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Narrator
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.
Tyler
If you're there just to make money, you're not going to make it at all. You got to actually want to help the patients.
Narrator
This is Tyler. He started working nights as an aide in a psychiatric center in Virginia after graduating from college in May of 2020.
Tyler
I was excited to finally start making my own money and just finally having a job and a career. I was in a great mental space and I was surprised by how my anxiety wasn't as bad as I would have probably thought.
Interviewer/Reporter
Tyler had been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder during his sophomore year of college. So he wanted to go into a field where he could help other people going through mental health issues.
Tyler
I just like helping them at their lowest point and helping them get stabilized and get back on their feet.
Narrator
Back when he first started the job, Tyler felt good at work, but in his personal life, he struggled with loneliness. He worked nights, so it was hard to make friends.
Interviewer/Reporter
And of course, it was 2020, the height of COVID and Tyler was working with patients. Even if his schedule allowed it, he couldn't really spend time in person with anyone.
Tyler
I was used to being in college where I'm around people my age, even though, like, I wouldn't say I had a lot of friends, but it was easy just to find people to talk to. Like, I could go to the bar easily and watch a football game or watch a basketball game, and then there'd be people next to me and I could kind of have conversations with them. So when I graduated and Covid happened and then I was working at a hospital, I would have to just be locked in my room. And so I just got extremely lonely and I was just getting to a low point.
Interviewer/Reporter
And then Tyler found OnlyFans. He was one of the millions of new subscribers who stumbled onto the site at that time when the company's revenue jumped more than 550% in one year.
Tyler
As I started messaging creators and the messages started getting more personal and stuff, that's when I was like, oh, this is different. This isn't like any of the other sites.
Narrator
You can probably hear Tyler's anxiety and the timbre of his voice. He told us he once had to quit a job at a smoothie place because it was so hard speaking to customers while working the drive thru.
Tyler
I'm definitely a lot more comfortable writing in text. Like, for some reason when I'm like, messaging and writing I'm more of a yapper than I am when I'm not. It's kind of like a complete opposite.
Interviewer/Reporter
So as you might imagine, chatting with creators on OnlyFans opened up a world of social interaction that Tyler had never gotten to explore.
Tyler
I had, like, zero experience, like, flirting or anything like that. And so it was also kind of a new experience. Like, I never had someone who tried to, like, flirt with me before. And so that was definitely one of the things that I did like about about it.
Narrator
Tyler subscribed to and chatted with several different creators, but there was ultimately one who stood out. Her name was Katie.
Tyler
Our messages were kind of a little different with the other creators. And then we did have a lot in common, like with sports and stuff. That was the big thing that kind of drew me specifically to that creator. Like, her Instagram showed she went to the Super Bowl.
Rick
Oh, wow.
Tyler
And so I would ask, like, oh, how is it going to the Super Bowl? How's the vibe and stuff in the Super Bowl? Like, is it just celebrities and just stuff like that?
Narrator
Tyler says he routinely tipped and bought content from Katie. It seemed like the best way to keep her attention and to keep their daily chats going.
Tyler
I kept thinking, like, the more buying content or tipping I did, the more that the person would want to respond to my chatting and stuff.
Interviewer/Reporter
Between tipping Katie to chat and purchasing her pay per view content, the charges added up fast.
Tyler
I first subscribed in July, and then it was probably like, late August. Like, I was spending an absurd amount of money on not just her, but just everyone. Like, I maxed out one of my credit cards, so I stopped for a little bit. Then in December, I was just bored. And then I just opened the app and started talking and then kind of got hooked on it again. By January 2022, I was messaging every single day.
Narrator
Because you're starting to talk to her every day. What are you imagining her as? Like, what attracted you and kind of what kind of what her personality was like.
Tyler
She seemed like someone who was kind and hard working and someone who I guess knew who they wanted to be and was like, I guess live their life how they wanted. And someone who I felt like I kind of felt like I could learn stuff from, whether it was, like, learning stuff socially or even learning stuff, like, sexually and just someone who I felt I could trust.
Interviewer/Reporter
How did it go from just talking about sports and everyday stuff to things that were maybe a little bit deeper and more personal?
Tyler
Like, I talked about my loneliness and just like, how I'm for Some reason that's hard to meet friends. And without even like tipping or anything, she was responding quickly and like doing what I would say to my, like my patients who are struggling with like anxiety and loneliness and stuff like that. And so I felt like it was genuine. Like she actually felt bad that what I was going through and wanted to do something to help.
Interviewer/Reporter
We usually associate OnlyFans with sexual and romantic. This almost more sounds like a friendship.
Tyler
Yeah, I thought it was like a long distance friendship, I guess you could say, like people who play video games and they have like friends on kind of like that. I like the sexual content. I'm not gonna like deny like that. I didn't like. I liked it and I enjoyed it, but that wasn't why I wanted to like message her and stuff. I genuinely had like a friendship.
Narrator
When was the first time you started having doubts?
Tyler
It would have been a year after I started, which was like August of 2022. That was the first time I saw articles about like, how they use chatters and how the chatters kind of make it seem like you're chatting with the actual model instead of the chatters. That like, I guess kind of shocked me a little bit.
