Onlyfans is, in the online sphere, what peep shows were (or are, if they still exist out there) in the physical world. Although with many more risks. You know, flesh and blood women who are displayed, according to the claim, in a hot room surrounded by booths with windows operated by coins per minute.
Girls with little or no clothing, writhing erotically in front of lonely and disturbed onlookers who salivate behind the glass. The same old garbage, one thing and the other.
Only that Onlyfans is not about getting naked in a seedy place, but about recording yourself at home with your cell phone in order to later sell sexually explicit content in order to monetize your life. And there is no need for necessity to be pressing, that too, because getting quite a few euros is within the reach of almost everyone and Aunt Rita can provide coffees for a paltry salary! This is how they enter the hell of content at the client’s request, oh sorry, “fan”. The difference with the past lies precisely in the delivery factor: they start with requests for photos in underwear and a month later they find themselves filming sex scenes. The rest in this whole matter is the banalization of porn, the sign of these times.
They swipe their credit card and, voilà, the order appears on their screen with one click. Tips allow the customer to give free rein to the craziest paraphilias and eccentricities. Elle Brooke, boxer, 33,000 euros a month on Onlyfans, recently said that she has been asked to range from barking like a dog to sending boats with her saliva or pretending to be raped by a ghost.
The numbers speak for themselves: $525 million in profits in 2023, 3.2 million content creators and almost 239 million subscribers. Sex is an electricity that flows without limits or regulation, and it lasts a long time. Give money, what a novelty. But many questions come to mind. Is Onlyfans a prostitution platform? Can virtual and non-physical exchange be considered a sexual relationship? Does a man buy sex, or dominance and submission from a woman? What about age verification? Will artificial intelligence come into play, with non-real bodies and faces?
A report from the Women’s Federation covered by the Ministry of Equality, which has been in the news this week, describes Onlyfans as the gateway to prostitute discourse about women. In turn, this channel normalizes the payment of money for the services of any image of a sexual nature. And in the middle, there is a pimp – digital, of course –, since the channel managers take 20% of the profits and it is known that their thing involves asking for more and more and more and more risqué.
According to Equality, we are facing a form of prostitution, 2.0. On the opposite side, individual freedom is invoked. A freedom in the wire if economic precariousness, lack of self-esteem (you are someone who sells yourself) and loss of control over what you publish on the Internet intervene. Those naked videos playing dog stop being yours the moment you upload them.
Onlyfans subscribers are mostly men, ages 26 to 44. Recent adults who understand that everything is for sale. Only the price is being discussed, as in Groucho Marx’s dialogue.
