ON
INSTAGRAM,
AN INFLUENCER
IS HELPING
SELL PRODUCTS.
ON ONLYFANS,
INFLUENCERS
ARE THEMSELVES
THE PRODUCT.
The draw for fans is “exclusive” content they
wouldn’t come across on other platforms, the major-
ity of which ban nudity. But the material is not always
explicit. One popular personality on the site is Vinny
Watson, an interior designer with an Instagram fol-
lowing of 121,000. Early on, his OnlyFans page was
a bacchanal of foot fetishism. “People kept talking
about his feet,” said a friend of mine and a fan of Wat-
son’s, “so Vinny said, ‘I’ll make people pay to look at
them and me.’” Watson has since diversified his sub-
ject matter to include racier content.
Dominic Ford has been a producer of gay porno-
graphic films for 11 years and became a creator on
OnlyFans not long after its inception. Last year, he
decided to develop his own platform, JustFor.Fans,
which includes features like a store where creators
can hawk merchandise, personalized phone numbers
to text with followers, and the ability to sell videos
(which OnlyFans now offers too). “I’d seen what was
out there and, frankly, wasn’t impressed,” says Ford,
who is 44 years old. “I’m a tech person. I just decided
to build my own version.”
The site launched on Valentine’s Day 2018 and now
has more than 400,000 registered users and 6,000
models—including women, gay and straight couples,
trans performers, and men, who make up the largest
portion of the site. Leveraging his connections, Ford
reached out to adult entertainers he had previously
worked with, including popular performers François
Sagat and Billy Santoro, who he says were instrumen-
tal in spreading the word about the site. “Thirty thou-
sand followers may not seem like a lot if you’re Cher,”
Ford says, “but if half of those pay $10 a month, then
they can make an amazing living not doing a boring
9-to-5 job.” (For now, JustFor.Fans and OnlyFans exist
solely on mobile and desktop browsers, as the App
Store prohibits pornography.)
“We have this need to have an authentic connection
with people we admire or who we deem as famous,”
Ford says. “With sex specifically, the industry has
largely focused on studio porn, and studio porn is very
manufactured. As long as I’ve been in the industry,
people have always looked to amateur stuff as more
authentic and interesting. The thing now, it’s combined
with social media, where you can actually connect
with these people.” It is a particular breed of contem-
porary relationship that thrives on codependency, as
social symbiosis.
This very specific migration of influencers onto
X-rated social media sites is having a curious impact
on digital alchemy—that is, how we continue to make
and build ourselves on the internet. Who an influencer
is, even in moments of performance, is becoming even
more muddied. As OnlyFans and JustFor.Fans demon-
strate, people can remake their identities, or be remade
by them, in often surprising and unforeseeable ways.