Latest / The Curve / OnlyFans: exploitation dressed up as empowerment.

Transcript

OnlyFans: exploitation dressed up as empowerment. · The Curve

• 0:01
  Coming up in today's episode, a listener recently wrote in suggesting that Sophie and I read Margot's Got Money Troubles, which is a fabulous book, came out last year and was recently made into an Apple TV show starring Elle Fanning that has been widely discussed.
• 0:15
  The book really centres around OnlyFans and is a wonderful read and watch.
• 0:19
  So we thought we'd do a discussion, kind of springboarding off the back of Margot's Got Money Troubles, discuss the economics of OnlyFans, who's making money on the platform and how, how the business is organised and how the business itself is making money and
• 0:31
  the exploitation that seems to become the dark underbelly of OnlyFans, and what happens next for the platform as it skirts a potential IPO.
• 0:39
  Welcome to the Curve Weekly, where we read the financing news so that you don't have to.
• 0:43
  I'm Sophie Hallwright, ex-television radio producer, who was sick and tired of not understanding investing, the economy, how to grow wealth, so we started this podcast.
• 0:49
  Welcome to the Curve Weekly, where we read the financing news so that you don't have to.
• 0:51
  And my name is Emma-Louise Boynton.
• 0:52
  I'm a writer, author and broadcaster interested in exploring the topics we're taught not to discuss.
• 0:58
  So that means typically taboo topics like money.
• 1:00
  But before we get into today's episode, we've got a quick word from today's sponsor.
• 1:05
  Did you know Generate have a team of advisors who will actually meet with you and help you make sense of KiwiSaver?
• 1:13
  You can book a no-cost KiwiSaver advice session via the link in our podcast show notes.
• 1:18
  And thanks to Generate for sponsoring this episode of The Curve Weekly.
• 1:21
  How was your weekend?
• 1:22
  How was your weekend?
• 1:23
  Hi, Sophie.
• 1:23
  And my weekend was... Hi, and my weekend.
• 1:25
  Like, hi.
• 1:26
  My weekend was... Well, actually, my weekend was delightful.
• 1:30
  I went with my boyfriend to a flea market, which actually was closed, which was annoying.
• 1:36
  But then we found a bunch of other, like, antique furniture places because we are doing up our flat at the moment.
• 1:42
  And we are looking for some great bargains.
• 1:44
  And we found a beautiful piece of furniture actually in the car park to our building.
• 1:50
  So we are on a money-saving...
• 1:53
  flat do-over and it is looking stunning.
• 1:57
  That's so fun.
• 1:58
  It is fun.
• 1:59
  Look, we're turning a house into a home.
• 2:01
  I mean, Emma moves in and the first thing she buys is the biggest bookshelf that anyone's ever seen to fill the entire back wall.
• 2:09
  And I think you've got to give some context to that, Sophie.
• 2:10
  I moved in with my minimalist boyfriend who had like nothing in this flat.
• 2:16
  He had the most, it was a very sparsely decorated flat.
• 2:20
  quite nice I will say it was nice I mean no I it was actually I'm being unfair to him it was it was very minimalist it was very calming he's so tidy he is like the cleanest tidiest person he definitely got less tidy since I've been there but I think there could be a last that you're shifting the from you to him no I did say that to him he froze that he was like excuse me what about you what did you do
• 2:45
  I went on a hike around the coast towards Margate.
• 2:50
  I had a random, I was Googling on my way there.
• 2:52
  We got on a train very last minute.
• 2:54
  In the UK, if you're last minute to a train, you stand the entire journey.
• 2:58
  So that was not my finest.
• 2:59
  If you're lucky, if you managed to get on.
• 3:01
  Yeah.
• 3:01
  So we were sort of hovering, standing, trying not to fall on everyone.
• 3:05
  And then I was Googling on the way there and it was like amazing hike from this earlier train stop.
• 3:10
  So I was like, right, we're getting off.
• 3:12
  We had like motorbike helmets that we carried the entire hike, big giant bag.
• 3:16
  It was not well planned for me.
• 3:18
  Oh, my gosh.
• 3:19
  But we had such a lovely day.
• 3:21
  Walked for a hike, went all the way to Margate.
• 3:22
  It happened to be Pride.
• 3:25
  So we were just dancing in the square, making friends, having frozen margaritas.
• 3:29
  It was so much fun.
• 3:30
  This sounds like absolutely heaven.
• 3:31
  Before we started recording this episode, I said to Emma, right, are you in the read or green?
• 3:35
  She was like, oh, I'm really, I'm considering lying about it.
• 3:37
  I think I am just going to lie.
• 3:38
  I was thinking about on the way and I was like, listen, I can't just be this broke record of like, oh, guess what?
• 3:43
  I'm in the right again.
• 3:44
  But so am I.
• 3:45
  It just makes you feel better.
• 3:46
  Lying.
• 3:46
  Okay.
• 3:47
  I'm going to say, you know what?
• 3:48
  I've paid off my credit card bill early this month.
• 3:51
  Nice.
• 3:52
  I mean, I always pay off in time, but I've paid off early this month, which is like a good feeling.
• 3:55
  That's all I'll say.
• 3:56
  Nice.
• 3:57
  Great.
• 3:57
  You know what?
• 3:57
  Selective information.
• 3:59
  Exactly.
• 4:00
  So it's not lying.
• 4:00
  It's withholding information to suggest that I'm in a non-identifiable color.
• 4:06
  Nice.
• 4:06
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 4:07
  Love that.
• 4:07
  What about you?
• 4:08
  Red or green?
• 4:08
  Massively red.
• 4:09
  I mean, I'm also bored with hearing myself talk, actually.
• 4:12
  Just lie.
• 4:13
  I mean, I mean.
• 4:14
  It's not the ethos of the podcast.
• 4:15
  It's just like so, it's so, if I had to follow my budget for what we did in London or in the weekends, we would be curled up in the house, not leaving to do anything.
• 4:27
  I know, but it's made me realize, wow, I do way more fun stuff now that I'm in a relationship.
• 4:32
  Really?
• 4:32
  Yeah.
• 4:32
  Yes, as well.
• 4:33
  Yeah, but also, I mean, like, I didn't pay for the train ticket.
• 4:37
  He did.
• 4:38
  He paid for our lunch.
• 4:39
  I did small stuff.
• 4:40
  Like, I paid for the coffee and the croissant for the train ride.
• 4:43
  I paid for, you know, a round of drinks later in the day.
• 4:46
  But it's not true to my budget.
• 4:49
  So I'm cheating, actually.
• 4:50
  Massively cheating.
• 4:51
  I mean, great.
• 4:52
  Yeah.
• 4:52
  You've got to be a baller on a budget.
• 4:54
  You've got to live the high life.
• 4:55
  But it's almost like a baller on someone else's budget, so it makes me feel better.
• 4:58
  Even better.
• 4:59
  That's like, baller on someone else's budget.
• 5:01
  Fabulous.
• 5:03
  Okay, so we're both in, well, I'm not in the red.
• 5:05
  I'm in a non-identifiable colour.
• 5:07
  Yeah.
• 5:07
  And you're a baller on someone else's budget.
• 5:10
  So I'd say that's winning.
• 5:12
  That's a reframe right there.
• 5:15
  Okay, so today's topic, we are speaking about OnlyFans.
• 5:19
  Can you get rich on OnlyFans?
• 5:21
  What is happening with the business?
• 5:23
  It has been a very interesting week.
• 5:25
  I will say I'm incredibly proud to let you know that I've read this entire book that we're going to start this episode by discussing in seven days.
• 5:32
  That's a record for me.
• 5:33
  Margot's Got Money Troubles, which is now streaming on Apple TV.
• 5:37
  You watched the show, didn't you?
• 5:39
  I watched it.
• 5:39
  So good.
• 5:40
  You didn't like it, but I loved it.
• 5:41
  I thought it was so well done.
• 5:43
  I didn't read the book.
