Hey, 5-4 listeners, it's Leon.
I'm here to tell you about my new show. It might not be exactly what you're used to from a guy best known for making history podcasts, but it is in its own way, scandalous. The series is called "Only Fantasy", and it's all about the wide world of "only" fans. The website that ushered in a revolution in online porn and has radically lowered the barrier
to entry for sex work.
To the point where there are now more than 4 million people on the platform selling
access to their private photos and videos. But as I learned during my reporting, photos and videos are only the beginning. It turns out the main export on "only" fans is attention. Subscribers are paying not just to look, but to feel. They're on there to have conversations and crushes and semi-imaginary relationships.
This confused and surprised me, and to be honest, I was skeptical and more than a little judgmental. All of which led me down a year-long reporting journey. Alongside my co-host, comedian and "only" fans creator Gracie Cainin. Together, Gracie and I did some of the most shocking and personal interviews I've ever
been a part of. And we ended up documenting what feels like a genuinely new and genuinely strange phenomenon that has without a doubt changed millions of lives in all kinds of unpredictable ways. "Only Fantasy" is a show about the changing nature of sex work, adult entertainment, human intimacy itself.
You're about to hear a preview of the show, and if you're like what you hear, please go find "only Fantasy" wherever you get your podcasts. Or you can binge all episodes now, add free on "autobal." Enjoy. So I know we've talked about this before, but not obviously not in a whole lot of detail.
“So you should feel free to disclose as much as little as you want, obviously.”
Yeah. It could be awkward, but it doesn't have to be. I don't think it's awkward. I've had people from "only" fans message you, so can I get more awkward than that? I do.
I cannot believe that I forgot that. Yeah. My sister Annie just turned 24, which makes her almost 20 years younger than me. She was raised by a different mom in a different household. She has led a very different life from me.
Mr. Harvard. Mr. I got a diploma. I can't relate, but it's okay. You're doing great. Over the years, I've mainly heard about Annie's adventures and phone calls like this one.
She lives in Chicago, and I live in New York, and we talk fairly regularly, often on FaceTime, while I'm walking my dog, and she's at work. She's a bartender these days, so she's often telling me about her regulars, and sending me photos of the cash she has stacked up at the end of a long night of tips. There was a time starting when she was around 19 years old, when Annie was telling me about
a different kind of hustle.
“Do you remember that one girl that I lived with the blondie?”
No. She was the only fan's creator.
She was the first girl you met, who was on there?
Yeah, because she was the one who, before, was like, since she won't do escorting with me, would you do "only" fans with me? Oh god, yeah, okay, I remember. Yeah, I remember it. At the time, all I knew about "only" fans was that it was a website where regular people,
like, by little sister, apparently, could make money selling naked pictures of themselves. Knowing that Annie was on "only" fans made me apprehensive to say the least. But Annie assured me that it was a safe alternative to real life sex work, and that her friend, the blondie, was showing her the ropes and keeping her out of trouble. She would be like, "Oh yeah, so you could post like lingerie photos this and that,"
and then if people like what they see, they'll message you, and then you can send them an album that the only way to unlock it is they have to pay a certain amount. They don't know what's on it. It could be bullshit photos, old photos, but they have to pay to unlock it. And that money is instantly in your account, once they've done it.
And so how much were was your friend making?
“Um, she was making, I think, 15k a month.”
That's a lot of money. Yeah.
What I remember Annie emphasizing to me, back when she first started "only" fans, was that
it was as much a marketing job as anything. She wasn't an influencer by any means, but she did have a couple hundred followers across her Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, where she would post free pictures intended to lure in new subscribers. Each account was under the same pseudonym Annie used on "only" fans.
So people who found her and, like what they saw, could then sign up for a few bucks a month to see her more exclusive content. In the early days, having to only show a couple of photos and then making a thousand bucks was great as an 18, 19 year old. I didn't know what to do with myself.
I really thought I was hot shit.
Annie and her roommate, Blondie, would cross-promote each other on their pages in order to bring in new subscribers. Within a month, Annie said she had a hundred paying customers, which sometimes made it hard to keep up with her DMs. It was very hard being like, "Oh my God, shit, I'll fuck this isn't Jake, back, back, back, back,
back. Oh my God, fuck, got a scroll up and see whose name this is." Annie told me that during her best month ever, she brought in $18,000. By that point, it was the COVID pandemic, and only fans had exploded in popularity, thanks to subscribers who were looking to escape isolation.
