Victoria Sinis (3:59)

Was it hard recruiting? I mean, is it a tough sell to a young woman to say, look, we're going to recruit you, you're attractive, maybe you're already doing something in this arena and we're going to bring you and. And help you blow up on Only Fans.

Megan Basham (4:13)

Yeah. So the crazy thing is, when people ask me about this, like, what is the hit rate, I guess you could say, of when you're cold? Message a girl. It was so successful. And the reason why that is is because we play with our words nowadays. So if I message you, I was like, hey, do you want to sign up to do porn? And we'll take 20% of your income, you're probably not going to earn a lot. You're going to have to do some really extreme things. You'd be like, no. But if I message you and I say, hey, I love your vibe. You see this Instagram page and we're throwing these parties and these dinners and we're showing this lifestyle and we're saying, would you like to be an Only Fans creator and maximize your earnings? So there were specific requirements that we did have for girls that we would look for. And at the time when this Was back in about 2022, 2023. The main top categories in pornography was Teen Fresh Teen, and Barely Legal. And so a girl at the agency that we would lie and say was fresh 18 and she made the most money. So we would actually look for girls that looked young and were already posting provocative content online on TikTok or on Instagram. And then they're the ones that we would cold message.

Victoria Sinis (5:24)

Gotcha. And, you know, one of the things that you and I talked about when we were backstage in an event together, that, man, it has stuck with me, was the fact that you said there were young women, young girls actually under the age of 18, maybe 14, 15, who plan to film content now, pornographic content now, so that when they were 18, they could legally release it, since it was their own image, their own material that they had filmed, because they knew that that would be attracted to the consumer. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Megan Basham (5:55)

Yeah, definitely. So the, I guess, catalyst for this kind of weird movement that we see of girls idolizing it, a huge influence in that is this thing called the Bop House. And so the Bop House is based in Los Angele Angeles, and it's got 3.2 million views on followers on TikTok. And it's a bunch of only fans girls. And they live in this house together, and they do childlike content. And it is so popular everywhere I go, all these little girls, they watch bobhouse content. And so that's where this stems from, is these girls. The Bop House is now open for registration, but you have to prove that you have a history of doing this type of content. So I have a close friend in Reading, California, who was telling me that at her daughter's school, her daughter was telling her that her friends are literally, as you said, storing up their content so when they turn 18, they can show the Bop House girls that, hey, look at this history that I have. So it's child porn. So then they can go and be at the Bop House and have this lifestyle and do only fans. Because they do only fans.

Victoria Sinis (6:55)

Gotcha. Okay. And so to get back to what you're saying, and I didn't mean to interrupt you, but so compelling when you told me about that, there's. There was a particular interest in barely 18. So we're hearing a lot of language that is, you know, really close to pedophilia here.

Megan Basham (7:08)

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And again, that's why I think that it is so important to be having this cultural conversation of what is happening online, because what we would do with the agency to Market girls to idolize. Again, this type of lifestyle is you would make these girls basically have three to four TikTok, three to five, sorry, TikTok accounts. And every single day, these girls were posting five unique videos per account. So in total, up to 20 videos. And we had an algorithm specialist that would send us these very specific curated videos and these girls would have to recreate them for virality. And so we are getting girls in seven days on like one video to like 2.2 million views on one video.

Victoria Sinis (7:50)

What kind of content might that be that you go, okay, we know this will go viral.

Megan Basham (7:54)

So it's, it's a. It's a mixture of so many different things, and it's more kind of the system behind it that I think helps with pushing the virality. But it's very specific things. Like, so one of the examples that I use is there was a trend that was going at the time, and it was like a vanity. And so you had all these different little makeup compacts with the mirrors and they were facing you. And so what would happen is the girl would scan the makeup compact so with the mirrors facing her. And then the caption was, did you see it? And it had a trending song playing at the time and all these very specific SEOs, very specific trending hashtags, and all of this. And so you would sit there and you go, did I see it? Did I see what? What is it? And so you're continuing to watch it because you're curious about it. And then you just see a glimpse of a girl in lingerie and you go, oh. And so then what does it do? It sparks someone's curiosity. So then they go to the page and they want to see more, and then they. So then that's how things go viral. And so it's all very curated, you know, And I think that's really important because that's what's being sent out again to this generation to allure them to think that this type of stuff is like organic and this is how you're rewarded. Now we see that people actually idolize this. People are quitting their jobs, dropping out of college. Young girls dream dreams across a vast majority of people that I've interacted with to actually do this. And they aspire to it. So that's why I think this cultural shift has happened from social media over saturating it. But for the. The behind the scenes of what is actually happening, the realisticness of it is like people think that you're going to jump on onlyfans and earn a bunch of money and it's amazing. But the average wage is $180 a month.