• 5:44
  So I came to it from the TV show, which was suddenly, I think I just heard about it everywhere.
• 5:49
  We've swapped roles.
• 5:51
  You'd normally be the reader and I'd be the watcher.
• 5:52
  I would usually read, totally.
• 5:54
  I will read it eventually.
• 5:56
  But also now I've watched the TV show.
• 5:57
  The TV show I do think is done really well.
• 5:58
  It's really close to the text because I did have a flick through.
• 6:01
  Because it was actually the show that was really buzzy.
• 6:04
  Obviously then that propelled the book and at least from a UK perspective, I think.
• 6:08
  Okay, right.
• 6:09
  Yeah.
• 6:09
  I mean, I will say I thought it was a very funny, fun, enjoyable, well-written book.
• 6:15
  I really enjoyed it.
• 6:15
  The characters were so fun.
• 6:18
  But yeah, I just find watching television with my boyfriend incredibly awkward because I think if I'd watched this by myself, I would have loved it.
• 6:26
  I think I'm really hyper aware of the girly, kind of not great acting, quite American shows when I watch it with him.
• 6:34
  Super funny.
• 6:34
  Super funny.
• 6:35
  No, I really did.
• 6:37
  I thought the main character, I was like, is there just too many shows being produced and so they're running out of good actors?
• 6:42
  I was watching it feeling really awkward.
• 6:44
  Anne Fleming is one of the top actors.
• 6:45
  She's amazing.
• 6:46
  The main character.
• 6:47
  Did you think so?
• 6:47
  I thought she was fabulous.
• 6:48
  For anyone who hasn't watched the show or read the book yet, just a quick description.
• 6:52
  It's basically about a young woman.
• 6:55
  She's studying at college and she ends up having an affair with her professor and she gets pregnant.
• 7:01
  Yeah.
• 7:01
  And the show basically follows her journey through this pregnancy.
• 7:05
  She decides to keep the baby and then has to work out, okay, how the fuck am I going to fund having a child?
• 7:11
  The professor is not great and like basically absconds all responsibility early on.
• 7:17
  And so she ends up thinking, okay, how do I fund this life and ensure that my child can actually live and ends up going on OnlyFans?
• 7:21
  And the show is like, okay, I'm going to go on OnlyFans.
• 7:23
  And the show is like, okay, I'm going to go on OnlyFans.
• 7:25
  And the show, I think, does such a good job at exploring with such nuance the motivations and the economic necessity that often drive people to OnlyFans and also the social stigma that really does surround people who use the platform.
• 7:41
  And I think explores this topic that is so sensationalist often is often discussed in the press and is very kind of sensationalist, often just kind of reduced to sex sort of way.
• 7:49
  It explores that in a really beautifully like sensitive way, which is why I found actually so engaging.
• 7:56
  What did you make of the book?
• 7:58
  I loved the characters.
• 8:01
  I found myself not getting annoyed at this 19-year-old deciding to keep her baby.
• 8:05
  It was really interesting, which I know is a kind of controversial thing to say, but you look at outwardly her life.
• 8:11
  She's young.
• 8:13
  She has no money.
• 8:14
  She has a casual waitressing job.
• 8:17
  She doesn't have a relationship with who's going to be the dad.
• 8:21
  Her mother outwardly says, I'm not helping you.
• 8:23
  This is your baby.
• 8:25
  She's so on her own.
• 8:27
  And objectively, if you look at her situation, you know, she's living in her flat.
• 8:30
  Flat share.
• 8:31
  Flat share.
• 8:32
  With two other people.
• 8:33
  With this baby crying, people like knocking on the wall being like, keep it down.
• 8:37
  And you're like, oh, wow.
• 8:38
  You just, I think a lot of the time, and maybe it's something to do with how involved we all are now with making money in our careers, but...
• 8:46
  It's sort of become this expectation that everything should be perfect and really well lined up before you have a baby and that, you know, you've got to be so financially secure.
• 8:54
  And you just think outwardly, you know, it's really easy to find excuses, particularly financial ones as to why you're not ready.
• 9:01
  And I think that the story was such a great example of all a baby needs is love and a mother that really cares for their baby.
• 9:10
  And it's by no means easy.
• 9:12
  And of course, she turns to OnlyFans to make money.
• 9:14
  So it's not...
• 9:15
  I mean, she's at the start of the book stressing so much because she gets fired from her job because she can't find childcare, which is obviously what so many people struggle with.
• 9:23
  Being able to pay for childcare, it almost cancels out your earning.
• 9:27
  So a lot of people then don't work because it's too expensive to pay.
• 9:31
  So basically what it explores is the modern issue with, yeah, like how do you care for a baby with all of the expenses that come with it?
• 9:39
  And I just think that, yeah, it made me feel –
• 9:44
  I don't know.
• 9:45
  I've had a lot of love for the characters in the book.
• 9:47
  And perhaps this is a nice example of women are very resilient and they will do what they need to, to care for their baby.
• 9:55
  And I love that you said that because it makes me think I, before we were recording, I was really curious as to the motivations of the writer as to why she wanted to write about this particular story.
• 10:03
  And I was wondering if it was kind of reflecting her own story or like what it was.
• 10:07
  And I found a couple of interviews that she'd done recently and I'm,
• 10:10
  Your reaction, I think, I really, from what I've read of her, is kind of what she wanted to elicit in the reader.
• 10:15
  So she really wanted to explore the Madonna versus whore complex, which is obviously this idea, this kind of dichotomous binary that was a term coined by Freud, like kind of 100 years ago, about this idea that women are either...
• 10:28
  kind of slutty whores who you want to shag who are really desirable for a man or they're these kind of virginal madonnas who you can imagine being a mother and a mother and a wife they can be one or the other and so Rufy Thorpe who is the author of this book was really curious about exploring this dichotomy and wanting to kind of just explore how women continually get put in
• 10:51
  And she wrote,
• 11:08
  when OnlyFans started to blow up, I noticed people were talking about it in a much less judgmental way.
• 11:13
  And I thought, here's my chance.
• 11:15
  And I love that because that, I mean, it leads so perfectly into our conversation about how OnlyFans has almost been this like segue
• 11:23
  to us having maybe more expansive, more nuanced conversations around sex work and the reasons that people do it in a kind of contemporary standing.
• 11:34
  So off the back of that, I wondered first and foremost, do you think OnlyFans has made sex work more socially acceptable?
• 11:44
  hundred percent I mean I have someone who I was at school with who's now an OnlyFans and for a long time she grew her profile through being on Below Deck so she had this huge profile on social media and everyone was saying to her please go to OnlyFans because she was constantly sharing it being like haha no and then she did it and I thought good on you yeah that's so cool and she has to market it on social media to people who know her family and friends
• 12:08
  because notoriously OnlyFans doesn't have an algorithm to help with marketing.
• 12:12
  So you have to be confident promoting what you do for work publicly.
• 12:18
  You can't keep it in the echo chamber of OnlyFans, which I think in itself has meant that you're seeing lots of different people who are doing sex work.
• 12:26
  Also, it's not necessarily physical, right?
• 12:28
  So people aren't actually having sex with strangers.
• 12:32
  They can be in control of what content they're putting out,
• 12:34
  what they price it at, who's sick, you know.
• 12:36
  And so I think that the safety element is amazing.
• 12:40
  I think that the fact that, I mean, some creators have made an insane amount of money.
• 12:45
  And like going back to the book, Margot doesn't know how else to make money.
• 12:51
  And at the start, she talks about how it makes her feel sick to show her vagina online.
• 12:57
  And obviously she graduates to doing that over time and then she really starts to love her work.
• 13:00
  But...
• 13:01
  It also really shows, I think, the nuance of how she's not 100% comfortable with doing this at the start.
• 13:08
  She's doing it for financial reasons, but she's able to do it in a way and gradually that suits and fits within her own values and what feels good for her.
• 13:18
  I don't know.
• 13:19
  I think there's a lot of normalizing that has happened.
• 13:22
  And it's only really in the last five years.