The thing we're all doing to keep ourselves safe can have an adverse health outcome, which is loneliness and loneliness.
“Talking so much about all the physical illnesses, but I think a lot of people are worried”
about their mental health right now. The social interaction now is going to be something challenging, creative, and important more than ever before. In April of 2020 alone, so the month after lockdown started, only fans reported a 75 percent jump in new subscribers signups.
But the growth wasn't just on the subscribers side. There was also a slew of new creators on the site. Anyone stuck at home and unable to work their regular job could now make content with minimal overhead and earn cash fast. "This only fans and comments very real and it's very quick."
That first night, I made about like, they're seeing a few dollars and they're like, "This
is insane." Pretty soon, only fans wasn't just a dirty little secret. It was a cultural phenomenon. According to a piece in BuzzFeed, selling yourself online is the hot new trend, quote, "Every buddy is making porn at home now."
Only fans reports that seven or eight thousand new women sign up every day. Our daughters are selling themselves for food and rent, and BuzzFeed is telling us it's cool. The thing is, it kind of was cool. Even Beyonce, one of the most famous people in the world, felt moved to name drop only
fans in the song. Michael B. Jordan, one of Jimmy Kimmel, and joked that he was making an only fans page for his mustache.
Part of what was amazing about only fans' explosive growth was that for more than 20 years,
the world of adult entertainment have been starved by the abundance of free online porn. "With free porn available on the internet, is this the porn apocalypse?" "I'd be compete with free." The situation was akin to that of the music industry after Napster. Stolen content was everywhere, and consumer expectations had shifted to the point where the
idea of paying to look at porn seemed utterly irrational, and then came only fans. With the time of this recording, the platform hosts more than 4 million creators, mostly women, and 300 million users, mostly men. The pay structure is simple. Creators keep 80% of what they make, and only fans takes a 20% cut.
In 2024, the company took in a $1.4 billion profit.
“How did only fans convince people to start paying for porn again?”
What was it offering that users couldn't get for free somewhere else? When I first got curious about this and asked Annie about it, she offered an explanation involving a guy who once paid her $800 to make a video of herself wearing a pair of shoes that he had bought her, and smushing a bunch of corn dogs with the high heels. "I promise you your favorite porn star is not about to call your name and step on a corn dog
for you, so, like yes, you can watch porn.
But those porn stars that you watch will never know your name, will never speak to you.
These only fan girls are paid to acknowledge your existence." I had always pictured only fans as a one-way street, a place to publish exclusive content that your most motivated fans could pay to look at, end of story. Annie told me that I'd been missing the point. Most of the money people made on only fans, she said, came from more than just being looked
at. It came from maintaining quasi-personal relationships with subscribers over weeks or months or even longer. "A lot of the people were just lonely and sad, so they really just genuinely wanted somebody to text them every day, text them good morning and the morning, good night at night, send
them a couple photos, didn't even have to be like naked photos, just cute photos. Some were literally like me and an oversized hoodie in front of me.
“"Not all of them, Annie, you show me, I remember it, I remember you show me a couple of”
free-dracy things you posted." "Not all of them, but there were a lot of the times they want you and a hoodie."
"Wanted you and a hoodie, wanted you in a messy bun, they wanted you to not l...
you, they were paying for you, basically."
"Right.
“What I realized, talking to Annie, was that only fans wasn't a porn site.”
It was more like a directory of people who, for a price, would participate in an extended fantasy in which the two of you were in a relationship."
According to a study that looked at the transaction histories of more than a million
“only fan subscribers, messaging drives almost 70% of revenue on the platform.”
What Annie and her fellow only fans creators were offering was a distinctly 21st century rendition of a staple product from the annals of sex work, the girlfriend experience. "Girlfriend experience, if you paid for that, it's like 72 hours of a fake girlfriend, she'll call you, she'll text you, she'll face time you, she'll send you photos, she'll basically talk to you as if you're a boyfriend for like two days."
"But not meet up in person." "No, all over the phone." "I know I sound skeptical here, and I was, but then I remembered something. I myself had once enjoyed the digital girlfriend experience.
When I was a teenager, chatting voraciously with someone I'd never met on AOL Instant Messenger."
Her name was Jessica. "A friend of mine from Summer Camp gave me her screen name and encouraged me to send her message." That's it for this preview of Only Fantasy.
“Find the show wherever you get your podcasts, or if you want to binge the whole series”
now, add free, go to audible.
