Look, Don’t Touch

I look down from watching football to see that my interviewee is typing again. She goes by the name Goddess K on Twitter, and when you click on the profile you’re met with a header image of a young girl holding up a green sweater, revealing cleavage and a lace bra. Goddess K is one of the myriad of online sex workers that have sprung up in droves since sites like OnlyFans and Snapchat Premium appeared. For $9.99 a month you can get full access to K’s most intimate moments in high quality picture and video formats, and can even ask her to do “customs” for a tip. Her Twitter page, which entices viewers to her OnlyFans site, is filled with selfies in underwear taken in front of full-length mirrors. The pinned tweet reads in part, “ass & feet- what else could you want?” Click on any post and there’s a handful of (male) users overindulging in terms like “unfff,” or gratuitous use of the eggplant emoji.

K started her business recently, during the pandemic, and tells me that COVID-19 has actually been a boon to the digital sex work industry. She admits she’s new to the profession, but does tell me that she, “[knows] the pandemic is what inspired a lot of girls to get into OnlyFans since we had to take our work digitally. That’s really why OnlyFans got so huge.”

It’s no secret that COVID-19 is contagious, and this factor, combined with the lockdowns, has destroyed the in-person sex work industry. On top of this, K lets me know that “the huge majority of people on OnlyFans are brand new [to sex work].” Many of these accounts are run by college-aged girls who figured that they can make a little extra cash on the side selling nude images of themselves, or even just feet pics, or used panties, or, according to a forum I found myself on: toothbrushes. Combine the pandemic with the acceptance of sex work found in the younger generations, and you have the perfect recipe for the new normal of sex work; one that takes place in the safe(er) confines of the internet. Unfortunately, the hopeful picture painted by experiences like K’s does not apply to sex workers everywhere, especially in third world countries. On top of this, sex workers engaged in acts such as prostitution are at enormous risk during the pandemic.

The large majority of sex workers worldwide are women; in Pattaya, Thailand, for example, you’ll find that male sex workers (almost entirely gay men) are relegated to a tiny fraction of the famous red light district. Despite the glamorous image of sex work that the internet can convey, one consisting generally of white college-aged girls showing off their bodies from behind a camera, sex work like prostitution carries with it a ton of health and safety concerns; and COVID-19 just amplifies these. According to Prostitution Research and Education, which, for the sake of transparency, advocates the abolishment of prostitution, 82% of adult prostitutes in San Francisco had been physically assaulted at one point during their work. We could talk all day about the gender dynamics involved and the underlying societal causes of this, but for now let’s acknowlege the fact that prostitution wasn’t really the best job to have, even before the pandemic.

Since the pandemic began, sex workers have found it increasingly difficult to gain access to the same types of aid that is afforded to others. Many sex workers have found it impossible to get the stimulus checks that are being handed out by some countries based on the fact that it is hard to prove their income. Additionally, unlike some jobs that are giving their employees a reduced income while they are closed due to COVID-19, sex workers by and large don’t have options like this, especially in places where sex work is still criminalized. Sex workers who need to continue to work out of necessity faced increased risks of receiving the virus due to the up close and personal nature of their work; so in an already dangerous industry the stakes have only gone up since the pandemic began.

The dangers of the pandemic have made even long-time in-person sex workers look for a shift in career formats. Abby, who is a 23-year-old using an alias for safety reasons, has also had to move to an entirely digital format, citing a risk of virus transmission preventing her from doing in-person work. When we talked she told me about the ups and downs of sex work in the COVID-19 era. On one hand, she tells me that she has gotten a lot more Twitter followers; most likely due to the fact that people have a lot more time on their hands; literally and figuratively. The flip side of this, however, is that because of the pandemic not many people are willing to spend money on this sort of thing. They’ll look at the teaser images, but not actually pay for the full service, which is obviously damaging to sex workers. Abby also tells me that she knows a few people who have just started in the biz because of COVID-19, hoping to make a few extra bucks, “even folks above 40, which almost no-one [traditionally] starts after.” K was another sex worker who lamented the lack of income, telling me that many of the new users on OnlyFans don’t make any money off of it, even if free content has been doing very well in the pandemic.

Hopefully people like Abby and K will be able to use the increase of traffic COVID-19 has brought them in the future when the pandemic dies down, but for now those followers are just empty numbers to many sex workers. In normal times when people have disposable incomes every follower counts, as they help drive traffic. In COVID-19 times, however, the clicks mean less and less if no money is coming in. With the digitization of the sex industry also comes the sobering reality of supply and demand. The migration to OnlyFans that Abby and K talked about also means that the market is much more saturated, and that sex workers are going to have to compete with one another for clicks and subscriptions.

Finally, I talked with Abby about the future of digital sex work. “I definitely think the future of sex work is online… to some major degree, but you cant replace someone’s physical presence, so I don’t think it will ever be entirely virtual.” Abby also tells me that she thinks OnlyFans is safe in the short term as the leader for a platform in independent sex work, if for no other reason than how the term has entered into the collective unconscious, like some Jungian amalgamation of ass pics and bra teases. Artists such as Megan Thee Stallion, Wale, and Freddie Gibbs rap about the brand in their lyrics, and you can buy t-shirts with the site’s logo. It’s safe to say that if nothing else, OnlyFans has won the war of recognition… for now. “I don’t know if the big name will be OnlyFans in five years or even one, but there will be a name, and it will be very big.”