https://www.elle.com/culture/amp32459935/onlyfans-sex-work-influencers
Whenever I see these kinds of posts, I get reminded how the internet was proliferated for two main reasons. The dissemination of cat pictures, and porn.
Social media giants, instagram, youtube, facebook and the like, took care of the dissemination of cat videos and pictures, while porn giants like pornhub took care of the porn.
One is more palatable to the general public (cat content obv) and the other less so but is by no means less influential and important on the internet sphere.
Opportunities lost
Whether you care for "porn" or not, I identified the recent boom of pay-walled "freemium" content as a huge nest egg way before the virus, way before the lockdowns, and now platforms like "onlyfans", "patreon" and other paywall freemium content platforms are starting to really pick up momentum.
To call 150,000 new user signups a day (and growing) anything short of a bubble is to be in denial of what is happening right now.
Our growing liberal society is becoming more welcome of sex workers, more people are able to produce content, and obviously, plenty of people are willing to pay for that content. Frankly, I don't care how you feel about sex work, and posting nudes as a "job", it is entirely besides the point.
The point is, there is a massive emerging market of content creators willing to post e-thotery and an even larger base of users willing to pay for it. There are few moments where the world all decides to start taking part in something,but the lockdown has ensured that the options are few, and those who are willing to build something to take advantage of the current state of the world, stand to gain. In the case of e-thottery, the demand for smut is never ending, and so I don't foresee the growth of these platforms to V-top u-turn. Crypto, without the utility of platforms like these, will have boom and bust cycles continuously until the main user base isn't entirely full of "get rich quick" speculators.
Lockdown has legitimised a new industry
Not to say that platforms like patreon and onlyfans didn't exist before. They did. In-fact they have been around for many years, but we needed a catalyst for these platforms to take off.
I believe the lockdown was that catalyst. People are indoors a lot more and needing something to entertain them to pass the time. Most enjoy a bit of porn anyway but the shift in attitudes towards porn in recent years has been towards independent creators and not porn from professional porn companies.
Absent other places to spend their money on, it was natural that people would start making micro payments to creators they've been following for a while that have decided to go nude! After-all, many people followed these e-thots for the eye candy in the first place, and paying a tiny bit more to see something extra is not an objection.
People have been catalysed by their fear of going outside. Conditioned by what has been going on for the last few months. Condition to be afraid of going outside, conditioned to be afraid of other people.
The internet and it's service platforms stand to gain the most from this and the biggest gainer of all is apparently sex workers and "influencers" monetising their more racy snippets of content.
It's not all porn
One of the biggest sells of crypto was providing a platform for the un-banked, under-banked, de-platformed people to allow them to regain their self sovereignty. The fact that we have as a collective industry failed to capture this massive influx of hundreds of thousands of users per day, is a testament to our naivity, and ignorance to properly attract emergent demographics of people who are conducting very substantial amounts of online ecommerce.
And before you get your knickers in twist, this isn't just about porn. People who create all sorts of content can stand to gain from a platform that facilitates paywalling of premium content. The benefits of using crypto may not be at the forefront of their reasons to join, but that will become a bonus later on. Honestly, how hard is it to build something like onlyfans? Not at all. Why was nobody doing that? Because they were obsessed with all the wrong things, like anarcho capitalism, freedom, liberty, technology and insert any other crypto jargon buzzword. But what people care about isn't all that jazz. They just want a place they can fulfil their needs, and at the end of the day, get paid.
A reward pool is a novel idea but it subjects the platform to how much buying interest is on the market for these tokens. The price of the token etc. Meanwhile, platforms like myfreecams have successfully used a non-crypto token to facilitate content sharing and monetisation for years. We need to build something people want to use out right, and just forget about crypto this crypto that. The world at large doesn't care.
They will care one day, but by then, the whole world has already decided on which kinds of these platforms to use, and the battle will be uphill to try predate these users over to crypto-ized versions.
Build something that people want
Instead of pinning crypto as the differentiator, build something that people actually need and want, and then see if crypto further enhances their experience. I suspect that there are many opportunities for this, but we have as an industry failed to capitalise on this one. You might scoff at the numbers now, but at this point, who wouldn't want 200k new users everyday, all making small payments for premium content?
A bubble has gone and past before our eyes, and we're all sitting here waiting for another crypto bubble to save the day. Well i'm sorry to alert you all to reality here, people don't just suddenly join platforms like hive because "it's crypto", they will join it because the platform has a service that provides real utility and value, congruent with what the're already doing else where.
I don't know what the next "hot" platform will turn out to be, but we messed up big time not capitalising on this patreon boom and let that serve as a lesson moving forwards.