Negotiated authenticity: An ethnographic study by an onlyfans girl

Abstract

Following in-depth interviews with users and my own experiences as an adult content creator, this study explores authenticity on Onlyfans. I develop the term negotiated authenticity to explain the process whereby subscribers and creators make active and passive choices and take on collaborative or solitary roles in negotiating a satisfying fantasy of authenticity. Understanding authenticity as a social construction, this work challenges the conventional understanding of sex work services and products. Moving beyond the real or fake binary in pornography, negotiated authenticity frames sex work as a relational and creative performance of the self.

Keywords

Authenticity autoethnography onlyfans porn sex work

I always considered myself a performer first and foremost, but you would also be right to call me an Onlyfans girl. For years, I made a living through Onlyfans and content creation. I would never call myself any kind of ‘star’, but I know I was good at my job. I credit my success to my ability to just ‘be myself’-- an idiom I used without thinking until this project. I made a conscious effort to not emulate anyone else; I just tried to make content I felt good about. The highest compliment I could achieve as a performer was for a client to feel my work was authentic. I wanted them to look at my product and walk away feeling something– anything really, as long as there was a real-life emotional impact. Of course, the porn I made was always real– it happened– but it has to feel authentic for the whole experience to be successful. But what makes something feel authentic? This is the central question of my work, in this article and otherwise.

Digital sex work

Before focusing on authenticity, I want to contextualize Onlyfans within digital work and pornography. Historically, the cultural imagination of porn was represented by ‘professional’, heavily-produced videos and images of performers contracted by industry studios (Thusi, 2021). But with the popularization of amateur-centered platforms, social media and digital technologies have had a democratizing and diversifying effect on the industry (Ashley, 2016; Stegeman et al., 2023; Thusi, 2021). Any adult person with a smartphone, a social media account, and Internet access can easily create and distribute porn, for free or for a price.

Mirroring the demands for relational labor in other industries, and under conditions of late-capitalism, sex work is ‘precarious, flexible, immaterial, service-oriented, and often tied to the management of one’s own and others’ emotions’ (Baym, 2015). The porn marketplace has become highly-competitive and arguably over-saturated, making it a struggle for workers to get a stable following (Rubattu et al., 2023). As media and porn literacy increases (Byron et al., 2021), viewers prioritize content that can convey a feeling of authenticity and relatability. Byron et al. (2021) defines porn literacy as knowledge of pornography as industry, and skill in discerning ‘real’ from ‘fake’ in the context of a person’s broader digital literacy. Workers essentially compete for viewers by distinguishing themselves with relatability and unique personali. On social media, adult content creators craft relatable personas and grow their social status among their peers to attain an authentic reputation (Abel, 2021). In their work on influencers, Duffy and Hund (2019) argue that this ‘authenticity bind’ especially challenges feminine creators when they carefully balance their digital identities.

Online sex workers must engage with numerous platforms, ranging from ecommerce websites and social media to streaming websites and crowd-patronage platforms like Onlyfans (Thusi, 2021). Researchers are confronted with an industry in constant flux, where workers participate via ‘complex, technical linkages and shared operational logics, as part of a broader, digital ecosystem’ (Swords et al., 2023). By using these platforms and monetizing content themselves, creators are free of third parties and no longer subject to the dictates of a studio (Cunningham et al., 2018). I want to emphasize that this does not mean that a creator effectively owns their means or modes of production. In practice, various external entities exercise a governing role over workers– a reminder of the vulnerabilities of “platform labor” (Van Doorn, 2017). First, workers practice ‘interpenetration’ of platforms (Swords et al., 2023) to reach customers and advertise their profiles. Then, to sell on Onlyfans or other platforms, workers usually must give up around 20 percent of all earnings to the site as a kind of tax for hosting the interaction. These complex exchanges exemplify what Poell et al. (2019) identify as ‘platformization’-- the convergence of ‘infrastructures, economic processes, and governmental frameworks of platforms in different economic sectors and spheres of life’.

