How Casual Sex Work Became Normalised for Gen Z

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“I remember seeing the most extreme shit on Tumblr.”

Erin and I sat together on the floor of her Chelsea studio, bathed in the waning city light. Erin and I have been friends since childhood, riding our bikes, gossiping at the mall, and, equally quintessentially, supplementing what we learned in sex ed class with fragments from magazines, movies and the internet. 

“I feel like seeing porn, I guess there was a thrill to it obviously but early on I sought stuff out almost educationally.” Erin reminisced. “Sex was such a mysterious thing and adults always talked about it like there was this danger so it felt like - I don’t know if powerful is the right word - but it felt like protection for myself to understand exactly what sex was.”

“I feel like seeing porn, I guess there was a thrill to it obviously but early on I sought stuff out almost educationally.” Erin reminisced. “Sex was such a mysterious thing and adults always talked about it like there was this danger so it felt like - I don’t know if powerful is the right word - but it felt like protection for myself to understand exactly what sex was.” 

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Born around the turn of the century, the ease and access with which me, Erin and our peers had to discover pornography was part of a major shift in the production, distribution and consumption of adult content. Professional pornstars went from landing lucrative deals coordinated by a network of agents to seeing their content pirated and hosted for free on websites like Pornhub, Brazzers, RedTube, and YouPorn. As pornography studios faltered, websites like OnlyFans, FeetFinder, Fansly, Cams.com and myriad others began gaining popularity as avenues for sex workers to monetise their content via monthly subscriptions, tips, and pay-per-view. 

With social media redefining the boundaries of intimacy and entrepreneurship and broader societal reconsiderations of sexual freedom, many people (but mostly women) see digital sex work as an adaptable means to support financial autonomy. But are the evolutions taking place in the porn industry the start of a more symbiotic economic ecosystem for adult content creators and their clients or the beginning of a precarious new era of sexual profiteering? 

Erin is one of the over two hundred million content creators who have joined OnlyFans since the company's inception in 2016. Her content supplements the income she makes as an illustrator and graphic designer. “There was a learning curve of how I wanted to present myself. But, you know, I think it’s a skill we grew up with and we don’t even realise it. I was thirteen or fourteen when I first downloaded Instagram and learned really quickly how to take photos of yourself to look pretty but not too posed.” 

The suggestion that anyone with a smartphone can have the technical ability to become their own pornographer, however, can be misleading. Many creators have spoken out about feeling like they were sold a dream, and making a career off of OnlyFans is actually incredibly difficult.

With the abundance of digital pornography - both free and behind paywalls - sex workers must excel as their own producers, directors, and marketers with an intimate knowledge of digital algorithms, in addition to being skilled performers. 

Jackie, a successful creator I spoke to, has risen to the top 10% of earners on OnlyFans largely due to amassing a following of over 200K on Twitter over the two years she’s been on the platform. “It’s a whole economy,” she explained to me at a Brooklyn coffee shop. Jackie detailed her experience with engagement groups - a curated pod of people sharing and engaging with each other’s social posts - which are used by influencers, small businesses and marketing professionals to gain visibility on Twitter are an especially important tool for sex workers. Content creators boost interactions on each other’s posts with likes, retweets and comments, helping peers' content gain visibility within the Twitter algorithm. Interested clients often find sex workers on Twitter before searching them out on OnlyFans. 

There are requirements for the amount of followers a user must have to be accepted to various groups - 10K, 100K, 300K. Sometimes these groups are based around certain body types or aesthetics to reach targeted consumer audiences. Jackie is in some groups for curvy and BBW creators, Erin is in one for Asian creators, and there are others for non-binary and trans creators. As the generation is already familiar with navigating social media from a young age, utilising Twitter for promoting their content comes naturally.

“That's like the main thing that I do is be active on Twitter.” Jackie told me. “I’ll be retweeting constantly, in any downtime I have. And then at night and in the evening, I'll watch TV and just be like double screening and retweeting.” With an innate ability to multitask hitting share while enjoying their favourite show, marketing yourself as a sex worker is easier, safer and more efficient than ever.

Yet Twitter can be unreliable too. “There will be sweeps.” Jackie said. “People call it sweeps. Accounts will be gone. And I don't know what rhyme or reason there is to it, but it happens.”

Digital platforms come with their own challenges and precarity. “I would like to see a distancing from OnlyFans…It's totally a pimp.” Jackie told me. “They take a 20% cut (of earnings), which is huge. And that's before tax…I don't know what the setup would look like specifically if you were to fully run your own site outside of a platform but I think that that will happen more as people get frustrated with OnlyFans.” 

But the majority of sex workers I talked to praised the rise of digital platforms, as they offer space to negotiate with clients and maintain agency over their work. “I have really bad ADHD. I think that a lot of sex workers have things going on - disabilities or in their lives - that make conventional work settings tough.” Olivia, who started OnlyFans during a period of unemployment in 2021, confided on a bench in Washington Square Park, told me.

Olivia noted: “Having the barrier of a screen feels like a huge protection. I can test out how people are interacting with me and I can easily step away from an interaction that begins to feel gross or violating.” For Gen Z, who are raised with internet safety training within their curriculum and cartoons, distancing yourself from unsavoury clients is so much simpler than it was for their predecessors in the world’s oldest profession.

The rise of websites like OnlyFans and others have answered an increased demand for ‘DIY’ and ‘Amateur’ porn. According to Pornhub’s reported analytics for 2022, reality porn is one of the fastest growing search trends. Searches for “real amateur homemade” grew by 310% in the United States. 

Like many aspects of the internet, authenticity has become a major part of the labour of digitally marketing pornography. Creators and businesses that can come across as authentic not only earn trust and credibility, but also reap financial rewards. 

My generation understands this dynamic exceptionally well: With barely a memory of a time before the internet, we’ve come of age balancing the online appearance of authenticity with the awareness of the deliberate planning and marketing behind it. Content may look spontaneous, but behind the scenes, there's a considerable amount of effort invested in crafting that illusion of spontaneity. 

“Loneliness is an epidemic and I do think I’m fulfilling a real need in these people’s lives.” Erin considers. “But it’s complicated and there’s objectification on both sides. They’re using me and my performance of sexuality, which is only like half my real sexuality anyway, they’re using it to come. And I’m feeling empowered! I have the money, I can pursue my interests, afford housing and buy things that I need. But do the clients understand that they’re purchasing a service and not a person?” 

Words: Evelyn Burke

Please note, names in this article have been changed to protect anonymity.