicited dick-pics. Although I feel that feminism has done so much to improve the negative aspects of being a woman, the behaviour of men at times seems to lag way way behind this movement. Through OnlyFans however, women were able to exploit the sexual objectification they face on their own terms, ushering in an era which the New York Times claimed had “changed sex work forever”.
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‘Filtered Memories’, by Lauren Clark
“PICKING UP THE PIECES” ILLUSTRATION BY LINDSAY TEMPEST
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Digital Chicken Gravy JACK STACEY
I reopened a forgotten thought from my computer; only place left to hide. Best not talk about private stuff with ink or pencil, or sporadic voice fossilised forever on a tree. Yes, I opened the computer, read the holy grail of crap from my brain, the recycled unhappiness from said date and time, sitting there like the old castle ruin people pay to visit. What does it say you ask? If I told you this before you’d probably not care. I tell my digital therapist instead. She has a digital name and tons of digital wisdom. She tells me there’s lots to live for. I told her my thought: There are fewer butterflies around. She said some things only exist when you’re a child. What happens when enough of us snuff it? All those digital graveyards, those names and faces and photos. There’ll be no more room in digital hell. Zombie group chats will walk the empty streets. That’ll be the best horror that ever lived.
Jack is a writer and poet born 1985, Salisbury, Wiltshire. He has a BA and an MA in Creative Writing. During his time at university, he won a poetry award and directed a play for the Theatre Royal in Winchester. Most notably, he likes tea and converting tiny life particles into poems. Jack uses his vast knowledge of film and television for quizzes. At the moment, he’s co-writing a television script and dabbling in acting
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Times have indeed changed, for people used to say that gaming was just a waste of time and didn’t contribute anything positive to a person’s life. It is common nowadays to hear people talking about the latest games, or about the latest scandal caused by a gaming personality, even on national news. Moreover, times have changed when it comes to the acceptance of people who play video games. Upon looking at a typical Facebook feed, I can see that gaming has become a widespread phenomenon that goes beyond the screaming crowds, the jam-packed stadiums, the grandiose production and the jaw-dropping prize pools. I watch my gamer friends stream a game and notice that there’s going to be at least five to ten people watching that same stream; those who do it for a living get tens of thousands of viewers in a single day; to put it into perspective, it’s akin to filling up an entire stadium full of fans. Just a decade ago, people would have thought of this as an oddity at best. The amount of interaction between the streamers and their respective audiences does rival those of real-world shows – reality shows are now starting to be a relic amongst Generation Z.
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As far as I remember, my parents allowed me to play video games back in the day, as long as I did my housework and my school work properly. My big brother played 1945 and Mortal Kombat with me in the local arcade machine, where we paid one peso for every three minutes played. Later on, my parents bought a bootleg DVD player from China, which also happened to have the capability to play games with its “1000 in 1” disc function. I could imagine commanding an armada of airplanes from the skies, going through endless waves of flak and enemy planes, blasting them with precise waves of machine guns and cannons, and fly my way to victory whenever I played 1945.
For the most part though, “Wala kang mapapala diyan (You’ll gain nothing from it),” “Sayang lang oras mo (It’s just a waste of time),” and “Kikita ka ba sa kakakompyuter mo (Will you ever earn by playing games)” were the usual tag lines uttered by parents and other elders back when I was a child. Many gamers had to deal with the negative stigma associated with playing games until just recently when the concept of gaming became widely accepted as a part of mainstream life. Online games allow for a moment in time in which strangers come together and cooperate towards the completion of a common goal. Also, when people play online games, they’re making their own stories. It is a story that is complete with pacing, tension, characters, catharsis, and even character development, both literally and figuratively. As for offline games, it allows the players to immerse themselves in diverse worlds while creating their exclusive narrative inside the game.
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4TH EDITION, AUGUST 2021 vainemagazine.com vainemag@gmail.com Social Media : @vainemagazine EDITOR Dominic Thomas ART DIRECTOR & GRAPHIC DESIGNER Siria Ferrer Sainz-Pardo COVER ART Siria Ferrer Sainz-Pardo
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