Interviewer/Reporter
Chatters are essentially ghostwriters on OnlyFans, usually hired by agencies to respond on the creator's behalf so they don't have to. I don't use them. I run my own account personally and respond to all my subscribers. Then again, I don't have hundreds of thousands of them. But for creators who do use chatters, it's not something they really advertise to subscribers like Tyler.
Tyler
I just couldn't understand how anybody could lie to someone like that.
Narrator
That's because the whole premise of OnlyFans is authentic connection. And creators know that their subscribers are there because they think they're really talking to them. And even though ostensibly everyone on OnlyFans knows it's a fantasy, what happens on the platform can have real consequences.
Interviewer/Reporter
This is only fantasy episode 4 we're all born naked and the rest is dragon foreign.
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Rick
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Amanda Torrey Meeding
My name is Amanda Torreymeeting. I'm a drag artist, an actress, a writer, a diplomat, a CEO and I used to be an OnlyFans chatter Amanda
Narrator
Torrey Meeding is a drag performer who came into the public eye as a contestant on season 16 of RuPaul's Drag Race.
Interviewer/Reporter
But before she got famous as a Ru girl, she worked for a large LA based OnlyFans agency. As a chatter.
Amanda Torrey Meeding
I was just like in their OnlyFans account talking to their subscribers, selling, you know, pictures of their titties or their asses and making them lots of money. While I was making
Narrator
maybe it was
Amanda Torrey Meeding
like 20 an hour. It was kind of fierce.
Interviewer/Reporter
Amanda told us she sat through a training PowerPoint and everything and was surprised at how similar it was to the onboarding process for any of the other corporate jobs she'd had in the past.
Amanda Torrey Meeding
Honestly, when we got into like the training, it was a lot more sales that they were telling us that it was going to be like you are a salesperson and you are expected to hit, you know, a revenue goal and like these are the ways that we try and do it. We have the paid posts, we have the subscription fees, we have like pay to chat. So yeah, it was, it was honestly just a lot of sales.
Narrator
Amanda and her fellow Chatters were assigned to specific creators accounts. She thinks she worked on at least 10 over the course of her seven months at the company. The team was given weekly sales goals to reach. Amanda was Pretty sure that one big account had a goal of $100,000 a week.
Interviewer/Reporter
$100,000 a week. That is a house a month. I mean it's a small house in like Missouri, but still. This agency that Amanda worked for represented top tier creators with massive followings and they were raking in the dough.
Amanda Torrey Meeding
I think our craziest day was like, we must have made like 50k on her page one day and it was like, sound the alarms. We can take the rest of the
Interviewer/Reporter
day off Open the champagne.
Amanda Torrey Meeding
Yeah, exactly.
Narrator
Amanda was also given a sort of style guide for each creator. Which emojis they liked to use, which ones they would never use, how explicit you could be when speaking on their behalf, and what their sexual boundaries were. When subscribers requested custom content, it also
Interviewer/Reporter
included a dossier of sorts on the creator's likes, dislikes, and basic personal information. Amanda had to be prepared for anything a subscriber might ask about.
Amanda Torrey Meeding
The men would ask a lot of, like, personal questions, right? So, like, they wanted to know where these girls grew up. They wanted to know what kind of movies or music or TV that they liked. They wanted to know, like, just measurements, like, bust, waist, hips. Like, they just needed to know. I was like, that's so nuts to me.
Interviewer/Reporter
I've gotten pretty used to these questions in my DMs. My subscribers have asked me everything from what type of lotion I use to what my reoccurring nightmares are. But just like Tyler, there are a lot of men on OnlyFans looking for something more than get to know you Icebreakers.
Amanda Torrey Meeding
Some were just there to jerk it fiercely. Some were there for, like, the girlfriend experience. They wanted a girl to say good morning to. You know, they wanted to be asked how their day was. They wanted to ask about her day. They genuinely just wanted, like, someone to connect with, like, in that way, which, yeah, it's. It's. I mean, that's like, a very simple thing to need, and, like. Like, everybody needs that, but it's just like, they hadn't figured out how to make that happen organically, I guess. You know, people talk about the male loneliness epidemic, and it's like the. I've seen the. The patients. I've treated them, actually.
Interviewer/Reporter
Even though Amanda was being somewhat cheeky and comparing herself to a doctor, she did genuinely feel like a caretaker at times, and she understood why her patients were so eager for her services. I've certainly felt like a therapist when my subscribers tell me about a bad day at work or a recent heartbreak. And in my noble and ongoing quest to save men, I found myself leaning into that role when presented with the opportunity. And there are a lot of opportunities,
Amanda Torrey Meeding
like, if you are a person who is very lonely and, like, starving for connection, and you think you're talking to this beautiful girl who is, like, literally a model and sends you, you know, pictures and videos and audio messages all the time and, like, asks you how your day is and says good morning and good night and, like, genuinely, like, pretends to show an interest in you, like, you're gonna believe that like, that is real. If that's something that you're like desperate for, you know, but like you could look around and put the pieces together.
Interviewer/Reporter
Yeah, you believe what you want to believe.
Amanda Torrey Meeding
You believe what you want to believe. And that is like. That was one of my big takeaways.
Rick
I knew it was not real, but the conversations were real, or so they seemed.
Interviewer/Reporter
This is Rick, who you met at the beginning of our series. While Amanda was chatting away from her company provided laptop in la, Rick was in deep with Jenna, the slender blonde creator he had formed a bond with.