Adult content creation is still an emergent field with new outlets and modes developing quickly. Between subscription-based sites like Fansly and Onlyfans, and then mixed clip-selling and camming sites like ManyVids, Clips4Sale, Chaturbate, and more– there is an incredible amount of ground for researchers to cover. I focus on Onlyfans because of my own experiences and due to its elevated profile in public consciousness. During the Coronavirus pandemic, Onlyfans became the subject of countless news articles, and celebrity participation drew the platform into popular culture. Media coverage in particular played a key role in popularizing Onlyfans and was a significant step in mainstreaming the image of the digital sex worker (Cardoso and Scarcelli, 2021; Rubattu et al., 2023). In 2019, the site only had about seven million users. Then, the site erupted to 20 million users in May 2020 with the pandemic. As of 2023, Onlyfans had more than 190 million registered users (Campbell, 2023). At present, published scholarship on Onlyfans is limited. For example, digital sex work scholarship on livestreaming, cam sites, or other adult content creation avenues may relate to experiences on Onlyfans, but the platform goes unmentioned in many works (i.e., Abel, 2021; Byron et al., 2021; Cunningham et al., 2018; Macleod, 2021; Ruberg, 2022; Simpson and Smith, 2021; Stardust, 2019a, 2019b; Stegeman et al., 2023). In other scholarship, Onlyfans is included in the discussion on digital sex work more broadly (i.e., Daniel et al., 2023; Harrison, 2022; Rubattu et al., 2023; Swords et al., 2023; Thusi, 2021). And most rarely, there are a number of recent scholars that strictly focus on Onlyfans (i.e., Cardoso and Scarcelli, 2021; Hamilton et al., 2023; Laurin, 2019; Lippmann et al., 2023; Uttarapong et al., 2022). Published works by Onlyfans creators themselves are rarer still– a topic discussed later in methodology. This article aims to be a contribution to this growing area of scholarship on digital sex work, digital labor, Onlyfans, and authenticity.

Authenticity

Since the emergence of ‘reality porn’ (Moorman, 2007) in the early 2000’s, pornography has trended away from absurdity and closer to relatability. Recent research has confirmed that a feeling of authenticity in porn is important to viewers (Macleod, 2021; Shor, 2024; Tillman and Wells, 2023); but the desire for authenticity is not new, and is spread across industry. For example, previous scholarship on escort services reveals authenticity as a central motivator for clients (Bernstein, 2007; Carbonero, Gómez, 2018). Sex work trends reflect efforts at ‘repersonalizing’ sexual services through the ‘The Girlfriend Experience’. This style of interaction builds emotional intimacy between the client and provider through additional acts and conversations outside of sex, such as daily text messaging and public dates (Carbonero and Gomez, 2017). With the goal of simulating a ‘romanticized notion of what a girlfriend is’ (Huff, 2011), these relational efforts are essential to the co-creation of a realistic fantasy.

In order to explore authenticity further, this article must actually provide a definition. I invite the reader to imagine a dialectical scale– idealism on one end and materialism on the other. This would mean conceptualizing authenticity as between an unknowable subjective truth and a social construction. To draw out distinctions between these ideas, I will approach Georg Simmel’s classic notion of authenticity and the ‘bounded authenticity’ put forward by Elizabeth Bernstein (2007), before making my case for negotiated authenticity as a product of social constructions.

In one of the first discussions of authenticity in sex work, Simmel refers to authenticity as the lived truth of an individual. Simmel offers an idealistic vision of human existence, where the apex of human expression is achieving the authentic individuality that comes from uniting a person’s subjective and worldly experiences (Silver and Levine, 2010). Essentially, Simmel argues that authenticity exists as a truth within the self. The act of sex reveals ‘an ultimate quality of the personality that simply cannot be explicated’, and sexual services involve accessing this pure feature of the self (Simmel, 1907).

Arguably, Simmel’s transcendental notion of sexuality and authentic individualism remains implicit in sex work research. For example, Bernstein’s ‘bounded authenticity’ (2007) suggests that when a sex worker offers their services, they are granting the client temporary access to their most authentic and personal self alongside the physical services. Similarly, Jones (2020) argues that cam models offer ‘embodied authenticity’ to clients as they bridge normative expectations and their own subjectivities to create a balanced, authentic-feeling performance that, importantly and idealistically, will add to the performer’s experience of pleasure. In another example, in their analysis of a young escort’s changing relationship with their client during the Covid-19 lockdowns in France, Lennes (2021) argues that to make a sexual-economic exchange authentic, the provider must offer a deepened, more nuanced emotionality to their client. Meanwhile, Cardoso and Scarcelli (2021) took a post-structural position to argue that performers use ‘self-surveillance’ to interweave authenticity throughout their ‘multiplicity of bodies’ presented on Onlyfans. Other scholars have argued that workers employ a ‘singular, authentic self-hood’ as an emotional tool during their exchanges (Simpson and Smith, 2021) and often use authentic individualism as a way combat sex work stigma (Stardust, 2019a). Unlike Simmel, these researchers find authenticity to be a vital compliment to sex work. But, the idea that sex workers can offer access to their inner-most authentic self in a ‘bounded’ exchange is still in agreement with the Simmelian notion of authenticity.