• 13:24
  I mean, OnlyFans started in like 2018 or 2016.
• 13:27
  So it's been not long.
• 13:28
  It started 2016 and then blew up in the pandemic for obvious reasons when suddenly people couldn't go out and everyone was correctly online.
• 13:34
  And suddenly you had this explosion.
• 13:35
  One of people not being able to work and loads of people being fired and not being able to do their previous work.
• 13:40
  money in the usual ways so I think it kind of benefited as a lot of online platforms did from that kind of slightly anomalous period in time but then has continued to be just such a big player in our online world but I just think I'll just reflect back on what you said just there I do think the the kind of seamless integration of the OnlyFans world and the kind of
• 14:04
  It's not all porn because it's not all sex.
• 14:06
  It's not all sex work.
• 14:07
  A lot of it's, you know, there's people who...
• 14:09
  I mean, foot fetish still counts as sort of sex work.
• 14:11
  But there's gradations of the stuff that people do on OnlyFans.
• 14:15
  But I think the fact that performers, to your point, have had to rely on building their audiences across other channels to then direct people to subscribe to their OnlyFans channel because there is no explore page...
• 14:27
  has created this sort of like seamless integration with other social media platforms in a way that has been very normalizing of we've kind of become used to OnlyFans creators being part of our digital ecosystem, even if we're not someone who goes on OnlyFans or watches porn.
• 14:43
  And I think that has really kind of blurred the boundaries of.
• 14:45
  And I think this is not a commonly spoken about thread with this conversation that, A, there's celebrities on there that are not making money necessarily through sexual content.
• 14:55
  So can we actually talk about some of the big celebrities that are on there and what they're using it for?
• 15:00
  Just this weekend, Jessie Cave did an interview with The Times.
• 15:05
  And Jessie Cave, for anyone who doesn't know.
• 15:06
  Yeah, so Jessie Cave is in Harry...
• 15:08
  So she was in Harry Potter.
• 15:09
  She played Lavender Brown when she was 19 years old.
• 15:12
  She's now been an actress for 18 years.
• 15:15
  And she's appeared in television shows, including Trollied, Call the Midwife.
• 15:20
  She starred in Arcadia and the West End.
• 15:22
  She's performed her own critically acclaimed one-woman show, Edinburgh Fringe.
• 15:26
  And she's also written a Sunday Times best-selling novel called Sunset.
• 15:30
  So she has been...
• 15:32
  out would be like very successful within the creative industries for years all while by the way she's had four kids she's 38 and she's had four kids with her on and off partner who's now her fiancee Alfie Brown who's a comedian uh they have a podcast called I think until we next break up so they their love story oh my god so they have actually also created a brand and a business around the off on relationship which is like the
• 15:55
  most risky thing either yeah it's their their story's really interesting because she got pregnant after their first date and then kept the baby and that was the kind of reason they ended up and they've now got four kids together oh my gosh okay their story's a really interesting one it's worth looking into but she joined only fans recently so she's 38 years old and recently she reached a point where she was basically in such a like dire economic situation she was like right i'm doing it only fans
• 16:20
  So she says in the Times piece, I couldn't go and say work in a supermarket because I can't afford the childcare.
• 16:26
  Exactly what we talked about before with Margot's Got Money Travel.
• 16:29
  I also don't want people shouting Harry Potter spells at me as I work in Tesco.
• 16:33
  It must be so weird if you've appeared in the biggest franchise of all times.
• 16:37
  You're very recognisable to people, but you no longer, that's not a money earner for you.
• 16:42
  And the kind of the adjacent ways in which you money, so this looks like conventions and things that the cast historically have done.
• 16:50
  She notes that that's become a bit more problematic because of JK Rowling and being very anti-trans and she doesn't really want to be associated with that brand anymore.
• 16:56
  There's a lot there's a lot of nuance to it.
• 16:58
  Anyway, she goes on and says, I could retrain, but I can't afford to do a degree.
• 17:02
  I had a breakdown and I thought, that's it with acting.
• 17:05
  I give up.
• 17:06
  But also we have no money.
• 17:07
  It was a point of complete desperation.
• 17:10
  A year and a half later...
• 17:12
  And she's been on OnlyFans this whole time doing hair content.
• 17:15
  So she has very long, lustrous hair that goes all the way down to, as she says, down to her vagina, my vulva.
• 17:21
  And it's this like very beautiful, thick, healthy hair.
• 17:23
  So she's been making quite experimental hair content.
• 17:27
  But she's now earned, she says, more easily than my entire acting career within one year on OnlyFans.
• 17:35
  She has subscribers who pay $6 a month.
• 17:38
  There's more for paid messages for hair content.
• 17:40
  So it's videos of her kind of brushing it while she's dressed as an elf, a maid, or as lavender brown.
• 17:45
  So fun.
• 17:45
  Plaiting it, shaking it, tying it around her waist, doing anything she can with it, really, for people who like kind of that sort of thing.
• 17:54
  So, I mean, I just thought this story was fascinating and really highlighted, actually, all the issues that this book brings up so well.
• 18:04
  First of all, you have a mother who is...
• 18:08
  finds it challenging to get to work because the cost of childcare is so extraordinarily high.
• 18:12
  Her and Alfie Brown, her partner, have moved out of London now to, I think they moved to Liverpool.
• 18:16
  I'm not outing it, they said it in peace.
• 18:18
  They moved to Liverpool just because the housing is so much cheaper there.
• 18:22
  She couldn't get a kind of, quote unquote, normal job, kind of in a supermarket because childcare is so expensive.
• 18:27
  So she really turned to OnlyFans out of economic necessity.
• 18:31
  She creates kind of, it's not not sexual.
• 18:34
  Because I think there's a sexual like,
• 18:36
  implication to it so there's something inherently provocative she's obviously leaning into kind of fetishes around hair but she's not having sex on camera she's not showing anything but she did note in the article that she's got a boob job last year funded by her only fans but she had a line in where she was like i felt like i needed to because this isn't like last forever like what i'm just just me playing with my hair
• 18:57
  Oh, so she feels like she's edging towards more sexual content.
• 19:00
  She didn't say it explicitly in the piece, so I don't want to put words in her mouth, but it kind of was like brought up and then the kind of the interview didn't delve.
• 19:07
  I mean, I would have really pursued that line of inquiry because that to me was fascinating.
• 19:11
  Like, so you've got this boob job, obviously to like, you know, she's had four kids that, you know, was something that maybe she wanted to do personally, but does also seem like it was to improve her personality.
• 19:20
  appeal and you know sex appeal on only fans so there's obviously a suggestion of like me just like wrapping my hair around myself isn't going to last forever so the implication is it might get more sexual so i think there's also you know that that blurring of boundaries and she does she said and i think this is also i guess what margot in the book really ends up having to grapple with
• 19:39
  There's a pressure to get more, to go deeper down that more sexual route because you can have quite a niche offering at the very beginning, but how you sustain your subscribers, I mean, you've got to be entertained.
• 19:52
  And it's so interesting because the amount of, you know, we talk about has it become less or I guess more socialized and acceptable to be on the platform.
• 20:01
  Most people that start from a lot of the research we've done and these stories, it comes from necessity to...
• 20:07
  But then it ends up being the main career path they have to follow because once you've gone there, it's really hard to go back and people are still so judgmental of it.
• 20:15
  So whether it's you drop out of another career that you have because people find out that you're making money this way, it is quite a risky career in the sense that if you don't make it really quite big on OnlyFans.
• 20:29
  It's hard to go back to more, quote, normal jobs.
• 20:32
  And so I think what would be really good is to look at actually how much are people making because there is this idea that people go on OnlyFans and then just make millions of dollars.
• 20:42
  And, I mean, I don't know if it's the same –
• 20:44
  within your groups of friends.
• 20:45
  But we used to throw on the idea of, oh, if all else fails, get my toes out on OnlyFans.
