OnlyFans and Perpetual Ego Death
To do OnlyFans you must be ruthless. Obliterate your sense of self, and you might make some money!
I started an OnlyFans when I was twenty-two—every day since has been a perpetual ego death. Over and over again, it has been my job to expect and embrace the irrationality, the cruelty, and the self-annihilation that come with being a public-facing person. Specifically, a public-facing person with a front built on what will sell - contorted into unnatural expressions of “authenticity”. My job is to be compelling, to be desirable. I think I am those things. However, I’m not so interested in convincing anyone of that. Therein lies the fatal flaw. I’d rather be myself than something someone wants. This has been a bit of a conflict, as you might expect.
To start with, I am not on OnlyFans because it’s sexy. I am not on OnlyFans because I am a damaged person. I am not on OnlyFans because I am well-suited to it. I am on OnlyFans because I am poor. It is and always has been, for me, a means to an end. It defines me as much as folding clothes in a department store would. Should I have had a stable place to live and enough financial security to pursue the things I am drawn to, I never would have started one.
Doing things I find worthless, boring, or unfit for me personally, at the behest of a hungry stomach and unpaid bills, is not something I have learned to make my peace with. I have worked twelve-hour shifts trapped under fluorescent lighting, and I have found myself in jobs that underutilized my skill sets and natural passions. It’s always been something I have resented. Work began as a kind of theft for me. I was seventeen when I got my first full-time job, and I should have been in school instead. I should have been preparing for the beginning of my adult life. I should have been learning everything you end up learning in high school. But I was scrubbing toilets and stocking shelves—committed to transactional and impersonal, essentially useless labor.
Such is the nature of work. You show up, you do the job. Not because it deserves to be done, or because you are any good at it, but because if you don’t, you will starve. This is a fundamental component of functioning in our society. One I am hellishly resistant to. Which can be and is easily misconstrued as lazy or disagreeable. But I don’t actually mind working so long as I don’t feel forced into it, so long as it is necessary and beneficial labor that makes sense for me to perform. I would, with zero hesitation, take up the labor of caretaking for a loved one who needs such care. I would, with genuine thrill, sit under lamplight night after night, pouring over legal documents if it meant I could protect and defend someone who needed it. So it’s not “work” I am adverse to. It is work I find antithetical to my essential qualities. Work I would only ever do under great extortion. That is what I am relentlessly bitter about.
Enter OnlyFans. Similar to my previous jobs in retail, I do this work, which I loathe, strictly to pay my bills. The difference is that I must now perform “authenticity”. No one expects you to enjoy sweeping the floors or tilling the cash register. You may have to smile and be polite, but you do not have to convince anyone that you are having fun. Earning a living on the internet (sex work aside) requires such performance. Internet income is tied to your “brand”, which audiences want to feel is “real”.
All the influencers you follow? They love being online, spontaneously sharing their lives with their millions of friends. Forget about sustaining themselves; creating content is fun and expressive! A source of play that they just so happen to be paid for. Mining every aspect of their personal lives as fodder for an always judgmental audience? Intentionally exposing the shameful aspects of themselves and serving it as rage bait? They’re just natural exhibitionists, obviously! Don’t think about the substantial pay and freedom an influencer might receive in comparison to a typical 9-5. They’re just being honest and creative. This cultural emphasis on authenticity and pleasure at work -disguised as liberatory and expressive- is just the latest weapon of the owning classes. Sorry to disappoint you.
And you can read about it here: Porn Work by Heather Berg. Chapter 2 specifically is all about authenticity and its disingenuous relationship to labor. Anyone who works any job whatsoever will benefit from reading it, but its spotlight on the sex industry is outrageously transformative and something I am begging you to read. Especially if you think you understand the people (me) who find themselves in this industry.
Anyways, it’s my job not just to take my clothes off but to have fun doing it. My audience wants to believe I’m abnormally horny. More so than the average person. And while some days in my personal life I might actually feel that way (Is she taunting us, is this another marketing ploy? Does she actually feel horny in real life??? What is real here, JESUS CHRIST), when that camera is on, I am hardly ever enjoying it. I’m getting through it. I’m thinking about how I’d rather be reading a book. I’m thinking about how much I might earn. On my worst days, I’m holding back tears and biting down my fury, thinking on a constant loop about how exploitative it all feels. The same thoughts I had in retail.
So, ego death. I am putting out content that I would of my own free will never spend my time on, and more than that - It’s not enough to simply put the content out there; I must also convince you that it is authentic content. I’m just a horny girl having fun. Or an evil dominatrix getting off on putting you down. Depends on the day and the client, but always, I’m just expressing myself! I’m having a very real, very fun time. Believe me.
