Not a Fan of Only Fans
This week’s column was inspired by a friend who sent me an article about a young woman in Australia who has turned her OnlyFans account into a lucrative, money-grabbing opportunity. 26 year-old Annie Knight used to make around $60k a year as a marketing agent as she scrimped and saved in hopes of someday being able to afford a house of her own. Now she makes $200k per month selling adult content of herself on the quasi-pornographic website and owns a series of international properties. My friend sent this to me accompanied by the note: ‘Thought there had to be a column in there somewhere.” Ok, but where? Is it the fact that OnlyFans has suddenly turned pornography into a legitimate side hustle? Or am I supposed to write about how our mainstream vocations simply aren’t providing a reasonable lifestyle that allows even hard-working professionals to own their own home? And that’s when I realised that the true insight for this week’s TRUTH: In 1000 Words or Less lies in the confluence of the two.
Now the first thing I thought of when I saw that there were people out there making seven-figure incomes from selling sex videos of themselves online was, “Where do I sign up?” Of course, that’s when my girlfriend informed me that no one was going to part with their hard-earned cash to watch me stroke my genitalia with one hand while simultaneously trying to video the whole production with the other. No one out there wants to watch that.
But clearly there are plenty of people out there willing to do fork over cash to watch Annie Knight and other desirable ladies and gents out there doing much of the same. For those of you out there who are, like I was until my well-meaning friend sent me this bubble-shattering revelation, blithely unaware of the surging popularity of the OnlyFans website, let me throw a few mind-blowing statistics your way. While you were sleeping comfortably in your bed, the London-based content platform has managed to derive 120 million registered users with an average of over 420 million active monthly users. The skyrocketing popularity of the site can also be measured in its rapidly escalating revenue which soared from $375 million in 2020 to an estimated $2.5 billion just two years later in 2022. While OnlyFans is not exclusively for adult content, offering various cooking shows and fitness videos, 98% of its content involves somebody taking their clothes off in some form or another.
And that’s where their bread is being buttered, in more ways than one. In 2020, OnlyFans paid over $3 billion to creators on its platform after they took their customary 20%. Move over, Uber, that’s quite the gig economy side hustle. While the average monthly earnings of creators on OnlyFans is $180, the top creators can earn over $100,000 monthly. No wonder that as of May 2021, OnlyFans had over 2 million creators registered on its platform. Somehow this has suddenly become a legitimate vocational plan with over 4% of American adults suggesting that they are planning on becoming an OnlyFans content creator. You may not know it, but chances are, be it your next door neighbour, your kid’s high school English teacher, or even your own partner, you know someone who is making some extra cash flashing their good and plenty’s on OnlyFans.
I come at this, as I usually do, not from a place of judgment or scrutiny, but from a place of recognition and acknowledgement. We own our own bodies and have the right to do with them as we please. If someone can get some dude in Palo Alto to fork over $15.90/month (the average subscription rate on OnlyFans) for flashing him their titties, well more power to you, sister. I would happily do the same, but aint nobody buyin’. As such, I have zero issue whatsoever with these folks making the decision to offer those services for whatever compensation they may be afforded. The issue I have is with a global economy that compels them to make that decision in the first place.
Annie Knight is a highly intelligent, college-educated professional who was toiling away at her marketing job in order to walk away with $60k a year. After years of trying to sock away enough of her income in the hopes of someday owning her own home while still somehow paying rent for the apartment that she did not, Knight realised that there had to be a better way. That way was OnlyFans. In a world where greed and connections are the only sure-fire path to financial gain, economic prosperity is a luxury afforded only to a select few. Fortunately for her, she had the goods to make that happen. Others are not so fortunate.
The rest of us do not have bodies we can hock for globs of cash on a website for the morally degenerate. Do I find it disheartening that women across our nation are enticed into exposing themselves in order to make a decent living? Absolutely. But what I find even more troubling are the legions of people out there who face similar financial constraints without the sumptuous physiques that they can parlay into financial remuneration. Sure, Annie Knight is pulling down seven figures annually, but the average monthly earning on OnlyFans is around $180, and if that’s the average, that means that there are a whole lot of people making less than that. What about those of us who would be happy to sell ourselves on OnlyFans but can’t, you know the OnlyFans Wannabe’s? What about the rest of us?
The entire gig economy, be it Uber, OnlyFans, or Airbnb, is a glaring testimonial to the continued economic schism that allows some to have penis-shaped space rockets while the rest of us hock our car, bodies and homes just so that we can afford a place to live. I find nothing wrong whatsoever with Annie Knight exploiting the system for her own personal gain. It’s the system itself I take umbrage with- a system that leaves her with no other option than to sell a piece of her bedroom in order to afford her house.
Steven Craig is the author of the best-selling novel WAITING FOR TODAY, as well as numerous published poems, short stories, and dramatic works. Read his blog TRUTH: In 1000 Words or Less every THURSDAY at www.waitingfortoday.com
