He doesn’t think there would have been many heterosexual lads 20 or even ten years ago that would have marketed explicit content of themselves to a gay audience. “It can be terrible,” he says, “because you can compare yourself to someone driving a Ferrari and be like why am I not living that life, but it can liberate you to do something you have felt that you have always wanted to do”.
OnlyFans offers people with no pornography experience an opportunity to market their bodies. For instance, Danny Blue, who has over 800 subscribers to his OnlyFans account, works full time in construction. At $ a subscriber he makes enough from OnlyFans to cover his rent, bills, and car, meaning that he saves all the money he makes as a digger operator. Like Ryan, Danny’s following was built through social media. A video shared to his 100k Twitter followers of him masturbating in his digger has been viewed over one million times.
It’s not just in his DMs and on forums either: “You get the people that are not your friends that have a whisper and judge you about it.” Before the first video was filmed, he knew kauniita Sri Lankan naiset that he would be thought to be gay. “Using dildos and that, it’s obvious people are going to question (my sexuality) and I’d be silly to think they wouldn’t. It was definitely something I was aware of.” Yet, he went ahead nonetheless. Refreshingly, despite being heterosexual, he shrugged that someone might think he was gay. In his words: “At the end of the day, I work hard and earn a lot of money doing what I do – why not.”
Danny’s content is more explicit than Ryan’s – Danny performs with sex toys – and because of this, he has the unusual experience of being a heterosexual man subject to homophobic abuse
It took Aaron McCleod, who is a full time electrician, over a year of thinking to make his decision to set up his OnlyFans account – his first post was three weeks ago. His friends with OnlyFans accounts had set theirs up anonymously, so he did the same. Then, in his second week, deciding he didn’t much care what people thought and wanting to increase growth, he used his personal Instagram account (with 25k followers) to promote his OnlyFans page. One week later he had 205 subscribers.
“You can compare yourself to someone driving a Ferrari and be like why am I not living that life, but it can liberate you to do something you have felt that you have always wanted to do” – Lotan Carter, OnlyFans performer
Aaron uses OnlyFans to save for his young son’s future; so, like the other men I spoke with, Aaron approaches his page like a business. He talks dirty to his subscribers for the same reason McDonalds sells Big Macs – it’s what the customer wants. The fact his customers are – by his approximation – 90 per cent men? He couldn’t care less. “I’m happy to appeal to an audience that are going to pay me money,” he says. He does, however, “know a lot of men that get freaked out by it, but it’s just the customers, it doesn’t bother me one bit”.
He and the other men I spoke with are so at ease with their own sexuality that they see a transactional dynamic between themselves and their subscribers where others may see a sexual one
So even though Aaron’s conversation with subscribers can be homoerotic, he would be unconcerned if his friends read them. “If my friend said did you chat to this guy in a gay way?” He makes a nonchalant scoff, “I’ve got a girlfriend, everyone knows that.”