The World’s Newest Profession | 1

Summary

Podcast Summary: OnlyFantasy – Episode 1: “The World’s Newest Profession”

Podcast: OnlyFantasy
Hosts: Leon Neyfakh, Gracie Kanan, Matt Ford
Date: May 21, 2026

---

Episode Overview

The debut episode of OnlyFantasy embarks on a deep, compelling investigation into OnlyFans—the adult-content platform that has quietly transformed from a space for “spicy” pictures into a complex ecosystem of intimacy, fantasy, and emotional labor. Journalist Leon Neyfakh and comedian-creator Gracie Kanan join forces, examining the personal stories and broader societal implications of a site where people around the world spent $7 billion in 2024.

The episode explores:

• The evolution of OnlyFans from a taboo hustle to a mainstream cultural force
• The blurring boundaries between performance, emotional connection, and transactional relationships
• The motivations and emotional needs of both creators and subscribers
• The economic realities and new forms of intimacy in a digitally mediated world

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Personal Entry Points into OnlyFans

• Annie’s Story as a Young Creator (00:39 – 04:22)

  • Annie, Matt’s half-sister, describes how her OnlyFans journey began with the encouragement of a roommate.
  • She emphasizes the marketing and hustle involved: cross-promoting on Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat under a pseudonym.
  • Early success: “In the early days, having to only show a couple of photos and then making 1,000 bucks was great. As an 18, 19 year old, I didn't know what to do with myself. I really thought I was hot shit.” (Annie, 03:22)
  • The pandemic made OnlyFans boom, both for creators and lonely subscribers—Annie earned up to $18,000 in her best month.

• Economic Realities (04:55 – 06:15)

  • OnlyFans offers fast, real income, with creators keeping 80% of earnings.
  • In 2024, OnlyFans reported a $1.4 billion profit, revealing the scale of its reach.

2. What Makes OnlyFans Special? The Emotional Marketplace

• Personalization Over Pornography (07:19 – 08:40)

  • Annie shares: “These OnlyFans girls are paid to acknowledge your existence… most of the money people made on OnlyFans… came from maintaining quasi personal relationships with subscribers over weeks or months or even longer.”
  • Messaging—not explicit content—powers 70% of the platform’s revenue.

• The Digital “Girlfriend Experience” (09:15 – 09:27)

  • “If you paid for that, it's like 72 hours of a fake girlfriend. So she'll call you, she'll text you, she'll FaceTime you, she'll send you photos. She'll basically talk to you as if you're a boyfriend for like, two days.” (Annie, 09:15)
  • Intimacy is sold, but remains virtual and transactional.

• Host’s Self-Reflection on Digital Intimacy (10:00 – 11:59)

  • Matt recalls his own teenage “digital girlfriend” experience on AIM, and confronts the universal human allure of online-only connection.
  • Raises the central question: Is online, paid connection less “real” than free, organic relationships?

3. Subscriber Perspectives: Rick’s Story

• Everyday Loneliness and Seeking Connection (14:22 – 23:00)

  • Rick, a retired, religious grandfather from the South, shares his sexual awakening and lifelong appetite for intimacy, shaped by both family dynamics and a formative encounter with pornography.
  • After two divorces and now largely celibate, Rick turns to OnlyFans to recapture lost feelings: “OnlyFans was a way to… in a fantasy world, have what I had lost and not had for all those years.” (Rick, 19:32)

• Emotional Validation over Physical Satisfaction (20:58 – 22:59)

  • On his favorite creator, Jenna: “Her personality, she's kind, she's funny. We like a lot of the same things… we would have quasi dates where… we would watch the same thing on Netflix and chat about it while we watched.”
  • “Even though there's a part of your brain that knows that it's not real… there's a part of us that wants to believe that we're desirable and that we have something to offer and that this can be real.” (Rick, 22:07)

• Normalizing the Unspoken (21:56 – 22:14)

  • Rick’s story illustrates that OnlyFans is not just for the “horny old guys,” but also for those seeking companionship and affirmation in an isolating world.

4. Creators’ Perspective: Gracie Kanan’s Experience

• Monetizing Emotional Labor and Relatability (29:08 – 32:18)

  • Gracie’s OnlyFans handle is “Professional Girlfriend.” With a corporate day job and a standup career, she views online emotional work as a savvy (and necessary) business decision given student loans and high living costs.
  • “Isn’t it degrading doing sex work for money? ...No, it’s degrading doing it for free.” (Gracie, 29:40)

• Managing Relationships and Boundaries (31:05 – 31:28)

  • Gracie maintains notes on subscribers, distinguishing between dozens of “Brians” based on their preferences, revealing the professionalism and scale of the business.

• From Strip Clubs to OnlyFans: The Graduated Experience (34:42 – 36:36)

  • Inspired by the earnings of dancer friends, Gracie started as a “lap dance” club worker, before moving online.
  • “It was almost like I would with a friend or someone I’m dating. And that gave me, like, a whole new curiosity and a whole new voyeurism and a whole new all new access to these people in a way that I just could never have gotten at the club.” (Gracie, 35:54)

• Genuine Care for Men’s Emotional Welfare (36:36 – 39:37)

  • Instead of encouraging co-dependency, Gracie describes wanting to “save men” from emotional isolation—offering advice, encouragement, and sometimes nudging subscribers to seek real-life connection.
  • “There’s this masculine isolation that’s so ingrained in our culture… And, you know, if men are using sexual encounters… to replace a lot of actual emotional vulnerability… how society would look differently if men were actually more vulnerable.” (Gracie, 38:56)

5. Sociocultural Impact and the New Normals

• The Mainstreaming of a Subculture (41:31 – 42:24)

  • OnlyFans is not a niche world—it’s rapidly becoming mainstream, reshaping notions of connection, desirability, and power in relationships.