Authenticity as social

In their research on autonomy support, Ryan and Ryan (2019) write that ‘Social contexts at interpersonal, institutional, and even cultural levels can support or undermine authenticity’. I find that these social contexts are key to understanding authenticity as it presents in my research. Expanding across disciplines, through their work on Chinese restaurants in America, Lu and Fine (1995) explain authenticity as a social construct that is ultimately defined by the expectations of the subject. By its nature, authenticity has a ‘relational character’, where the product is deemed authentic by the consumer within the context of their experiences and expectations. The search for authentic experiences can be viewed as an aspect of identity transformation for the consumer, and as a ‘social accomplishment’ for the creator (Lu and Fine, 1995). According to the logic of authenticity as having a relational character (Jones, 2020; Lu and Fine, 1995; Ryan and Ryan, 2019), authenticity on Onlyfans is achieved due to what clients expect digital intimacy might look like, and comparing it to their experiences with professional studio pornography and other social interactions. Onlyfans would feel more realistic to consumers because it has the characteristics that one would expect to signal authenticity. In my research, authenticity has emerged as a social construction borne of the combined individual experiences and learned expectations of both consumer and creator. Through this lens, authenticity on Onlyfans is a socialized process, where together the creator and consumer have painstakingly gleaned what satisfying intimacy might look like within this space, and both parties continually adjust their expectations accordingly. This project proposes that Onlyfans creators offer negotiated authenticity, wherein both parties have a role in the creation and maintenance of a negotiated fantasy.

Methodology and ethics

Autoethnography and extant scholarship

To understand the experiences of creators and clients on Onlyfans, I conducted this study with a mixed-method approach using autoethnography and qualitative interviewing. As I employ ethnographic methods, I rely on a grounded theory approach in order to develop my findings. Grounded theory emphasizes the primacy of the data in constructing a theory via an inductive analysis procedure (Chun Tie et al., 2019). FitzGerald and Mills (2022) also strongly advocate for the inclusion of participant or observational data alongside interviews to improve the quality and accuracy of a study’s conclusions. In this mixed methods approach, I recognize my subjectivity, and by doing so, I can ‘maximize the potential of fieldwork as personal experience’ (Wolcott, 1999, 45).

Though it remains an under-published area of scholarship, autoethnographic research is a growing method of inquiry (Sparkes, 2024). Often characterized by emotive writing, sex work scholarship by sex workers can be a compelling addition to scholarly analysis, particularly on the subject of identity. Published scholarship by self-identified former sex workers include powerful work on exotic dancing (Colosi, 2010; Frank, 2002), BDSM services (Levine, 2021), and legal brothel services (Mohr, 2019). Published scholarship on digital sex work by self-identified digital sex workers, let alone Onlyfans creators specifically, are also in limited supply. For this project, I primarily refer to the work of Stardust (2019a, 2019b). Stardust engages specifically with amateur pornography, authenticity and identity, and uses qualitative interviewing and autoethnography as their research methods. Stardust self-identifies as a porn performer, but does not explicitly discuss Onlyfans or similar platforms (Stardust, 2019a, 2019b, 2020).

These present limitations may be a result of institutional privilege. Onlyfans was not popularized until after 2020 (Campbell, 2023), and digital sex work’s growth is still relatively new. As Egan and Frank (2005) contend in their work on strip clubs as former sex workers themselves, ‘some researchers may have the luxury of ‘coming out’… because they are made less vulnerable by the fact that they have achieved tenure, published enough ‘straight’ academic material to legitimize their work, or have attained a ‘name’ for themselves in the field’. The vulnerability required by autoethnography can be prohibiting especially for young scholars at the start of their careers (Sparkes, 2024), and sex worker-scholars face additional challenges from stigma and discrimination, and legal or political risks (Stardust, 2020). These factors in mind, I contend that we are still at the earliest stages of publication on Onlyfans and digital sex work by the workers themselves.

Interviewing, recruitment, and ethics

Between 2022 and 2023, I conducted 10 remote interviews with Onlyfans users. All six subscribers identified as straight men residing in North America or Europe, and their ages ranged from mid-twenties to mid-fifties. The four creators I interviewed, and myself, all identified as bisexual women from North America, with most being on Onlyfans for longer than 2 years. Creators ranged in ethnicity and their ages ranged from early twenties to late thirties. One creator had less than fifteen subscribers, another had thousands, and the others were in-between.

On recruitment, Onlyfans does not have any search features or public forums, making it difficult to recruit directly from the site; therefore, auxiliary digital platforms were necessary to my research. Participants responded to my advertising posts or direct messages on Twitter (X) and Reddit. These two platforms have fewer censorship rules regarding nudity and are digital homes for large sex worker communities (Tiidenberg and Van Der Nagel, 2020). To select participants, I used purposive and convenience sampling, as is common with qualitative research on sex work (Gerassi et al., 2016).

Upon contact, I sent potential informants a short, professional script detailing my institutional affiliations, identity, and the aims of this project. I was open with prospective informants about my own background as an Onlyfans creator, as I believed this would add to my credibility. Due to the nature of online spaces and in-group character of the relevant population, this study was done with convenience sampling. Those who participate in sex work (digital and physical, as worker or client) often face a great deal of stigma, though in varying degrees (Daniel et al., 2023). This stigma can make participants hesitate to talk to an ‘outsider’ for risk of judgment or fetishization (Gerassi et al., 2016).

