Being online is being in the pornopticon. In the surveillance state, we are all camgirls. It's, yes, sextraterrestrial. The cyberhorny world takes us all to an edge of the universe. Yet, professionally being a camgirl, nudie girl, working girl, to say, sex worker in the digital abyss, presents a unique space in the margins of e-society.
The opacity of our presence or invisibility is convenient for seemingly everyone except us: on the one hand we are conveniently invisible to society, constantly being deplatformed, shadow banned, turned into a meme punchline, othered, and oppressed. On the other hand, digital sex worker influence is conveniently prevalent in media not limited to films, music videos, and rap lyrics, and there are many popular guides on to “how to make money on OnlyFans” “how to cam successfully” etc. “Fuck like a porn star” … “high class escort vibes” … “stripper style” … it’s fun to pretend. It’s fun to slip into the role of stripper or cam girl for a day. I suppose it would give one cred, an edge of yassification, as long as you don’t actually within the legal gray area exchange sexual services or images for a living, and god forbid enjoy it.
I started my OnlyFans a bit after the pandemic hit. Other sex-adjacent, SW-orbiting ventures have been like practice simulation for me — a rocket launch, but not a landing. I cammed briefly, but I was atrocious at it and gave up. It’s a job that looks easy but is packed with hours upon hours of work that you need both physical and psychological stamina for. As someone with a weak immune system and weak physical strength, I couldn’t work a pole to save my life; it was all floor work. My live music performances and films have always featured bimbopilled choreo and horny imagery, so moving online was dovetailing all those aspects that perfectly aligned. My OF is like a mix of performance art, candid emo diary, meta analysis, capitalist critique, the obvious nudes + digital porn star shit, sexual services like custom videos/life-changing cock ratings/the best GFE ever/sexy video chat, and wholesome slice of life content. It’s not a mass appeal page for everyone, but my niche following enjoys it. I was not an overnight success that many assume starting an Onlyfans will be, but months after I started my OF I reached the 1% and remained there for a painstaking but rewarding time. 2021 was a good year for me. Kind of.
It’s an invisible success. I’m not as popular or marketable as many girls who enviably fit into an easily digestible category, I’m a niche forbidden planet, but I’m amazing at what I do. Still, it’s not as though I can tell my friends and family, “omg my dragon dildo alien tentacle anime sex tape did so well” or “wow I just took the best nudes ever” or “I fund my therapy and psychiatry sessions through my porn.” Also, the industry is fleeting as hell. My impostor syndrome does not handle it well. I am constantly afraid of loss. For a week that you can do amazing and get all your bills paid and beyond, you can encounter another week where you make nothing. Along with luck and tireless hours of marketing (I fucking hate marketing — I love creating the content but the advertising is the bane of my existence), one’s reach on OF and other online sex work depends on intrinsic motivation, which unfortunately I had in spades, unfortunately because I am a chronic overworker and burnout is real. No one really talks about burnout, and the weight of not taking any days off — real time happens 24/7 which means customers happen 24/7, and the invisible pressure to outdo ourselves is motivating until it is warped into something unbearably crushing and demotivating. It’s a Jungian enantiodromia.
My numbers have dwindled since, and continue to fluctuate hard, both in my own choice to slow down from the burnout and take breaks... Of course, once-loyal subscribers also inevitably get over me and move on to a new face. Cold impersonal fact of this industry— every ride or die fan will eventually get over you. But there will always be new people to tantalize and titillate, for as long as you want to be the object of affection and seduction. I now hover around the 1-2%’s and eventually there will be a termination point where I can’t sustain it any more and move on to something new. Honestly, it’s hard to think about. I will probably never have another opportunity like this again. This terrain is strange to conceptualize. Age is a currency. When I age out of whatever category I’m in right now that’s between the porn dichotomy of babygirl-MILF, when I can market myself as an elder with heaving wisdom and even heaving-er mommy milkers, I can maybe have an equal footing.