Rick
Just talking non sexual. That was the part that I liked and I think that was the part that kind of appealed to her as a model, is that she had someone who found her attractive and appealing in a non sexual way.
Narrator
Eventually, as Rick told our producer Sam, Jenna's messages to him seemed to breach the boundary between fantasy and real life.
Rick
Things continued to move forward and she was talking about how that she would really like to have a relationship with me. She'd like, you know, me to be her, her man, I mean, her boyfriend and she'd be my, my girlfriend in person or like online. Well, that's the thing that was discussed. Of course she was very coy, you know, no personal details, which on only fans they're not allowed to give personal details. They have a lot of protections in place that, you know, a girl in that position is not going to want to give her details out to anybody anyway. But I kind of felt like the way our relationship had gone that surely she could at least talk to me
Interviewer/Reporter
on the telephone instead of phone calls. Rick says that Jenna encouraged him to stay on OnlyFans and buy more of her pay per view content.
Rick
She started asking me to let her make a custom video for me. Well, you know, that sounded pretty interesting because it would be something made just for me and you know, she would probably use my name and what have you in it, so it becomes much more personal and more real.
Tyler
Right.
Rick
And so I'm, you know, I'm interested. And for a seven minute custom video, it was $2,000. $2,000? Yes, ma'. Am.
Amanda Torrey Meeding
Wow.
Rick
The total that I invested in her in the entire time was over $12,000. Holy. Sorry. Part of my French. But okay, you know, things like my, my girlfriends are going to this spa this weekend and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it is going to cost me $1,000 if I sign up with them. And I really, really want to go, but I just don't have the thousand dollars. Can you help me? Okay, so I help, but she doesn't go to the spa. I changed my mind. I'm going to use that for something else that I want or I need a weekend away and I've got this hotel and sends me information about the hotel and how it's really a special place and she just needs some time to herself, blah, blah blah and fifteen hundred dollars. And it went on like that, on and on.
Interviewer/Reporter
OnlyFans has a strict policy that you're not allowed to use the platform to arrange in person meetings with subscribers. But according to Rick, Jenna had managed to connect with him on a third party app and started messaging him on there. She said she wanted to become a real life couple and Rick was buying what she was selling.
Rick
I'll tell you how, how much I was into this and believing it was real. The week after Thanksgiving, I was scheduled to arrive in Miami on Monday and leave on a Friday. I had already booked my hotel and on Saturday evening she said that I should cancel my plans to come because she just wasn't going to have time to spend with me and that she probably wouldn't even see me the entire time I was there. But it had reached the point that we were supposed to meet in person and we were going to sit down and talk about things and steps going forward. You know, marriage was discussed. She had discussed wanting to marry me and be my wife. That's how far it got.
Amanda Torrey Meeding
Wow.
Rick
Wow. And she was doing it strictly to scam me to get money out of me.
Narrator
When OnlyFans became a billion dollar company after the pandemic, it introduced what Marlo from the Wire would have called one of those good problems because all those new subscribers meant an explosion in the number of messages and content requests that creators were receiving from fans. In response, creators with large followings turned to agencies for help. And according to a Reuters investigation that looked at more than 160 agencies in 2024, chatters play an essential supporting role in the business.
Interviewer/Reporter
Very little of that chatting work is done by Americans like Amanda, who we heard from earlier. A huge amount of it is outsourced to developing nations overseas where there are large workforces already trained as online customer service reps who can be paid a few dollars an hour to chat on a creator's behalf. They often work on commission, so they're incentivized to upsell customers. I talked with one guy based out of the Philippines who showed me a whole training presentation deck that gave newly recruited chatters tips and scripts on how to respond to their subscribers. Okay, Leon, let me Share some screenshots with you, please? Yeah. Okay, here's the first one.
Narrator
Okay. Well, this is pretty tame, I would say. It's labeled knowing the order of operations and it says sometimes there can be a lot of different things going on when you log onto an account with. But you should use our strategy to focus your attention to get the maximum payment from each fan. Follow these tips and you will never miss a sale opportunity.
Interviewer/Reporter
Yeah, it does sound very, like, corporate and buttoned up. Or like this one. Understanding your job, why it matters. You must remember that you are the model. You should always try to convince the fan that they are talking to the model in the content to get the best outcome.
Narrator
The best outcome, meaning take all the money. Yes, take all the money.
Interviewer/Reporter
Exactly. Best outcome. It says, quote, the training material will help you understand the strategies we use to. To maximize the profit while providing a good fan experience.
Narrator
Okay, so at least they care about the fans having a good experience.
Interviewer/Reporter
Yeah. Get that five star Yelp review. This is one of my favorites. Sexting guide. Okay. So of course I could read these out loud because I feel comfortable doing that, but it would be so, so much more fun to have you read them and pick your favorites.
Narrator
Okay, I was just about to say, you know, I think these are ones that you should read.
Tyler
No, no, no.
Interviewer/Reporter
I've already been way too comfortable on this podcast. This is part of your education.
Narrator
Okay, okay. All right. This one's funny. Stop everything. Stop what you're doing. Lipstick emoji. I want to show my body off.
Interviewer/Reporter
That's insane. That's like a sexy fire drill. So I. So I guess the idea is you can just copy and paste this.