Ethical approval of this study was given by Sophia University through the institutionally required review process. At all times, informant identities were thoroughly anonymized, all data was stored locally under dual authentication, and all non-essential information was discarded.

Participants were also assured of their right to privacy and safety: that their identities would be carefully anonymized, that they were free to answer or decline any question, and that they were able to withdraw participation at any time. Once informed consent was given, audio-only recording began on a password-protected local device and an English-language, semi-structured, in-depth interview continued. The content of the interviews was guided towards discourse on three key areas: participant motivations, how participants conceptualize relational identities, and what does authenticity and intimacy mean on Onlyfans. Available participants were also sent a copy of the study, which was met with positive and hopeful reviews.

Positionality and reflexivity

As a bisexual American woman and former digital sex worker, and a person afforded the privileges of higher education, my perspective and natural biases appear in my analysis of this study, like anyone else’s would. Some biases were accounted for through careful and continuous reflexive analysis, others may have gone unseen. Acknowledging the subjectivity of the author allows a more full bodied engagement and awareness of the limitations of a study (Wolcott, 1999). This reflexivity also offers an opportunity to engage with the deeper and more complex contradictions of sex work spaces, and mindful analysis of autoethnography versus grounded qualitative interviews offers an upfront, reflexive acknowledgement of the ways in which “biography and ethnography intersect” (Egan and Frank, 2005).

When the research topic covers a small population of in-group informants, recruitment methods and sensitive topics may mean that the study will lean on peer-to-peer interviewing (Quinney et al., 2016). Shared language, experiences, and existing knowledge of the field facilitates a free-flowing rapport and trust between interviewer and informant, which ultimately develops a stronger, more in-depth interview (Daniel et al., 2023; Fitzgerald and Mills, 2022; Gerassi et al., 2016; Quinney et al., 2016; Wolcott, 1999). While there is no guarantee of total transparency in qualitative interviewing, consideration of role relationships and trust-building contributes to providing informants with “an opportunity [emphasis added] to voice their lived experiences” (Quinney et al., 2016).

Results

Why pay for porn?

Authentic amateurs

As a creator, and again when I began this project, explaining Onlyfans to colleagues and friends was met with one common question: ‘But why would people pay for porn?’. After all, the Internet as we know it was built upon the backs of free-to-view pornography websites (Wosick, 2015). So, what makes consumers want to subscribe? According to my participants, people are paying because Onlyfans porn feels more authentic. As Trevor (Subscriber, 4 years) thoughtfully explained, ‘I think stars look fake... Whereas someone who does it amateur– it’s more homey, I feel closer to them… feels more handcrafted, compared to something manufactured’.

To create a satisfying experience, both creator and client, together and individually, make a series of active choices, including a direct discussion of needs via chat or an indirect indication of tastes via purchases or other actions. Consumers often make the conscious choice to ignore any lingering doubts about the creator’s authenticity or differences with ‘real-life’ attitudes and be ‘in the moment’ by trusting their assessment of the provider’s intentions. This ongoing process of decision-making and relational crafting is a process of negotiated authenticity. A motivating desire for authenticity has been a consistent throughline across recent studies on sexual trends and amateur pornography (Abel, 2021; Ashley, 2016; Byron et al., 2021; Hamilton et al., 2023; Macleod, 2021; Simpson and Smith, 2021; Stardust, 2019b; Tillman and Wells, 2023).

Today, ‘amateur’ lives as a remnant term from the stratification of digital sex work (Ray, 2007), and despite the oxymoronic application to professionalized performers, the aesthetics of the ‘amateur’ strongly appeals to authenticity (Stardust, 2019b). Onlyfans content might display characteristics like fewer edits or reduced video quality, or the ‘everyday’ styling of the performer. A long-time customer of mine, Jack, explained to me that for as long as he watched porn, scripted studio content did not appeal to him. Instead, he would turn to softcore videos from Hollywood movies or social media porn, then eventually to Onlyfans because it is ‘better on a personal level than just watching random, glitzy stuff that’s not real.’ -Jack (Subscriber, 1 year). For my participants, studio porn featuring famous adult actresses often feels ‘fake’ in the sense that the performers don’t seem accessible to the viewers in aesthetic or circumstance, and that the sex itself often seems far removed from what viewers would enjoy in their daily life.

A desire echoed by my other informants and in additional studies, Jack and Trevor are not alone in seeking out genuine and realistic-feeling pleasure in their porn (Jones, 2020; Macleod, 2021; Shor, 2024; Tillman and Wells, 2023). For many viewers, and especially for young people and those with higher porn literacy (Byron et al., 2021), standard studio pornography can seem less like two people having good sex, and more like absurd entertainment of its own genre. Fred (subscriber, 3 years) explained, ‘Even when porn tries to bring in this element of realism. There’s still in my head that knowledge that this isn’t really real. But with Onlyfans, I think it’s more likely to be real’.