Victoria Sinis (9:39)

Wow. Okay, let's back up there really quick. So we're talking about how things look, how it seems very glamorous. You're recruiting these women, you said you're taking them on yachts. They're coming to, you know, glamorous parties thinking, I'm going to be recruited into this world and make a lot of money. So the average is $160 a month. But I'm going to presume that's not the girls you were working with.

Megan Basham (10:01)

So, yeah, that ours was a little bit of an anomaly, I would say, because we already knew two of the owners of the agency where I worked at were already quite prominent in OnlyFans. So they already knew a lot of friends that were, I guess, like a higher caliber, you could say. But then even ones that maybe weren't in that bracket, realistically, again, you're really not earning that much more than if you had like in quotation marks, a normal job, really?

Victoria Sinis (10:28)

Wow.

Megan Basham (10:28)

Just. Yeah. And there's a huge requirement from now we know social media. Why is it what you're needing to do and then actual content wise on Only Fans, there is a huge requirement of what is needed to be able to satisfy your subscriber. And people don't really yet understand the depths of. It's as much of a full time and intense job as what we perceive like a normal job to be. A lot of girls are jumping online thinking that they're going to make this money. I just have to sell my feet. But we can see how competitive this is. You've got, you know, influencing factors like agencies that want you to do more, you've got subscribers that want you to do more. It's competitive. So you're probably going to jump on, film a bunch of porn, have it on the Internet for forever. It's very difficult to get down and you might earn a couple hundred dollars.

Victoria Sinis (11:14)

Wow. Okay. So I think that should be a sobering fact just, you know, practically for a lot of young women who are getting involved in this stuff. So once an Instagram influencer or some other young woman has gone, okay, I want to make this transition over to OnlyFans, because I can, I think I can earn all of this money. What did that look like for them? So, you know, once they've created an account and they're starting to create content, how long would it take to build up a following and what were they required to do in order to build that following.

Megan Basham (11:43)

Yeah, the first element is account management. So what would happen is when you recruit a girl, the first thing they do is an onboarding questionnaire. And so the onboarding questionnaire is every single personal minute detail you can think about the girl we're asking them. And in this as well. And I think this is really important because a main argument as well as well, it's given more autonomy, it's ethical. The girl can choose what she's comfortable doing. And so even when you just onboard a girl, you can see that that's not the reality, because what we would have is this thing called levels. And so levels was the content that you're comfortable doing. And so we would have. Level one is Instagram content. So bikini lingerie. Level two was implied nudity. Level three was full nudity. Level four, excuse the language, but was everything but. And level five is everything. And so you're already being inaugurated into an ecosystem that is not asking you, but telling you what level are you? And so inadvertently you're going, oh, well, if I'm comfortable with this, well, I start at the bottom. Do I have to work my way up to get money? So I think that's just really important to highlight. But basically you come through this questionnaire and that questionnaire gets turned into a brief. And so a brief then gets sent to these things called chatters. And so we don't chat on the accounts, we hire third party cheap labor to chat on the accounts that pretend to be the girls.

Victoria Sinis (13:05)

So we would hire the interactive part of it. That's why OnlyFans is different than, you know, just hopping on some pornography site because they think I'm interacting with this woman totally.

Megan Basham (13:15)

And then from there you'd go from like that onboarding process. So you'd actually come to me. So I was doing all the marketing, and so you jump on a call with me. And my role was to make you go as viral as possible as quickly as possible. Every single platform that you can think of, we're promoting Girls onlyfans on and we're doing everything possible to make you. Yeah. As viral as known as possible, to pull in as many subscribers.

Victoria Sinis (13:42)

At what point does do they start to go, okay, maybe they're not earning that much because they're only a level two. So, I mean, did you have to push some of these women to say, okay, if you really want to earn, you're going to have to step it up or you're going to have to move to this now next level?

Megan Basham (13:55)

It's not like you sit there and you outwardly say these things. You know, the guys that you have as I guess like a female run only fans agency is we're here for you. Where go you, girl? Like, you know, if that's what you want to do, if that's your. But like, so it's always that softer subculture, I guess you would say. And so then there's complexities within that as well. Because if you have a subscriber that's asking for a custom request and they're wanting to do this amount of money for that customer request, you're gonna be like, hey, this guy wants this. Do you want to. And even if it's not their level that they're comfortable at, maybe it's a. Do you want to do? Like, we'll just propose it to you. So again, I think that the danger in this, I think anyways is the fact that it's like a soft coercion. It's not this hard. And I think that that's why it's more deceitful.

