So Your Friend Is Making Porn: A Guide to Not Making It Weird

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdown has had a number of surprising side-effects. One of them has been an explosion of social-distancing influenced horniness. This in and of itself isn’t that unexpected; Thanatos and Eros go hand in hand, after all. Many people respond to stress and the threat of death by wanting to reaffirm life — and there’re few ways that make us all feel more alive than some good ol’ bangin’.

The problem is: social distancing, a lack of testing and no vaccines means that hooking up with people is a no-go. La petite mort has an entirely too high of a risk of bring la grande mort along with it. As a result: there are scads of horny people with nowhere to go and nowhere to blow.

 

Of course, where there’s a demand, the market will rush to match the supply. So it shouldn’t be surprising that there has been a veritable explosion of people turning to making porn while they’re in lockdown. In fact, the influx of self-produced porn has become so ubiquitous that even Queen Bay herself dropped a reference to the subscription site OnlyFans in Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage”, giving the platform both an awareness boost and a dose of social cachet. People who’ve turned to various forms of sex work, including lewd cosplay photos, camming, and video work, run the gamut. There are folks trying to make the ends meet, experienced sex-workers changing mediums, people who’ve always had an exhibitionist streak, and folks trying to stay in the spotlight.

But regardless of why folks have turned to amateur porn, one thing remains true: discovering someone you know is naked on the Internet can make things awkward in ways you might never have expected.

This leads to a host of questions that many people never expected to have to find answers for: what do you do when you find out that your friend, your co-worker, your friend’s sister, or your kid’s babysitter is making porn? Do you mention that you know or that you’ve seen it? And is there any way of consuming their content that isn’t inherently creepy?

What’s An OnlyFans, Anyway?

One of the eternal truths of the modern era is that almost all technology is driven by porn. We used VHS instead of Betamax (and then later, DVD over DIVX and Blu-Ray over HD-DVD) because porn companies supported the format. Paying for goods over the Internet? Porn lead the way. Video streaming? Guess what? The driving force behind that development were porn sites.

But just as porn has driven technology, technology has driven porn. The advent of the smartphone has provided virtually everyone with a pocket-sized  porn production studio. The ability to shoot, edit and post video without requiring specialized equipment or training has removed one of the major barriers to entry for the spread of nude photos or filming sex acts for fun and profit. But while smartphones have provided the method, subscription sites like OnlyFans, ManyVids, CamSoda and even Patreon have provided the market.

Despite being a seemingly recession-proof industry, it’s much harder for performers to make money via porn in this day and age. Piracy and ‘tube sites like PornHub have tanked porn profitability for everyone (except MindGeek, who own Brazzers, RealityKings, DigitalPlayground and almost all the tube sites), leaving porn performers at a loss.

Enter sites like OnlyFans. OnlyFans and other platforms like it provide a subscription service. Content creators are able to create posts, including text, pictures and videos and either share them for free, or place them behind a paywall. Meanwhile, users are able to pay a monthly fee to subscribe to a creator’s content and gain access to subscriber-only content, as well as the ability send direct messages, tip the creators and have access to content created exclusively for certain members.  And while technically there are cosplayers and independent models who have OnlyFans accounts that don’t feature anything you couldn’t reasonably find on Instagram, the major draw is, well, porn and the ability to support your favorite porn performers directly.

Think of it this way: if PornHub is Wal-Mart, then ManyVids and OnlyFans are your local farmer’s market. Only with boobs and Astroglide.

The low barriers to entry, the ease of production, the relatively generous payout structure and increased visibility has turned OnlyFans into one of the sites for anyone wanting to dip their toe into sex work… and people have been signing up in record numbers. The idea of easy money and sexy thrills is appealing to a lot of folks — even if the money is often less easy and more work than some would expect. But that increased ubiquity has also lead to awkward moments of folks discovering sides to friends and family that they hadn’t been expecting… and now they aren’t sure how to handle it.

To Tell or Not To Tell, That Is The Question

At first glance, it can seem like this would be a dream come true for people. The fantasy of discovering that their friend/co-worker/teacher had a secret career in porn is surprisingly popular — it’s practically a genre in and of itself. Who wouldn’t love a way of seeing someone they know get naked and doing the sorts of things that fuel emergency loads of laundry when you run out of towels and socks?