Achieving authenticity grants the audience the opportunity to engage with a fantasy of attainability. Tom (subscriber, 1 year) explained that the process of finding his favorite creators is personal and varied. ‘I think it’s a little bit like generally dating and sex life. You have a certain kind of personality or person you fall for.’ Most consumers acknowledge that making porn is a job, and that creators perform to some degree (Shor, 2024), but this fact is less glaring when on Onlyfans. Participants revealed that they were most excited by content they can imagine the creator performing in their day-to-day life. Viewers enjoy the content more when they can feel as if this scene might occur even if the camera was off (Moorman, 2007). The personality of the creator and the viewer’s measure of their authenticity is key to subscribing.

Connections

Accessibility, in the imagination and via the site, is crucial for the development of authenticity in this space. There are several points of contact that can help create this connection even without exchanging words, such as following the creators’ regular social media, ‘liking’ posts on Onlyfans, or even just the act of subscription itself. Even when subscribers do not engage in conversation, the fact that they could is often satisfaction enough. For consumers that are more shy or want a less collaborative experience, the approachability of the creator still sustains the desire; ‘The creators I like, at least I believe that they would be interesting to talk to’, said Karl (subscriber, 1 year).

For consumers that want a more interactive connection, that experience is readily available to them. For most of the participants I interviewed, the ability to flirt with creators directly or partake in simple conversation was a core aspect of why they continue to use the platform. For example, Fred missed casual dating during the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and Onlyfans helped fill that gap in social interaction and sexual curiosity:

‘I think that kind of interaction, even if it’s just through a computer, through Onlyfans– it’s still valuable, it’s still helpful, it still serves a purpose… I don’t expect just because I tell somebody that they have pretty eyes or whatever, to turn around and DM me, and say ‘let’s kick this off’, or start a very long conversation about how attractive we find each other. I’m not naive. But at least there is some connection, somewhere. The connection is important. As attractive as I find Janice Griffith [adult film actress], maybe I’m never going to have a conversation with her. But there’s people on Onlyfans…’ -Fred (Subscriber, 3 years)

The importance of the chatting ability cannot be overstated. As an experienced amateur content creator, Mandy explains, ‘I don’t make myself available anywhere else… People come in [to my Onlyfans profile] all the time and say, ‘Oh, I watch you on PornHub all the time, it’s cool that I’m talking with you’’. To watch a creator’s pornographic content creates a kind of connection in the viewer’s mind, but to be able to engage with that creator and have a conversation with them takes that sexual experience to a more personal place.

The desires of customers who enjoy chatting with Onlyfans creators vary. Some subscribers give payment for sexting services or additional content through direct messages. Other subscribers like to share secrets. I have had many customers send a message once every few months just to reveal a new fetish or briefly act out a sexual fantasy of theirs, such as multiple instances of ‘my wife doesn’t know I subscribe to your Onlyfans’. But the subject matter of most messages is usually ‘wholesome’ (Erin, creator, 4 years). The conversations can be on sexual topics, without being sexting, or they’re often just someone talking about their day:

‘I have people that write every single day just as a ‘check-in’ or telling you something that they’re doing, just for validation, or just to have someone that they feel like they’re talking with… for a lot of people, it’s not that deep. They just want to tell me what they did today, or what they cooked for lunch and just have that connection.’ – Mandy (Creator, 3 years)

These wholesome daily chats are routine for many Onlyfans participants, as part of strengthening the connection and maintaining access. As creators and subscribers navigate their intimate routines and emotional involvement, participants become engaged in a negotiation of their relational identity, as they continually define and redefine their conception of role relationships within their exchanges (Sluss and Ashforth, 2007). Whether creators or consumers are willing to classify this kind of relationship as a friendship varies between individuals, but all agree that this process does create a form of genuine connection. On Onlyfans, there is intimacy in seeing someone naked, in seeing someone perform sex acts, but there is also the option to explore a layer of interpersonal intimacy, and thereby increase one’s pleasure. Jack (subscriber, 1 year) supports this claim: ‘Sex is better when you’re emotionally connected, so why wouldn’t masturbation be.’

Negotiations

Strategies

Each Onlyfans user comes with their own expectations that inform their approach to the experience. Because of these subjective variables, there are variations in how a person would negotiate what kind of authenticity is satisfying for them. Both creators and consumers are involved in this process, sometimes independently, but often as collaborators. This section will unpack variations in the negotiation processes, detailing participants’ expectations and experiences, and their method for achieving and maintaining their desired outcomes.