• The Central Mystery: What Is “Normal” Now?

  • “Because I'm pretending like this isn't normal, but like, I just want to know what's normal. I just, I just want to know what's normal.” (Matt, 42:08)
  • The hosts question what the future holds when transactional intimacy becomes the norm, especially for the next generation.

---

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• Annie on the emotional nature of OnlyFans:
  “A lot of the people were just lonely and sad, so they really just genuinely wanted somebody to text them every day. Didn’t even have to be like naked photos, just cute photos. Some were literally like me in an oversized hoodie in front of the mirror.” (08:04)

• Rick on why subscribers stay:
  “Even though there's a part of your brain that knows that it's not real and that it's fantasy and that they’re probably all lies, there's a part of us that wants to believe that we're desirable and that we have something to offer and that this can be real.” (22:07)

• Gracie on monetizing care:
  “My handle is Professional Girlfriend, which my friends all found funny because I've been in relationships nonstop since I was 18. So I was like, I might as well use this skill set. Let’s monetize my love.” (29:08)

• Gracie’s motivation:
  “I want this person to feel confident. ...Let them fly the nest when they no longer need it.” (38:18)

• Matt’s realization about cultural change:
  “The fact that that even seems possible, combined with the fact that millions of people are seeking out these relationships, often in secret... it makes me think something profound has changed in the world.” (25:47)

---

Important Segment Timestamps

• Annie’s Introduction and OnlyFans Origin Story: 00:39 – 04:22
• Economic Context for OnlyFans & Platform Mechanics: 04:55 – 07:19
• Analysis of the “Girlfriend Experience”: 08:04 – 09:27
• Matt’s Reflection on Digital Connection: 10:00 – 11:59
• Rick’s Subscriber Story and Emotional Landscape: 14:22 – 23:00
• Creators' Motivations and Backstory (Gracie): 29:08 – 32:18, 34:42 – 36:36
• Creator-Subscriber Relationship Dynamics: 36:36 – 39:37
• Mainstreaming of OnlyFans & Subcultural Shift: 41:31 – 42:24

---

Tone and Style

The episode is candid, sometimes humorous, and deeply empathetic—balancing journalistic inquiry, personal anecdotes, and nuanced cultural analysis. Leon, Gracie, and guests speak with openness and nonjudgmental curiosity, often reflecting with both skepticism and humility on their own experiences and assumptions.

---

Conclusion

OnlyFantasy launches with a thorough, intimate portrait of OnlyFans as both a financial opportunity and a new frontier of human connection. The episode sets the stage for a season exploring who profits, who suffers, and what it all means for human intimacy in a digital, transactional era. The central tension—authenticity versus fantasy, loneliness versus connection—remains unresolved, and the hosts are unafraid to admit they have as much to learn as any subscribing listener.

---

Next episodes promise to dig deeper into the money, the emotions, the management, and the reality behind the fantasy.

Transcript

[Matt Ford]

Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Only Fantasy early and ad free. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. So I know we've talked about this before, but obviously not in a whole lot of detail. So you should feel free to disclose as much or as little as you want. Obviously, yeah, I'm your brother. It could be awkward, but it doesn't have to be.

[Annie]

I don't think it's awkward. I've had people from OnlyFans message you so can't get more awkward than that.

[Matt Ford]

Dude, I cannot believe that I forgot that.

[Annie]

Yeah.

[Matt Ford]

My sister Annie just turned 24, which makes her almost 20 years younger than me. She was raised by a different mom in a different household, and she has led a very different life for me.

[Annie]

Mr. Harvard, Mr. I got a diploma. Can't relate. But it's okay.

[Matt Ford]

You're doing great. Over the years, I've mainly heard about Annie's adventures in phone calls like this one. She lives in Chicago and I live in New York, and we talk fairly regularly, often on FaceTime while I'm walking my dog and she's at work. She's a bartender these days, so she's often telling me about her regulars and sending me photos of the cash she has stacked up at the end of a long night of tips. But there was a time, starting when she was around 19 years old, when Annie was telling me about a different kind of hustle.

[Annie]

Do you remember that one girl that I lived with? The blondie?

[Matt Ford]

No.

[Annie]

She was the OnlyFans creator.

[Matt Ford]

She was the first girl you met who was on there.

[Annie]

Yeah, because she was the one who before was like, since you won't do escorting with me, would you do OnlyFans with me?

[Matt Ford]

Oh, God, yeah. Okay, I remember.

[Annie]

Yeah, now you're remembering.

[Matt Ford]

At the time, all I knew about OnlyFans was that it was a website where regular people, like my little sister apparently could make money selling naked pictures of themselves. Knowing that annie was on OnlyFans made me apprehensive, to say the least. But Annie assured me that it was a safe alternative to real life sex work and that her friend the blondie was showing her the ropes and keeping her out of trouble.

[Annie]

She would be like, oh, yeah, so you could post, like, lingerie photos, this and that. And then if people like what they see, they'll message you. And then you can send them an album that the only way to unlock it is they have to pay a certain amount. They don't know what's on it. It could be bullshit photos, old photos, but they have to pay to unlock it, and that money is instantly in your account once they've done it.

[Matt Ford]

And so how much was your friend making?

[Annie]

She was making, I think, 15k a month.

[Matt Ford]

15k a month?

[Rick]

Mm.

[Matt Ford]

That's a lot of money.

[Annie]

Yeah.