This brings me to another point of the alien terrain: how the market is fickle. One does not need to study economics to intuit this. The market is oversaturated, the girls are candy in a candy store, and everyone’s a diabetic. The “freshly turned 18” mania makes me sick — it is, horrifically, the biggest selling driver to make the most online SW money. I know girls my age marketing themselves as 18 year old high school/college students to make more money. Some are very believable and successful. It’s alien dimensional drift where everything in the virtual life is cosplayed. You can be anything you project yourself into. I’ve thought about experimenting with it myself, or making a separate faceless account as a social experiment, but I can’t ethically bring myself to do so yet when the price is the loss of authenticity. We didn’t build this capitalistic and cannibalistic system, but we have to exist in it. It’s disgusting. It’s a dark psychology. It’s a calibration of our alien selves with our human identity. Where the most intimate sides of the carnal and the cerebral meet, that’s where I’ve willingly inserted myself. Penetrated the dark galaxy of the sexual collective unconscious.
No one told me about any of this when I was starting out. There are no hitchwhore’s guides about how to handle the parasocial intimacy realm. What I found were oversimplified and formulaic “how to get started,” “how to make money on OF,” listicles and videos made by already-popular influencers. For someone starting from scratch, who doesn’t have the luxury of rich parents or a massive online following, those tips never worked. There is no one size fits all on how to succeed. Lest this fact not be forgotten, failure and success are cyclical.
In February 2021, I started working on my Cyberhorny project to remedy this lack of philosophical analysis and psychological guideline in the online sex work world. My intention is for this to be my legacy in the future when I leave OnlyFans and any other spicy websites. I can retire and leave my knowledge for people like myself who may have needed something like this when they started. It’s important to address burnout, mental health crises, protection, boundaries, parasocial phenomena, self esteem, physical limitations, and more. OnlyFans is not the get rich quick scheme people may meme it as. It’s also a product of its time: it blew up during the pandemic, and who knows when it will expire or what is next in the online sex world. If not OF, there is certainly something poised to take its place, as well as a critiquable aftermath.
Cyberhorny: Navigating A Sexual Dystopia started as the idea for a book, expanded into an idea for a video series/podcast series/PDF series, and has recently been concretized into an initial PDF (currently available for free on my website or in detailed explanation on my OF).
It pains me to think that I’ve been working on its development for a year with only a 17 page spread, and a recently acquired domain name, to show for it. Depression, demotivation, demoralization have heavily impacted my creative output and cognitive ability. It’s also hard working on a passion project when you work full time and your job is a different kind of passion project. I do consider my OF an art piece in itself, albeit a private and transactional one, but it would be cool to do something that transcends it. If I could unfold the entirety of my OnlyFans into an art gallery retrospective experience, blurring out the socially unacceptable stuff or strategically photoshopping a Pokemon or a smiling Jack Nicholson over my boobs and pussy, I would want to terraform the narrative and transform the thought that sex workers can’t make critiquable art.
When I started my OF, I was more motivated by new experience and creative platform, and never expected to make a full time job of it. I’m happy that I did though. I was recently rereading my early 2020 diaries and it was obviously a bleak time for everyone, I was this close to just ending it all and decided to go balls in on art house porn. Following the news of coronavirus mania, it was all instinctual from there. Weird times call for weirder porn. As Hunter Thompson said, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. I completely gave up on the traditional job path and sought to align with a path of being as fully myself as possible: my real, true, alien self, vulnerable and raw and powerful and weak and obscure amongst a sea of over saturation. The alien entity is my real self; pretending to be a human is my cosplay. I am a custom designed projection of a human fuckdoll until I wither from burnout and become once again my original extraterrestrial chassis.
Why don’t we talk about burnout more? You can’t perform at your best if you’re burned out. The nervous system becomes weak over time. (Burnout is another major major major thing that needs to be discussed more btw). I think many of us are far beyond burned out to the point where it’s chronic. The body and mind have their fragile human limitations, the meat sacks that we are. I do believe it is the responsibility of the upper hierarchy to help those below them, because hoarding (of anything, whether it’s wealth or advice or things) is inhumane. In my perfect delusional fantasy world there would be a redistribution of wealth and better living conditions for all people. Life is just full on misery sometimes, we don’t deserve that. We all deserve to be as healthy wealthy happy and loved as we can. I do believe that. We deserve happiness just not at the expense of others. In a war there are no winners only losers. We deserve peace.