For many consumers, an ongoing negotiation feels natural, and their awareness of creating a fantasy of realism is not an obstacle, but a feature. Fred (subscriber, 3 years) explained that people are constantly making choices to believe and accept certain illusions about our experiences and relationships. Fred argues that on Onlyfans or in everyday life, ‘Solo or with others, it doesn’t matter. It’s human, you know? Fantasies.’

Any fantasy and any relationship requires upkeep, but there are some particular obstacles on Onlyfans. Users can manage these challenges through negotiations. A number of participants discussed the problem of ‘bot’ accounts, where a profile is managed by a team of assistants or automatic reply programs, instead of the person portrayed in the content. Customers will sometimes ‘look for red flags’ (Tom, subscriber, 1 year) to ensure authenticity. Sometimes, they even ask for proof outright. Erin (creator, 4 years) has had more than one person give extra money for photos proving their identity. In my own experience, I have had people ask me to write their name on my body when I create custom content– this is partly fetish fulfillment, but also acts as a system for proving that I made the content for them personally. Creators Gwen and Erin also offer handwritten and individualized paper ‘fan signs’ for display in custom content. This verification idea is part of the negotiated authenticity process, as a customer’s way for settling for themselves what the baseline for real is in this space, and for reassuring themselves that the fantasy is secure.

Like other viewers with high porn literacy (Byron et al., 2021), my participants’ level of knowledge on the porn industry made them vigilant and aware of their own expectations. Fred explained to me that when he watches content on Onlyfans, he actively chooses to believe in the creator’s authenticity in order to heighten his enjoyment.

‘It’s pretend, it’s make-believe, it’s fantasy– and it's fun to go along with it. I mean, that’s the whole reason you do it is, because it’s fantasy, and you’re aware, and you don't want to overthink it. I think thinking about your pornography and interrogating what turns you on is valuable… But at the same time, sometimes you just want to get off and go to sleep, you know?’ -Fred (Subscriber, 3 years)

As part of negotiating authenticity, Fred makes a conscious effort to suspend doubts and choose an approach that makes his fantasies more achievable. Jack (subscriber, 1 year) was also outspoken about negotiating the terms of his fantasy, acquiescing, ‘I know that it’s probably a fake version of them, but at least it’s something more than just a random video on the Internet of strangers’. The viewer makes choices to believe in the genuine character of the performance, and it is the performer’s paradoxical task to make their real-world experience intelligibly authentic (Cardoso and Scarcelli, 2021; Jones, 2020; Stardust, 2019b).

A great deal of trust is involved in these kinds of interactions– both parties are left to mediate their own doubts and choose to read each other’s messages in a tone of mutual respect and care. As Sam (subscriber, 3 years) explained, ‘we also don’t always see each other’s faces. You can’t emote to each other as well, to a degree, and there’s always that block’. Managing that blockage involves active choices for the maintenance of the trust in fantasy.

Sex work, both digital and otherwise, is part of the service industry (Pitcher, 2015), and while the exchange feels personal, subscribers still operate with the goal of satisfying their expectations and desires. Users often collaborate in order to accommodate or clarify individual preferences. Several interviewees shared that creators will actively seek out their fans’ opinions and preferences to improve their pages, and some consumers enjoy offering suggestions and sharing their sexual interests. Trevor (subscriber, 5 years) was passionate about this style of negotiation, sharing that he enjoys offering constructive advice and encouragement to newer creators. I’ve had my own subscribers occasionally send a friendly message asking me if I’ll be posting their favorite kind of content soon, or if I’d be willing to try out different poses and styles. It was common to receive kind messages quickly explaining their reasoning when someone ever chose to unsubscribe, sometimes for financial reasons or if they got a new partner, or perhaps I was not posting enough of their favorite fetish. Many consumers on Onlyfans enjoy this kind of collaborative effort.

Tom (subscriber, 1 year) offered a great example for how users and creators engage together in personalizing the service. Sometimes, as time goes on, some customers will start enjoying a creator’s content less and less, for a variety of reasons. If they enjoy the creator’s personality or their conversations together, Tom will try to save the connection by negotiating for different content or interactions. Tom explains, ‘[Honesty is] definitely one of the main things, and I noticed that when I have attraction, but I feel like, they’re a bit dubious… it’s usually really fast for me to go. But first of all, I always try communication… Because if we don’t both enjoy it, it just doesn’t make sense.’ - Tom (Subscriber, 1 year)

Echoing Jones’ (2020) emphasis on genuine pleasure being an important signal in ensuring the digital sex worker’s ‘embodied authenticity’, my informants greatly value the feeling of a shared intimate experience. Negotiation is the key to validating this feeling of mutual enjoyment– where the subscriber enjoys their experience, and the model genuinely cares about or is pleased with their work.