In reality, however, finding out that someone you know has been doing some form of sex work — whether it be stripping, camming, fetish modeling, porn or escorting — can be an awkward experience. There are plenty of folks in your life who you may not be ready to see in a sexual light, who may well be performing acts that you didn’t think they would ever be interested in.

But beyond the sudden realization that your friend is a sexual being, there is the awkwardness of how to bring it up… or whether to mention it at all. It can be hard to broach the topic without sounding judgey, shaming or coming across as though you’d been looking for them.

To be fair1 , it can be hard to decide how to handle this particular issue. After all, very few of us have ever been in the position to tell somebody you know personally that you’ve seen them going to town with a Bad Dragon toy. You’d be forgiven for being torn between the desire to bring it up and the desire to never say a damn thing about it.

It is, however, worth noting that the odds are good that this is a conversation your friend is expecting from someone. It’s a truism that if you’re going to do some form of sex work, you have to do so under the assumption that everyone from your cousin to your first grade teacher will eventually find out. The Internet has made the world a much smaller place, and the risks of getting outed for doing porn are high. Some people have been outed and doxxed by asshats who delight in shaming women for their sexuality. Some have been outed through a series of unintended consequences. But the fact that the conversation may be inevitable doesn’t mean that it’s one they want to have. And, more specifically, they may not want to have it with you.

After all, it’s not unreasonable for someone to worry that your knowing would have an effect on your relationship. It’s understandable for them to worry that you’re going to see them differently, or treat them differently. Society has a tendency to treat sex-workers as less than deserving of respect or dignity; people will watch porn, visit strip clubs and get lap dances quite happily, then turn around and shame the performers for providing the very services they demanded. And many people can have a difficult time separating the person they see on the screen from the person in real life.

It’s entirely reasonable that your friend would worry that, since you’ve seen them having sex on camera, that you may assume that they’ll be down for sex with you… even if you never had that kind of relationship.

There are no easy answers to this one, unfortunately. The closest you can come to one is “well… it depends.”

One of the first factors in determining if you can talk about it with them depends on your relationship with them. If, for example, you have the sort of relationship where the two of you talk openly about sex and each other’s various escapades, then it’s much easier to bring it up. You’re already close enough to discuss sex frankly with one another; they know you well enough to know that you’re less likely to judge them or shame them for it. Similarly, if your friend is someone who is already open about doing sex-work in one form or another, then talking about their content is going to be far less awkward. A friend who strips that’s turned to some video work while the clubs are closed is more likely to be comfortable with their friends knowing than someone who’s completely new to producing adult content.

Another factor is how you discovered their porn in the first place. Let’s be real here: the odds of your “accidentally” stumbling over it are pretty damn low. If your friend feels like you went searching for their work specifically, that can make things very uncomfortable, especially if they weren’t open about producing porn in the first place. And if you found out because other people told you, that can almost feel like a violation — even if they are open about performing, it’s still their prerogative to decide who knows about it and how they know.

If, on the other hand, your friend shared the link on their (non-private) social media or made a public announcement, then it’s reasonable to assume that they’ve weighed the attendant risks. If someone is mentioning their OnlyFans accounts or NSFW cosplay Patreon tier in their Instagram stories or Twitter account, then they’ve probably made their peace with the idea that their nearest and dearest are going to find out. That doesn’t, however, mean that they’re necessarily comfortable with discussing it with you. There’s a difference between someone knowing that they’re a sex worker and knowing that person’s been watching their work.

(More on that in a moment.)

Now notice very carefully that I’m saying “odds are” and “likely”, not “definitely” or “guaranteed”. While the nature of your relationship or the way you discovered their work can affect how comfortable they are with knowing that you know, that doesn’t preclude them from having complicated feelings on the topic. If you’re someone who’s going to judge them for it, who can’t keep a firm line between their work and them as a person or if you’re going to be weird about it… well, that’s going to make them far less at ease with the whole situation. The more they know you to be open-minded, non-judgmental and willing to respect boundaries, the more comfortable they’re likely to be with your knowing about it.

