The OnlyFans Generation
The Unfathomable Cost of Selling Sex
Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land. —Genesis 19:24-25
The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. —C.S. Lewis
Above: The Devil takes on many different forms.
Recently over on X, Sophie Rain—the top “creator” on OnlyFans—shared that she made nearly $44 million in her first year on the app.
Sure, that’s a great deal of cash—more than both NBA and NFL superstars take home annually—but what of the cost?
Thomas More’s famous line from A Man For All Seasons comes to mind: “For Wales? Why Richard, it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. . . but for Wales!”
We might ask: For millions? At what cost to one's dignity, self-respect, self-esteem, soul?
To the blissfully uninitiated, OnlyFans is “an internet content subscription service based in London, England. The service is popular with sex workers who produce pornography.” The platform's meteoric rise represents a disturbing shift in our cultural landscape that merits serious examination.
The “creators” on OnlyFans are selling the very rope by which they are slowly being hanged. Their bodies have become a commodity—mere digital flesh on offer to the highest bidder. They are nursing a serpent that will, in time, devour their hearts.
Who truly pays the price?
Is it the seller? Her future self? Her body? Her mind? Her soul? Her potential spouse and/or children?
Or is it the men who buy, feed, and sustain this bestial behavior?
Any marketplace—no matter how licentious—requires both supply and demand. The unholy spot where these two forces meet is at the root of near all society’s ills.
The success of OnlyFans models is an indictment not only of the woman who make content, but also the men who pay for it.
These men are akin to arms dealers—merchants of a kind of spiritual death—providing the deadly munitions by which these women are destroying themselves. By providing such devastating armaments, they are fueling a war waged on the human heart over its very soul.
The collateral damage here goes deep and runs wide; its severity and pervasiveness is alarming.
Per a 2023 article from The Washington Examiner (emphasis mine and, sadly, we can assume that things have only gotten worse):
Of the 3 million “creators” on OnlyFans, the site reports that 67% of revenue goes to Americans. While the overwhelming majority of revenue goes to a minority of high-performing content creators, let’s assume, on average, that this revenue share can be extrapolated to mean that roughly 2 million Americans are OnlyFans creators. According to the site, 70% of creators are women, and 30% are men, translating to approximately 1.4 million American women and 600,000 American men.
Adults aged 18 to 45 — nearly all of the users of OnlyFans — comprise little more than a third of the U.S. population, or just shy of 119 million in total. This means that we can (again, very, very roughly) deduce that about 2% of American women aged 18 to 45 are selling themselves on OnlyFans, and about 1% of men are doing the same. The problem is way more bleak on the demand side of the equation. According to OnlyFans, nearly half of its 220 million users are Americans, or more than 94 million. Considering that 87% of users overall are male, we can assume that’s about 82 million American men, three-quarters of whom are reportedly in that 18-45 age bracket.
If women selling their bodies is unequivocally bad, the men who finance this degradation are arguably worse.
To paraphrase a good thread on X, a generation of men are rotting their brains and becoming too lazy to have meaningful lives because they can have their sexual desires fulfilled for money. This is the product of a dopamine-addicted generation who choose one-way, effortless para-social relationships rather than anything that could expose them to rejection or failure.
OnlyFan’s commodification of desire and imitation of intimacy are antithetical to the human experience, and fulfillment of these typically requires social interactions and vulnerability. OnlyFans removes any and all risk inherent to gratification, making it only contingent on payment.
Worse still, this sinister transaction makes men behave more like wolves than human beings. It teaches them that women are mere pieces of meat at which to oogle, salivate, and then devour whole.
This cultural shift has dire consequences. Not only does it erode individual self-respect and integrity, it threatens society as a whole—especially when combined with our modern age’s unrestrained screen time and dopamine-chasing behavior. As my friend Randy Ginsburg wrote:
Our mindless scrolling, dopamine savoring, quick-hit content consumption is actually deteriorating our brain.
It’s giving us digital dementia.
The concept of "digital dementia" proposes that our heavy reliance on the internet and digital devices might harm cognitive health, leading to shorter attention spans, memory decline, and potentially even quickening the onset of dementia.
A major 2023 study examined the link between screen-based activities and dementia risk in a group of over 462,000 participants, looking specifically at both computer use and TV watching.The findings revealed that spending more than four hours a day on screens was associated with a higher risk of vascular dementia, Alzheimer’s, and other forms of dementia. Additionally, the study linked higher daily screen time to physical changes in specific brain regions.
Now factor in sexual perversion—in the form of pornography and parasitic platforms like OnlyFans—and you have a cultural and moral powder keg.
A generation lost to lust, apathy, and spiritual emptiness is not only tragic, it’s dangerous. It adds yet another dimension to the demographic and moral crises unfolding in the United States and across the West.
Though correlation is not causality, the below is alarming:
The soul and the body cannot be neatly separated. To sell one is to lose the other.
The state of Western man is sick, sad, and ugly—rotting not only his moral fiber, but also the foundations of civilization itself.
Anthropologist J.D. Unwin’s research in Sex and Culture is eerily and terrifyingly prophetic. It shows us not only where we currently stand, but also where we will find ourselves if these trends keep up.
Unwin found that cultures embracing total sexual freedom collapse within three generations. When strict sexual mores are abandoned, absolute monogamy and rational thinking eventually disappear. His research concludes:
The history of these societies consists of a series of monotonous repetitions; and it is difficult to decide which aspect of the story is the more significant: the lamentable lack of original thought which in each case the reformers displayed, or the amazing alacrity with which, after a period of intense compulsory continence (sexual restraint), the human organism seizes the earliest opportunity to satisfy its innate desires in a direct or perverted manner. Sometimes a man has been heard to declare that he wishes both to enjoy the advantages of high culture and to abolish compulsory continence. The inherent nature of the human organism, however, seems to be such that these desires are incompatible, even contradictory. The reformer may be likened to the foolish boy who desires both to keep his cake and to consume it. Any human society is free to choose either to display great energy or to enjoy sexual freedom; the evidence is that it cannot do both for more than one generation.
In short, OnlyFans is personal and societal cancer.
Much like cancer demands a decisive, exacting procedure to halt its metastasis, we must identify, root out, and destroy the tumor that has consumed men and women the world over. We must put on our metaphorical gloves and wade directly into the filth and carnage of our own creation. We must unequivocally identify the contagious malady, disinfect the wounds it has produced, remove the cancer in its entirety, and monitor for any and all signs of its return.
Father Robert Barron once wrote, "At the heart of the spiritual life is the conviction that your life is not about you."
This wisdom stands in stark contrast to the self-commodification that OnlyFans promotes. The platform's success represents not economic triumph but spiritual bankruptcy—a trade that exchanges lasting fulfillment for temporary gain.
When the bill inevitably comes due, we will pay for it dearly.
Per my about page, White Noise is a work of experimentation. I view it as a sort of thinking aloud, a stress testing of my nascent ideas. Through it, I hope to sharpen my opinions against the whetstone of other people’s feedback, commentary, and input.
If you want to discuss any of the ideas or musings mentioned above or have any books, papers, or links that you think would be interesting to share on a future edition of White Noise, please reach out to me by replying to this email or following me on Twitter X.
With sincere gratitude,
Tom
Excellent article. Lust is a hell of a drug.
Fantastic piece of writing