Where they’re getting it wrong, and where they’re hitting the nail on the head.

It’s been 7 years since I began my badgirlpage- a name I chose to refer to my OnlyFans as an effort to mitigate AI software targeting my account, and to advertise on Instagram while avoiding the threat of being shadowbanned or deactivated. In 2020, you couldn’t even type the words only or fans without being scrutinized, or risking losing your monetization privileges (or whole account for that matter). Actually, for a long time, Instagram was paying me roughly $100 a month to not mention it. But every time I did anything remotely scandalous -or one jealous person reported a series of my posts- I didn’t have enough followers, or the blue checkmark, or a big brand behind me to make it ‘acceptable’. I couldn’t post a picture of me at the beach, but an A-list celebrity could squat over her camera lens in a thong and get nominated for a webby. After a while, I gave up on caring about monetization, yet I was incredibly creative in how I advertised my ‘spicy page’. I used to write cryptic responses to inquiring dms calling it ‘the fans of only’, or directing them to type in ‘double you double you double you dot o n l y f a n s dot com slash with the coco” I also would create polls saying “if I *had* and account, would you want access to it?”, and then personally DMing each and every person who chose “yes”.

Fast forward to today, where you can go right ahead and put your onlyfans in your linkinbio, or advertise your account on your stories or feed, but unless you have 100K followers, or a feature with Interview or Sports Illustrated, you’re going to be up against Meta’s algorithm, AI software, and the sleuths of the internet. At least, thats what’s happening to my own account, and the accounts of my friends and people that I follow. The pattern we’re noticing is that Instagram is suppressing account reach and visibility to anyone within the Sex Industry- including but not limited to, Adult Creators, Sex Educators, Sex Therapists, and Adult Toy and Clothing companies.

So while these global social media platforms are censoring and removing accounts and creators in the adult industry, other global mass media and entertainment companies- like HBOMax and AppleTV- are actively creating content that are glamorizing and misrepresenting those very same creators.

‘Margo’s Got Money Troubles’ is an AppleTV original about Margo- an English Lit student who got pregnant by her Professor and started an OnlyFans page to earn money to take care of her newborn. She advertises that for a fee, she will tell subscribers what Pokemon their genitals most resemble. The plot of HBO’s ‘Euphoria’ character Cassie Howard begins with her desire to be worshipped for money that she can spend on luxury items, but turns into a means to an end to get her husband out of a million dollars of loan shark debt.

These tv shows receive millions of views, which spark conversation and discourse online through social media platforms. One major point of discussion-not surprisingly- is about Terms of Service, specifically: Content Restrictions. What these tv shows are depicting as far as content creation and interactions on the platform are not even allowed on the platform to begin with. For example: in Euphoria, Cassie has a photoshoot where she is dressed as what she calls an “Adult Baby”. Infantilization is not allowed on OnlyFans, including the ban of words and adjectives associated with the fetish. Cassie’s account would have been Terminated for that photo series, yet we see her gaining followers to the point of being able to wire $30,000 at a time to her husband. Her husband, who, up until this point had been dead set against her page, and had previously required her to delete it. Cassie is also seen selling panties on her OnlyFans page- another offering that is against the Terms of Service. The only physical goods you’re allowed to sell on the platform are through the integrated Spring store- a pushprint platform. Soiled’ or ‘worn’ items containing bodily fluids (dirty panties) are not allowed. Either Cassie has multiple adult platforms, or someone at HBO hasn’t done their research.

Television wants desperately to talk about -and monetize - the subject of OnlyFans, but they don’t want to do any of the research required to do so properly.

Further, one does not ‘find’ an OnlyFans creator, and you cannot ‘go viral’ within the platform because outside of tagging a specific creator in a post, OnlyFans does not promote creators, and there is no ‘explore’ page. You must advertise yourself through cross-promotion on other creator pages, or on outside social medias such as Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and elsewhere. So when we see Margo (Margo’s got Money Troubles) make one post and then start receiving subscribers out of nowhere, I can’t help but think, “how did they even find her?”.