It’s interesting how such an emphasis on authenticity only ends up creating the most hellishly forced personas you’ve ever witnessed. I’ve never craved it more than when I’ve been forced to perform it. I don’t want to be sexy all the time. I don’t care if you like me or you think I’m ugly. I don’t want to serve myself on a silver platter for a let s-be-honest- relentlessly stupid and careless audience. I don’t care about any of it. Unfortunately, the job is to make them care. Contort myself into a compelling character. Or I could expose all the worst parts of myself in a strategic move that will end with money in my pocket.
Someone help me. I’m going in circles.
In short succession, here is a list of all the ego death, soul-crushing components of OnlyFans that make me want to rip my hair out.
Making videos that I don’t find sexy or fun or real in any way and then having to pretend I do find them to be all those things, and that it doesn’t hurt my feelings to be misunderstood.
Having my finances tied to my physical attractiveness. I think I’m attractive enough, but I don’t want to be running around baiting everyone to tell me that I’m not, and frankly, I don’t care if I’m not. I am so much more than a physical body. Plus, I will age. I will. I could become horribly disfigured in a freak accident. One time, I got a really bad haircut, and I still had to pretend to be beautiful. It’s okay not to be beautiful all the time.
Mining every single aspect of my personal life for anything that might remotely end in views and, therefore, income. I don’t care what people lacking in any context of me whatsoever have to say about my life. Fucking idiots. You think I’m a whore? I don’t care to explain to you that I’m not. Go ahead, think it, buddy.
Be confident, be sexy, and be fun. Even if you know you’re more suited to academic work.
That desperation… If you want to make any kind of real money, you absolutely must be willing to do anything that might end in virality. Whether it be embarrassing, stupid, or fake as hell, it doesn’t matter. Figure out what sells, and do that. But make it seem real. Don’t forget to do that.
Marketing. Oh my god, kill me now.
Having to deal with men. Luckily, as a dominatrix, I do get to be as close to my bitchy self as possible, but there are plenty of unbearable men I must placate, and to them - Fuck you. Then there are the incels. As lovely as you can imagine. We really need to do something about the epidemic of self-centered, brainless little rat men wandering around thinking they should be both pitied and catered to.
This work, which I started when I was young and bereft of options, following me forever and preventing me from a career I might actually be good at. Don’t worry, I’m going to take control of the narrative and make hell for anyone who thinks I’m too tainted for other things. Bitch I’ll be an internet whore and disgustingly educated. They’re not mutually exclusive, dumb ass. Maybe a nice law firm won’t want to hire me, but I’ll find something to do with the law degree that I will get or die trying to get. But, yeah, the way people assume so many inaccurate things about me simply because I didn’t want my car to be repossessed and so I started an OnlyFans at twenty-two. I hate how boldly wrong people will be about me for the rest of my life.
I just don’t want to do it. It bores me. I don’t care about horny men. I’m not interested in being desirable to people I don’t know. I really, really do not care. My actual sexuality will always be separated from my OnlyFans because I don’t want to share that, that shit is MINE. I literally just want to live somewhere and go to school. If you’ve done that so far, pat yourself on the back, girl. You’re living my dream.
To do OnlyFans, you must be ruthless. Detach yourself entirely from how people perceive you, and let go of every ounce of self-respect you might have, not because of the sex, which is, despite all the moral panicking, not at all reflective of your worth or virtue, but because you must market yourself, and marketing is an abominable endeavor. Prepare to be misjudged and scrutinized by people of inferior intelligence, and prepare to tolerate transactional relationships despite their spiritual alienation. And don’t forget to do it all with a smile! You’re having a great time!
I’m the kind of man they expect you to cater to. But I’m not here for that. I’m here because your words cracked something open.
You described a kind of death I recognize—not in flesh, but in spirit. The death that comes from selling a version of yourself you don’t believe in. I’ve worn uniforms too, smiled on command, shrunk myself to fit a world that only values performance.
But you—you’re naming it. Dragging it into the light. And in doing that, you’re not just surviving—you’re transforming. There’s beauty in that. Fury, too. And it’s holy.
Keep going. We need voices like yours—uncompromising, unflinching, awake.
Sorry to be the Devil’s Advocate here, but someone’s got to step into the void. You say you feel exploited…I don’t remember reading anywhere that someone forced you into Only Fans (in which case you would,absolutely, have been exploited). It seems to me to be a choice you made, freely, because you saw it as your best among several unappealing options. Do you think roofers, garbage collectors, and dishwashers are in love with their work? Do you think they go home in the evening feeling fulfilled by the challenges they have met in clever and satisfying ways? Some of them are probably among your “fans”, sending you money they earned by putting in day after day of mind numbing, back breaking, sweaty and undignified work, and I suspect you resent having to put on a show for their entertainment. I’m sorry you don’t like your work. Lots of people don’t, but they weren’t lucky enough to have won the genetic lottery that, through no merit on your part, made you attractive enough to be able to make good money by sharing your sexuality with people. You’re certainly free to go find a job running a cash register at Walmart if you think you’d feel less “exploited” there.