“It Isn't Empowering in Any Capacity:”An Interview with a Former Recruiter for an OnlyFans Agency
Street Grace’s Director of Research, Courtney Furlong, MS, MEd, LPC, CRC, sits down with Victoria Sinis to discuss her former role with an OnlyFans agency, how she feels sites like OnlyFans are influencing culture, and what we can do about it.
Courtney Furlong (CF): Thank you so much for joining us today! Briefly, what is an OnlyFans agency?
Victoria Sinis (VS): The purpose of OnlyFans agencies can be broken down into 3 elements:
Account Management: The main allure of OnlyFans is that consumers can have private conversations with the content creators. And, through those conversations, they can ask for anything that they want. For example, if a girl has thousands of followers on her OnlyFans account, logistically, she can't sit and respond to everyone. That's where an OnlyFans agency comes in. An agency can take the account and make that account as efficient and profitable as possible.
Marketing: Bluntly, these women are products that need to be promoted. There’s an entire ecosystem that manages the women’s Instagrams and TikToks to get content out and bring profit back into the agency.
Recruitment: Agencies are always bringing in new people to provide fresh content for consumers and grow the business. Recruiters scour the internet looking for people to work for the agency and provide fresh faces for consumers.
CF: What are a few of the operations behind OnlyFans accounts and OnlyFans agencies that people might find surprising?
VS: One of the most surprising things I think that people are unaware of is that, when it comes to account management, there are people who serve a role called “chatters.” Chatters are people an agency will hire from developing countries, usually like India and the Philippines, to pretend to be a girl and make as many sales as possible, essentially impersonating girls for subscribers. The chatters earn commission from those sales. My agency’s chatters were from the Philippines. The chatter would work on multiple girls’ accounts every single day, six to seven days a week, 12 to 14-hour shifts, and get paid anywhere from $1 to $5 an hour to pretend to be the girl and create as many sales as possible.
Another surprising thing is the magnitude of social media marketing for OnlyFans. That was my role and responsibility—to make girls go as viral as possible, as quickly as possible. Part of our inner workings was that we would ask girls to have three to five TikTok accounts and, across those three to five TikTok accounts, they had to post five unique, individual videos per day. And these videos were very provocative, suggestive videos. We had someone that studied algorithms, so they would send these hypersexualized videos and add trending sounds, trending hashtags—everything you can think of. One girl the agency managed received 2.2 million views on one of her TikTok videos in seven days, and it's all for the agency to make money off the woman.
CF: In your opinion, why do you feel like sites, like OnlyFans, are not empowering to women?
VS: There’s a myth that women on sites, like OnlyFans, have autonomy—that they can make all of this money, make their own hours, and be their own bosses. Further, people argue that these sites provide a safe platform and removes the role of a trafficker. Some even describe OnlyFans as ethical and liberating.
That's not true in any capacity. The average wage of an OnlyFans content creator is about $180 a month. In addition, there is pressure from the agency and subscribers—pressure from the agency to make as much money as possible and pressure from subscribers who believe that they own the woman and that the woman is obligated to do certain things because they're paying for it. There's also personal pressure. If the average wage is $180, content creators often feel the pressure to do more (i.e., escalate into levels of more nudity and illicit sex acts). It's a trifecta of pressure put on these women to do more to make more money. They make a great deal of pornographic content, put it on the internet, and it is very difficult to get rid of. It isn't empowering in any capacity. If anything, it's extremely damaging to a woman's mental health. That's the harsh reality of what people experience on OnlyFans.
CF: What are some of the concerning trends that you're seeing?
VS: We're seeing a rise in people thinking that creating content on OnlyFans is a legitimate career path. Here in America, the Bop House is hugely popular, with 3.2 million followers on TikTok alone. The Bop House is a bunch of young women producing very childlike content that inadvertently promotes their OnlyFans accounts. They’re representing a lifestyle that isn't true or realistic. Yet, every place I go, young girls know about the Bop House. We're raising and influencing a generation to think that their biggest dreams should be to become “sex workers.” We've never lived in a time and culture where “sex work” has been idolized in this way. If we continue to normalize this, we're communicating to little girls and young women that they should forget about their dreams, get naked online, and they’ll make a bunch of money. It's not a theory, it's happening.
