The Democratization of Porn
Inside the Growing World of OnlyFans
Photo courtesy of Anny Aurora
By Molly Box
April 29, 2021
When Sammy Krieger was still working 44 hours a week as an assistant manager at a retail store, and her coworker suggested she start an OnlyFans, she immediately said no—the platform's reputation for being a porn site was too off-putting. But after a little time spent ruminating on the benefits, she decided to sit down and make a profile. At the time, Krieger was gaining traction on her other social media, and figured adding a new account to her résumé might lend itself well to building up her brand.
​
In her first three weeks on the site, Krieger made $10,000. She decided then to quit her nine-to-five and commit fully to creating and posting content on OnlyFans.
​
OnlyFans is a UK-based social media platform that enables users to charge followers to view their content. The site acts just like any other social media: you scroll through your feed and like and comment and interact with other users, build your own profile and post your favorite photos with witty captions. What differs OnlyFans from Facebook or Instagram is that access to accounts are subscription based—that and the site is primarily used to distribute explicit and pornographic imagery.
​
In today’s creator economy, user-generated content is displacing professionally produced media in multiple realms, including adult entertainment. The porn industry has been undergoing this shift, slowly but surely, since the early 2000's with the rise of webcamming. Now, seldom are big-budget pornographic films being made for the viewership of many, and instead millions film niche content from home for an audience of a hundred, dozens or even just a few. OnlyFans is the tip of that iceberg.
Kreiger poses on her public Instagram. The photo, captioned "I been a boss. Check my resume" has over 54,000 likes.
Photo courtesy of Sammy Kreiger.
Back in March of 2020, when COVID-19 first became a wide-scale threat and social distancing became mandatory for survival, recreational sex was no longer an option for those not willing to risk infection. To satiate their needs people turned to the internet. During that time, OnlyFans experienced a dramatic increase of both performers and users. Krieger, better known by her social media handle SAMMYY02K, felt the surge on her account both in viewership and competition.
​
“[My account] did really well the first month or two of the pandemic. I had a really big increase in fans so I think that was just people being at home more which definitely helped my work.” Krieger, 28, said over Zoom from her Portland apartment.
“I know a lot of people joined the website [as content creators], which some people were scared of, but I think because I was already a big presence on the website beforehand I didn’t really feel effected when a lot of smaller individuals came to the platform.” Said Krieger. “But, who knows if the pandemic never happened and I kept going where I was and all these smaller creators didn’t come on, if I would be bigger.”
​
To subscribe to Krieger’s OnlyFans, it costs $10 monthly. On her page, she also offers two discounted bundles, one for $22.5 for three months or $84 for an entire year. Much of Krieger’s success on the site she attributes to years of growing popularity across different platforms.
On OnlyFans, Krieger has 146.4 thousand likes, on Instagram over 3.3 million followers and YouTube 9.91 thousand subscribers. She calls it the Sammyy02k brand, but according to her, only on her exclusive OnlyFans does someone get the full Sammy experience.
Although social media influencers have an edge when it comes to gaining traction on OnlyFans, more and more people are looking to the site to make a little extra cash, capitalize on their social media or just to tap into their own sexuality.
​
“It’s not about the money for me. The main reason I started it was more so for self-expression, confidence. I always felt like my sexuality was a big part of me,” said Natalie Boyle, a content creator on OnlyFans.
In December of 2020—amid the second L.A. lockdown—Boyle posted her first video with a caption thanking viewers for joining. For access to her account subscribers pay $11.99 per month. Behind the paywall, users can scroll through Boyle’s timeline posts, most of which depict her day-to-day personal experiences: skinny dipping in the ocean, twerking on her bed, trying on different bikinis, taking bubble baths. She stays true to her bio, “sexy, not sex,” and sticks to the sensual side of casual life.
​
If performers choose to charge subscribers, like Boyle does, the minimum their monthly fee can be is $4.99, and the maximum is $49.99. The OnlyFans conglomerate takes 20% of their creator’s earnings, while the creator takes home 80%—plus any tips they make. There are three main ways a user can tip their favorite account: through messaging, on profiles, posts or live streams.