[Matt Ford]

What I remember Annie emphasizing to me back when she first started OnlyFans was that it was as much a marketing job as anything. She wasn't an influencer by any means, but she did have a couple hundred followers across her Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, where she would post free pictures intended to lure in new subscribers. Each account was under the same pseudonym annie used on OnlyFans. So people who found her and liked what they saw could then sign up for a few bucks a month to see her more exclusive content.

[Annie]

In the early days, having to only show a couple of photos and then making 1000 bucks was great. As an 18, 19 year old, I didn't know what to do with myself. I really thought I was hot shit.

[Matt Ford]

Annie and her roommate Blondie would cross promote each other on their pages in order to bring in new subscribers. And within a month, Annie said she had 100 paying customers, which sometimes made it hard to keep up with her DMs.

[Annie]

It was very hard being like, oh, my God, Jake. Oh, fuck, this isn't Jake. Back, back, back, back, back, back, back. Oh, my God.

[Rick]

Fuck.

[Annie]

Gotta scroll up and see whose name this is.

[Matt Ford]

Annie told me that during her best month ever, she brought in $18,000. By that point, it was the COVID pandemic and OnlyFans had exploded in popularity, thanks to subscribers who were looking to escape isolation. The thing we're all doing to keep ourselves safe can have an adverse health outcome, which is loneliness and loneliness talking

[Gracie Kanan]

so much about all the physical illnesses.

[Annie]

But I think a lot of people are worried about their mental health right now.

[Gracie Kanan]

Social interaction now is going to be three things.

[Matt Ford]

Challenging, creative, and important more than ever before in April of 2020 alone. So the month after lockdown started, OnlyFans reported a 75% jump in new subscriber signups. But the growth wasn't just on the subscriber side. There was also a slew of new creators on the site. Anyone stuck at home and unable to work their regular job could now make content with minimal overhead and earn cash fast.

[Rick]

This OnlyFans income, it's very real and it's very quick.

[Annie]

That first night, I made about like $1,300 and I'm like, this is insane.

[Matt Ford]

Pretty soon, OnlyFans wasn't just a dirty little secret. It was a cultural phenomenon.

[Rick]

According to a piece in buzzfeed, selling yourself online is the hot new trend. Quote, everybody is making porn at home now. Only Fans reports that seven or eight thousand new women sign up every day. Our daughters are selling themselves for food and rent, and BuzzFeed is telling us it's cool.

[Matt Ford]

The thing is, it kind of was cool. Even Beyonce, one of the most famous people in the world, felt moved to name drop OnlyFans in a song.

[Gracie Kanan]

Hips TikTok when I on that demon time, she might start a onlyfans big

[Matt Ford]

B in that Michael B. Jordan went on Jimmy Kimmel and joked that he was making an Only Fans page for his mustache.

[Rick]

Got an Only Fans coming soon onlyFans account. Why not? Eating fruit, all types of crazy stuff.

[Matt Ford]

It's gonna get wild. It's gonna get wild. Part of what was amazing about OnlyFans explosive growth was that for more than 20 years, the world of adult entertainment had been starved by the abundance of free online porn. With free porn available on the Internet,

[Rick]

is this the porn apocalypse? How do you compete with free?

[Matt Ford]

The situation was akin to that of the music industry after Napster stolen content was everywhere and consumer expectations had shifted to the point where the idea of paying to look at porn seemed utterly irrational. And then came OnlyFans. At the time of this recording, the platform hosts more than 4 million creators, mostly women and 300 million users, mostly men. The pay structure is simple. Creators keep 80% of what they make, and OnlyFans takes a 20% cut. In 2024, the company took in a $1.4 billion profit. How did OnlyFans convince people to start paying for porn again? What was it offering that users couldn't get for free somewhere else? When I first got curious about this and asked Annie about it, she offered an explanation involving a guy who once paid her 800 bucks to make a video of herself wearing a pair of shoes that he had bought her and smushing a bunch of corn dogs with the high heels.

[Annie]

I promise you, your favorite porn star is not about to call your name and step on a corn dog for you. So, like, yes, you can watch porn, but those porn stars that you watch will never know your name, will never spare speak to you. These OnlyFans girls are paid to acknowledge your existence.

[Matt Ford]

I had always pictured OnlyFans as a one way street. A place to publish exclusive content that your most motivated fans could pay to look at. End of story. Annie told me that I'd Been missing the point. Most of the money people made on OnlyFans, she said, came from more than just being looked at. It came from maintaining quasi personal relationships with subscribers over weeks or months or even longer.

[Annie]

A lot of the people were just lonely and sad, so they really just genuinely wanted somebody to text them every day. Text them good morning in the morning, good night at night, send them a couple photos. Didn't even have to be like naked photos, just cute photos. Some were literally like me in an oversized hoodie in front of the mirror.

[Matt Ford]

But not all of them. Annie, you showed me. I remember it. I remember you showed me a couple pretty racy things you posted.

[Annie]

Not all of them, but there were a lot of the times they want

[Matt Ford]

you in a hoodie, wanted you in

[Annie]

a hoodie, wanted you in a messy bun. They wanted you to not look like they were paying for you, basically.

[Matt Ford]

Right? What I realized talking to annie was that OnlyFans wasn't a porn site. It was more like a directory of people who, for a price, would participate in an extended fantasy in which the two of you were in a relationship. According to a study that looked at the transaction histories of more than a million OnlyFans subscribers, messaging drives almost 70% of revenue on the platform. What Annie and her fellow OnlyFans creators were offering was a distinctly 21st century rendition of a staple product from the annals of sex work, the girlfriend experience.