• 20:49
  You know, it sort of became this thing where, oh, well, I'll just fall back on OnlyFans as a joke, as if it's just really easy to make heaps of money on there.
• 20:56
  And I don't think people realise that's just totally not the case.
• 21:01
  But I think that often it's because the people that we hear about in the press...
• 21:07
  who are making money on OnlyFans.
• 21:09
  So say like the Jessie Cave, who already had a built-in big audience from Harry Potter.
• 21:13
  So she had an audience on her other social platforms that she could immediately convert to her OnlyFans.
• 21:18
  You have people like very famously Lily Allen, who went on OnlyFans and was earning, I think she was, I think she sold feet pictures.
• 21:27
  uh for for years and only fans and i think it's worth noting someone actually commented on twitter saying god imagine being one of the biggest pop stars or musicians in europe and then being reduced to this and lily ann replied imagine being an artist and having nearly eight million monthly listeners on spotify but earning more money from having 1000 people subscribe to pictures of your feet
• 21:47
  don't hate the player hate the game uh she now has 10.3 million monthly listeners of so new album has like catapulted her although you know what streaming is i mean that's a whole other conversation is so fucked but i think we tend to hear these stories of the jesse caves the lily allen the like these these um creatives who have a big public profile who think
• 22:07
  through just the absolute economic shitshow that is the contemporary creative space, are compelled to turn to OnlyFans to subsidise their increasingly pitiful creative earnings.
• 22:17
  But nonetheless, they still are the success cases of OnlyFans because they typically have big audiences already.
• 22:24
  Then we have the people who got massive on OnlyFans.
• 22:26
  Again, they have huge audiences and thus they are really able to cash in on the platform.
• 22:33
  What we don't hear about is the...
• 22:36
  all the other people, the 99% of people participating on the platform who don't have anywhere near that, like following on that platform or other platforms.
• 22:46
  And so I, yeah, their earning potential is capped kind of, well not capped, like it's so much harder to get anywhere near that, like high levels of an earning that you could actually live on.
• 22:58
  So tell us about the actual data.
• 23:00
  How much is the average person on OnlyFans?
• 23:03
  So not the superstars, not the Lily Allens.
• 23:05
  How much is the average person earning?
• 23:06
  Yeah, just quickly on what you said on the sensationalized amounts.
• 23:10
  When I was looking at the different averages,
• 23:13
  you do see like at the top of any search or article, stats like Sophie Rain, who apparently earned 95 million in two years, or this girl who joined when she was 18 called Anna Paul.
• 23:26
  And, you know, it came out that she was earning 300,000 in one month.
• 23:30
  It's like these crazy amounts where you think, why on earth would I not join OnlyFans?
• 23:35
  But yeah, it's just totally not the average.
• 23:38
  So there's this creator that I'm going to reference throughout this episode because I just think she's so great.
• 23:44
  And I have mentioned her before on the podcast.
• 23:45
  Her name's Ari Kusak.
• 23:47
  And she has over 24 million followers.
• 23:49
  So keep in mind, she's enormous.
• 23:51
  She has a huge reach, but she didn't always.
• 23:53
  But she speaks about the fact she's gone and spoken at Harvard University.
• 23:57
  So she is not only amazing at creating content online, at making money on OnlyFans, but also she is an amazing businesswoman.
• 24:06
  And she said in a recent interview that most creators earn 100 to 150 USD a month.
• 24:15
  Like the average is between 100 and 1,000 a month.
• 24:18
  But everywhere the stats online, and it's probably worth saying that this is not so amazingly reported on in the sense that they're not coming from very credible sources.
• 24:27
  But everywhere you see, it's about the average is 150 USD.
• 24:32
  Yeah, it's about 150.
• 24:33
  Yeah, that's what I've seen.
• 24:34
  There are quite, I think it's reported on a lot, but because the platform is private rather than public, there is no, like we actually don't have clear view on the stats.
• 24:43
  There's quite a lot of peer reviewed papers.
• 24:44
  There's one in particular, which we can cite in the show notes, which seemed to kind of reinforce the idea.
• 24:51
  It's about 150 US dollars per month is the average amount that an OnlyFans creator earns.
• 24:57
  And it's worth saying that the people who that we tend to see reported on who are earning the like, you know, six figures, seven figures, they are in the top 0.1% of earners on OnlyFans.
• 25:09
  They represent such a small portion of OnlyFans creators.
• 25:14
  Do you know what one of the weirdest things that I came across, though, was, and this woman Ari was talking about the fact that a lot of...
• 25:22
  creators are encouraged to lie about what they're earning, and it's because it creates this mystique of, oh, what are they doing on that platform, which I thought was quite interesting.
• 25:31
  Oh, that's really interesting.
• 25:32
  So there was this one report that was talking about Carrie Katona as a mum, she's in her 40s, and she has kids, and she's reported to have earned $175,000 in her first month on OnlyFans.
• 25:42
  She's also a household name in the UK.
• 25:44
  She's like a, like, it's worth noting because she's got a big built-in following because she's been, she was a pop star.
• 25:49
  She was in Atomic Kitten, that band.
• 25:52
  Yeah, yeah.
• 25:52
  She's like been in our public purview for like my entire life.
• 25:57
  Carrie Cotone has been like a name.
• 25:58
  But the thing here is that in two separate interviews, so one with The Times and one with ITV2 getting filthy rich in January of this year, she gave different amounts of how much she earned by only about £15,000.
• 26:11
  But still, it made me think, I really do wonder how legit some of these numbers are that are enormous.
• 26:18
  Are they real?
• 26:19
  It's hard to know.
• 26:20
  No one can fact check it.
• 26:22
  No one can go in and see your bank account.
• 26:23
  And I actually never thought about that.
• 26:26
  But it does make sense.
• 26:27
  If someone's saying I'm making a million a month, you'd be like, what is the content?
• 26:30
  Well, I need to go and see what you're producing.
• 26:31
  Must go subscribe.
• 26:32
  It's so true.
• 26:34
  But if you look at the numbers, so there's over 4 million creators.
• 26:37
  4 million creators?
• 26:39
  Yeah.
• 26:39
  And if you look at the amount that was paid out to creators, like it's 5.8 billion.
• 26:46
  Which means that if you look at the average per creator, yeah, it's like, this is obviously considering the people that earn a huge amount and then the people that are earning 100.
• 26:56
  It's about 1260 each per creator.
• 26:58
  So it makes sense, right?
• 26:59
  There's some people that are earning extreme amounts of money and then there's people on 100.
• 27:04
  So as of the financial year 2024, over 7 billion, so 7.2 billion was processed through the platforms.
• 27:12
  That was the amount of money that people were basically paying creators.
• 27:15
  7.2 billion.
• 27:16
  7.2 billion?
• 27:18
  Yes.
• 27:19
  Jesus.
• 27:19
  And there was 377 million fan accounts.
• 27:24
  So basically, if you were to look in the last 10 years, if we look from 2016 when it was created to now, the amount paid to creators is 25 billion.
• 27:37
  So there's definitely a huge amount of money being made in the platform.
• 27:41
  Wait, there's 25 million paid to creators on OnlyFans?
• 27:44
  Yeah.
• 27:45
  In the last...
• 27:45
  In the last...
• 27:46
  It's since created.
• 27:47
  Since 2016?
• 27:48
  Yeah.
• 27:49
  $25 billion?
• 27:50
  Yeah.
• 27:50
  Wow.
• 27:51
  So a huge amount of money.
• 27:51
  So just in 2024 alone, so that's the most recent stats that I've seen, $7.2 billion was processed through the platform.
• 27:59
  So people paying to get access to subscriptions or one-off payments...
• 28:03
  And just the disproportionality between the number of fan accounts, which makes sense, versus creator accounts, also highlights just like you're probably having a large concentration of those fan accounts funding a very, very small pool of creator accounts.
• 28:20
  And then the rest, like, having probably close to none.
• 28:24
  When you look at how much is being made, you're right.
• 28:27
  The headlines are millions and millions.