What would I do if I made a lot of money from OF? I admire the few people on top who genuinely use their earnings to better society; I’ve seen a few porn accounts who have opened animal sanctuaries and do activism/humanitarian support, which is fucking cool. Selflessness will never not be cool. If I had financial power I would 1. Help animals. 2. Start an art grant for creative SWers. 3. Take a year off work, a selfish indulgent long vacation to do nothing but unwind from life. At that point I would have earned it and I’ll have rested enough to comfortably help others.
How has there not been an art grant for SWers? I really wish there was better mutual aid in this field, but like most people in the world in any field, personal expenses always come first // this is what capitalism has ingrained into us from day one. Also the hidden and stigmatized factor of being an SW dampens a lot of efficacy of mutual aid things. The competition of this field is also the worst part of it, people can become overly competitive and start gatekeeping. This is also part of why I want the Cyberhorny thing to get going, as a source of guidance for creators who may need it. When I was starting out I wish I had something/someone like that to encourage me but be realistic. If I can be that for someone, I would be happy. Honestly that is major goal for me, that if later this year my account is doing okay I would love to create a grant even if it’s a smaller amount like $500 or $1000 to help someone who could use the money for equipment or lighting or whatever would help them succeed as a rising obscure star in the cybersex world. I feel incredibly grateful being supported by my subs on there and being able to scrape by with this as my job but it hits different being supported in a big way by a fellow SW.
Is it worth it? The reward for dealing with a cadre of miseries is that if you’re very very good at what you do, you can easily make money in a field that requires no resume or workplace grind. Some people like myself are not cut out for the 9 to 5. Everyone who knows me knows I will never have a “normal” job. This is what I am to make peace with. I cum in peace.
The reward for finally encountering a semblance of personal success comes at the price of a lot of online hatred, deplatforming, stigma, people you know finding out, stress, burnout, and psychic attacks, as well as a myriad of self doubts and depressions. How many psychic consequences are there to being nude online? The uncanny valley of seeing your own image all the time, thrice upon a time. The discomfort of knowing people are always watching. Thinking. Fantasizing. Deriding. Critiquing. A solar system of minibosses.
SWERFS. Incels. Stalkers. Sex work tourists. These are a few of the minibosses we deal with on a daily basis. You know, people treat us like gods: they ignore us unless they want something from us. You are lurking and jerking. I am working. The biggest boss battle is my own brain. Where are we going? How do I fit into this future? How do we navigate this dystopian parasocial landscape?
We’re both burdened and illuminated by the parasocial phenomenon.
“Parasocial”, which suggests a one-way interaction with a figure you see daily who comes close to the role of a hologram-like projected-upon friend or companion, doesn’t quite feel like the right word to describe the OF experience. It is a good word for now, but it does go beyond a one-way parasocial interaction with a model: depending on the creator, can be very interactive. Post-parasocial living? Many men want an e-girlfriend experience instead of/in addition to simply looking at porn. Sometimes the instances when I work with my clothes on are the most intimate. This is a service that I am fascinated by and enjoy offering — but it may consequentially have an emotional, affectionate connection that feels real. Is this ethical? The ethics of these subscription-based porn sites is another burning hot topic, and there are many spammy creators who give the platform a derisive reputation of being exploitative of male loneliness and treat customers like ATMs. While I want to make a living and do acknowledge the transactional nature of this work, I also want my subscribers to like me as a human, so I try to go above and beyond to practice ethical business dealings.
Why pay for porn? In an internet where porn is free and limitless and instantly available, why join someone’s Onlyfans? Why buy panties through ManyVids? Why support someone’s pornographic existence when you can really never have them? And in general, how many people who watch or consume sexual material are even willing to stand by the sentiment that adult entertainers deserve to be compensated for their hard work?
First of all, in the one-way street of pornsites or social media profiles, you’re extremely unlikely to get a response from the creator. Onlyfans is unique in bringing you in direct intimate contact with the lovely person you stan, pulling you directly in their orbit, transporting you to their personal dimension. There, we as creators exist alongside you, sometimes for you. It’s an interactive form of patronage. You see the intimate ins and outs of our lives in a completely different way than you can through simply a follow on social media or a pornhub search. It’s like a mix of artist support by being a patron, and sexual service by being a client. Whatever role you want to be in, and want them to be in, we can all slip into. Yeah, I have a lot of subscribers who are “lurk and jerkers” — exactly as this sounds, they view but don’t engage, voyeurs at an online peep show — and others still who interact more with my art and slice of life things. They get to know me dare I say as an online friend (...with benefits). It’s a different world, and to explain it would necessitate a ton more writing or to experience it for yourself.