CF: How do you believe these trends might affect young men and women?
“We’re commodifying women at a rate that we’ve never seen before.”
VS: I know this might sound dramatic, but I feel like the rise of OnlyFans is destroying the fabric of relationships. Social media is inundated with hypersexualized content. We're commodifying women at a rate that we've never seen before. Men are logging on and developing preconceived ideas that they can have a conversation with a girl and get her to do anything that they want. OnlyFans facilitates that dynamic. Women are meant to fulfill men’s sexual fantasies.
Conversely, we're seeing girls and women—who might not even be on OnlyFans—feel that there's an expectation that they have to be like the women on these sites. Then, when they put sexualized content on social media, they are rewarded with comments and likes. The message is, “I have to act like an OnlyFans girl to get a boyfriend.” It is difficult for this generation to have healthy perceptions of males and females, sexuality, and relationships.
CF: How are sites, like OnlyFans, related to commercial sexual exploitation and human trafficking?
VS: People think that the sex industry, human trafficking, pornography, and OnlyFans exist in silos—but they're actually the exact same thing. If we don't address the significance of OnlyFans, more and more young people will begin to justify escorting, stripping, topless waitressing… It will bleed into every part of our culture, affecting us multigenerationally. OnlyFans is the catalyst, and it is insidious.
CF: What advice do you have for parents and educators?
VS: For parents, don't think that your child isn’t at risk. There is an entire industry on mainstream social media that is softly influencing children to be desensitized to hypersexualized content. And it's all in the name of profit. You need to educate your children. If you're not, something or someone else will. Open doors for conversations, especially for children ages 12-14 years old. Ask them who they are following—which influencers they like. Do research, and look out for answers, like the Bop House, Sophie Rain, and Blue Eyed Kayla Jade. Unfortunately, you must begin having these conversations at even younger ages—any age when your youth will have access to a device. The average age of pornography exposure in the United States is 9 years old. Parents might say something like, “If you ever see something that makes you feel yucky or doesn't make you feel good, I want you to talk to me. There are good pictures online, and there are bad pictures online. And many of the pictures are not real… that's not a man and woman that love each other. I'm never going to be mad at you for telling me if you see something that upsets you.” Then, they know that it is safe to talk to their parents whenever they encounter this kind of content.
Educators rarely expect to have to deal with these types of issues. Unfortunately, they will. Be a safe person for young people. Don’t shame them. Remember, youth as young as 8 to 9 years old are being exposed to pornography. Have procedures in place to assist them in navigating exposure. It can be really damaging to children. Create safe space for conversations, answer questions, and connect with parents and caregivers.
CF: How should the faith community respond to the concerning trends associated with widespread pornography consumption and webcamming practices?
VS: It's not about shaming. We must avoid toxic purity culture. However, youth are being hypersexualized at younger and younger ages. We need to understand Scripture and understand the why behind our faith. Young people need to hear more than just, “It's God's best for you.” Covenant theology from the Old and New Testaments provides a framework for the significance of marriage and sexuality. Sexuality is not bad. When young people understand these values, they can identify hypersexualization in the culture, recognize how they are being influenced by it, and choose to be countercultural. It is powerful.
Victoria Sinis is a dynamic speaker, social media strategist, and advocate for cultural transformation. With a background in startups, marketing, and storytelling, she helps counter-cultural voices, activists, and not-for-profits amplify their impact on social media through her consultancy, Creating Gems. Drawing from her experience in the OnlyFans agency and her personal journey of radical transformation, Victoria speaks globally on topics such as over-sexualisation, biblical sexuality, and reclaiming personal worth. Passionate about using social media for empowerment, she equips individuals and organisations to cultivate engaged communities, challenge harmful narratives, and create spaces of hope and change in Australia and around the world.
Courtney Furlong, MS, MEd, LPC, CRC, is a native of Atlanta, GA and a graduate of Auburn University with a Master of Science in Human Development and Family Science and a Master of Education in Rehabilitation Counseling. A licensed counselor, Furlong has spent over 20 years working with victims of commercial sexual exploitation from ten countries covering Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. She is currently a PhD Candidate in Human Development and Family Science at Auburn University and serves as the Director of Research for Street Grace.