• 28:30
  Someone made a million in a month.
• 28:32
  When I looked more at some of the other smaller creators and, yeah, realized that the average or, like, the median for an OnlyFans creator is 150 to 180 per month –
• 28:43
  A, not only is that nowhere near enough to survive, but B, if you cannibalize your entire career to try and make it, like it's incredibly risky.
• 28:52
  If you think about the fact you have to promote it via your personal accounts, because there's no way to get access to subscribers on the platform.
• 29:00
  So there was this, there was this conversation
• 29:03
  Really awful article.
• 29:04
  I was reading about this Missouri teacher called Brianna Copid.
• 29:07
  She basically had to resign from the school that she taught at because they found out about her OnlyFans account.
• 29:12
  She created the account initially because she was trying to fund her third degree because she wanted to be able to be paid more as a teacher.
• 29:19
  She openly has said in an interview, I started this for financial reasons.
• 29:24
  She obviously didn't want to go more into debt.
• 29:26
  So she was trying to fund that in a clever way.
• 29:28
  But basically she was only earning 42,000 a year as a teacher and
• 29:33
  When the school found out about it, she basically had to resign.
• 29:35
  And then she got another job and they found out within five days of her starting about her account or she had on a community platform and she was fired.
• 29:44
  So she, you know, and now she says she's made, you know, she doesn't regret it and she's made a million on the platform.
• 29:49
  Yeah.
• 29:49
  So, I mean, great, you know, that's now her focus.
• 29:51
  But for people who don't get to that point and who completely lose the ability to make money in the way they studied, where they have a reputation and, yeah, they're not earning much, but that risk, if you look at the amount of people that are making the big bucks compared to the 150 average a month, it's so risky.
• 30:08
  But I think this tells a much bigger and more pressing story about our economic environment today because the fact that a teacher...
• 30:19
  is having to subsidise their earnings through OnlyFans.
• 30:22
  And this is kind of the story that you come across again and again when you're looking into the motivations that drive people to OnlyFans and what we've discussed before in terms of the economic necessity of the women that we've highlighted thus far turning to OnlyFans.
• 30:36
  And I just think as I was thinking about this throughout the weekend and I just thought we have reached such a crunch point societally in that typical traditional jobs no longer paying enough to actually allow people to live.
• 30:53
  There's a huge cost of living crisis here in the UK, for example, where there's such a fundamental breakage that's happened with the social contract.
• 31:01
  No longer can you safely say...
• 31:03
  If you work hard at school, you get a decent degree, you go and get a decent job and like, you know, a good job.
• 31:09
  No longer can you say that that is a guarantee of being able to afford a basic, like, good life.
• 31:16
  When I say basic, I mean like housing, you know, being able to afford your food bill, being able to have a car, being able to go on holiday once a year or something.
• 31:24
  And I just think that rupture has happened across the world.
• 31:27
  We're seeing cost of living crisis across the world, housing crisis across, you know, so many major cities, across multiple countries.
• 31:35
  And the fact that people are turning to OnlyFans is not surprising given that kind of broad global economic issues.
• 31:42
  And we're going to see fewer and fewer people going in traditional routes of employment because it just no longer makes economic sense.
• 31:48
  I think there's 70% of Gen Z's identify as a content creator.
• 31:53
  Wouldn't you?
• 31:53
  If you're graduating, what the hell is motivating you?
• 31:56
  If you graduate, you're saddled in student debt.
• 31:58
  I think the broader point that I want to reinforce here is that I just feel like the growth in OnlyFans is so emblematic of our, like,
• 32:08
  broader economic situation which is only getting worse and actually it's worth just noting um chloe cherry who is on one of the stars on on euphoria so she plays a sex worker on euphoria having been a sex worker herself previously she came in real life in real life yes exactly so she was a sex worker she was a porn performer before and then she's done only fact she turned to only fans i think during the pandemic when euphoria filming was paused and
• 32:33
  And she said she was really grateful to have that route to income with a bit of a platform in porn before because no acting jobs were happening then.
• 32:41
  She gave an interview to Refinery29 recently, which is worth us bringing up because it really just encapsulates...
• 32:50
  I guess the thing that's front of my mind in this conversation so she says only fans and sex work have become more normalized but it's literally only because of capitalism and the economy getting worse it has nothing to do with empowerment or power or anything we live under capitalism and the economy is horrible and that's why people are turning to it
• 33:07
  What is the future of work going to look like?
• 33:09
  What will the future of business look like?
• 33:11
  Where and how?
• 33:12
  Because it is so hard to live on a salary, you know?
• 33:17
  Like, there's not that many people that are in control of how much they earn.
• 33:21
  And I really think that what we'll see is a shift towards so many people wanting to be their own boss and have more control over how they're making money.
• 33:27
  I think it's really important, Soph, that we talk about or that we address the dark underbelly of OnlyFans.
• 33:32
  We've talked about the kind of financial opportunities and the reasons that people –
• 33:36
  go on the platform in the first place but I think after the break we should turn our sites to the darker side of OnlyFans, the exploitation that's happening of OnlyFans creators and the cap that this ends up placing on people's earning potential on the platform.
• 33:51
  Yes and also I think let's quickly discuss what the business model is, how much money it's making because it's an insanely profitable business and it'll be really interesting to see what the future of the platform is.
• 34:02
  But first I've got a quick word from today's sponsor.
• 34:05
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• 34:08
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• 34:16
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• 34:21
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• 34:27
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• 34:34
  And just a quick thank you to Generate for making this episode of The Curve Weekly possible.
• 34:39
  Right.
• 34:40
  Section two.
• 34:41
  That sounds really boring.
• 34:43
  No, but this is kind of, I feel like the start of this conversation in a way made me feel like, yes, it's really important to note that not everyone makes a huge amount of money on the platform.
• 34:55
  But it also feels like this empowering kind of hopeful feeling where we've almost given people the autonomy to create their own.
• 35:05
  incredible potential business and financial outcome through the platform.
• 35:10
  But what we're about to talk about now kind of slashes that hope in half and makes me realize, gosh, it's so classic.
• 35:16
  As soon as there's an opportunity where people can actually be thriving, someone sees it as an opportunity to come in and exploit those people.
• 35:23
  So I think that is almost like I felt amazing.
• 35:27
  Great.
• 35:27
  There's all these people that can control how much they earn and they're using their platform to directly get money into their own pockets.
• 35:34
  But when you then look at what's actually happening...
• 35:37
  It's, yeah, it's not the case.
• 35:39
  And there's a lot of people that are being massively financially and otherwise taken advantage of.
• 35:43
  At the end of July, there was a piece in the cut by Ezra Marcus called Revenge of the Simps, how a community of porn addicts tried to rescue the teenage cam girls they worshipped from the clutches of a violent webcam pimp.
• 35:57
  I mean, just a moment to recognise how epic an article title that is.
• 36:05
  But I wanted to bring this up because I think this article, I mean, it's totally absurd and I'll explain it momentarily.
• 36:10
  It is an absurd article, a fascinating investigation, but for me really sums up that kind of darker underside of OnlyFans exploitation and this new class of OnlyFans managers.
• 36:24
  Long story short, you have this group of people who avidly watch
• 36:31
  and are fans of girls in a cam house.
• 36:35
  It's almost like a house that has different rooms for the different creators, and it's being kind of controlled by...
• 36:44
  I mean, I don't even know if we can use the word pimp, but it's almost like...
• 36:48
  They control the earnings of all of the girls that are in there.
• 36:51
  So basically what happens is this group of men who watch this channel where these girls who live in this house, they're all about 18, and they kind of create content together, the kind of sexual nature,
• 37:04
  These men notice over time that there are kind of warning signs, that these girls are coming and showing up with bruises, that there's kind of shouting in the background.
• 37:12
  And this group of men brand themselves the White Knights and embark on investigating what's going on with these girls because they're worried about their safety.
• 37:20
  I mean, bonkers.
• 37:22
  They end up sleuthing very successfully and...
