Jobless And Quarantined, Thousands Turn To OnlyFans To Make Ends Meet
When coronavirus cases started spiking in Texas late last month, Isabela, a 19-year-old student and waitress, felt a creeping sense of dread. She was already living paycheck to paycheck while financially supporting her parents.
A week later, she got the call: Business at the small Chinese restaurant where she worked had all but evaporated, and it could no longer afford to keep the lights on. She wouldn’t be getting any more shifts for the foreseeable future. Isabela panicked.
Her manager urged her to hold off on filing for unemployment benefits because it was unclear when the restaurant might reopen — a dilemma facing many service industry workers. And although her community college extended the deadline for tuition payments, providing some immediate relief, her bills were still due, and her family needed groceries.
As she processed her situation, Isabela remembered that she had an account on OnlyFans, a platform where content creators share posts that are accessible only to their paying subscribers. She had set up a profile with her friends a few months earlier, joking at the time that she could sell nude photos on the site to get by if things ever got tough. Suddenly, unable to work and confined to her house under a new government order, it seemed like her only viable option.
“Out of nowhere, it was just like, ‘Hey — you don’t have a job anymore,’” said Isabela, who asked to be identified by her first name only due to stigma surrounding her new source of income. “This is something I could do from home.”
As the coronavirus pandemic sends American unemployment levels soaring to record highs, thousands of people have turned to OnlyFans and similar independent-creator platforms, such as Patreon, in hopes of making up for lost wages. In recent weeks, OnlyFans has seen a 75% increase in sign-ups, with more than 170,000 new users each day, according to a company email. Patreon reported 50,000 new creators in March — its fastest ever rate of...
