Link in Bio: How Problematic Pandemic Trends are Bad for Sex Worker Business
Considering the post-apocalyptic shit show we are undergoing at current, I’m sure many of your personal lives are in total disarray due to Miss Rona. Some of you may have lost your job, or partner, or maybe like me you’ve lost your entire fucking mind. Perhaps to make up for the lack of cash flow in your life, you decided to shift an erratic array of clothing from the remnants of your wardrobe, or maybe you put your hat of bravery on and decide to dip your toes in to the world of sex work by creating an Only Fans account.
Just in case you’ve been living under a rock for the last year: Only Fans is a platform for creators to paywall content of their choosing. This could be anything, from stand-up comedy, to makeup tutorials, but the site is renowned for its pornographic content. It’s selling point being that anyone could start up an account, and you are able to have regular contact with the creators - think Patreon, with added smut.
The allure of Only Fans is the personal level of contact subscribers get with their favourite content creators; from one-on-one messaging, to receiving customised content, content creators are able to fulfil the wildest fantasies of their fans, with the intimate aspects that your average porn site can’t provide for them.
I cannot speak on the benefits of Only Fans from a personal perspective, as I don’t have an account, but I have a multitude of friends that enjoy the creative freedom it brings, like being their own boss, and making decent (sometimes very decent) cash.
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The idea of your ‘regular joe’ selling nude images & videos is extremely common now, which is a big win in terms of normalising and validating the idea of sex work being a job, or even a straight up career for people. Still, with great exposure comes great misinformation. As the world warms more to the idea of sex workers being important and essential assets of society, sex workers are also being weighed down by the lies and false utopias that social media presents their jobs as.
I have been a sex worker for a few years now, and I can tell you, it’s a whole damn rodeo out there. You’ve seen the tweets and viral posts that follow a similar script to “lol guys I’m sooo broke right now, if any one wants to be my sugar daddy dm me xoxo” or, “ha-ha brb quitting my job, dropping out of university to become a stripper, so random” or my personal favourite “selling feet pics” – because the only ‘vanilla’ or ‘acceptable’ form of sex work to this individual is selling images of a body part that they find gross... News flash, feet are in fact the most fetishized body part after genitalia, so if anything, selling feet pics is even kinkier than the more ‘classic’ nude (no hate on you feet pic pushers though, it’s a very profitable sector that I wish to crack someday).
Regardless, these variations of attitude are definitely not new, and neither is making people with Only Fans accounts the punchline of a joke - but with no one getting any action on their socially distanced dates, you can see why the site had a 75% sign up increase at the beginning of lockdown. It can make life difficult for the day-to-day SW’er now, as the top percentage of content creators is frequented by celebrities and influencers that have a bottomless pit of followers and sponsorships, leaving less and less room for your everyday content creator to gain success through the site.
Plus with everyone from your auntie to your neighbour making accounts, the people who use Only Fans to earn their bread-and-butter face even further competition as the site grows in creators during the pandemic.
Poppy, an online content creator, started off her sex work career by selling her nudes via Tumblr, she then gradually progressed to using Only Fans when the site became popularised three years ago. Back then Poppy found getting success on the site relatively easy, as there was more of a gap in the market for online sex workers.
She tells me that now with Only Fans is oversaturated and it has become an uphill battle for content creators as having a large following on social media sites has become part of the criteria in having a successful Only Fans page. This adds even more barriers to creators who do not have the additional time, or money, or energy to build such online followings without a financial gain. Poppy also mentions that creators are using paid promotional posts in order to get seen by more subscribers on different pages, which again, could be seen as an unfair advantage for creators that are able to afford those costs.
She feels that the influx of newer content creators has fuelled a crackdown in laws, particularly the SESTA/FOSTA law in the US, which changed how sex workers use sites such as Instagram entirely - as anything that could be considered facilitating online ‘prostitution’ is banned.
As well as this, an entire list of key words such as “link in bio”, “stripper”, “#sexpositive”, “sex work”, any ‘suggestive’ words, emojis, or imagery can result in Instagram users being shadow banned - which can in turn massively impact the income of a sex worker. Even worse, Instagram can delete your account entirely, obliterating months or even years’ worth of content, as well as losing a personalised community of fellow sex workers and customers. They then have to try and rebuild this following on a new account, resulting in a total burn out. Poppy feels she is ‘pushing against the tide’.
Combining the ever-growing restrictions for sex workers on social media with the influx of influencers and celebrities such as Bella Thorne and her million-dollar first day on Only Fans, you can see how sex workers are being pushed further down by a ‘clout’ hierarchy, which ultimately reflects the gentrification of social media and has happened repeatedly to every profitable site over the last decade.
Within the Bella Thorne scandal, there lies a more problematic change in cyber-sex work, which involves the actual payment providers blocking sites such as Pornhub, due to allegations surrounding illegal activity in videos. Although pornography giants such as Pornhub need to do more to filter the masses of content that enters the site on a daily basis, with both Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal blocking transactions to Pornhub, this is a new kind of devastation for online content creators. PayPal has a known reputation for blocking payments to sex workers, yet with economic giants now removing the means to an end, it poses the question of, how long it will be until all adult sites have several blocks on payment providers? and how will creators be able to generate profit for themselves when major credit and debit card providers are being blocked from some of the largest adult content hubs in the world?
If it wasn’t for ‘in-person’ sex workers having to transfer over to online work during the pandemic, there would perhaps be less issue taken with baby sex workers, or influencers, taking up online territories. But we now face an overwhelming volume of content, and as Poppy mentions, baby creators may be rushing into setting up Only Fans accounts without wanting to put in the work needed for this brand of sex work. This will only leave their subscribers disappointed and further perpetuate the stigma that Only Fans = Only Scams.
The message that is being echoed by sex workers at current comes down to this: if you don’t need the additional income during the pandemic, please avoid starting up an Only Fans during lockdown. Although this could be considered gatekeeping, these are marginalised, working class voices, who have been using sex work as a means of survival as opposed to a trendy cash revenue stream.
However, if you are still considering creating an OnlyFans, Poppy kindly offered some pointers for newcomers:
● Treat Only Fans like a business from day one, be consistent and know your audience
● Get into engagement/retweet groups on Twitter to further your reach and get new clients
● Invest in a good camera and lighting if you have the means to
● Photogenic backgrounds are a must for filming content
● Never post anything that you’re not prepared for everyone you know to see
● Use a fake name from the start, and change your social media names to nicknames
The final point Poppy mentioned was to avoid using Amazon Wishlist for gifts. Although they are a common link that you see in a SW’ers Twitter or Only Fans bio, some light has been shone on the fact that people are still able to access your address through Amazon Wishlist, due to loopholes within the delivery process. A safer alternative to this would be to use either Amazon lockers to receive gifts, or to simply ask for online gift cards instead, which you can have emailed to your work address.
So in short, to anyone considering the sex work industry: Make sure to research your sector extensively, be fully aware of what you are diving headfirst into, but also, don’t let people patronise you or influence your choice.
As long as you can understand that the photos and videos of you can be shared or leaked at any point, that the money may not always be consistent or reliable, and you have some kind of back-up plan in case shit hits the fan, then this could 100% be the perfect hustle for you. Just because a site like Only Fans has become somewhat of a meme, doesn’t mean that you can’t utilise this and make the money you need to stabilise yourself and work towards your own goals, whatever those may be. I’ve found that finally getting paid for your sexual artistry is a liberation in itself, just make sure to support and respect the existing workers who have paved the way for you in turn.
Words: Izzy Stokes | Illustrations: Carolina Altavilla