• 37:26
  And finding that there is, and finding the kind of, the guy who runs this house, Nikita Ticalo, who is a 21-year-old man who models himself on extremist misogynist ideologue, Andrew Tate.
• 37:38
  And he has essentially running this house of young women who he is kind of through quite a lot of violent forces, compelling them to create content online.
• 37:49
  So this men, the group, the white knights, the simps,
• 37:52
  basically find this man online, figure out what he's doing, tip off the police, and become kind of almost some of these weird heroes in this story.
• 38:04
  I'm finding it.
• 38:05
  I'm trying so hard not to talk because there's actually nothing funny about the story.
• 38:08
  But there's something kind of hilarious.
• 38:11
  The result is this 21-year-old, prosecutors are now charging him with four counts of human trafficking, one count of money laundering, and one count of leading an organized crime group.
• 38:21
  describing a sprawling operation with numerous employees, dozens of models and millions of dollars in profit.
• 38:29
  So he'd managed to basically create a kind of working replica of Andrew Tate's webcam enterprise, hidden in luxury apartments and kind of a suburban mansion in the Seattle area.
• 38:39
  He is now being held.
• 38:40
  I think he's got, there's a kind of $5 million bail over him.
• 38:44
  So he's being held, he's been arrested.
• 38:46
  So these white knight sleuths of the internet have become kind of
• 38:49
  you know, a huge part in this continually unfolding story.
• 38:53
  But I think...
• 38:55
  Whilst this is an absurd story and it's definitely worth reading, it also speaks to something bigger.
• 39:00
  And that is the role of these OnlyFans managers like Nikita, who are seemingly springing up across the board and who are exploiting young girls.
• 39:11
  And essentially kind of forcing them to, you know, use quite mild, it means forcing them to create content en masse.
• 39:18
  Then so they can, so the OnlyFans managers can end up kind of profiting from their bodies.
• 39:22
  So you see this interplay of sexism, misogyny, exploitation, a tale as old as time, but using this new technology.
• 39:29
  And that, I think, is fascinating because he is not alone.
• 39:33
  He is one, you know, the more you go into it, there are so many of these OnlyFans managers.
• 39:37
  If you zoom out and think about like a marketing agency or any agency, whether it's a talent manager, it is quite normal to have or to think that a talent manager, an agent is going to catapult your career, that they have contacts, that they're going to...
• 39:52
  X, Y, Z, increase your earnings.
• 39:54
  For a lot of these creators who know that they have to rely hugely on their own marketing and they have to create a business around it.
• 40:00
  So while they might think, oh, I'm great at creating content, I have no idea about the rest of it.
• 40:04
  So they outsource the power to these people who are telling them that they can help them make even more money.
• 40:10
  That is actually a business model as older's, you know, talent has been around.
• 40:17
  And generally an agent might take 20, 30 percent, but a lot of these are taking 50 to 70 percent.
• 40:24
  And I think it's just worth like when you look at the way that OnlyFans make money, they only take 20 percent of a creator's earnings.
• 40:33
  So that's actually way lower than other platforms.
• 40:36
  If you look at Twitch, which is the online gaming, it's 50%.
• 40:38
  YouTube Shorts is 45%.
• 40:41
  Patreon's 10%, but plus processing.
• 40:43
  So OnlyFans is actually kind of okay in terms of what it takes percentage-wise.
• 40:48
  It doesn't do a huge amount.
• 40:49
  Because it doesn't do anything.
• 40:50
  It's basically just distributing.
• 40:51
  It's not actually helping with any kind of marketing or growth.
• 40:55
  But...
• 40:56
  The problem here is that we were originally talking about how all these creators have the autonomy to make money and they just give 20% away.
• 41:03
  But what's happening for a lot of these women that are being taken advantage of is that they create the content.
• 41:08
  They're signed up to management or these people that are taking advantage of them.
• 41:12
  They're taking 60% to 70%.
• 41:14
  Then the platform's taking 20%.
• 41:16
  They're making 10%.
• 41:17
  So it's –
• 41:20
  It's just like if you think of the sex industry and how unfair it is for a lot of people who are doing sex work in person and they're relying on someone who pays the rent for, say, a space for people to have sex in person.
• 41:32
  You know, they're taking only a percentage of that money.
• 41:34
  OnlyFans created a space where the control is with the creator and they could make as much as they want.
• 41:40
  But these men are seeing the opportunity to exploit that.
• 41:43
  That's amazing.
• 41:44
  And there seems to be a playbook that a lot of these only fans, the kind of exploitative only fans managers are operating in accordance to.
• 41:51
  And it's, I mean, again, a lot of it's borrowed from Andrew Tate's playbook where they're kind of go.
• 41:56
  So I think it's described by prosecutors in the Andrew Tate case as the kind of the lover boy method.
• 42:02
  So they essentially, like, seduce these young girls.
• 42:04
  They kind of shout them compliments, make them feel so loved and adore.
• 42:07
  Like, I can really help you get your career.
• 42:08
  Like, you're so amazing.
• 42:09
  You're so beautiful.
• 42:10
  You know, Andrew Tate notoriously would... A lot of the girls that he exploited were people that he had dated.
• 42:17
  So again, it's really, like...
• 42:18
  You see that a lot in these stories.
• 42:20
  It's like they get their girlfriends to join and then they're in control of their girlfriend's account.
• 42:24
  And then it sort of grows from there.
• 42:25
  Exactly.
• 42:26
  And that was the same Nikita.
• 42:27
  He really pressured his girlfriend.
• 42:28
  He went off to university and then she was trying to pay her way through college.
• 42:33
  And he kept on pressuring her.
• 42:34
  No, you should do this.
• 42:35
  Like, I can make you make loads of money.
• 42:37
  I can help you.
• 42:37
  I can help you.
• 42:38
  And then gets the girlfriend.
• 42:39
  Eventually, she was persuaded to...
• 42:41
  join his to join OnlyFans and once a lot of what they do so they do this love boy method seduces girls into being on OnlyFans and for them managing them then they take control of their OnlyFans logins and basically control their online presence so some of the girls in the independent the independent reported that the women interviewed by police in the Nikita piece so that's the one reported in the cut claim that they would be forced to stream for long hours were given little
• 43:11
  And you just see this time and again.
• 43:13
  So there was a recent documentary, which we can go into in a bit more detail momentarily, but the BBC did, called Inside the Machine.
• 43:19
  So really delving into the machinations of OnlyFans.
• 43:22
  And they just, they interviewed multiple girls, multiple women who had similarly had this very same experience of...
• 43:30
  you hand over your logins, and suddenly you have no power and you have no control.
• 43:35
  And to your point, the managers will then put in their details, financial details.
• 43:40
  So the women are no longer even, the payment isn't going through to their bank account.
• 43:43
  It's going through to this manager.
• 43:45
  And so once that happens, if they then lock you up your account, that means overnight, your earnings as an OnlyFans creator is going to be able to do it.
• 43:52
  is controlled entirely by someone else.
• 43:54
  And that is incredibly disempowering and also really, you know, so exploitative.
• 43:59
  But in order to really understand how the OnlyFans managers are working and how they're making money off these, I feel like I need to better understand the business model of OnlyFans.
• 44:10
  Can you please explain for me how OnlyFans
• 44:14
  actually operates at like a business level.
• 44:17
  So it's the most genius business model ever in the sense that they've created the platform for people to buy and sell explicit content or not even just explicit content.
• 44:27
  But the amount of people involved in this business is unbelievably low compared to the amount of money that they're making.
• 44:34
  So it's really interesting because I was looking at the business model thinking, I mean, I hate to say it, but it's genius in terms of the amount of money that it spits off.
• 44:44
  But it is very limited by the way that it can expand by getting money from investors to grow and potentially go public one day because it falls under the umbrella of pornography.
• 44:57
  So I guess just like before we go into the business model and how much money it's making, generally a company that's this successful, that's making this much money.
• 45:06
  How much is it making?