If you do bring it up, then the next step will be the need to have an awkward conversation about how you’re both going to handle it and where the lines are. This is going to be important; having lines that cannot and should not be crossed are going to be important for everyone’s peace of mind. Knowing what your friend is ok with and what are off limits can make things easier on both of you. This helps manage expectations and — importantly — helps you both avoid even more awkward conversations down the line. It’s better to know your friend isn’t cool with, say, your commissioning a custom video before you ask for one.

Reading all of this, it’s easy to assume the safe answer is to err on the side of “keep it to yourself”. The truth, however, is that different people are going to have different feelings on the matter. Some people — including a number of sex workers who I spoke to for this column — feel more comfortable if it’s all out in the open, at least among friends. That way, they don’t have to pretend or worry about who knows and how much they know. Others prefer having a firm boundary between their professional life and their personal life. and keeping the two as separate as possible.

Even for people who are open about working in adult entertainment, a lot of times, there can be an unspoken agreement (or the hope, anyway) that at least some people in their lives are saying “Yup, I know it’s out there and I try really hard to avoid it.”

Don’t get me wrong: sexual expression isn’t something to be ashamed of and that there’s nothing wrong with making porn2. However, not being ashamed of it doesn’t automatically translate to ” willing to talk about it in detail with everyone.”

Your mileage is going to vary drastically with this one, and it’s going to depend entirely on the relationship you already have with them.

What About Your OTHER Friends?

Here’s where things get complicated.

The impulse to share the news is going to be high. I mean… you just found out that X is doing porn. How do not tell somebody else? And really, how bad would it be if you told your mutual friends? After all, it might mean that they’ll subscribe, or tell their friends, leading them to subscribe. It’s all win-win-win, right?

Enh, not so much. The problem is that you’re you, and they’re not.

See, you might be an open-minded, non-judgemental, sex-positive kind of person. You might have a “as long as everyone’s freely consenting, it’s all good” attitude towards sex work. Your friends, your co-workers… they may not. And that disparity in attitude can make a radical difference in how they respond to the knowledge that they know someone who’s selling nudes or making porn.

Like I said: people have a tendency to treat folks differently when they find out that someone does sex-work. It’s like flipping a switch in their brains: “I’ve seen you fuck, therefore you’re no longer a person to me.” They assume that if the performer is ok with people seeing them naked or having sex, then they’ll be fine with people commenting on it. Constantly. In front of them. Or worse.

That’s not an idle fear; this has happened to many people who were outed as sex-workers. They were valuable members of the school or the company they work for right up until people discover their OnlyFans or ManyVids accounts. Then suddenly they’re an embarrassment, a moral hazard or otherwise an actual object who deserves whatever happens to them.

This makes telling your friends or co-workers or family a dicey prospect. It’s one thing if your friend is cool with your knowing or talking to you about it. It’s quite another to spread that news… even if it’s in the name of trying to help drum up an audience for your friend. This is a classic example of “two can keep a secret; three can only keep a secret if two of them are dead.” The problem is ultimately one of controlling the spread of information. If you know something, you have control over who knows and — to a limited extent — what is done with that knowledge. But once people who aren’t you know, then you have given up any control over that knowledge.

You may well trust the people in your immediate circle not to be assholes or get creepy about your friend’s porn, but you have no control over who they tell. Your friends may be as cool about it as you are, but some of their friends might not be. Gossip spreads like wildfire, and salacious gossip spreads even faster. The knowledge that your friend is doing porn could spread well beyond the circle of trust, to folks that they’d rather have not know.

Just as importantly, however, is that sharing the information has potential side-effects that you simply can’t control for. If one of your mutual co-workers decides to access your friend’s porn while at work, that runs the risk of outing them to the entire company. Porn, especially porn involving someone people know, is the sort of thing that ends up getting shared widely. That means that folks who aren’t cool with it can find out, with has potentially dire consequences for your friend. Those consequences can run from harassment, to doxing, to getting fired and possibly losing their entire career.

Even in this day and age, someone gasp, shock having nude photos of themselves appear online can lead to losing their jobs… even if their photos are stolen or leaked without their consent. Even having done perfectly legal sex-work — past tense — is enough to get people fired from jobs or ever keep them from getting a job in a field like teaching or child care. It doesn’t matter to the various moral guardians that sex-workers are “supposed” to leave the industry and work vanilla jobs instead; they’re frequently punished for having done it at all.