​
The structure of OnlyFans and its many tools are built to allow for a variety of uses. The decision between making their account free or subscription-based is not the only one creators have to make about how, and if, they want to make money. In addition to the initial paywall to access an account, creators can also make pay-per-view posts and messages.
​
Creators can choose to send messages to individual followers, or all of them at once, with a picture or video that can only be viewed after the recipient pays the set amount. Some creators use this function to make custom content for their most loyal fans, or to better regulate who is seeing their more explicit media.
​
Since starting her account, Boyle has tried to remain cognizant of the dangers of posting graphic content of herself online, and the possibility of something getting leaked. To maintain a certain amount of control over her footage, she attaches a faint watermark with her OnlyFans URL at the bottom of all her photos and videos.
​
Also proactive against the potential harm, Krieger shares a warning in the bio of her exclusive OnlyFans: "You may NOT copy, reproduce, distribute LEAK, modify, or create derivative works from my page without my express written permission. Failure to follow these rules will result in LEGAL action against the person who’s information was used to sign up."
"It's not about the money for me. The main reason I started it was more for self expression, confidence. I always felt like my sexuality was a big part of me."
OnlyFans, although a hotbed for suggestive content, does it’s best to protect its users. To attach a bank account so you can start charging for content, you are required to submit your personal data as well as a government issue ID to prove you are over the age of 18. The page will also ask you if you plan to post pornographic content, and creators from the U.S. must complete a W-9 form.
Anny Aurora, a 24-year-old Los Angeles-based content creator on OnlyFans, got into the porn industry five years ago.
“I was in the swinger world before, and found a girl online who did webcam,” said Aurora of her history in the business. “I was very interested in that, so I signed up for a German amateur platform and started webcam for the first time on my 18th birthday. I had my first professional production 6 months after that.”
According to Aurora, when the porn industry was forced to go remote in March of 2020, without access to sets production companies had performers produce everything from home. After taking the first two months of lockdown to relax and reset, like many others it was then Aurora decided to start her OnlyFans. Her account quickly grew, and Aurora now has over 9 thousand likes on her page. To access her account, viewers must pay the $10 subscription fee.
These days, OnlyFans is Aurora’s primary focus. A regular day for her starts with working out, answering her emails and messages on OnlyFans, shooting new content and posting on all of her social media accounts. Her favorite part of her work is connecting with her fans through the chat function of the site, and said she loves getting to know each of them. Although her work takes up almost all of her time, Aurora is displeased with how her career choice is perceived by other people.
“Everyone is watching porn but no one sees it as a real job. It is still not accepted in society,” said Aurora.
With the significant rise of OnlyFans comes tidings of a new structure of adult entertainment. While sex workers struggle on other social media sites due to strict regulations and user guidelines, and other porn sites prove dangerous with their abhorrent lack of, OnlyFans offers conditions for performers to maintain their livelihood and the online environment it is shared in. OnlyFans is also not the only of its kind, although it is the one with the most success. The New Jersey based site FanCentro, has a similar set up and goal: for users monetize their content.
Krieger has two OnlyFans accounts, a free one and a "VIP" one. On her VIP account is where users can privately chat with her and make imagery requests. Photo courtesy of Sammy Krieger
Nikos Lykousas, 28, is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Piraeus in Greece. His research pertains to computational social science with a focus on cybercrime and deviant behaviors. In 2020, Lykousas helped author a significant study titled Inside the X-Rated World of ‘Premium Social Media Accounts, where he and his team explored in depth the upsurge of users on adult entertainment social media by studying FanCentro.
While his research found that coronavirus-induced lockdowns accelerated the number of people joining the site as creators, it also proved that most users receive little to no income from performing.
​
“No matter how good looking you are, or how kinky you are it won’t probably make you, this by itself, be more popular or have more subscribers than somebody who is already famous or has a well thought out personal plan,” said Lykousas. “This is something I didn’t expect at all.”
After completing his research—which originally began as an examination of the anomalous space of FanCentro—Lykousas has come out the other end with a different opinion.
​
“To be honest I don’t think it’s that much of a deviant behavior, not really,” he said. “Because right now it is getting normalized on many levels.” Going forward, the scholar isn’t sure if things will return to normal, whatever normal might be.