• 45:07
  Oh, I mean –
• 45:09
  So like the company was valued at $3.1 billion in May this year, which is actually not a lot given the amount of money that it's making.
• 45:17
  So according to Bloomberg, the main guy who unfortunately died earlier this year from cancer, he earned more than $1.9 million a day from the site in 2024.
• 45:30
  That's like paying out dividends.
• 45:31
  So it's like when it comes to paying out dividends, you only really pay dividends out if there's enough and like an extreme amount of cash to spit out, if that makes sense.
• 45:39
  Otherwise, it's used for operating and for running.
• 45:42
  But this business in 2025, so like the financial year of 2025, it made $666 million in operating profit.
• 45:49
  Yeah.
• 45:54
  It's only run by 46 staff members.
• 45:57
  So think about the size of this business.
• 45:59
  You know, we've got like four people, really.
• 46:02
  The fact that they're only paying like 46 salaries, but they're making nearly $700 million in a year is crazy.
• 46:10
  So it's incredibly profitable because the platform doesn't rely on, it doesn't help with marketing, it doesn't help with search, anything.
• 46:20
  Yeah.
• 46:21
  All of the creators that come to OnlyFans are using other social media platforms to create or build or use or transfer their audiences to then monetize on their platform.
• 46:33
  So just as a business, it's like it doesn't really have to invest in a lot of infrastructure.
• 46:37
  Or like techie people.
• 46:39
  Anything really.
• 46:40
  Or like engineers.
• 46:41
  Doesn't have to like, oh, that is what?
• 46:43
  It's really crazy.
• 46:45
  Yeah, 46 people.
• 46:46
  I mean, like that's insane.
• 46:47
  So…
• 46:48
  Like the company has tried to raise outside capital and sell for a long time because the person that was running it, the main like shareholder who was like 43, he died and now his widow –
• 47:03
  No.
• 47:03
  So it was founded by a father and son in like Essex, like in the UK.
• 47:08
  And then he bought in, he's like a secret billionaire.
• 47:11
  That's like quite like, he's really flown under the radar.
• 47:13
  There's not a lot of information about him.
• 47:15
  He's very secretive.
• 47:16
  He has basically created this unbelievably valuable business.
• 47:20
  He tried to sell before dying.
• 47:21
  Yeah.
• 47:22
  or get external capital in.
• 47:24
  And it was sort of falling on this hurdle of the main reason that this business can't get external investment is the riskiness that it relies on like Visa and MasterCard and other processing payments to process all of these payments, but they are uncomfortable with the way that the business is making money.
• 47:46
  Visa, MasterCard, all of the payments kind of pulled out, saying we're not going to have anything to do with OnlyFans.
• 47:52
  He came out saying, okay, creators can no longer create explicit content.
• 47:56
  And obviously the entire reason this platform exists is for explicit content.
• 48:00
  So creators lost like millions of dollars.
• 48:02
  It was a whole thing.
• 48:03
  There was a big uproar.
• 48:05
  Six days later, they were like, kidding, kidding, kidding.
• 48:07
  You can still release explicit content.
• 48:09
  But the main business risk, even though it's like spitting off money, is it relies heavily on external banking and processing that,
• 48:19
  to make money.
• 48:20
  And so it's basically, it's sold roughly 6% of its stake to architect capital at a top level.
• 48:27
  They've sold a portion of the business to invest in, allowing it to almost run as its own vehicle that doesn't then rely on external banking because it's so risky.
• 48:36
  If, say, for example, again, they were to say, we don't want to have anything to do with you, this whole business model falls apart because as we spoke about, they don't really do anything, you know?
• 48:46
  It's like, they're just processing and like,
• 48:49
  housing a place for people to put their content and buy and sell.
• 48:53
  But without that, if they're relying so heavily on external businesses' payments, it's very difficult to IPO.
• 49:00
  And a lot of investors are allergic to that.
• 49:02
  It's just like a risky business model.
• 49:03
  Do they want IPO?
• 49:05
  I mean, they've tried to before.
• 49:06
  Have they tried to?
• 49:07
  Yeah, like there was a lot of rumors about them wanting to go public.
• 49:11
  But the main, not just the payment reliance, but there's also just, yeah, the fact that they are in the pornography space means that they won't automatically get access to capital from like indexes or, you know, the S&P.
• 49:25
  A lot of investors have blanket rules over what they will and won't invest in.
• 49:28
  Tobacco, alcohol, porn are kind of the most obvious.
• 49:33
  It's almost like.
• 49:34
  To do industries.
• 49:35
  Most people just don't.
• 49:36
  Yeah.
• 49:36
  It's not even them being good people.
• 49:38
  It's just almost like kind of abnormal.
• 49:40
  While the payouts are insane and there's been like $25 billion paid out to creators in the last 10 years and the most insane amount of money earned by like owners and investors, the actual business is quite risky based on the fact that it does rely on these external banking.
• 49:55
  So anyway, I think…
• 49:59
  What I'm interested in, you know, when we look back at the exploitative nature of these management companies and individuals that are sort of pulling money out of these creators' wallets to say, like, we'll make you famous.
• 50:11
  We'll help you, you know, rise to fame, blah, blah, blah, which they're obviously not.
• 50:15
  And they're just taking advantage of people enormously.
• 50:19
  I wonder if the platform, and especially because there's all these documentaries and content now coming out about it.
• 50:28
  as a business, it's in their interest to make sure that the business can be invested in or that can be financially successful.
• 50:37
  If it's riddled with so much underbelly and darkness, they don't really have much to stand on in terms of being able to sell the business as a whole, even though objectively it's incredibly valuable.
• 50:50
  So I wonder if what will happen is when they have their own business
• 50:55
  ways to sort of like pay and for people to be able to transact on platform.
• 50:59
  I wonder if they'll put more strict regulation in place around how people make money or not.
• 51:03
  I mean, who knows?
• 51:04
  Because I was looking into the people who have invested and also the people who started it and their history is in pornography.
• 51:11
  You know, you don't look at it and think...
• 51:13
  Oh, what an amazing person.
• 51:14
  They're making porn.
• 51:15
  Like, you know, it's power of the people.
• 51:17
  It's not that.
• 51:18
  It's people that have made money in porn for decades and see the revolutionary, like, way that now you can do it online.
• 51:24
  So, because on the one hand, I look at OnlyFans and I think, God, I wish it was, like, run by women.
• 51:29
  And I wish that it was.
• 51:30
  The CEO is a woman.
• 51:31
  Is the CEO a woman now?
• 51:32
  Yeah.
• 51:33
  I actually think it's interesting that their CEO is a woman because.
• 51:37
  It is a, it was founded by men.
• 51:39
  It is a very, I think that the positioning, the like public positioning is really fascinating because you have, I think the majority of creators are women.
• 51:47
  The majority of subscribers are men and they have a CEO as a woman, which to me is creating a face, the face of the company is a woman.
• 51:55
  It's like signaling that we, yeah.
• 51:56
  Yeah, but behind closed doors.
• 51:59
  the power dynamics that seem to be quite prominent within the company.
• 52:04
  It's kind of seemingly very male dominated in terms of who's actually a lot of the times in control of what's happening behind the scenes.
• 52:12
  I think it raises a really interesting point, the exploitation piece, and to your earlier point around the viability of the company going forward.
• 52:19
  The BBC recently did a documentary I mentioned earlier called Inside the Machine, in which it basically investigated this phenomenon of OnlyFans managers.
• 52:29
  and this, you know, this darker side of the site.
• 52:32
  And the investigation is fascinating.
• 52:34
  And it's worth watching because it gives you, she interviews the, the presenter interviews a number of creators and also these managers, and it kind of delves into the model that a lot of these managers are peddling.
• 52:47
  A lot of the women who are interviewed say they give to earlier point 50 to 70% of their
• 52:55
  I mean, some of the revelations, certain managers rely on incredibly violent and intimidating tactics to stop the OnlyFans creators from ever leaving.