Victoria Sinis (14:49)

So at what point for you were you like, I can't do this anymore. And when did you decide to step out of this?

Megan Basham (14:55)

Yeah, so for me, what had happened was I was working at the agency and doing all of the marketing. And so I never actually saw the back end in the beginning. I was like, I think you can just sell your feet on here. I don't really know what it is. You know, I've got friends that do this and they seem to make a lot of money and girl power, liberation, all the things, things. And so I'm doing all the marketing, not seeing the back end. And what we had decided after a period of time is that if we're impersonating a person and I'm over here doing all the marketing and the only fans account manager is over here doing that. And you're the subscriber and we're not communicating on the back end. Well, the subscribers are starting to see holes in our story now. And so we're like, oh, we have to change the structure of the business. So that's when I jumped on the back end. And I've never even been exposed like to pornography. I've never been a consumer of it. So I'm seeing porn for the first time and it's these girls that I know and I've started to build relationships with. And I'm sitting there and I'm watching these acts and all I can think about is that girl. So kind, that girl, great family values. She's so funny. She's so generous. Like, what is she doing? And so the only way I can explain it is like, my brain just malfunctioned. Like, I just. I really started to struggle. I'm crying every day. I can't open up my laptop. I can't do this job. And I started to ask questions to other people at the agency, like, what do you think about what we're doing? And. And, you know, people told me it's like a safe injecting heroin room. People need a safe place to do drugs. We give people a safe place to do porn. And nothing was satisfying me. So I went, okay, maybe I need to do a good. Like, maybe if I do a really big deed of good, it'll offset all the bad that I'm doing. So I come to church on the Sunday, and this guest speaker in church is talking about this over sexualized culture, and she's talking about the dangers of only fans, and she's talking about what's happening in our schools. And she goes around the country, and she's been an activist for many, many years, and she's talking about how it's destroying this next generation. And specifically what she said and just clicked for me. I didn't understand it at the time, but she goes, christians are supposed to be the salt and the light of the earth, and they have failed, and we are destroying the next generation. And I just went, oh, my gosh, I'm not crazy. This is wrong. What we are doing is wrong.

Victoria Sinis (17:10)

I also think about the destruction to the young men in creating this fantasy world that they're leaving, living in. Do you ever talk about that? Is that something that you get destructive nature on men as well?

Megan Basham (17:22)

Oh, my gosh, yes. I care about this so much. I think that especially coming into this activism space, a lot of people seem to have this perception that, oh, all men are bad, all men are evil. They're predators, they're users. And it's like, no, there is. In this sphere, I feel that we pit men against women, and we need to stop attacking people and attack the problem. And the problem is a $97 billion porn industry that is destroying men and women. And so I care so much about that because I'm like, we were doing these targeted videos at men to extort men, to exploit men. So they're just as much. They're not the consumers, but they're the ones being consumed by this.

Victoria Sinis (18:10)

So now that you've moved on from that and you're working with creating gems, what do you suggest in terms of how we solve this problem.

Megan Basham (18:18)

The language I like to use is we don't need to shift the culture, but we actually need to build a new culture because we need to totally reject this culture that we have and champion something new and something different. And people need other options of what they do align with and what they do want to see in males and females, in partners in humanity. I learned this from a non for profit back home. It's called like the law of first exposure. So it's like if you can more so equip earlier on to understand these things and understand the realities when they eventually get exposed to this thing because not if it's when they can have a lens now of, oh, I know this isn't real. I know there's an industry behind this. I have language around what I'm seeing. I have safe people I can talk to. And so I just hope that anyone who is anti porn, who does, you know, this resonates in their heart and they feel it's wrong. Please focus on the problem and let's attack the problem. And the war is not against your flesh and blood, but it is against dark things in this world. And we need to focus on that to see this end, not on attacking each other, you know?

Victoria Sinis (19:17)

Yep. Amen. Because both the, the woman behind the camera and the, the man who's watching it are both made in the image of God. And so we, we don't want to attack them and villainize them so. Well, Victoria, this was really illuminating and God bless you for your work. Just, just revealing the, the behind the scenes of what happens at only fans and how destructive it is and, and how much of a mirage it is. So thanks so much for joining us and we, we wish you not even just good luck, but all the success in the world in this work that you're doing.

Megan Basham (19:48)

Thank you so much, Megan. This was great. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Victoria Sinis (19:51)

Thanks.

Georgia Howe (19:52)

That was Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham interviewing former Onlyfans recruiter Victoria Gloria Sinis. Thanks for joining us. We'll be back tomorrow with another episode of Morning Wire.