South African Study Focuses on OnlyFans Creators

While OnlyFans continues to expand its global reach in new exciting ways, one PhD researcher at the University of Cape Town took it upon herself to research what some South African OnlyFans creators think about their job. Or rather, how they perceive themselves as OnlyFans creators versus how they may be perceived by others.

The amount of discrimination OnlyFans creators go through on the daily is well-documented. So, what’s it like in South Africa? How do creators there perceive their work? 

Phiwokazi Qoza is a PhD researcher at the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa. She’s been studying OnlyFans for nearly five years as part of her work at the university. Qoza says it’s easy to write OnlyFans off as just another adult website, but it’s more complicated than that.

OnlyFans really took off during the COVID-19 pandemic, becoming the place to be for selling sexual content online. Lots of people had been laid off and turned to the platform as a way to earn surprisingly large sums of money. OnlyFans had an estimated worth of over $1 billion by 2021, now it’s at $3+ billion. 

Most of the creators who perform best on OnlyFans are the ones who already had a built-in audience from another highly publicized career. But, as social media influencers have begun to take over - some of whom are expanding into OnlyFans - Qoza says it’s clear OnlyFans is “blurring the lines between traditional pornography and social media influencing.” OnlyFans is more than just uploading spicy content. Creators have to spend lots of time cultivating audiences and gaming the algorithms to draw traffic their way. There’s now room for social media influencers to excel on the platform, too. 

South Africa is an interesting country to study. Sex work is technically a crime, but OnlyFans is legal and operates without a hitch. Since 1996, South Africa has allowed sexual content to be created and distributed. Youth unemployment rates are staggering there, with 60.9% of its 15 to 34 year-olds unemployed. For context, the United State’s unemployment rate for the same age range is 9.1%. Globally, 12.4% of youth are unemployed (about 67 million people). Obviously, OnlyFans requires users to be at least 18 to join the platform, and it goes without saying the 18 to 34 year-olds are the people who typically produce and consume the most on OnlyFans. 

The creators in South Africa have fundamentally fascinating, and differing views of their work, largely fitting into one of two camps. Either they confidently declare themselves sex workers, or see themselves as adult content creators. The chief difference? How they define what they do. 

The “sex-worker” side, Qoza found, embraces the term as an “umbrella for anyone in the business of pleasure”. They believe just because they don’t have physical contact with their fans, doesn’t mean their work fits a different definition better. 

Adult content creators, on the other hand, seem to carry a “moral distinction” about their work, according to Qoza. They still take pride in what they do, but see it as a performance art, not sex work. Rather than proudly proclaiming their occupation, they may frame it as “body art” or liken OnlyFans to Instagram, seeing their work as only a small step up from what the latter permits on its platform.

What’s universal for everyone Qoza studied is the stigma. No matter how these creators define their work, they face judgement from loved ones and the public quite often. Some creators won’t approach law enforcement if they’ve had their content pirated or they’ve experienced harassment and extortion. The reason behind this is unclear, but it’s theorized that creators avoid law enforcement for fear that they won’t be helped, or that their work will be leaked to individuals they don’t want knowing about their work. Their use of pseudonyms is also universal, affording them a degree of separation between their true selves and the work they do.

“Understanding the vulnerabilities of digital sex workers can help guide policy initiatives to make digital sexual spaces safer work environments,” Qoza says.