Access is an illusion. Or, really, what I mean to say is: access, filtered through social media, is an illusion. In 2016, no one understood that better than Timothy Stokely, who launched an adult subscription site called OnlyFans that summer. He knew that access—the selling of it, and what buyers believed it opened up—could be quite lucrative.
I interviewed Stokely in 2019. His background was in soft-core camming; he ran, with mild success, the sites Customs4U and GlamWorship. But Stokely wanted OnlyFans to be different. He believed if he could get people to buy into the platform’s promise he could stand to make a lot of money. At the time, he explained his utopian vision to me in blunt terms. “The way that Uber enabled anyone to monetize their own car, OnlyFans allows anyone to monetize their own content and following,” he said. “Influencers are the new celebrities.”
Like the generation of tech industrialists before him, Stokely was driven by questions of volume, ambition, and impact. Just how big could OnlyFans be?
Almost a decade later, we have an answer: really fucking big.
Impact is more than numbers, of course. OnlyFans’ core influence is perhaps best measured by what it culturally shifted. It is one of the platforms that has changed, in part, how we think about social media. What OnlyFans reaffirmed, more than anything, was a culture increasingly built around and addicted to fandom.
OnlyFans sold “access.” It made middle-of-nowhere users into influencers. It dangled the carrot of micro-fame and easy money. Like clockwork, many people—millions per month—bought into the illusion.
“What providers are largely selling isn’t the mechanics of intercourse but an authentic connection,” says Kurt Fowler, an assistant professor at Penn State Abington and author of The Rise of Digital Sex Work. “The idea of making clients feel unique and special has always been part of the equation.”
Photographer: Yana Van Nuffel; Model: Nassia Matsa @nassia_
In the US, we like to say American culture is celebrity culture. And, sure, some of that is true. We’re fame whores. But, really, what American society is built around more than anything is fan culture. Fandom infects everything we do.
The nature of relationships has changed as a result, and especially online. The language of social media is the language of obsession. We like. We subscribe. We don’t dare look away. We crave unlimited access to one another. It’s gotten so bad that last year the US surgeon general, Vivek H. Murthy, called for a warning label on platforms that have had a role in the mental health crisis among young people, of which “social media has emerged as an important contributor.” Apps like Fansly and Fambase have cashed in on the trend; by 2030 the global creator economy is projected to pull in $528 billion.
Only, access is a mirage. Fowler was right about one thing. Creators are in the business of selling connection. How genuine that connection is, however, is not always clear. In the the age of social media, access has become fantasy. The many ways we connect, communicate, and come together are now infused with the stink of artificiality.
ChatGPT wants to dictate language. Generative AI is eager to warp the images that make us true and human, exploiting your race, gender, or sexuality (and sometimes all three at once). Disinformation floats from platform to platform with the poison of make-believe. Dating apps have become the place where people turn for love and partnership, only the industry is betting big on AI. Rizz, Grindr, and Elate are offering AI “wingman” features that help singles maneuver awkward text exchanges that happen in the early stages of getting to know someone.
What’s more, the veil of OnlyFans has since been lifted. Many creators employ low-wage workers to communicate with followers horny for connection. And those workers now run the risk of being replaced by AI impersonators. In every way, artificial media is on the rise.
To consider AI is to question the future of authenticity and its place in society.
Some might say we are losing what German media theorist Walter Benjamin referred to as “aura.” Writing in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in 1935, Benjamin expressed concern that photography and film, new technologies that were being used to mass-produce artwork, did more to reduce value than add it. In a world of intensifying deceptions, aura was the essence; it was the real thing. Imitations of the original just wouldn’t cut it. Aura, as Benjamin saw it, was the authentic truth.
Some believe AI works in the same mode. Others have warned that without proper regulations, AI will scrub the soul of humankind. The technology is rewiring the very basis of connection, restructuring the how, who, and what of digital communication. Google Gemini’s pitch is to literally “supercharge your ideas” (whatever that means). These evolutions are meant to remove human error. They promise to make us smarter, more productive, and curious people, but it is still too early to say whether AI is taking more than it is offering in return.
One outcome is that authenticity—that intangible, essential truth—will rise in value, says Eric Waldstein, cofounder and CEO of Beyond, a social club built around modern relationships that facilitates both online and IRL interactions among members. “Authenticity is an increasingly scarce currency,” he says. “As the world becomes increasingly artificial, demand for it will soar.”
Beyond, which launched this month, believes it can preserve the aura of what’s being lost in the machine race. If the innocence of connection was the first wave of the social media revolution and fandom defined its second, Waldstein is hopeful for a return to something realer. He says he is already seeing a U-turn in relationship habits.
“Fandom fills a void that’s been left by the disappearance of third spaces and spending time with friends,” he says. Similar to Blacksky and Geneva, Beyond is part of a shift toward what Waldstein calls purpose-driven communities. “We’re not looking for our person anymore, we’re looking for our people, and that’s really where the magic is. For years, platforms have optimized for engagement at all costs. But as we become more aware of how these systems manipulate our attention, we’re seeing a shift toward more intentional, curated experiences.”
Waldstein wants to provide singles a new texture of access; the kind of access—to community, to potential love and something real—that isn’t bound by the trends of yesterday. “The platforms that win in the next era of social media will be the ones that give people something they can’t get from an algorithm,” he says.