[Annie]

Girlfriend experience. If you paid for that, it's like 72 hours of a fake girlfriend. So she'll call you, she'll text you, she'll FaceTime you, she'll send you photos. She'll basically talk to you as if you're a boyfriend for like, two days.

[Matt Ford]

But not meet up in person?

[Annie]

Nope. All over the phone.

[Matt Ford]

I know I sound skeptical here, and I was. But then I remembered something I myself had once enjoyed. The digital girlfriend experience. When I was a teenager chatting voraciously with someone I'd never met on AOL instant Messenger. Her name was Jessica. A friend of mine from summer camp gave me her screen name and encouraged me to send her a message. She was a few years older than me, she had blonde hair, and she was really good at being flirty. Online, I was extremely interested, and unlike in my normal life, I found it surprisingly easy to get and keep her attention. I wish I could remember the particulars of what we talked about. What I do remember is that we talked every day after school. Me hunched over my keyboard, trying to come up with jokes and questions and light provocations, all in service of ratcheting up the romantic tension between us. Things escalated when Jessyca invited me to her high school prom. She lived in Wisconsin, only about an hour and a half from me in Chicago, reachable by Greyhound bus. I should have been thrilled, but in the end I chickened out. I'm certain I handled it badly, and soon after, we stopped talking. Looking back, I guess it just felt like a bridge. Too far, too intense, Too real. It turned out I preferred instant messenger, but the relationship Jessica and I had on aim stuck with me. I'll never forget the rush of seeing her screen name pop up, or how it felt to think about her while walking through the hallways at my school. And the experience made me realize that something that happened only online could feel just as intoxicating as real life. So on some level, I can relate to these OnlyFans subscribers. I know the pleasures of stepping into an alternate dimension and being a version of yourself that you don't normally get to be. But also, I wasn't paying Jessica, and as far as I know, she wasn't just pretending to like me back. That's what doesn't compute for me about OnlyFans. How are there millions of people out there who are willing to shell out money for someone to pretend to like them? To essentially pay for an imaginary friend who exists, for all intents and purposes only, inside their phones?

[Rick]

I'm not here just because I'm some horny old guy looking to have a fantasy orgasm. I'm here because I want to interact with someone.

[Audible Announcer]

Whether you're exploring your current fascinations or discovering new ones, Audible has all the stories that'll introduce you to your most fascinating self. Tap into a whole new world of heated conversations with a saucy romantasy series, become your friend group's sci fi expert on the latest blockbuster book to screen adaptation, or find unexpected reveals through the exclusive episodes of a viral true crime podcast. However you choose to listen, Audible keeps you fascinated so you can be just as fascinating all in one easy app with plans now starting at £5.99, you'll get access to over 900,000 audiobooks and podcasts, including trending bestsellers, the hottest new releases, and exclusive podcasts you won't find anywhere else. Sign up now to become a member and get any audiobook every month, plus exclusive podcasts. Plans now start at £5.99. Audible be fascinated, be fascinating. Whether you're exploring your current fascinations or discovering new ones, Audible has all the stories that'll introduce you to your most fascinating self. Tap into a whole new world of heated conversations with a saucy romantasy series. Become your friend group sci fi expert on the latest blockbuster book to screen adaptation or find unexpected reveals through the exclusive episodes of a viral true crime podcast. However you choose to listen, Audible keeps you fascinated so you can be just as fascinating all in one easy app. With plans now starting at $8.99, you'll get access to over 1 million audiobooks and podcasts, including trending bestsellers, the hottest new releases and exclusive podcasts you won't find anywhere else. Sign up now to become a free member and get any audiobook every month plus exclusive podcasts. Plans now start at $8.99. Audible be fascinated, be fascinating.

[Rick]

My public Persona is that of a man who would probably not be subscribed to OnlyFans.

[Matt Ford]

This is Rick. Not his real name. He's retired, he's Christian, he has grandkids, and he lives in a rural area in the South. He agreed to let my producer Sam Lee record a conversation with him last summer as long as we protected his anonymity. It was supposed to just be a quick call to get a sense of what he might want to talk about in an interview, but Rick got right into it. And as he made clear To Sam, his OnlyFans story began decades earlier during the Vietnam conflict.

[Rick]

I was 8 years old, height of the war. Things were really kicking up and we were overloaded with soldiers and everybody that had any kind of a building turned it into a rental house.

[Matt Ford]

Rick grew up near an active army base and some of the soldiers stationed there lived in a building near his house. One day that building burned down and

[Rick]

after the house burned and everybody moved out, nobody had looked underneath the house except for me. And I found this tackle box, toolbox, metal, pulled it out, opened it up, and lo and behold, inside with the edges charred but everything else intact, were four books about an inch and a half thick of Danish pornography. I knew at 8 years old things that my dad couldn't even imagine. Sam, when I tell you that it was all was in there, if it was categorically possible as a sex act, it was in those books. I mean I saw Hetero Homo by I saw it all at 8 years old I saw everything and it sexually excited me and from there my appetites never really were wedded.

[Matt Ford]

Now you might expect an 8 year old boy to hide pornography under his bed or in his closet, but Rick stored his books in a shared family bathroom. And then one night, with the whole family sitting around the dining room table, his Father, a leader in the local church, asked about them.

[Rick]

He said, so what have you been doing in there? In there jacking off? And I said, well, yeah, I wasn't embarrassed. I didn't know I was supposed to be embarrassed about masturbation. Right? And in our family, things like that were not embarrassing. You know, sex outside of marriage was said was a no, no, but inside marriage, sex was the most beautiful thing in the world. You know, he pat my mom on the butt while she was serving breakfast and reach up and pinch her on the titty to say, I need a little cream for my coffee. And you know, that's the way our family was. We had no taboo about intimate relations. It was cool and it was good if it was done properly.

