OnlyFans & The Future of Content Creation

I still remember the first time I heard Beyoncé name-dropping OnlyFans on the remix of Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage.” A significant cultural moment not just for the meeting of two Houston icons, it was unquestionable proof that OnlyFans had entered the mainstream. The subscription-based media site has evolved a lot since its conception in 2016, growing to a sweltering 90 million users, including over a million content creators. While most famous for being NSFW, it now boasts plenty of safe-for-work content from celebrities like Cardi B, Shea Couleé, and Jordyn Woods. The site’s also been a model for the trends and currents in today’s worlds, from media and politics to economics and entertainment. OnlyFans hasn’t entered the mainstream, it is the mainstream–and it represents our future.

OnlyFans is one of several sites of its kind. Users generate content, and their audiences pay a monthly subscription fee to access their posts. Patreon, Substack, and Luminary are all networks following similar pay-for-access models that have attracted specific industries: influencer marketing, writing, podcasts. Sex work came to OnlyFans, as it was built for visual content and permitted nudity right around the time other social media sites, such as Tumblr, began to crack down on explicit content. Therefore, the rise in popularity of direct-to-fan sites represents a distinct industry shift: the opaque, discretionary guidelines of social media admins, which lead to censoring and policing of content, has intentionally pushed certain creators to seek more direct avenues of monetization.

Few brands have ventured into the OnlyFans territory. Its association with sex work is likely a primary reason, but importantly, the site’s model doesn’t really support how most brands behave on social media. Currently, most brands’ digital identities are ghostly, using social media like an echo chamber to post fragments and copies of their imagined selves without much substance to say. Most are still trying to game the algorithm, which is a significant reason why users move to subscription sites. Creators want more direct payment and less moderator oversight to release what they know is influential, original work.

Independent clothing line Phlemuns is one of the only brands on OnlyFans. Named “PH After Dark,” the page hosts a trove of the label’s creative work, only a small bit too risqueé for Instagram. Founder James Flemons says the move to OF was not only to evade censorship, but more so to evade creative theft. As an independent designer, copying and undue crediting are practically encouraged on public social media. Fed up with the algorithm, censorship, and “being stolen from constantly,” Flemons says that “OnlyFans caters to all these things I’m fighting against.” The direct-to-fan (DTF) model can therefore offer creators more freedom, creatively and financially.

While the profit potential is certainly true for the established influencer, this is not the narrative explaining the cultural rise of OnlyFans. Many have turned to OF out of financial instability during the pandemic, where the US economy lost 140,000 jobs in December alone, all of them held by women and disproportionately by Black and Latina women. The rise of OnlyFans seems like evidence to the extent our neoliberal digital economy has gone, where individual responsibility pushes us further and further towards marketing and monetizing ourselves, our passions, and our own bodies. It’s a digital climate we’ve helped contribute to: the more marketing fuses with social media, the further self-presentation becomes about business rather than expression.

With this understanding, the popularity of OnlyFans can offer quite radical change. It opens up conversations around stigma and sexuality, an avenue to less judgmental views around our bodies. The site presents alternative economic systems for the future of influencer work, signaling what industry shifts we can expect. As influencer marketing has matured, equitable pay in the digital sphere has become a more visible issue to unpack. Clouded rules of engagement on open platforms have further dematerialized influencer marketing, rewarding contract negotiations more than actual cultural impact. The DTF model brings digital creators more control in monetizing their content, which more creators will begin to seek out. Brands and marketers should all be aware: change is on the horizon for how influencers will manage their content.

For more on the ever-shifting landscape of social media relations and deeper insights on our OnlyFans strategies, hop in our inbox.

Till next time,
Doug