Narrator
Yeah, I mean, seems really easy in a way. I will say the others in here that I did not elect to read are significantly more explicit.
Interviewer/Reporter
Okay, okay. I'm going to let you off the hook. But of course, there's the last slide, which is my personal favorite.
Narrator
Oh, my God.
Interviewer/Reporter
And this is the thank you slide, which says, leon, good luck on your chatting.
Narrator
Let's empty their balls. Followed by a bunch of.
Interviewer/Reporter
A bunch of very tasteful emojis.
Narrator
Yes, very tasteful. Bullseye. Eggplant Devil. Gizzy face. I mean, the thing that makes me wonder is like, does OnlyFans know that these kinds of documents exist? Is this allowed?
Interviewer/Reporter
Well, I mean, they don't encourage it. But here's the thing. OnlyFans Terms of Service also don't explicitly prohibit using chatters. They don't mention chatters at all. But if the chatters are paying off for the creators, they're also paying off for OnlyFans, I imagine. Yeah, yeah, because remember, the site takes a 20% cut of all the money a creator brings in.
Narrator
Right.
Interviewer/Reporter
So in 2024, that money, that collective 20% or was $1.4 billion. So without these chatters, who are trained to get as much money as possible out of every subscriber, OnlyFans would be making a lot less.
Narrator
All that success has predictably brought a lot of scrutiny, and the tactics used by OnlyFans, as well as its creators and the agencies who represent them started receiving press attention that eventually became hard for subscribers like Rick and Tyler to miss. It was in the summer of 2022, a couple of years into subscribing to Katie on OnlyFans, that Tyler first came across articles reporting that OnlyFans models were hiring people to impersonate them in private chats.
Tyler
I guess at the time they called them ghostwriters, which is what I guess what chat, what they call chatters now. But at the time it was ghostwriters. I was definitely anxious and my mind was like, I was running through all these scenarios about, well, if I'm not actually talking to her, I just told someone stuff that that was like, extremely personal.
Interviewer/Reporter
Tyler logged into OnlyFans and asked Katie directly if that was something she was doing. He shared screenshots with us of the conversation that he had with Katie, confronting her about it.
Narrator
Yeah, and I have to say he was extremely polite. He said, and I'm reading here as someone with generalized anxiety disorder, not knowing whether I'm talking to the person I thought I'd been talking to or if I was talking to random people, answering the mess that person's behalf. That idea is horrifying to me and it's making me think about every conversation we had and overanalyzing whether there were signs. And then he said that if he wasn't talking to Katie, he wouldn't be mad and he wouldn't try to get revenge, but he would be disappointed. He says, I just want the truth so I can ease my anxiety. That's really all I'm trying to do. You got a pretty definitive reply from her when you put the question to her in this very respectful, non accusatory way. Can you just summarize sort of how she responded?
Tyler
Basically, she said that of course it's her and that she doesn't let anybody on her account, let alone talk to her subs. And that she knows there's rumors that go around and that people hire agencies or outsource and that that couldn't be her.
Narrator
And did you believe her?
Tyler
Yeah, I. I just trusted that she was telling the truth. I didn't think that she would be lying to me about it. So I just kind of. I believed what she said. And so I kind of. I guess you could say I let my guard down. Right. I stopped kind of worrying about it and just focused on keeping chatting. And I started tipping a little bit more, too.
Interviewer/Reporter
So I kind of want to talk specifically about this one subscriber we talked to. We talked to this person for, like, three hours, and he seemed super sweet, super soft, outspoken. And he really, like, fell for this person and spent, like, tens of thousands of dollars. But then he would be like, I don't think it's you. And then they would respond immediately with, like, no, babe, of course it's me. And, like, a video that might have been me. A voice, honestly.
Narrator
And they would get really mad at him and they would act offended.
Amanda Torrey Meeding
We would also do that. Like, that was sort of like the emotional stance they wanted us to come from, which was being mad at them when they, like, confronted us about not being the real person. Like, we would. We would have to get, like, a little indignant with it and, like, be like, what? How could you ever, like, question me? Like, there was so much gaslighting involved.
Narrator
Okay, so, Gracie, this is where I have to confess something, which is that when Amanda was talking to us about this, like, gaslighting script that she used, I was like, I know about this. I experienced this. I remember exactly how it feels to be on the receiving end of this.
Interviewer/Reporter
Wait on OnlyFans.
Audible Advertiser
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 to over 1 million audiobooks and podcasts, including trending best sellers, 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.
Tyler
Audible.
Audible Advertiser
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 member and get any audiobook every month, plus exclusive podcasts. Plans now start at $8.99.
Narrator
Audible.
Audible Advertiser
Be fascinated, be fascinating.
Narrator
So, okay, do you remember Willow, the model I briefly subscribed to years ago and then panicked and told my accountant it was an accident?
Interviewer/Reporter
Yes. Fraud alert girl.
Narrator
Yes, Fraud alert girl. Exactly. Well, when we started working on this podcast, I got on OnlyFans, I registered for an account, and I subscribed to the, like, a bunch of people just to see how it worked. Right? And Willow was one of them because, I don't know, I knew she had one, and I guess I wanted to return to the scene of the crime and see what was there.
Interviewer/Reporter
God, I love seeing you explain this. So did you finally get to see Willow naked? For journalistic reasons, of course.