[Matt Ford]

Rick, however, did not wait until marriage to have sex properly. He told Sam that he lost his virginity at 11 to his best friend's older sister and was sexually active from that point forward.

[Rick]

And I had a lot of wild experiences sexually. I was dating a 16 year old girl when I was 17. I'm sorry, no, I was 16, she was 15 and her mother had her when she was 16. So she was 32 and the mother was a, a nymph. And sitting at coffee one morning at their house, she says, I, I know that you're having sex with my daughter and I want you to know I love sex and I want my daughter to love it as much as I do. So I want you to be good at having sex with my daughter. And so she decided that she was going to be my, my teacher. And for three months I was sleeping with both of them, unbeknownst to my girlfriend, because she wanted to teach me how to make love to a woman. And she was a very good teacher.

[Matt Ford]

Sam's gasp captures my reaction to this pretty well. All I could think when I heard it was, damn, people are really living all kinds of lives out there that

[Rick]

was very, very capable. And the thing that she made very clear was that you've got to make, you know, visions in their head that you then bring to reality. You've got to make love to their mind before you ever touch their body.

[Matt Ford]

Rick brought those lessons into his adult life as he got married, divorced, married again, and divorced again.

[Rick]

My ex wife would tell you the first 10 years of our marriage were the most amazing 10 years of her life or mine in every way. Relationships, sex and the whole nine yards.

[Matt Ford]

I should say here we didn't ask Rick's ex wife. It was just impossible to do without compromising his anonymity. So Consider this Rick's version.

[Rick]

After the divorce, of course, I dated a couple of times, had negative experiences. So from the age of 40 until now, I have been to a great degree celibate. That creates some mental issues knowing that you were a very sexual person all your life and were actually quite accomplished as a lover.

[Matt Ford]

Rick has kids from his first marriage, but they're all grown up now. He has lived alone since 2020 and has had a bunch of health issues.

[Rick]

We became incapable of doing the activities that I had done all my life, gained a lot of weight, self confidence, went in the hole. So Only Fans was a, a way to, in a, I guess a fantasy world, have what I had lost and not had for all those years. And that's how I came to get involved and communicate with someone there.

[Matt Ford]

In the fall of 2023, Rick came across a model named Jenna on Reddit, a popular place for onlyfans creators to promote themselves.

[Rick]

She was the epitome of what I've always liked in a woman. Petite, small breasted, and this is not meant to be gross or any in any way, but she was everything physically that I've always liked. Yeah, and she just had a look, an innocent, a genuine look about her and was very interesting. And on her Reddit she had a link to the site where you could actually chat with her, which happened to be Only Fans. My first introduction to Only Fans. I have heard of it but had never been there, had no idea what it really consisted of. So I went out and joined Only Fans and then we chatted quite a bit and things went fine and you know, we just kind of were friendly.

[Matt Ford]

What did you like about Jenna?

[Rick]

Like the, her personality. Her personality, she's, she's kind, she's funny. We like a lot of the same things. She likes movies, we talk about movies. In fact, we would have quasi dates where that we would watch the same thing on Netflix and chat about it while we watched. That's cute. Yeah. I mean, the longest is dating the way people would really do it in real life.

[Matt Ford]

After some time forming this online relationship and talking to Rick quite a bit, Jenna started telling him that she liked him too.

[Rick]

She was very complimentary and told me, you know, that I was the sweetest guy she'd ever met and she'd never had anybody in her life that was as interested in her as I was, you know, and I was loving that. Yeah, made you feel special. Every guy loves to hear that they're, you know, making a person feel better. And I'm a giver that's my nature.

[Matt Ford]

As much as Rick gave, Jenna gave back. It really seemed like their relationship was deepening.

[Rick]

And then, you know, she started, you know, I really, really enjoy talking to you. You're interesting. You're not all about the sex. You're, you know, and it was coming across as very genuine, very real. And I said, you know, I enjoy talking to you, too. For that same reason, I wanted human interaction. I wanted someone that I could talk to and, you know, compliment and just have. Have a relationship of source. Even though there's a part of your brain that knows that it's not real and that it's fantasy and that they're probably all lies, there's a part of us that wants to believe that we're desirable and that we have something to offer and that this can be real.

[Matt Ford]