How personal

From physical safety and online security to personal comfort, creators have to balance varying risks and rewards, exemplifying the ‘authenticity bind’ dilemma (Duffy and Hund, 2019). Resembling the ‘parasocial relational work’ of other creative workers (Hair, 2021), Mandy ultimately approaches sharing on Onlyfans as a mutually beneficial social exercise:

‘What I try to do is, in terms of what I'm not willing to share about myself, where my family is… things I don’t feel safe to share. But I do feel like a lot of people that I interact with on the fan pages are friends. They’re people that have been there for years, that I can see their ups and downs, and know what they’re doing, and I look forward to that connection and checking in every day.’ - Mandy (Creator, 3 years)

When asked about their experience, Gwen (Creator, 2 years) also shared that managing their vulnerability and emotional energy was a cornerstone of their time on Onlyfans.

‘The people that stick around the most want somebody to talk to, and they want to feel like they know me. Sometimes they want somebody to vent to, or they want some companionship along with the sexual aspect. I feel like that’s mostly what people want. When I was deep into online sex work, I felt like a personal girlfriend.’ - Gwen (Creator, 2 years)

Onlyfans creators engage in the gig-economy of platform labor (Van Doorn, 2017), where it can be mentally draining to be ‘always on’, combined with the well-documented emotional labors required of sex workers (Uttarapong et al., 2022). Platform labor like Onlyfans monetizes and transforms emotional labor, referred to by Laurin (2019) as ‘subscription intimacy’. Engaging with subscribers is a necessary part of the work and often adds to the creator’s personal enjoyment and experience, but managing this relationship is yet another balancing act of ‘emotion work’ (Hochschild, 1973).

Similar to the findings of Cardoso and Scarcelli (2021) in interviewing Italian Onlyfans creators, performers will often find themselves in a quiet conflict between portraying themselves as relatable, but without oversharing or being so real that they risk potentially becoming less attractive. Over time, creators learn to avoid accruing excess ‘negative empathy’ (Auriemma, 2023). During their daily Onlyfans chats, Erin (creator, 4 years) tries to give honest answers and have fun with replies, but when fans ask vulnerable questions, Erin doesn’t ‘feel the need to lie to them’, but ‘won’t go into the details’. I, and every creator I interviewed, shared a similar experience. Considering the facelessness and complexity of the multi-platform sphere in which Onlyfans creators work, catering to the desires of an ‘invisible audience’ (Marwick and Boyd, 2011) requires a continual negotiation of marketability and authenticity.

When a consumer’s expectations and fantasies are challenged by a creator’s version of authenticity, sometimes compromises cannot be made and they are left unsatisfied. Mandy, creator for 3 years, shared that some customers will leave messages whenever they’re disappointed by contradictions in their expectations. For example, one person told Mandy they were deeply disappointed after she collaborated with a male performer that was not Mandy’s husband. Mandy adds, ‘they feel like they know [me] personally’, and when their fantasy breaks, the client responds as if ‘that’s a breach of trust and I can’t do that’.

In short, the subscriber wanted the fantasy of knowing the ‘real’ person who is performing the porn, but when they couldn’t consolidate reality with their fantasy, the subscriber felt deeply offended and did not choose to negotiate between those contradictions. A negotiated fantasy involves maintaining trust and bridging gaps between desires– this conflict shows the limitations of such a process.

Discussion: Bounded, embodied, and negotiated authenticity

To conceptualize negotiated authenticity, I compare the term with Bernstein’s Bounded Authenticity in Temporarily Yours (2007), and Jones’ Embodied Authenticity from Camming (2019). First, Bernstein’s Bounded Authenticity framework is a profound and intricate exploration of authenticity, sex work, and social relations under conditions of late stage capitalism. I aim to clarify differences with the term ‘bounded’-- the reason being that the term establishes an intellectual boundary between the act of sex and the material reality of social relations. Bounded authenticity is a concept with two-parts, with one claim about ‘boundedness’ and another about authenticity.

Jones’ focus on camming and my focus on Onlyfans, and our representative understandings of boundness, signals changes in the development of digital sex work since Bernstein’s writing. Bernstein’s conception of boundedness vitally centers upon physical, tangible, and spatial boundaries that restrict the participants. Boundaries include the maintenance of ‘separate spaces for “living’ and ‘working’’ (Bernstein, 2007). As established, authenticity continues to be a vital characteristic of contemporary labor, but Bernstein’s specific definition of ‘boundedness’ is problematized by contemporary online contexts. Looking at how the field has evolved, the reality is that Onlyfans and digital sex work are not limited by these conventional temporal or tangible boundaries. As Jones’ writes, ‘people (with access) are simultaneously immersed in both offline and online contexts. Our offline and online experiences are diffuse and symbiotic’ (Jones, 2020). Unlike cam performers doing live shows, however, Onlyfans workers are effectively on-call for clients twenty-four hours a day. Creators can perform their work while in-line at the store, or even sitting next to their partner at home. Intimacy and authenticity are expected to be imbued in every facet of the Onlyfans creators’ interactions and products. The borders between their working lives and their supposedly personal lives are effectively blurred (Auriemma, 2023), and as a result, these boundaries themselves are part of a constant negotiation.