Narrator
No.
Interviewer/Reporter
For science. Yeah.
Narrator
No, not even for journalistic reasons. As far as I can tell, she only posts bikini photos and that's about it. But I did try to talk to her, and I did tip her because I had to in order to get her to respond. So we only exchanged, like, I don't know, 10 messages total. We barely got past her, like, asking me my name and where I was from. And then I was sort of reading over our chat log and I noticed all these, like, little grammar mistakes and strange usage. And again, in the name of journalism, I was like. And I'm reading now from my inbox. Hey. I was looking at our conversation again, and I noticed some unusual grammar mistakes that I wouldn't expect from a native U.S. speaker. Have I been speaking to the real Willow or a Chatter?
Interviewer/Reporter
Oh, so you just, like, came right out and said it? Yeah. What did she say?
Narrator
She said, leon, way to make me self conscious about my spelling and my grammar. And then she told me it was inappropriate, that I had asked and said that it made her sad. No. And she sent me a sad face
Interviewer/Reporter
emoji no, not the sad face emoji.
Narrator
Yeah. And I gotta tell you, I felt horrible. Uh, I was like, oh, my God, I made this woman sad. Sort of like vacillating between, you know, okay, this is still obviously just the chatter trying to reel me back in, you know, and the overwhelming feeling was that, like, this person's really hurt by what I said. And so I, like, sent her another message and sent her, like, more money and was like, I'm sorry.
Interviewer/Reporter
Oh, my God. So her ploy worked and you were just probably chatting with a man in the Philippines the whole time.
Narrator
It did. It totally worked. It totally, totally worked. And I guess what I find interesting about the experience is that if I were to step outside of myself for a second, it just seems so easy actually to conjure the suspension of disbelief that I would have thought I was immune to. It really did not take much for her to neutralize my suspicion by being like, you've said something hurtful. So when Tyler accepted that Katie was telling him the truth when she said she didn't use chatters, I can totally understand how he accepted it.
Interviewer/Reporter
Yeah, it's like you believe what you want to believe.
Rick
Right.
Narrator
As Amanda said. And Rick, when he got caught up in this fantasy of running away with Jenna, he noticed all the same things I did, like the weird grammar and the fact that Jenna was online all the time and never not responding to messages.
Interviewer/Reporter
Giveaway.
Narrator
Yeah. And it made him question whether any of it was real. But ultimately, all the inertia is in the direction of believing it's really them.
Interviewer/Reporter
I mean, Rick even told us that Jenna admitted to him she used an agency, so he assumed that at least some of the time he was talking to Chatters. But even knowing that he confessed, it was still hard to stop talking to her. Her in quotes.
Rick
I don't even know what to say because I am still susceptible to the person. Non person that I. I fell for, because I really did fall for this person. Because our communications and our conversations were. Were good. They were real. They were real life. They were, you know, family type conversations. Except I still don't know her phone number. I still don't know her last name. I still don't know anything for sure about her family. I don't know if she was born in Miami or not. I don't know if she lives in Miami. And so, you know, you start to lose your faith in humanity, you start to lose your faith in human interaction, and you withdraw more and more and more. And that's kind of where I am I have withdrawn to the point that I don't interact with human beings unless I absolutely have to. And you can tell I'm a very verbal person. Yeah, I tell people all the time. I can talk the horns off of the billy goat and make them like it. And it's partly because I'm so lonely. I'm a very lonely man. My daughter and her husband came for my surgery in July, and that's the last I have seen of my family. That's the last visitor that I have received into my home. That is the last person I've encountered on more than a shopping trip or something like that in over a year. I'm extremely lonely and would love to have a friend, but I don't have any. I'm still lonely, and I still wish, you know, that the situation with Jenna were real. Hey, I'm intelligent. I have an IQ of 176, extremely high. But that doesn't make me wise. It doesn't make me grounded, and it doesn't make me able to. To always say, oh, this is hogwash, and walk away, because I'm also human and emotional and desire to hear things that they're very, you know, willing to say and not mean. So I was taken advantage of, and do I feel like an idiot? Yes. Do I realize that I'm played the fool? Absolutely. Would I do it again? I don't know. Because I did it once. I might be subject to do it again if somebody was good enough. I don't know, and I hate to even think that about myself. But she was so convincing in the beginning and throughout the beginning of our supposed relationship that by the time it got to the we're an item phase, I was in. I believed her. And then when I found out that she wasn't, I was crushed, destroyed. And suddenly you begin to see yourself as a dollar bill, and outside of that, you're nothing.
Narrator
What makes a good chatter, like, when you're training them, like, what are you teaching them how to do? And like, what are the natural talents that you look for when you're hiring for those jobs?
Michael Eisman
The number one skill that you're looking for is obviously a person who understands sales, but understands sales in a deeper psychological sense.
Narrator
Michael Eisman, the COO of Echelon Agency, whom you met earlier in the series, talked to us about the chatters his company employs. I asked Michael how he felt about the ethics of using traditional sales tactics on subscribers who think they're paying a woman they have a crush on to talk to them.