I don't know exactly who I was imagining when Annie first told me about the men she interacted with on OnlyFans. They were sort of abstract to me, I guess. A faceless blob of Internet guys. The thing about Rick was that even though in certain ways he fit the stereotype, he was lonely, he was sexually frustrated. He didn't start off that way. He had arrived at OnlyFans by way of his own winding path, and I understood what it was doing for him. It was hard to judge Rick for having this need that OnlyFans filled, which in turn made it hard to judge OnlyFans itself, which was giving women a platform through which they could provide a kind of public service, albeit one that could make them a lot of money. It made me think back to how skeptical I'd been that anyone could possibly want this thing just because I didn't want it. I believe the word for that is myopic. But also, I hadn't been fully honest with myself. Was I really so sure that it could never be me? In picturing it, I had to confront a memory that I had stowed safely in a shame drawer years earlier. According to my credit card statements, it happened in March of 2021. Her name was Willow. She'd popped up in my TikTok feed wearing a bikini. Then I followed her on Instagram, where I noticed that she had a mysterious link in her bio. I remember that it was late and I'd been drinking, and. I don't know, apparently I was curious enough about what Willow looked like naked that I spent $30 to gain access to her page. I remember feeling like I'd given in to something I wasn't proud of. And I also remember feeling anticipation, like what was I going to see on the other side of this wall? That's about the time I got the fraud alert from Citibank, followed by a concerned email from my accountant asking if the charge was mine. I panicked and told her to disregard it, that I'd ordered something by mistake, and also it was for work. I canceled my OnlyFans account, moved on with my life, and until now had never told a single soul. What's funny about that moment, in retrospect, is that I didn't even know what I was buying. I wasn't trying to strike up an online relationship with Willow. I didn't put in my credit card information because I thought she was going to talk to me or flirt with me or acknowledge my existence. As Annie said, part of me wonders what would have happened if my accountant hadn't caught me. Would I have been tempted when I realized I could send Willow a message to strike up a conversation? Is there a version of me that would have wanted to flirt with her to see where it went? The fact that that even seems possible compared to combined with the fact that millions of people are seeking out these relationships, often in secret, and so many others are making a living off of them, it makes me think something profound has changed in the world. Not just in how people consume porn or buy sex, but in how men and women relate to each other, period. And look, I'm happily married and have been with my wife for 15 years, since before even Tinder was a thing. All of which puts me at a remove from whatever shift has happened under my feet. A remove that Annie as a young gen zer does not feel and that my two year old daughter will definitely not feel as a young woman 20 years from now. Not to be all as a father of daughters, but I can't help worrying about the sexual and romantic landscape that she'll be growing up in. What is lost when relationships that are not only entirely online, but are also nakedly transactional become so normal? I realized I wasn't going to understand it alone. I needed to enlist a partner in crime. A woman on the inside who wasn't my little sister and who embodied onlyfans potential to change the lives of creators and subscribers alike. I needed someone to hold my hand and bring me into this world that I find both deeply alienating and clearly intriguing. There she is. Hi, Gracie. How's it going?

[Gracie Kanan]

You guys found it. Come in.

[Matt Ford]

Hello, I'm Matt Ford.

[Gracie Kanan]

And I'm Alice Levine.

[Rick]

And we're the hosts of British Scandal.

[Gracie Kanan]

Yes, we are. And our new series starts with a loud, lovable woman from Bermondsey who becomes one of the most famous people in Britain.

[Rick]

This is the story of Jade Goody,

[Gracie Kanan]

the reality TV star who built a fortune just by being herself and then

[Rick]

lost everything in one of the most public racism scandals Britain has ever seen.

[Gracie Kanan]

It's a story of fame and a

[Rick]

change of the conversation around cervical cancer forever.

[Gracie Kanan]

Follow British scandal wherever you get your podcasts or listen early and ad free on Audible.

[Audible Announcer]

Whether you're exploring your current fascinations or discovering new ones, Audible has all the stories that'll introduce you to your most fascinating self. Tap into a whole new world of heated conversations with a saucy romantasy series. Become your friend group's sci fi expert on the latest blockbuster book to screen adaptation. Or find unexpected reveals through the exclusive episodes of a viral true crime podcast. However you choose to listen, Audible keeps you fascinated so you can be just as fascinating all in one easy app. With plans now starting at $8.99. You'll get access to a over 1 million audiobooks and podcasts, including trending bestsellers, the hottest new releases, and exclusive podcasts you won't find anywhere else. Sign up now to become a member and get any audiobook every month, plus exclusive podcasts. Plans now start at $8.99.

[Matt Ford]

Audible.

[Audible Announcer]

Be fascinated, be fascinating.

[Matt Ford]

All right, let's see it.

[Gracie Kanan]

Okay. All right.

[Matt Ford]

Okay, let's see this dashboard.

[Gracie Kanan]

Okay. So dashboard.

[Matt Ford]

A few weeks after deciding to investigate the only Fans phenomenon, I was put in touch with a creator named Gracie Kanan.

[Gracie Kanan]

So my handle is Professional Girlfriend, which my friends all found funny because I've like been in relationships nonstop since I was 18. So I was like, I might as well use this skill set. Yeah, totally. Like, I remember people's birthdays and like, if they're taking French and stuff. And I was like, let's monetize my love. Let's do that.

[Matt Ford]

Gracie wears many hats. In addition to being a professional girlfriend on Onlyfans, she works a corporate day job and is also a stand up comedian.

[Gracie Kanan]

I work from home now. I'm on OnlyFans. And in case you guys don't know what Onlyfans is, ask your husband. And you know, people ask me too. Like, isn't degrading doing sex work for money? Like, sexual acts for money? I'm like, no, no, it's degrading doing it for free. Holy shit. When I was in my 20s, like I fucked a man, a grown man, in his bunk bed. Okay. And then I biked home

[Matt Ford]

in Winter.

[Annie]

Okay, that was a net negative.

[Gracie Kanan]

Not a cent. Completely pro boner.

[Matt Ford]

Sam and I met Gracie at her Brooklyn apartment on a sunny spring day last year. We settled into her living room and Gracie pulled out her laptop. I wanted to see under the hood, as it were, to get a glimpse at how subscribers were interacting with creators like Gracie on OnlyFans.

[Gracie Kanan]

So you can see, like, I have some that are like, hey, Gracie, I'm

[Matt Ford]

well, blah, blah, blah.

[Gracie Kanan]

And. And then we just have some, like, business things where it's like, yes, of course, Dog Ear Reverse would be great. And it's very, you know, like, I've been good. Those pictures are sexy, blah, blah, blah. So this is kind of like an older guy, and they like to leave tips and do a lot of, like, exclamation points, which I find very cute. Like, hot stuff sexy. And I'm like, I love you, Randy.

[Matt Ford]

You just click something that says add note.