Indeed, the very fact of its ‘unboundedness’ is an attractive feature of online sexual services. In my study, I find that negotiations allow for an appealing degree of flexibility in the provider-client relationship. Jones also finds that the screens separating client and performer ‘forms a psychological barrier that, for the most part, makes both parties feel safe and more willing to be themselves, which also opens up the potential for more pleasure for the worker’ (Jones, 2020, 21). Notably, Jones’ focus on individual pleasure in embodied authenticity is grounded in critical feminist theory– a frame that negotiated authenticity does not adopt.

Onlyfans customers, perhaps like other cybersex seekers, want more than a no-strings-attached yet emotionally-involved erotic experience. They want a relationship where they can easily attach or detach, can communicate directly or indirectly, and where they can express themselves with minimal risk and in perfect anonymity, if they so choose. On Onlyfans, the boundaries of privacy and intimacy are flexible and varied– and these preferences are toggled through negotiation.

On authenticity, Bernstein’s conception of intimacy evokes episodic, emotionally-involved erotic experiences that are neatly restricted by time and space, and transactional exchange. At a certain time for a certain price, clients receive ‘a real and reciprocal erotic connection, but a precisely delimited one’ (Bernstein, 2007). The author argues that ‘evidence of middle-class sex workers’ efforts to manufacture authenticity resided in their descriptions of trying to simulate — or even produce — genuine desire, pleasure, and erotic interest for their clients’ (Bernstein, 2007). Bernstein believes that this process resembles Hochschild’s concept of ‘deep acting’, due to the worker’s ability to spontaneously conjure private emotions as part of their labor (Hochschild, 2003). Similarly, Jones’ embodied authenticity involves the achievement of the cam model’s genuine pleasure in the intelligibly authentic performance of their manufactured identity. Jones cites Bernstein’s conception to underscore the customer’s desire for an authentic and intimate sexual encounter (Jones, 2020, 19). Importantly, Jones also heavily emphasizes the performers’ need to balance their own authentic expression of self with the demands of normative sexuality and expectations (Jones, 2020, 169). Embodied and bounded authenticity acknowledge a performer’s need to access genuine pleasure to achieve this form of authenticity, in an episodically and transactionally bounded way (Bernstein, 2007), and in a way that can be visibly expressed through embodiment (Jones, 2020). Negotiated authenticity, meanwhile, foregrounds authenticity as a fluid social construction that achieves success through the process of adjusting individual and collaborative relational identities and performances.

Conclusion

Subscribers are willing to pay for Onlyfans and use it as their regular porn resource because Onlyfans content feels more authentic and attainable, and the closed distance between themselves and the creator augments the experience emotionally. The price of subscription offers the opportunity to negotiate a gratifying, authentic-feeling experience with the creator or within the self. From the development of content to chatting with customers, a creator is keenly aware that with subscription comes expectations beyond just the posting of erotic material. Content and conversation is expected to be relatable and genuine, simulating intimacy alongside sexual stimuli.

In the end, authenticity is a social construction. The notion of authenticity is a product of relational identity transformation, and one’s perception of it is informed from layers of expectations and prior experiences (Lu and Fine, 1995). Authenticity on Onlyfans, and elsewhere, is a social performance to be negotiated in the personal imaginary. Participants’ expectations and experiences are continually reshaped and their personal criteria for a satisfying experience are naturally in flux. This process informs their approach to authenticity.

Authenticity is not the resolution of deviations, in fact, I found part of the joy of amateur porn to be this act of bridging contradictions– getting to play with fantasies and expectations. Authenticity is expressed in a genuine and creative performance of the self, even when it is contrived. Participants on Onlyfans desire a fantasy that feels attainable and genuinely intimate, and they get to negotiate the terms of that exchange. This process is key to their enjoyment and is what draws people to the space. Made more obvious by the lack of physicality, Onlyfans subscribers and creators negotiate together and independently to develop the trust and connection required to achieve satisfaction. Negotiated authenticity accepts the fluidity of boundaries, and understands authenticity as a product of social and relational transformations, as an explanatory theory for developing a successful ‘authentic fantasy’ -- an idea that might seem like an oxymoron to some, but isn’t in this world.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Melody Benjamin

Melody Benjamin was born and raised in California. She received a BA in Political Science from San Diego State University before moving to Tokyo. She earned an MA in Global Studies from Sophia University after completing her thesis with honors. Her research interests include sex work, sexual subcultures, and Marxist political economy.

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