The Digital Whore.

In an age where anyone can digitally market themselves as a product, I ask the question: are we all digital whores?

2020 was an unprecedented year for a number of reasons. One of the main reasons, though, is that we were on a strict lockdown that probably hasn’t ever been experienced by the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to that lockdown, many of us experienced an isolation so insufferable that we turned to the internet for our community, and to fulfill whatever social need we’d had. For some, those needs were just simple, vanilla connections with other people online, and for others: they needed sexual release.¹

Something that is not often spoken about—or at least not talked about with serious air—is people’s engagement in and heavy reliance on sex work (during that time). Nobody really talks about how some jobs that once happened in person were literally not translatable to be done from home. So, lots of people lost their jobs, their companies, their means of survival, and social connection. And so they turned to the oldest profession in human kind out of desperation, curiosity, or boredom. Further, sex work was so much more accessible and accepted during that time. You could access it on-demand from your computer or phone, and find almost whatever erotic content suited your fancy². OnlyFans, for instance, became a hot topic, and was even mentioned in pop culture and songs, such as the viral “Savage Remix (ft. Beyonce).”

How Is Sex Work Perceived Today, Four Years Later?

In my opinion, conversations about sex work online are now regressing culturally, just like lots of the conversations about sexual freedom and bodily autonomy are. It’s even happening in our legislation (United States); Roe v. Wade was overturned by the supreme court, restricting access in many states for many lifesaving contracepetive measures for people who give birth—most specifically abortions.

And I do not think that this is a coincidence.

There is an air of arrogance surrounding the topic as well, particularly by cis-heterosexual men towards women. Lots of them, who’s ideological arches bend toward misogyny, claim that they don’t need to “buy pussy” because they “get pussy” easily (an age old conversation). Oftentimes, the implication with this statement is that the sexuality of women is easily conquerable and so boundlessly available that the thought of even purchasing sexual services is ludicrous. Also: AFABs aren’t the only people who are sex workers!

And this logic is also so strange because, since the dawn of time (I’m hyperbolizing, but you catch my drift), sexual services have been sought after by men, even by some of the most powerful ones. Even some of our own lawmakers have been caught in huge scandals as of late soliciting sex workers or at least utilizing the platforms known to host them. Last year, George Santos was outed and ousted for using government funding to pay for OnlyFans and an number of other unauthorized expenses. And former 45th of the United States, now a 34-count felon, used hush money to keep the details of his “affair” with porn actress Stormy Daniels from ever reaching the public. Now, Santos has had a run of having his own OnlyFans page in which he charged viewers $29.99 a month, though he claimed he would not post sexual content. And Trump, well, he’s unfortunately, and currently running for president of the United States…again.

OnlyFans even has its own problems; at one point, it threatened to rid its platform of all of its sexual content. This is after profiting millions of dollars off of sex workers who depended on the platform—which you could arguably say made OnlyFans the lucrative platform that it is. By the way, don’t forget that OnlyFans takes a portion of the income that its creators make from their work posted onto the site. Just like Tik Tok.

But then it retracted its ban of sexual content and allowed sex workers to come back to the platform, but not without leaving a lasting scar in the minds of sex workers and non-sex workers alike. Many did not return to the platform. Some even stopped online sex work altogether.

Subsequently, however, the principles of sex work have not left the psyches of people on the internet.  The discourse about transaction in many online correspondences, specifically in romantic relationships, for instance, is a very hot topic right now and deeply emphasized.

It’s almost a guarantee that if you say something along the lines of “women/men owe me ______” or “what do you bring to the table” your content will go viral.

Marketing yourself, your personality, your body, even, is highly encouraged on social media and highly lucrative. And, sometimes even kinky. Gym influencers, e-girls, mukbang and ASMR creators—and a new one I have had the misfortune of learning about via Tik Tok: the cupcake poof dress—all live in a similar world in regards to content creation, believe it or not. I argue that creators in these categories (and there are so many others) dance on a very thin line between vanilla and kink so often that sometimes it’s even hard to tell the difference what is porn and not.

But most people don’t realize that. Some do not realize that their content and their followers that they have on a platform may be getting high reception because their audience literally gets off on it. Unfortunately, some creators do not know that they are unintentionally and non-consensually creating fetish content, and that becomes a serious, ethical problem.

Or…sometimes these creators do know, but they don’t care. I mean, they’re not technically doing anything considered “illegal” right? They’re fulfilling a need—a parasocial relationship, and they’re doing it willingly. And it’s making them money or giving them recognition or increasing their social mobility or whatever their desires are. In essence, both the viewer and the creator are satisfied. Technically, they have fulfilled a transactional relationship.

So then, what do we say for the digital sex worker? The one who deliberately makes it clear that they are doing this for the purpose of making someone sexually aroused, sometimes even to completion? The one who demands (fair) pay for their work? The one who deliberately creates content purely for someone’s viewing and physical pleasure? The one who’s content gets stolen from them constantly and used for nefarious reasons other than the intended use?

Most demonize them.

And my question is: why?

If it is true that many of us “content creators” these days are engaging in the same concept of work—providing a service to our fan base or clientele that they are interested in, then I genuinely wonder:

Are we all digital whores?

Fin.

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Honorable Mention:

I am inspired to write this piece for a number of reasons. I recently watched an episode of the 90s HBO cartoon, Spice City. The very first episode depicts a sex worker who experiences a complicated relationship with a client she meets online. She develops romantic feelings for him, and its obvious that a lot of her feelings for him are dictated by the neglect and abuse she experiences from her pimp and IRL lover.

What’s also interesting about that episode is that the sex worker and her client, though they interact online, they do not use their real pictures or “live streams” of themselves. Instead, they use avatars of their most idealistic selves—how they’d want to be perceived. For instance, the client uses an avatar that is a highly chiseled boxer with boxing gloves and the works. The sex worker uses the avatar of a geisha.

This cartoon and episode is not without faults, however. I find the image of a geisha to be problematic and the image of a fit boxer to be fatphobic and lookist. However, I do believe that this episode provides an interesting and almost prophetic view of relations on the internet today.

Still from first episode of HBO’s Spice City (1997): “Love Is A Download”

1. I want to note that 2020 is also an unprecedented and important year because we had the protests against police brutality for the murder of George Floyd. Arguably, we saw some of the world’s the biggest protests for police brutality post Y2K.

2. Here, I want to be clear that online sex work was not inaccessible before 2020’s lockdown. However, I do believe that the content provided was slightly more limited before the lockdown. I posit that this is because of so many people’s induction into it during the lockdown, thus creating even more varied and specific content that people could access.