[Gracie Kanan]

Oh, yeah, add notes. So, you know, you have a lot of subscribers. You especially might have, like multiple Brians or something. I have, like 18 Brians and sometimes, like, I'll give them nicknames. So it's like Butt Brian, like Foot Brian, you know, And.

[Matt Ford]

And that's what you put in the notes.

[Gracie Kanan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Matt Ford]

Is there a user who. You've taken notes on that you'd be willing to show me the notes?

[Gracie Kanan]

All right, this is. This is. Yeah, this is someone. I just likes Bush.

[Matt Ford]

Like the band. No,

[Gracie Kanan]

that is a keeper. Oh, I'm gonna corrupt you guys. Yes. Used to live in. My second best was the president loves Bush.

[Matt Ford]

Yeah, one or two.

[Gracie Kanan]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Be like, so it's like, you know,

[Matt Ford]

sipping a stovetop espresso. Gracie had made me. There was a part of me that was surprised I was talking to a sex worker. The old fart in my head was like, wait a second. She has a college degree and a full time job. Why is she doing this? And it turned out the answer was she had a college degree and a full time job.

[Gracie Kanan]

2, 3 years after I graduated. I think my loans were like $1,800 a month. that time, it was like twice as much as my rent.

[Matt Ford]

Gracie wanted to be a comedian, but in order to pay for her life and service those student loans, she had to spend most of her time working a desk job and hustling on the side.

[Gracie Kanan]

I was like, I want to do comedy. I know that at some point I will need to really focus on it and walk away from my full time job. And I knew that as long as I had $1,800 a month. I just couldn't do that.

[Matt Ford]

When she was about four years out of college, Gracie checked the balance on one of her loans. And despite having made tens of thousands of dollars in payments already, she saw that her balance had gone up.

[Gracie Kanan]

I remember, like, I printed it out. I went to Union Square on my lunch break, and I looked at it, and it felt like. It felt like at the beginning of a disaster movie where the geologist, like, prints it out.

[Matt Ford]

It's like, no, this is so much

[Gracie Kanan]

worse than we thought. And I was like. It was just like everything crumbled down. It was really bad. I felt like. I was like, this is a fucking. This is.

[Matt Ford]

This is never gonna end.

[Gracie Kanan]

It felt like my life. In that moment, it felt like my life was over. I was like, there's no way I'm gonna be able to live this secret life that I want of comedy and traveling and all this stuff. And then something just kicked in, and I was like, yeah, I'm not going to accept that.

[Matt Ford]

One day in 2017, Gracie was talking to another comedian she knew who worked as a dancer at a strip club. And Gracie asked her how much she made.

[Gracie Kanan]

I was like, I just need to ask, like, how much could you possibly make a night, thinking it would be like, 300. And she was like, mm, it's usually like a grand. And I was like, it would be financially irresponsible for me to not make become a stripper. It'd be just like leaving money on the end table, leaving money in the G string.

[Matt Ford]

After replying to a few ads on Craigslist, Gracie ended up getting hired at what's called a lap dance club. No stripper poles, no dancing on stage. Just girls walking around, flirting, and eventually inviting guys to a private room. It sounded like the strip club equivalent of the girlfriend experience. Tell me about the first night.

[Gracie Kanan]

My first night, I remember actually enjoying talking to these people. And I was like, this is great. I'm, like, potentially making money to flirt. Like, hell, yeah. And then I remember in that night, there was someone I gave a dance to, and I don't remember his face, but I remember his facial expression was that, like, he looked up at me and he looked, like, completely different than when we were talking at the bar. He was, like a finance bro, kind of quippy, blah, blah, blah. And then we were dancing. He looked, like, helpless. Like he. He looked, like, forlorn. Like he was, I don't know, like a puppy or something. And I was like, what? Like, there was this moment where I was like, whoa, whoa. And I had a lot of those moments the first night that I danced. And then I just kept having more moments as I kept dancing where I felt, like, increasingly more powerful in a way that almost made me kind of uncomfortable. I was already curious about these men when they started coming in for dances, because I was seeing kind of behind the curtain of what they were like in their regular lives. And then when I transitioned to OnlyFans a few years later and really understood the chatting and really started forming actual relationships with these people, I was like, ooh, this is a whole new level of intimacy. Like, this person is at home, I'm at home, we're chatting. Almost like I would with a friend or someone I'm dating. And that gave me, like, a whole new curiosity and a whole new voyeurism and a whole new all new access to these people in a way that I just could never have gotten at the club.

[Matt Ford]

Gracie's experience at the club and on OnlyFans made her sound more like Wendy with the Lost Boys than JLO and Hustlers. And it surprised me, like, this is not what I thought people were doing. But as we talked more, it became clear that Gracie's subscribers on OnlyFans had genuinely affected her, not just her bank account. She really took these guys seriously and she wanted to help them.

[Gracie Kanan]

What I find myself wondering is, like, who are these people and what are they getting from me that they cannot get from anywhere else? And does that indicate anything about emotional isolation, like, in the time that we live in?

[Matt Ford]

Gracie told me about one subscriber who had recently sent her a message saying, wow, you're so gorgeous. You're making my night unhinged, depressing. No one compares to you. And I thought this was telling. Instead of being like, you're right, no one compares to me. Now buy this video for 100 bucks. Gracie responded to him with some sincere

[Gracie Kanan]

advice, and I go, ha. It's a beautiful night out, even though I don't know exactly where you are. Ditch the app, put on a casual but sexy shirt, and go make eyes at a stranger at a bar. Irl.

[Matt Ford]

Wow.

[Gracie Kanan]

And he goes, only because you inspired me to do it. I was going to head out tomorrow night, but I'm going out tonight as well. Thanks for the motivation. And then 45 minutes later, he sends me a $15 tip under a post to unlock something.