This is, in many cases, a service job. The sex industry is a service industry. We work. To our subscribers, we turn on and off like a hologram. Sex work is a temporal art, our medium is time. We are not real, yet not not real. We are engaging in Shroedinger’s sex. It’s cool. It’s strange. It’s weird. It’s gross. It’s awesome. I cannot say whether this is a “good” or “bad” field. I can say it works for me. It has changed my life. It has aligned me with my values and illuminated the darkest depths of my psyche.
This line of work is not for the faint of heart, but it’s somehow more wholesome than it sounds. I wish more people knew that. Sex workers are some of the most intelligent, fragile, innocent, childlike, open-minded, creative people I’ve ever met. We get a bad rap for the lustful presence we allegedly exude that happens to be considered “bad” in the moral dichotomy of society. Shame and dread can follow us. Does showing nudity to survive make one an inherently bad person? We’re inherently not bad people, we chose a path most wouldn’t dare to take. We’re stardust crusaders. We’re good at moving in the shadows. We’re neither heroes nor villains, we just are. Not all heroes wear capes. Some wear nothing.
We are all, in the grand philosophical human sense, specks of nothing in a vast conglomerate of galaxies. No humans are better or worse than others by existence or work description alone; it is our actions that determine our standing. How strange and alienating it is to be considered less than nothing simply for rejecting society’s traditional values and embracing the NSFW life. I can’t count ho many times I’ve received messages calling me useless, inadequate, a plague to society (no — but even a plague is productive as it sees action. I am nonessential.) Sometimes I internalize it, and the hate does get to me. The love outshines the hate, and I am endlessly thankful for my supporters, but deep in my heart there is an echo of the people who view me as less than nothing.
In this perception of nothingness, SWers are being deplatformed more than ever. From the OnlyFans ban on porn on August 2021 that left many porn creators including myself scrambling (only to be reverted once they realized how much money they’d lose removing nsfw content from the platform that popularized it), to constant shadow bans and content bans on social media apps (I am shadow banned on almost every platform: Insta, Twitter, Reddit, Tiktok — the four horsemen of the digital apocalypse), to content removal on Onlyfans itself.
It commands my essence to be invisible: no more being a weaponized babe, no more eating sushi in the nude with my swords out, no more documentation of my medical visits, no more kitties and titties. I still will post to the platform as long as I can, and I do the best I can to uphold terms of service, but it seems new rules are written every day and the content removal is arbitrary as hell. Once they’ve flagged you for something, be prepared to have other things to come into light that weren’t even on the ToS before; they make it up as they go along to push SWers out. I love OF and it changed my life, but these sites that are the last frontier of where content and free speech can be free are joining the foray of the vanilla social media into sex worker erasure. It’s strange, this command of invisibility.
Being invisible until commanded not to be is a full time job. It is a sex robot aptly controlled by her human overlords. But what if that is the performance? What if the pleasure model realizes her consciousness?
Sex workers are important. We brought commerce to westward expansion when that terrain was newly being explored. Many madams were high ranking influential figures in their community, and the working girls regarded highly as well. Take a look at Maeve from Westworld or Inara from Firefly. Without us, the fabric that connects society would be much more boring. Less bussing and less serotonin would exist in the world. There is a rich history of carnally human yet sextraterrestrial women of the night, although now we are available online 24/7. Now, the terrain to be explored is the cyberworld, and the cyberhorny participants are the ones discovering, terraforming, and charting it. The antipodes of the antipodes of the mind. You are scrolling through my pictures. I am sitting on the Pokemon-plushie covered couch feeding my cat sardines on a holographic platter. It is an illusion. Available though we may be, we are not yet truly free. Planet Bimbo is still a mystery zone. Where is the Karman Line of our space and civilian space?
We require the hardware update of decriminalization; maybe then our species would be allowed to inhabit Earth as a home planet.
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