Another very important topic of conversation with how OnlyFans is depicted in television, is how easy they make platform success out to be. You can find free adult content all over the internet. To get someone to pay for it, and specifically pay you for it is more difficult. Usually, -and most easily- is if you have some sort of following to begin with. Generally, that would mean an insta account with a lot of followers, or a person who has been in the public light. A newly single mom with no social media following (Margo’s character) is not going to be able to take a few pics and suddenly start amassing followers. The platform is literally not designed that way.

Where AppleTV got it right, however, is that Margo does seek out help from creators who have a large following- albeit in an incredibly dangerous manner (she goes to their home). Collaborations will remain the most successful way to build a following in any capacity (cue ‘teamwork makes the dream work’ and ‘its not what you know, but who you know’). There is one brief scene in which Margo meets the successful creators, and they lay out exactly how to grow on the site: by bread-crumbing your subscribers to what they want (read: explicit content), all while putting in a lot of effort on their page. This is called a Content Trade- where you perform on and/or with a larger account, unpaid, in hopes that their subscribers will also subscribe to yours. We see this a lot with Male creator accounts who ‘feature’ different creators by making scenes (sextapes) with them. The larger account gets all of the attention, and the smaller account maybe gets a follow or two. You can see how if you aren’t careful or in control of your own business, you can be easily taken advantage of. The larger creators explain the risks of entering the adult content creation industry, mentioning how all social medias must be separate, and in no way connected to their personal account (that’s where I am different, and have found moderate success).

Another place where we see a moderately accurate depiction of potential situations an OnlyFans creator might find themselves in is with “Platform Managers”. To me, it’s another way of pimping out a SWorker, but the way its pitched to a creator is ‘you make the content, we do the posting, and then we take a cut’. This is a slippery slope and I’ve seen it from both ends. Firstly, the ‘manager’ takes a cut, so they want to sell volume not value. I spoke to creators who had previously been able to breadcrumb their clients and build the allure, had found that once they got a ‘manager’ their most explicit content was being sold for the lowest prices, and then showing up on reddit ads, for free. It’s a form of exploitation, to say the least. On the other end of it, for a brief period in 2021, I was managing an account for a creator who was bringing home $25K a month. She had three videos, and my job was to sell them to incoming subscribers. I was writing all of her dms, and updating subscriber profiles all while she was telling her instagram following that she was the one behind the screen and that they too, could make $25K a month like she was. (She was a special case who was scamming strippers as much as she was scamming men). I ended that relationship once I saw she was selling my IP to her following as “Party Tricks to use at the Club”.

Ultimately, I believe that the most successful way you can manage yourself in the Club and on OnlyFans is by doing it solo. Yes, you can hire photographers, and have a marketing strategy, and a plan for a customer journey, but as with any other business, the more people you involve the riskier it gets. And lets not ignore how much OnlyFans takes right off the top as a platform fee before you pay any taxes- 20%- in comparison to any strip club out there that expects you to pay a Housefee, a percentage of vip rooms paid on a card, and $5 per private dance you sell, plus tipping out the DJ, Floorstaff, and HouseMom and sometimes Managers. The club is the platform, they want a cut, and after tracking my earnings and expenses year after year, amounts to roughly 25% of my earnings. Not much different than OnlyFans.

I will say, that of the two tv shows, Margo’s Got Money Troubles is giving a more realistic portrayal of the platform, with Margo likely being a top 1% creator. Whereas Euphoria is glamorizing it, and showing Cassie as the exception- she is probably a top .001% creator. For transparency- I, myself have reached top 1.7% and that month I earned $7,500. Yes, people are earning millions, but a top 10% earner is bringing in about $1,000 a month. Both shows are adding their own Hollywood filter onto the depiction, but the truth is that most OnlyFans creators don’t just make thousands of dollars because they have an account. They make thousands of dollars because they are doing a lot of behind the scenes work to bring people to their site, and the work is still dangerous and risky for similar and different reasons that in-person work is.

There’s more to say, and places to dive deeper into discussion, but that’s all the breath I have for now. If you want to check out thebadgirlpage, here's the link.

xoxo,c