All you need is a phone, WiFi, and a little creativity to make money on OnlyFans.
“To quote one of the first women I ever lusted after, I’m not that innocent!”
Good afternoon, everyone.
New York tends to snap a little more into place when Caroline Calloway is back in town. She tipped me off to a screening of Bob Fosse’s Star 80 at Roxy Cinema last night, which I attended with Harry Hill. Allie Rowbottom and Lili Anolik hosted a conversation about Allie’s new book, Lovers XXX, afterwards. I only wrote down one line from Allie’s Q+A: “It’s hard to be a woman playing multiple roles.”
Star 80 is a suspenseful retelling of the murder of Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten by her sleazeball husband, Paul Snider. When the movie ended, several women walked out disturbed, before Allie spoke about her new novel, which takes place in a similar universe: 1980s Los Angeles, specifically the porn industry in the Valley.
The 80s Los Angeles porn scene was very different than the industry being built online today. I listened to Allie answer questions about Lovers XXX and adult film, keeping in mind that today’s newsletter was about OnlyFans, and keeping in mind that OnlyFans was a main storyline of this season of Euphoria, and keeping in mind that many of the women hanging off of streamer Clavicular’s arm are OnlyFans creators. OnlyFans creators made $3.9 billion in 2021. This industry is ubiquitous, and the specifics of how the internet has changed adult film, monetization, and ownership are fascinating to me.
In today’s newsletter, I have an interview with both Leon Neyfakh, a journalist, and Gracie Canaan, a New York-based stand-up comedian and (relevant here) OnlyFans creator. Leon has been behind some great podcasts and audio series over the last decade, including Slow Burn (Watergate, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal), Fiasco (Bush v. Gore, Iran Contra), and Think Twice (Michael Jackson). Last month, they launched a new podcast about OnlyFans called OnlyFantasy.
Today’s newsletter also includes: Recho Omondi is the most interesting person in media this week, the new issue of i-D magazine is going for $500 on eBay, and how much would you pay for a bag of tea?
Posting and browsing the Feed Me Job Board is free. It’s used by hiring teams at Bumble, YouTube, and Happier Grocery.
“To quote one of the first women I ever lusted after, I’m not that innocent!”
Last week, a friend of mine told me about a new, highly-produced podcast series about OnlyFans called OnlyFantasy. It’s co-hosted by Leon Neyfakh and Gracie Canaan. I had two immediate reactions once I started listening:
I thought I knew something about OnlyFans, but the show just kept surprising me—particularly in its portrait of the economy in the 2020s, and the need (/opportunity) for so many people to find new forms of work within the OnlyFans ecosystem. (More on that below.)
A well-produced podcast just feels so rare today and it was refreshing to listen to something that wasn’t just chattering between two people on mics.
After finishing the six-episode series this weekend, I had some questions for Leon and Gracie. We discuss AI use in OnlyFans, the barrier to entry to success, and the man who spent $43,915 on a single creator.
Leon, you come to this project with a great deal of innocence—there are many moments throughout the show when you sound blown away by a new revelation about the OnlyFans ecosystem, from the amounts of money spent by an individual user on an individual creator; the existence of chatters (that is, other people who are hired to talk to creators’ clients as though they are the creator); the dim view of humanity broadly (or American men more specifically) held by the “e-pimps” of OF, etc.
What was the single fact or figure that surprised you most — or that you found yourself repeating to friends while you were reporting the show?
Leon Neyfakh: To quote one of the first women I ever lusted after— I was in middle school in 2000 — I’m not that innocent! I saw some commenter say I was trying to act like I’d never seen porn before, which is not the case — what surprised me was the realization that OnlyFans is NOT a porn site, but more like… a paid messaging app, or if you prefer, an online strip club. Men aren’t just using it as a place to buy pictures and videos — they’re on there paying women to talk to them, flirt with them, and pretend they’re in a relationship with them. What I found shocking was that there are millions of people who are willing to pay for what is essentially an imaginary online girlfriend. (It’s not a peer-reviewed study or anything, but an analysis of ~59 million OF transactions found that messaging drives almost 70% of revenue on the platform.)
All that said, the one thing I told more friends about than anything else is that YouTuber Adam22 has a podcast with his wife Lena the Plug where each episode is a long, Marc Maron-style interview with a different OnlyFans model, and then at the end they all have sex. (The theme song of the podcast goes, “Plug Talk is the best, the only podcast where the hosts smash the guests.”) The interview portion of Plug Talk is available “wherever you get your podcasts,” as we say; if you want to see the other part you have to pay for it on OnlyFans. The future of podcasting? (I’m sad to report we never found a place for this in the actual show, but I’m hoping we can release it as a bonus episode.)