[Matt Ford]

So he's at the bar on OnlyFans.

[Gracie Kanan]

Or just about to. Or just about to leave. Maybe he didn't go out. I need to.

[Matt Ford]

We were laughing Here. But in a way, this got to one of Gracie's big questions about OnlyFans. Was it helping male subscribers or was it stunting them?

[Gracie Kanan]

I often ask myself, is OnlyFans for subscribers training wheels or an emotional crutch? I want this person to feel confident. I would rather build up their confidence. They spend money and talk to me for as long as they do, and then they go out in the world.

[Matt Ford]

Let them fly the nest when they no longer need it.

[Gracie Kanan]

Yeah, totally.

[Matt Ford]

It sounded to me like Gracie wanted to be something more than a professional girlfriend to her subscribers. She wanted to be their white knight.

[Gracie Kanan]

I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna save men.

[Matt Ford]

Why do you think you want to save men so much?

[Gracie Kanan]

Great question. I feel like, because there's this masculine isolation that's so ingrained in our culture. And, you know, if men are using sexual encounters, whether that's virtual or in real life, to replace a lot of actual emotional vulnerability and just what that would look like, how society would look differently if men were actually more vulnerable just in their everyday life. So it's really about saving the world.

[Matt Ford]

The idea of saving the world by chatting with horny guys online seemed ambitious. On the other hand, Gracie was just one of millions of creators on OnlyFans. Maybe in aggregate, they could move the needle. On the other other hand, I had a feeling not everyone shared Gracie's altruistic approach to the job. Regardless if her mission was to save men and through this podcast, understand whether OnlyFans presented a viable way to that. My mission was to just figure out what the hell is going on as a journalist and yes, as a girl dad, but also just as a guy on the Internet, here's the discovery I want to make. It seems clear to me, like, given the fact that there are three and a half million or three million people on here and untold numbers of subscribers, that all this is happening all around me all the time. And I guess I've, like, been in this sort of prudish cocoon where, like, I don't know anything about it, which effectively means that, like, I don't really understand what's going on around me. But, like, okay, I always reference this, my favorite scene from movie Diner. Have you seen Diner?

[Gracie Kanan]

No.

[Matt Ford]

Kevin Bacon is driving a car with his friend, and they are driving past, like, a farm field, and they see this beautiful woman who they've seen galloping on a horse, and they, like, pull over to get her attention, and she, like, flirtatiously dismisses them.

[Gracie Kanan]

What's your name? Jane Chisholm.

[Matt Ford]

Anyway, the point is, after she like gallops away, Kevin Bacon turns to his friend and he goes, you ever get

[Rick]

the feeling, feeling there's something going on we don't know about?

[Matt Ford]

And I always just love that, like there's something going on that I don't know about.

[Gracie Kanan]

Just like a beautiful woman on a random horse and you're like, why am I seeing this? What is this? This is the tip of the iceberg of something.

[Matt Ford]

Exactly. And so as I've spent more time, even just in this like early research phase, like watching YouTube videos with like a 21 year old kid who is saying that he's a only fans manager and he's with his girls. It's just part of the world.

[Gracie Kanan]

It's a subculture.

[Matt Ford]

It's a subculture. But I think it's way more mainstream than that word would suggest. I think it's like, I think it's actually mainstream culture.

[Gracie Kanan]

Yeah, It's a different dimension and I've

[Matt Ford]

just been sort of like removed from it. And I think the world is just a different place than I think, than the one I see. Because I'm pretending like this isn't normal, but like, I just want to know what's normal. I just, I just want to know what's normal.

[Gracie Kanan]

Oh, look, the whole thing is if you're going to get to understand yourself and others, you got to. We got to go down the rabbit hole. Okay.

[Matt Ford]

All right. I should go home and put my daughter to bed.

[Gracie Kanan]

I got it. Like, take a shower.

[Matt Ford]

I gotta get off. OnlyFans I'm Leon Nayfak, journalist and podcast host.

[Gracie Kanan]

And I'm Gracie Kanan, comedian, writer and

[Matt Ford]

OnlyFans creator from Audible Originals and Prologue projects. This is Only Fantasy, an investigation into

[Gracie Kanan]

the changing nature of sex, work, porn and human intimacy itself.

[Matt Ford]

There's a lot of people just in

[Annie]

the dark, hiding and telling me their

[Matt Ford]

kinks and just being very shamed about it and saying, it feels so good

[Gracie Kanan]

to be able to do this.

[Annie]

I'm in a very vanilla marriage and there's no way my wife would ever

[Matt Ford]

play like this with me.

[Gracie Kanan]

I know his date, birth. I know his name. I know that he's married. I know what her name is. I know where he works. I know everything. I could ruin his life.

[Matt Ford]

Who is profiting from the fantasy being sold to subscribers? We must have made like 50k on her page one day and it was like, sound the alarms.

[Rick]

Of course it's recession proof.

[Audible Announcer]

If there are no bullets flying by your head, you are going to jerk off.

[Matt Ford]

It's the modern equivalent of the American dream.

[Gracie Kanan]

And what about the dream being sold to creators? This is the new Hollywood. And basically, you know, if you're going to set yourself up for the rest of your life, like, this is your opportunity. And what happens when fantasy meets reality? Oh, my God. How are you? All right, come on in. It's so good to meet you.

[Rick]

Same here.

[Matt Ford]

Great.

[Gracie Kanan]

You look like you're not gonna kill me.

[Matt Ford]

All that and more is ahead on Only Fantasy. Foreign. Listen to Only Fantasy on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Only Fantasy early and ad free. Right now, join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.