Michael Eisman
You know, I'VE struggled with this quite a bit over the years because I think of myself as a pretty principled and ethical person. And so there's obviously a. There's a serious concern that you're misleading people. Here's what I'll say on that one. We never deny. So the general rule would be like, if somebody gets on and says, hey, is this actually a Sarah that I'm talking to or is this some chatter? We would not say, no, this is definitely Sarah. We would say, baby, we've been talking for months. We've shared intimate details about ourselves with each other. Why would you ask me a question like that? That's so insulting? And I struggle with it. I struggle with it because I'm right there with you. I definitely there's a questionable ethical issue here. However, my response to that is this person is paying to have what they believe is a true intimate relationship with Sarah, with people who maybe they're not actually Sarah on the other side, but they're expressing genuine care. They're genuinely interested and concerned about their lives. They have genuine non sexual conversations with them. And for me, when we're in a situation right now as a society where people are becoming more and more isolated because of their phones, because of work from home, because of a collapse of many in person social structures, when we're at a point in society where genuine human interaction is diminished so dramatically, I think so long as you're doing so in a way that does not take advantage of the person in the sense of scanning them out of large sums of money. I personally, I can sleep well at night knowing that they're looking for companionship, they're getting companionship and they're not paying a fortune to get it.
Narrator
Tyler spent almost $60,000 over the four years he was talking to Katie on OnlyFans. As you heard from Rick, he says he spent around $12,000 on Jenna. We talked to another man who told us he spent almost $200,000 in just a few months. At the time, he was married and going through a manic episode.
Interviewer/Reporter
We do want to be careful here to say that Michael does not represent either of the creators that Tyler and Rick talked to us about. He told us that he drew a line at the type of behavior that Rick experienced with Jenna. Telling a subscriber that you want to get married or asking for thousands of dollars for plane tickets, Michael said was completely unethical. But what about Katie, the creator that Tyler felt betrayed by? As it happened, Michael actually used to work for the agency that represented her
Michael Eisman
unruly so here's the thing about the folks who feel betrayed. My heart does actually go out to those folks. I get it. That's gotta be horrific. You know, I can understand that. Could be emotionally damaging for some folks. I would also, I guess, and I hate whenever other people make this argument that this is really the honest truth of the matter. Those folks are going to go looking for those kinds of relationships no matter what. And there are significantly worse bad actors out there than what the small fraction of agencies that are doing this ethically are going to do. You could end up chatting with a creator who employs an agency like the one I work with, where we keep detailed notes about everyone. We follow up with them, we wish them happy birthday on their birthdays. We really do a painstaking amount of effort to keep detailed dossiers on all of the fans. And that's a level of care that you weren't receiving otherwise. We had a girl who worked for me at an agency a while back who we were going to transfer her to a new team, to a different team, which means she would have been working on different clients. And she refused. She was like, there's three clients on this account. They mean so much to me. I love talking to them. I feel like a deep personal connection to them. I don't want to stop chatting with them.
Tyler
Wow.
Michael Eisman
And so I would argue again,
Narrator
if you.
Michael Eisman
What you were in search of was companionship for somebody to actually care about you, and you already understood that you were paying for it. Because that's the other aspect of this. It's not like the people who feel like they got betrayed got on there and spent $0.
Narrator
Right.
Michael Eisman
The people who feel like they got betrayed are because they were spending, you know, anywhere between 20 and a few hundred dollars a month on this companionship. I think it's really a difficult ethical fine line to walk, but I like to think that the way that we walk it is probably the most ethical way you could walk it.
Narrator
There have been at least two class action lawsuits filed in the US court system alleging that OnlyFans, along with a number of major management companies, defrauded subscribers by not telling them they communicating with chatters. These lawsuits alleged that OnlyFans is essentially facilitating a massive romance scam. I should add, we were connected to both Rick and Tyler by a paralegal working on one of these cases, though neither of them was a plaintiff in either lawsuit.
Interviewer/Reporter
It was seeing press about one of the lawsuits that raised alarm bells a second time for Tyler. This was two years after the first article he'd read about chatters. This time, he noticed that one of the agencies listed in the lawsuit was an agency he knew Katie worked with. Katie's name, in fact, appears in one of the complaints.
Narrator
He also noticed that shortly after the lawsuit was announced, Katie's OnlyFans profile had added a little disclaimer that said in legalese, something about how people from her team might be chatting on her behalf. On top of that, Tyler found Reddit posts where other subscribers were complaining that they were pretty sure Katie was using chatters.
Interviewer/Reporter
Once again, Tyler confronted Katie. This time she admitted she did have a, quote, team of people that helped her when she needed it. However, she held firm that Tyler had been talking to the real her. But by this point, Tyler could no longer convince himself that Katie wasn't lying.
Narrator
And then in February, Tyler saw another post on Reddit from someone claiming to have evidence that Katie was posting photos that had been stolen from other models and cropping them so you couldn't tell it was someone else.
Tyler
That was very upsetting, and especially since I spent a few. Few thousand on pictures that wasn't even her. So not only was I not talking to her, I was getting content that wasn't even her either.
Narrator
How did that feel, Tyler, in that moment? Like, I know it's probably. This is probably a hard one to try to put yourself back into, but if you, to whatever extent, you can, like, just describe the feeling of kind of having this suspicion come true.