​
“I don’t think that that kind of behavior is going to cease to exist. I would think ok, you’ve shown this part of the new expressions, and there actually might be a lot of users that were there not to produce or sell content, but out of curiosity,” said Lykousas. “But there is no way to know to understand this just from the data…[this] might be a side effect of us having too much free time on our hands.”
​
Boyle, although she began her work on OnlyFans during the standstill of lockdown, plans to continue posting and building her account into the near future. She hopes to create higher quality content by hiring photographers and form a more professional look. Her goal is to start her own sustainably and ethically sourced lingerie line centered around women’s health, and all her earnings from her account go towards her dream’s initial investments.
​
​
​
​
​
​
As much as OnlyFans and sites like it are becoming normalized, having an explicit account is—often—still considered taboo. Crystal Jackson, a mother of three and a content creator on OnlyFans, had had her account for over a year when her children were banned from returning to their Catholic school in Feb. 2021. The Jacksons claim their sons were expelled from Sacred Heart Parish School in Sacramento because of Crystal’s online presence. Similarly, Kirsten Vaughn, another creator on OnlyFans, was fired from her job as a mechanic at an Indiana Honda dealership. According to her interview with Buzzfeed, after her male coworkers discovered her account they sexually harassed her at work. Instead of reprimanding her colleagues for inappropriate behavior, Vaughn was fired.
​
Although the number of users on sites like OnlyFans increased during the pandemic, this type of self-produced adult entertainment is not new. Dr. Lynn Comella, associate professor of gender and sexuality studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, author of Vibrator Nation: How Feminst Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure and New Views on Pornography: Sexuality, Politics, and the Law, argues that its roots date back to 1984—the year women first began to step behind the camera of pornography.
"Everybody is watching porn but nobody sees it as a real job."
“Women have had for decades a role as producers,” said Comella. The content and imagery being created in 1984—from Candida’ Royalle’s Femme Productions to the female-founded erotica magazine On Our Backs—set the groundwork for what we see in porn today, what Comella calls “the democratization of production.” Like Aurora, content creators on OnlyFans are not only performing, but filming, editing, producing and marketing as well.
​
"The economic organization of the porn industry has been undergoing a shift that way preceded the pandemic," said Comella. "OnlyFans didn’t fall from the sky fully formed with the onset of the pandemic, nor did these new generations of content creators. This new generation of content creators have been creating content for years. The rise of webcamming, the rise of sites like OnlyFans was already very much in play before the pandemic.”
​
Comella suggests that the pandemic did two things to and for the adult entertainment industry: first, it garnered the interest and attention of mainstream media. Secondly, it enticed people who had never previously done sex work as an easy way to make money. “What many of them discovered quite quickly is it wasn’t so easy,” said Comella.
Comella said that mainstream porn performers who already have accumulated a fan following or somebody with a social media presence have an easier time migrating to OnlyFans then somebody who is neither—a trend that was also mirrored in Lykousas’ research. However, in the past when a celebrity of a higher caliber joins the site, there has been backlash from sex worker’s whose income is disrupted.
​
Bella Thorne, a former Disney actress and current social media influencer, joined OnlyFans in August of 2020, and in her first day on the site earned over $1 million. During her first week on the site, Thorne charged $200 for "naked" images; which when they were revealed to paying customers turned out to be pictures of herself in lingerie.
​
A few days after Thorne’s arrival, OnlyFans altered its transaction policies so that the maximum a performer could charge for pay-per-view content is $50, and viewers can only tip up to $100. However, the company denies that the changes were made in response to the celebrity’s account. Many sex workers were outspoken against both the policy changes and the fact that Thorne was on the site at all; arguing that she was taking opportunity away from people who rely on OnlyFans as a primary source of income.
​
The porn industry is undoubtedly in a phase of evolution that—though its beginnings preceded March of 2020—was accelerated during the pandemic. As the world recovers from the global emergency and we try rediscover what normal is, it's certain that adult entertainment is forever changed by the millions that have decided to create an account under the encouraging promise of the OnlyFans home page: "Sign up to make money and interact with your fans!"