OnlyFans and… Climate Change?

When it comes to the climate crisis, humans rarely want to hear about it, and for a number of reasons. It can be uncomfortable to spend time thinking about existential threats and reckoning with the sheer power of the fossil fuel industry can be brain-breaking and disheartening. So what makes everything a little better? What makes this climate change pill easier to swallow? OnlyFans models, of course! Here’s how the show Headline Newds is using OnlyFans to create effective climate change messaging. 

Yellow Dot Studios, a non-profit filmmaking studio founded by acclaimed filmmaker Adam McKay, is behind the latest effort from filmmakers and artists to bring attention to climate change in an effective way. McKay, a former writer for NBC’s sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live is no stranger to tackling the big subjects. The director of films such as The Big Short and Don’t Look Up (about the 2008 financial crisis and climate change, respectively), McKay has put his studio and his experience behind this unorthodox, but possibly effective new way to discuss climate change.

In The Big Short, there was plenty of concern that the audience wouldn’t understand the causes of the 2008 financial crisis. So, McKay had stunning actress Margot Robbie walk viewers through the concept while naked in a bathtub. It’s almost common sense. No matter how this makes you feel, a Bonnie Blue monologue about climate change’s threat to life as we know it is bound to get more attention than a scientific study. As OnlyFans continues to grow in popularity, Headline Newds is attempting to reach people on the platform through comedy, short videos and yes, super hot OnlyFans stars.

Climate narrative strategist and co-creator of Headline Newds Jessica Riches, says, “Some of the most intimate parasocial relationships that exist right now, especially among people climate communications often fail to reach, are on OnlyFans.” Adding, “Story and entertainment can help complex messages land because our brains lower their defen[s]es when they are immersed in rich worlds, humor and emotional character journeys.” Riches says the new series is “meeting people where they are, rather than where the climate sector wishes they were.” 

All this serves as a confirmation that the way we receive and process most of our information is changing. Long before OnlyFans and the internet, lengthy political ads, newspaper stories and compelling radio talk shows drove much of what people thought and discussed. Now, however, influencers and short-form content are responsible for more and more of what everyday people believe. Popular social media apps like Instagram, however, have always been hard on OnlyFans creators and it appears they haven’t let up on those involved in Headline Newds. Riches says Instagram regularly flags their content as offensive and therefore shrinks their reach by not recommending the show to Instagrammers who don’t already follow Headline Newds. 

While Riches believes this has more to do with “the policing of women’s bodies” (something the CEO of OnlyFans has discussed in great detail) and less about the show’s messaging, she’s not giving up on trying to get the information out. Riches acknowledges her use of the OnlyFans platform to discuss existential threats like climate change may not be as comforting as Sophie Rain’s bikini pics, but above all, she wants people to know it’s not all doom and gloom. “We know how to survive the impacts that we are too late to reverse and, more importantly, we know how to stop it getting worse.” All Riches wants to do, she claims, is to bring attention to and “dismantle the systems” built by those in positions of power that serve to “prevent meaningful climate action.”