Tyler
I was definitely very hurt. I was probably at my lowest point. Like, I was depressed. I was barely able to get out of bed. Like, I tried getting my mind off. Off of it by going on a snowboarding trip by myself. And I ended up just staying in the hotel the whole time. I didn't even go out. I was. I was. I hate to say say it, I was. I was a little bit suicidal as well, because I wasted. I felt like I wasted 3.5 years for something that wasn't real. And I thought it was. And I just didn't understand, like, why they would do this, like, why they'd do this to me. Like, I. I try to be as, like, respectful and open and honest in the messages. Like, I just, I was extremely hurt.
Interviewer/Reporter
Is there something that still feels real to you about it? Like, real comfort? Or is it all kind of just, like, doesn't mean anything anymore?
Tyler
It kind of just doesn't mean anything. I guess because it didn't come from a place of, like, something that was genuine. They wanted to make me feel like this so I could Continue to still tip. And so I guess I just. It makes me more upset than helps now.
Narrator
Do you think having her there for those two, three years, do you think it ended up kind of discouraging you from going out and looking for real connections in your real life?
Tyler
Yeah, that's one thing that I was upset because I. I thought I was kind of. I guess, kind of helping myself by messaging her. But even when I was out with friends, I was still thinking, like, I would still find time to send a quick message or whatever. I was still. I wasn't all the way with my friends and family gatherings. I was always kind of somewhere else when I was messaging with her, if that makes sense.
Interviewer/Reporter
What's your attitude towards, like, meeting someone right now or, like, dating, whether it's in real life or starting on an app or something? Like, do you feel like you're ready?
Tyler
I would like to. I don't think I'm ready right now. I think, like, it's hard to trust people right. Right now. I guess before I first started on OnlyFans, I was naive, and I trusted everybody. I thought, like, I just had to be nice to somebody and they would be nice back to me. And now I'm even more guarded, and I know I'm not ready, but I hope one day that I am and that I find the right person, and then I can just laugh about this situation. But it's just really hard right now. And so I want to work on myself right now and then once I. Once I'm ready. I know. I know. I know it.
Interviewer/Reporter
Sorry, I'm getting emotional. When Tyler said I just didn't understand why they would do this, I felt like I was watching hope die in real time. I wanted to say anything that would bring him some comfort, whether it was true or not. I wondered if things would have been different if he'd fallen for another girl on another page, a real one, one who actually cared, even if it was just a little bit.
Narrator
Yeah, I want a romantic comedy where a chatter falls in love with a subscriber.
Amanda Torrey Meeding
I mean, listen, there were a couple of them that almost got me girl. And I had to remember that I wasn't. Was it the girl?
Interviewer/Reporter
Been there.
Amanda Torrey Meeding
I had to remember that, like, if this person saw me on the street, they would literally not know me. They would keep walking, and if I tried to talk to them, maybe they would literally try and beat me up.
Narrator
The reason Amanda says this is that she's trans. She was born male, identified as gay for much of her life, married and divorced. A man. She was a chatterer during the period following her divorce. And at the time, she identified as non binary.
Amanda Torrey Meeding
Like, some of the guys who were, like, actually cute or attractive or hot in any way. Like, when I would be, like, sexting them, I would be like, oh, I'm into this. And, like, you know, my heart would flutter a little bit. Like, when they told me what a beautiful girl I was, and I was like, oh, I really am. I was like, you don't know that.
Tyler
I.
Amanda Torrey Meeding
But I also. But I.
Narrator
Well, yes, I am.
Interviewer/Reporter
Amanda performed in drag as a woman, and while that was certainly part of her gender journey, she told us that being on OnlyFans impersonating female creators was a crucial piece of it too.
Amanda Torrey Meeding
I really do, in retrospect, kind of feel like spending all of this time pretending to be these beautiful girls, like, and talking to these horny men and, like, receiving that kind of attention from them as a woman, like, character wise, I guess, was like, one of the things that kind of pushed me toward, like, exploring those things about myself and, like, hey, wait a second. Maybe I do like this. And, like, I like being flirted with when the per. When that person sees me as a woman more than I do when that person sees me as a man. Like, in the trans community, they call it, like, the egg. Like, when you haven't realized that you're trans and you haven't, like, fully gotten there, like, they call you an egg, and so it's like they'll talk about the things that cracked the egg or put cracks into the egg.
Interviewer/Reporter
And I was talking to weird guys online, honey.
Amanda Torrey Meeding
Because white girl doesn't need a phase of talking to weird guys online. I feel like it's a rite of
Interviewer/Reporter
passage, especially some of the compliments are, okay, great.
Amanda Torrey Meeding
I was like, yes, my titties are big. Thank you.
Interviewer/Reporter
You're like, and this feels right, right?
Amanda Torrey Meeding
I was like, no, maybe they should be.
Interviewer/Reporter
Amanda came out as trans after her turn on RuPaul's Drag Race. When we met up with her last summer, she'd actually just had facial feminization surgery, and she was preparing to launch a nationwide Face Reveal tour.
Narrator
Would you ever get an OnlyFans?
Amanda Torrey Meeding
Oh, my God. I'm literally, like, talking to my friends about how to make that happen.
Interviewer/Reporter
Let's consult. I got some ideas.
