OnlyFans is a platform where strangers pay a monthly subscription to simulate sexual intimacy with people they will never meet – a technological innovation that would have baffled every previous civilisation.
On the other side of this transaction are millions of young women (and a few men) who treat this as they might a career in teaching or an entrepreneurial pursuit – weighing the hours, calculating the income, and optimising the marketing strategy.
Imagine explaining that to someone 50 years ago. Better yet, imagine you’ve time-travelled back to a classroom of teenage girls in the mid-1970s and you’re telling them what’s coming. That within a generation, thousands of girls their age will aspire to sell access to nude photographs and videos of themselves, and that newspapers will profile them as entrepreneurs. That a woman called Bonnie Blue will offer her body as a venue for an extreme endurance sport and that this will be treated as a newsworthy ac…