This is why it’s important that if you want to mention it to someone, especially someone you both know, that you run it by your friend first. Are they ok with your sharing the information with people? Are there folks they’d rather didn’t know? Don’t just assume that the fact that they shared their profile publicly means that they’re cool with your telling all and sundry; they may prefer having a say in the spread of the information.

If you do get the go-ahead, what you shouldn’t do is share the actual content. The fact that you may have bought it doesn’t give you the right to spread it around. If you’re going to be supportive of your friend, then giving away their paid content for free is the wrong way to do it. Share the link to the account instead. If your co-workers want a sample, then they can either check out whatever free teasers your friend is offering, or pay the subscription fee.

And incidentally, if people you know are being shitty or harassing to your friend over their involvement in porn, then you have a duty to step up and say something. Especially if you’re the reason why they know. Part of why people feel free to talk shit about sex work and sex workers is because they feel like everyone already agrees with them. Even silence gets taken as approval. Speaking up and saying “hey, knock it off” or “not cool” reaffirms that no, everyone doesn’t agree with them. It also empowers the other folks — the ones who want to speak up but feel embarrassed or isolated — to speak up as well.

How Do You Avoid Being A Creeper?

So you found out your friend is making porn. The single biggest question is almost always: do you watch it or not?

Hell, is it even possible to watch it without making things creepy? How can it not get weird?

The most obvious answer is simple: don’t watch. Don’t subscribe to their account. Stick to the knowledge that this exists and don’t take it any further.

Are you gonna do that?

For a lot of folks, the answer is going to be “no”. So how do you avoid making things weird or creepy?

The key to not making things creepy is to maintain some serious boundaries and avoid crossing lines that would directly affect your friendship. It’s one thing, for example, to be a passive consumer of your friend’s content. Watching videos or looking at their pictures can feel intimate, but it’s ultimately a passive event. Choosing more interactive options, however starts to come close to crossing lines and blurring boundaries in ways that your friend may not be comfortable with. Many OnlyFans models don’t just offer pictures and videos; they’ll often offer services like custom videos, private snapchat sessions, even sexting or trading pics. Some offer domination or humiliation services or Skype and cam sessions. Asking about these can start to edge closer to the idea of a sexual relationship with you — and that may well be too far for their liking.

In an ideal world, you would have already had this conversation, including what would be considered off limits. In the event that you haven’t talked about it, then it’s safer to err on the side of caution and assume not to unless and until you’ve been given the go-ahead.

Talking about the content is a little easier, though it will still depend on the relationship you have with them. If you’re at a place where you able to talk about the work they’re producing, then talk about what makes it hot or sexy, rather than what it does to you. A little distance and a little passive voice — as though you were talking about a painting, for example — can make it feel less like you’re having a discussion about what your friend does for your junk.

One interesting question that comes up is whether subscribing anonymously is more or less awkward or creepy than subscribing under your actual name. The sex workers I asked about this were divided on the topic. People who had been making porn, dancing or camming for a while preferred openness. Anonymity made them nervous, and most of their friends either already knew or didn’t care. Newer people were less enthused about knowing their friends were watching their porn. They were fine with their friends knowing about it, but less comfortable with knowing that they were watching. Willful ignorance eased the awkwardness of the situation in their minds.

What everyone did agree on was the need to be a good customer. That means following the performers’ rules on their page, including rules on content, pricing, tipping, direct messages and what’s considered off-limits. Being friends doesn’t give you an exemption to their rules. Sex work is work, and you should treat it as such, especially since so many are working without a net. Asking for discounts or free trials, sharing their content without permission or subscribing, downloading everything and then unsubscribing are disrespectful to your friend and to the work they’re doing. If it’s good enough to turn you on, it’s good enough for you to pay for.

And if it isn’t… pay for it anyway. They’re your friend and times are hard enough as it is.

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Thanks to Samantha38G, Risa Silk and the many others who graciously provided input for the column. 

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1. to be faiiiiiir [↩]
2. The racism, sexism and exploitative conditions of the porn industry is another topic entirely [↩]