Amanda Torrey Meeding
Yes. Well, especially, like. Cause what? I just got surgery on my face. I. I've been on hormones for, like, a year and a half and some change. Like, I'm starting to feel comfortable in my body in a way that I never was before. And like, thinking about being a creator in 2025 and like, having 100,000 followers on Instagram and like, I'm still doing a day job and like, worrying about rent. I'm like, hmm, I don't know if I'm utilizing all my resources, like, the way I could be. You know what I mean? Like, I take videos of my titties bouncing, like, just to show my boyfriend and like my close friends. Like, so if somebody was like, paying me to see that. Oh, honey, come, come subscribe.
Interviewer/Reporter
Come subscribe, come again.
Amanda Torrey Meeding
Exactly, honey, a come festival.
Narrator
Would you hire a chatter?
Amanda Torrey Meeding
I'm not at liberty to disguise Perfect.
Interviewer/Reporter
There's that training coming in. There's a training coming in. Damn.
Amanda Torrey Meeding
I would. I would.
Narrator
In the wake of his experience with Katie, Tyler told us he was looking into his legal options. Though both class action lawsuits against OnlyFans have been dismissed, for now, Tyler has taken his case. Where many disgruntled men go to Reddit, where Tyler actively posts warnings to other men about Katie. In one post, he wondered if Katie had gotten a jaw implant and said that if she did, she should be on the reality TV show Botched because the doctor messed that chin up so bad. He's also posted that Katie definitely only goes to the super bowl in the hopes of finding a dumb professional athlete who will date her. At least to me, it seems like some of the loneliness and lack of of connection that Tyler was looking to fill on OnlyFans has now found a different outlet.
Interviewer/Reporter
And to me, it seems like Tyler's experience on OnlyFans has left him more broken and resentful than when he found it. Like the platform has created one more hopeless, lonely, angry man.
Narrator
Take these OnlyFans girls brains.
Rick
Put it in a male body.
Narrator
These would be in poverty, bro, because
Rick
they don't have any real tangible skill sets.
Michael Eisman
They're not entertaining, they're not funny, they're not cool, they don't teach their audience anything. Dudes are just watching because they're sims.
Interviewer/Reporter
If our question is whether OnlyFans acts as training wheels or a crutch, the answer clearly can be both. But if it's not handled well, it can be something else. A time bomb.
Narrator
It's very funny that you get in your moral high ground about this thing that we're the scum of the earth and that we appeal to incel fans. At least we're actually trying to bring them faith, trying to give him value, trying to give him real power, trying
Audible Advertiser
to save them from you taking their money. Before they kill themselves, we give them a real message.
Rick
You jiggle your tits and pretend you don't expire in two years.
Interviewer/Reporter
Get replaced by that's next on Only Fantasy.
Narrator
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.
Rick
Hello, I'm Matt Ford.
Interviewer/Reporter
And I'm Alice Levine.
Rick
And we're the hosts of British Scandal.
Interviewer/Reporter
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 Gooding,
Interviewer/Reporter
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.
Interviewer/Reporter
It's a story of fame and a
Rick
change of the conversation around cervical cancer forever.
Interviewer/Reporter
Follow British Scandal wherever you get your podcasts or listen early and ad free on Audible.
ONLYFANTASY | Episode 4: We’re All Born Naked and the Rest is Drag
Release Date: June 4, 2026
Host: Leon Neyfakh, with comedian/creator Gracie Canaan
Main Guests: Tyler (subscriber), Amanda Torrey Meeding (drag artist/OF "chatter"), Rick (subscriber), Michael Eisman (agency COO)
This episode of OnlyFantasy investigates the deeper realities behind OnlyFans, focusing on the emotional intricacies and ethical challenges of screen-mediated intimacy. Through stories from both subscribers and professionals who work behind the scenes as "chatters"—people paid to impersonate creators in subscriber chats—the episode explores the blurring boundaries between performance and authenticity, the vulnerabilities of loneliness, and the psychological cost of digital connection.
The theme is summed up by the central question: When the desire for intimacy meets a platform designed for fantasy, is anything real—and does it matter?
Introduction to Tyler (00:12)
The Allure of Real (or Real-Seeming) Connection
Emotional Investment and Financial Cost
Betrayal and Psychological Fallout
Behind the Velvet Curtain (09:35)
Types of Subscriber Needs
Emotional Labor and Ethical Dilemmas
Chat Scripts and Identity Masking
Falling for a Fantasy (15:00–19:10)
Consequences and Reflection
Agency Perspective (36:21)
Industry Scale and Outsourcing
OnlyFans Platform Policy and Lawsuits
Tyler’s and Rick’s Legacies
Amanda’s Gender Journey
On Belief and Desire
On Emotional Fallout
On Ethical Gray Areas
On Chatting as Gender Play
On Platform Impact
The episode is compassionate and candid, alternating between humorous, reflective, and deeply poignant moments. The tone is respectful toward all guests—even as it grapples with uncomfortable realities. Self-deprecating humor from Amanda and the hosts gives way to empathic reporting of loneliness and vulnerability.
Episode 4 of OnlyFantasy deftly exposes the emotional economies at work on OnlyFans: the vulnerability of (mostly male) subscribers, the performance and care labor of chatters, and the ambiguous lines between business, intimacy, and deception. The stories of Tyler, Rick, and Amanda are not isolated anomalies but revealing case studies in a new era where fantasy and human need collide—and sometimes explode.
If you haven’t listened, this episode will give you a provocative, empathetic look into the human costs and hidden mechanics of digital desire, and the search for connection in a world that sometimes only offers fantasy.