Conservatives Can’t Decide Whether They Love OnlyFans or Hate It

Plenty of Republican politicians have made their disdain for porn into a big show. Often rejecting the industry as a whole on religious or moral grounds; they’ve authored bills that propose broader enforcement of age verification on sites with adult content, they’ve suggested egregious taxes on OnlyFans creators, “ending porn” is even outlined in their agenda. But some OnlyFans creators aren’t just surviving off of Republican views, likes and tips, they’re thriving.

Meet Savanna Cannon. The 22 year-old conservative firebrand starts out each podcast episode swinging. “People who don’t like what I say are, more than likely, braindead,” Cannon asserts in one episode. She routinely delivers political talking points with that signature conservative roughness; and as some of the more salacious fans might notice, she sits in her chair in a weird way.

Well, weird unless you’re trying to draw attention to your feet, breasts and undercarriage. While clad in skin tight yoga gear, Cannon manages to squeeze everything into one vertical shot, with the main focus being on her groin. Not only does it engage viewers for longer (even if they don’t hold her same views), the whole act is used as a way to direct fans to her OnlyFans account.

Cannon actually started on OnlyFans as part fitness influencer, part adult content creator. There have been plenty of creators that have found success doing just OnlyFans, but Cannon was not one of them. So, she entered the political arena. It’s clear this was the right call. Cannon’s fitness Instagram has about 42,000 followers, compared to her political page’s 285,000. Aside from the numbers, though, Cannon is using politics (and her figure) to engage her target audience: young, raunchy, impressionable conservative men.

Conservatives often publicly rally against the adult industry and everyone involved in producing NSFW content. Yet data indicates that conservatives are, more often than not, the adult industry’s best customer. A 2009 study published by Professor Benjamin G. Edelman of the Harvard Business School found higher porn subscription rates in politically conservative states. From the study, “Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year’s presidential election… While six out of the lowest 10 favored Barack Obama.”

Since Cannon has built a home for herself on the right, she has become a target of their disdain for sex workers. “Conservative female talking heads are just a bunch of shallow, disgusting skanks spewing low-IQ takes,” said one far-right commentator. Another of Cannon’s critics accused her of taking money from Israel, something Cannon emphatically denied. To explain, Cannon said simply, “I do OnlyFans.”

We’ve seen our fair share of OnlyFans creators getting rich by using the platform’s relativity to their advantage. OnlyFans is what’s hot right now, and plenty of creators know it. OnlyFans has turned thousands of its creators into millionaires, mostly those who have a built-in audience from somewhere else. In Cannon’s case, she was able to harness enough attention in right wing circles to ultimately boost her OnlyFans page. Whether or not her OnlyFans customers are the same as her podcast listeners isn’t known, but it can be inferred the two aren’t far removed from one another. 

Whether you see Cannon as an opportunistic OnlyFans model or a legitimate voice in right-wing politics, one thing is clear. Her conservative audience isn’t going anywhere.