The CEO of porn site OnlyFans said the company has paid out $20 billion to creators. (Lionel Bonaventure – AFP / Getty Images)
By Michael Schwarz October 11, 2024 at 12:07pm
In the celestial canopy of modern Western culture, some of the darkest clouds have grown darker of late.
If you look closely enough, however, you will discover that those same clouds have a few silver linings.
On Thursday, according to Variety, OnlyFans CEO Keily Blair boasted that the platform had paid its content creators a whopping $20 billion since its creation in 2016, but she also insisted — in a classic the-lady-doth-protest-too-much moment — that OnlyFans, widely known for adult content, welcomes all kinds of creators.
The subscription-based platform, Blair said, allows “artists freedom to say what they want and to be controversial.”
What a relief. After all, if there is anything missing from modern society, it is the license to “be controversial.”
In any event, Blair made those comments at the Bloomberg Screentime conference in Los Angeles, California.
The CEO’s revelation of OnlyFans’ gargantuan payout to content creators came with an additional layer of bad news.
For the fiscal year ending Nov. 30, 2023, those same content creators received total payouts of $5.32 billion.
In other words, more than 25 percent of the company’s $20 billion in total payouts since 2016 came in the most recent fiscal year.
Do you think pornography should be banned?
“Yeah, it was a good year,” Blair said.
As eye-popping as those numbers are, Blair’s comments about the platform’s content-related diversity seemed even more striking — almost as if she understood that making money by exploiting people’s sexual temptations required some kind of mitigating virtue.
“Everyone assumes it’s sexy content. Some of it is sexy content — and we’re very happy with that, we’re an inclusive platform, and we’re that way for a reason … We believe it’s very important for adult content creators to have a safe space, to be able to monetize and also to be able to do that alongside other content creators,” Blair said.
Ah, there we have the mitigating virtue. Call something “inclusive,” and modern readers will shelve all objections to it.
Alas, Blair doth protest too much.
According to Bloomberg, OnlyFans has an astonishing 400 million customers. Those customers pay for subscriptions to the platform as well as “micro-transactions” to purchase additional content.
And every honest person knows the nature of the content for which they pay.
“Porn is free on the internet,” Blair said. “I think the reason why people pay for OnlyFans is because they want to engage with those particular creators. It’s because of the ability to customize as well as to ask for a specific content.”
There you have it. Diversity-schmirsity. Customers pay for adult content.
But let us go further and identify what those customers actually purchase. After all, one need not resort to prudery in order to tell the truth about such things.
What they actually purchase is a lie, a dark illusion that draws them deeper into themselves. The perception that OnlyFans customers actually “engage with those content creators” constitutes perhaps the illusion’s most insidious element.
In short, those customers purchase a demonic inversion of the intimacy God intended for us.
Out of darkness, however, a light often emerges.
For instance, Christian readers would do well to follow a young woman on YouTube named Taylor Alesia.
Here is Alesia’s video testimony, which she entitled “From OnlyFans to Jesus”:
WARNING: The following videos contain language that some may find offensive.
On the old account above, where she built an OnlyFans-based following, Alesia still has more than 2.19 million subscribers.
On her newer account, where calls herself “The Bible Chick,” she has worked hard to build a comparatively paltry 134,000 subscribers.
That newer content, however, deserves praise and support from her fellow Christians.
Here, for instance, she devoted nearly 11 minutes to helping viewers “Win the Fight Against P*rn”:
Would Alesia have turned to Jesus if she had not first succumbed to the temptations associated with OnlyFans?
And would her message of triumph over those temptations resonate as it now does?
In short, while we decry the grip that pornography maintains over so many people, we must also acknowledge that silver linings form around dark clouds, and that those silver linings — represented by young Christians like Alesia — come directly from God.
Michael Schwarz holds a Ph.D. in History and has taught at multiple colleges and universities. He has published one book and numerous essays on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Early U.S. Republic. He loves dogs, baseball, and freedom. After meandering spiritually through most of early adulthood, he has rediscovered his faith in midlife and is eager to continue learning about it from the great Christian thinkers.
Michael Schwarz holds a Ph.D. in History and has taught at multiple colleges and universities. He has published one book and numerous essays on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Early U.S. Republic. He loves dogs, baseball, and freedom. After meandering spiritually through most of early adulthood, he has rediscovered his faith in midlife and is eager to continue learning about it from the great Christian thinkers.
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