• 53:05
  So one woman had left her management and a brick was thrown through her window and then a masked man came to her house, broken and strangled her on the floor.
• 53:14
  She shows... My God.
• 53:17
  It's harrowing.
• 53:18
  But the documentary, so the documentary, as I said, kind of really delves into...
• 53:24
  this exploitation that we've covered here, but also looks at that question which you're highlighting around what, from a business perspective, one, how much does OnlyFans know what's going on with this phenomenon of OnlyFans managers?
• 53:40
  And two, will it change its practices?
• 53:42
  Now, it answers that first question and says, yes, it does know because there have been numerous, it's known, I think, for the past four to five years, the documentary highlights,
• 53:49
  because people have been flagging to it from creators.
• 53:52
  And I think also journalists, there have been multiple reports by numerous prestigious journalistic institutions that have asked OnlyFans for comment on stories as they pertain to this exploitive dynamic between manager and creator.
• 54:05
  OnlyFans has been aware of this, is aware of this, and hasn't done anything.
• 54:10
  And the documentary really makes the point that it's not in their financial interest to do anything about it because they're making a lot of money off of this, you know, off of these creators.
• 54:23
  And these managers are only essentially fueling more talent within the platform.
• 54:28
  So it feels like they've been very slack or just, yeah, not very kind of...
• 54:34
  They've not really done much to seek to curb this behavior.
• 54:38
  One of the journalists in the documentary signs up to OnlyFans to test how much their systems actually help to ensure that the payment, for example, is set up in the name of the creator and that the payments are going through the creator.
• 54:52
  And the platform says they have really strict guidance as to kind of who's named and then where the money goes.
• 54:58
  They're constantly regulating that.
• 55:00
  The BBC journalist was able to set up an account.
• 55:02
  She was able to post some feet pictures and get two colleagues to subscribe to her channel and pay.
• 55:07
  But she put in another colleague's bank details.
• 55:10
  So the bank details were under someone else's name.
• 55:12
  And she said the money just went straight to that other person's name and no issue was flagged.
• 55:16
  If it ever did IPO and become a publicly listed company that people could invest in...
• 55:22
  it's almost like exposing your naked body for the whole world to see.
• 55:26
  So it almost shocks me to hear that and then simultaneously hear that they've been going for external capital or considered going public because why on earth would you do that?
• 55:36
  then it makes me sad to think like, well, maybe there still would be so many people that would invest in this business, even if it was incredibly exploitative, because it's just making lots of money and people actually just don't care, which is terrifying.
• 55:50
  The documentary actually features Labour MP Tonya Antoniazzi alongside the anti-slavery commissioner Eleanor Lyons.
• 55:57
  So they're featured in the doc commenting on the revelations that the documentary has surfaced.
• 56:03
  And they've called for a formal parliamentary inquiry into OnlyFans and highlighting the kind of systemic safeguarding failures, exploitation and trafficking risks tied to third-party management agencies.
• 56:17
  It is a UK-based company, so the fact that a UK-based MP...
• 56:22
  is now going to be putting forward a parliamentary inquiry into the company is a really big deal.
• 56:29
  This could lead to a deeper formal investigation into the company, in which case it will be compelled to really tidy up its affairs.
• 56:36
  When Emma and I were talking before we started recording, Emma was like, I'm just exhausted with what's happening online, platforms.
• 56:42
  I feel just the world is absolutely F-U-C-K-E-D-D.
• 56:47
  unsure if there's kids in a car probably imagine not if you're listening to an OnlyFans episode.
• 56:51
  I mean I think by this point, fuck is the least of your worries if you've listened this far with kids in the car, we're sorry.
• 56:58
  But I think you know when I first started thinking about this I was feeling so hopeful about the idea and when I read this book I actually felt quite happy with the storyline and how it evolved because at the end of Margo's Got Money Troubles you know she keeps the custody, sorry a huge spoiler if you're planning on reading this book,
• 57:15
  But she gets, you know, full custody of her baby.
• 57:18
  She continues working on OnlyFans.
• 57:21
  Her, like, annoying professor that she had an affair with decides that he's okay with her making money that way.
• 57:26
  And it sort of has this nice sort of round-off that, yeah, okay, people make money in different ways.
• 57:31
  Let's support that.
• 57:32
  You know, she's able to...
• 57:34
  care for her child, make actually a lot of money.
• 57:36
  By the end of the book, she has like 30 grand in savings or something.
• 57:39
  So it felt positive.
• 57:41
  But when you dig beneath the surface, it's so sad and scary.
• 57:44
  And I just, you know, back to your point on the cost of living and so many people kind of being forced into making money in this way, it's such a scary moment.
• 57:53
  big world of people trying to take advantage of people that are already financially struggling, desperate to find a way out of whatever their situation is.
• 58:03
  And there's all these little...
• 58:06
  crows on the side, picking at the pieces.
• 58:08
  I just feel, yeah, I don't know.
• 58:10
  I, I, um, on the one hand it's been revolutionary for the, you know, sex worker industry in terms of making it feel more normalized and it gives, you know, a lot of control back to creators, but, um,
• 58:25
  When you hear stuff like this, it's also just like, oh, God, of course.
• 58:29
  Of course, something that should have been somewhat positive or given people the autonomy to make money has now turned into this absolute shit show that is really scary.
• 58:39
  I totally hear you on that.
• 58:41
  And I think, yeah, I felt, I mean, particularly finishing the documentary, I felt really aggrieved by the revelations that emerged within the BBC's reporting.
• 58:51
  Yeah.
• 58:51
  I think my big takeaway to kind of round up, to reflect back on what you're saying and to round up the conversation, my big takeaway was the world of work, to an earlier point, is changing so rapidly.
• 59:01
  And traditional routes to a stable and successful income and making a living in a traditional way is really shifting.
• 59:11
  And I think with that, we have seen a kind of...
• 59:15
  We've seen an influx of tech-enabled platforms create new pathways to income, the creator economy taking off and OnlyFans being a part of that, in a way that is revolutionary and creates numerous opportunities.
• 59:31
  I think the rapidity with which technology is fueling this new world of work is...
• 59:36
  is what gives cause for concern because governments and policy is not keeping up with just how rapidly our broader kind of working climate is changing.
• 59:48
  So for me, that's my big takeaway.
• 59:49
  Regulation, so unsexy.
• 59:51
  Yeah, no, I think mine is probably just, if you're listening to this and you are one of those people who judges sex work or OnlyFans,
• 1:00:03
  I would say read this book, watch the show and open your eyes to the fact that a lot of people are trying to do this in a way that is caring for themselves, for the people they love.
• 1:00:14
  You know, there's a lot more nuance to the way that people are approaching sex work now.
• 1:00:19
  And...
• 1:00:21
  Also, if you work in a company that is outing people for their OnlyFans accounts or trying to make someone feel less than or tacky or slutty for creating content like this...
• 1:00:34
  I think you need to probably look in the mirror and realize that there is a total crisis for a lot of people.
• 1:00:41
  If you're listening to this podcast and you've had any big takeaways or actually you disagree with anything that we've said, I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts.
• 1:00:48
  Oh, the other thing I just wanted to promote is we did a conversation, we did an episode with Grace Wesley, who's an amazing OnlyFans creator, who is one of those people who's made a lot of money on OnlyFans.
• 1:00:58
  And what she shares in terms of financial dominatrix, the different ways she makes money out of her clients.
• 1:01:03
  And also the insanely clever business mind that she's brought to her OnlyFans really shifted how I thought about the entire industry.
• 1:01:11
  So if you want to go back and listen to that, it was such a good episode.
• 1:01:14
  For anyone that wants to read some further inner dialogue about this conversation, on Fridays in a couple of days' time, depending on when you listen to this episode, there will be an article that you can read as well.
• 1:01:23
  So we'll put that in the podcast show notes.
• 1:01:25
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• 1:01:27
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• 1:01:40
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• 1:01:42
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• 1:01:45
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• 1:01:51
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• 1:02:03
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