A Philosopher’s Analysis of Onlyfans

Porn is free, there’s plenty of it on the web, so why should anyone subscribe to a person’s onlyfans? There’s one core feature of onlyfans that I feel must be emphasized for the phenomenon to be properly understood — its parasocial nature

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For a person’s content to be worth subscribing to, they must provide to its user base a variety of things:

1) An experience that porn cannot provide.

2) An experience that isn’t easily attainable for free in the real world.

3) A highly marketable product that is both rare and high in scarcity value.

4) An experience that is overall attractive to its consumers and consistently dispenses high quality content on a regular basis while maintaining its affordability (its content doesn’t deprecate in quality and regularity among an increasing influx in subscribers).

5) An experience that does not leave the consumer feeling exploited in any way whether it be financially or emotionally.

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What are most men’s qualms with OnlyFans, what causes them to feel weird about subscribing to a woman’s content? Here are some of the reasons given by different men:

1) Porn is free, why should I pay for someone’s nudes?

2) They don’t want to objectify the woman in a purely sexual way.

3) It makes them feel weird to pay for porn.

4) They’re against OF because they feel it is inherently exploitative toward men and gives women a free reign advantage to make massive amounts of low-effort income.

5) It’s not genuine. They want to know the “real me” on a personal level. They don’t want to see themselves as a customer and actually “get to know me”.

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To respond to these concerns directly one by one:

1) I don’t see myself as a sex worker or someone who is simply providing porn / nudes on her OF. I do view myself as providing a service though, but I wouldn’t say it’s primarily sexual in nature. I do try to provide men an outlet for their sexual desires, but also their intellectual and emotional ones. My inbox is always available to my subscribers for deep philosophical conversations or simply emotional expression to a non-judgmental caring listener.

2) I feel equally as objectified for my personality and intellect as I do for my physical appearance. I allow myself to be objectified in these ways and am not made uncomfortable by this fact.

3) It’s not weird because I don’t view the transaction as men paying for porn but for an “experience”, or even them providing a monthly donation as a friend who cares for my well-being. I try to reduce feelings of guilt by demonstrating that I do care for my subscriber base as friends and will gladly meet up as friends for coffee if the stars align (obviously not for sex because this isn’t prostitution). I never feel “forced” or pressured to respond to messages or talk to people, I do it because I want to and deeply enjoy these stimulating discussions.

4) This take is just anti-sex work and anti-women, plain and simple. Women are only utilizing the market that men created and continue to sustain. It’s men who create this increased demand for sexual labor and it’s women who supply the product. What harm are women contributing by having a safe method of earning independent income?

5) What type of women make an OF account? Is there a distinct kind of “OF girl” that can easily be differentiated from what you’d call a “normal girl”? No, there isn’t. Women have many different reasons for making an OF account and are led toward this path by an unique array of individual circumstances, so no real generalizations can be made about common features that OF content creators supposedly share.

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OF feels less genuine to certain men because they’re paying for a service. They feel their relationship with me is commodified and that this prevents them from getting to know the “real me”. Let me be the first to tell you that there is no such thing as an Authentic self. I feel everyone plays a specific role catered to various situations and contexts. I do sometimes see “core features” of who I believe myself to be that have remained consistent over a long period of time but I still wouldn’t go as far as call that “authentically who I am” as a person. The individual you message over OF is as authentically “me” as when you meet me from any other setting whether it be in real life or from a basic dating app.

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I can’t say why other women make an OF, all I can do is speak for myself and why I made one. My initial reasons was due to financial struggle, I couldn’t find work and wanted to ease the burden off my aging parents who are both 70 years old. This platform is not making me rich but it is serving the important function of decreasing the amount of money I ask for from my parents which has been incredibly helpful.

As I continued to make content, I realized I was discovering different aspects of my religiously repressed sexuality on the way (I was having a sort of “sexual awakening” — I’m a late bloomer, I thought I was asexual for a majority of my life) and that I actually enjoyed doing this. OF gives me plenty of opportunity to be creative in my room decorations, developing ideas for photo or video shoots, collaboration with other content creators, and the erotic stories I write.

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Why subscribe to my OF?

If you’re even reading this long-winded rant, it must mean I piqued your interest in some way whether it was initially physical from my sexually explicit posts or by reading through my posts via intellectual stimulation. I would assume it means you’re attracted to my physical appearance and feel intellectually engaged to some extent by what I have to say. This itself is already good enough reason for you to subscribe because it will then allow you greater access to a large amount of potential masturbation material and a person whose conversations you feel intellectually and emotionally stimulated by.