AI and the Future of Connection

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Kidding Really, that's a joke made by one of our on stage guests, who is among the four and a half million creators on Om Fans, each cultivating their own little online community Or for some of them, not so little, because onlyly Fans has four hundred million users. And journalist Leon Nayfok wanted to know more about this online ecosystem You may know him as the creator and host of podcasts like Slowburn, Fiasco, and Backfired But for this new show, he teamed up with Gracy Kanan, a stand upp comedian and only fans creator to examine this bustling online marketplace of sex and emotions and try to understand the role it plays in the lives and relationships of the buyers and sellers Leon and Gracie's new podcast from Audible is called Only Fantasy, and they told us all about it at the WBR Festival Take listen. So for the uninitiated, I figured Gracie we would start with you. For people who do not know what Only Fans is, you are a creator on Only Fans. how would you describe it You know, it's so funny becausecause even after making this podcast, I feel like I still don't have a succinct log line of what this is. It is a platform that is really like an all in one for digital sex workers, right? So it's something that brings or digital creators. It doesn't even have to be seex work. It is something that combines selling your videos, with chats, with live streams. So it's really a one stop shop for creators and subscribers to connect whatever the content is What sorts of things are Oly fan subscribers paying for For me specifically, I think well, they're ters. So I have, you know, masks, PPVs, paper views, which is like I'll send those out to everyone and those can be they're not honestly, they're not very explicit. I try to make people feel connected and maybe a little bit sexual in a creative way. So it might be me like doing a little dance or me doing something like pouring water on myself or I don't know. like There we go, literally falling apart what's some guys. Yeah, Casio. youaking your watch. got to be aQ thing You got it for free. Yeah. This is the beginning of a strip tease guys. So I just want you to know. And then I think mostly people do pay for a connection. So if I get like a hundred dollar hundred tip out of nowhere, that's someone who really wants to chat to me. And then there's all And that's the cool thing is every creator has their main source of revenue, right? So whether it's some people rely really heavily on custom videos, right? where they sell something for a hundred dollars plus. someome people do where someone asks you do this. Yeah, exactly. and then you char know, that's like a bespoke piece, so to speak Some people are like high volume PPVs, some people are live. So I think for me, people pay really for like any kind of conversation. That's what people feel the most connected to. The phrase that I remember cllarifying a lot for me was the girlfriend experience, which was a phrase I'd heard from watching the TV show where it's about like a Like a like a What's the opposite a digital sex worker? real notot a real sex worker. Wh. Sorry. IL flashh and blood sex. Flashh and blood sex broadcast sex worker. Yes But in the only f analog, Thank you. But in the only fans context, it's someone it's almost like having a long distance relationship with someone, right? You're texting with them, you're saying good morning, good night, you're telling them about your day, it feels like you haveave a girlfriend who you have this special access to through your phone Yeah, And I'll just add to that, like I do a lot of what I call like connection builders that are free. So I will do a lot of just like good morning voice memos. It's really about like taking intimacy and scaling it to now you know, five six thousand people So sending a voice memo, sending a good night memo, making someone feel special. and then in all of those free relationship builders, that get someone invested so that I can take all their money. No so that, you know, obviously like they want to stick around and they they want to. So it's really interesting in that way. It's interesting too that you talk about it as a connection that you're building a connection because Le and I I feel like in in the podcast, you talk about AOL Instant Messenger as a kind of precursor to this in a way and your experience with someone on Aim. Yeah, well, I thought of Aim as a reference point. after sort of initially being pretty deeply skeptical of why someone would want the thing Gracie is describing L you want to pay someone to pretend to like you through the phone, like made no sense to me. Like you want to you're paying to sort of have these snatches of communication you're paying to almost have a more vivid imagination of this other person out there somewhere. And then I was like, oh wait. I sort of did this, I didn't pay for it, but I sort of did this when I was a teenager. and I used AOL Instant Messenger, which was for those who For those who weren't there, was like a really, I think uersung advance in the internet where suddenly you could Find out the screen name of the girl in your class or the girl you went to summer camp and College I used it a lot in college Uh, that's cool No I think I used in college too though I think I might have moved on the GC chat by that. I cz around waiting for that door opening Yeah. And so I remembered having quite intense relationships with people either never met or, you know, met once and never again Um And then I was like, okay, I really got a lot out of that. I could imagine someone wanting to pay for it at the very beginning the show, Leon you talk about kind of how you got into making this podcast series which might have something to do with an Om fans creator named Annie. We hear from Annie at the beginning of this series And Annie explains this kind of key difference between what we think of as traditional pornography And specifically only fans, let's take a listen to that When I first got curious about this and asked Annie about it, she offered an explanation involving a guy who once paid her eight hundred bucks to make a video of herself wearing a pair of shoes that he had bought her and smooshing a bunch of corn dogs with the high heels I promise you, your favorite porn star is not about to call your name and step on a corn doog for you. So Like, yes, you can watch porn, but those porn stars that you watch will never know your name, will never speak to you. These only fan girls are paid to acknowledge your existence. I had always pictured only fans as a one way street lace to publish exclusive content that your most motivated fans could pay to look at End of story. An told me that I'd been missing the point Most of the money people made on onlyly fans, she said came from more than just being looked at came from maintaining quasi personal relationships with subscribers over weeks or months or even longer people were just lonely and sad So they really just genuinely wanted somebody to text them every day, text them good morning in the morning ood night at night, send them a couple photos. D didnn't even have to be like naked photos just Cute photos. Thome were literally like me in an oversized hoodie in front of me But not all of them, Annie. You showed me rem I remember you showed me a couple pretty racey things you posted my little sister, by the way. There were a lot of the timees I in a hoodie. Wanted you in a hoodie, wanted you in a messy bun. They wanted you to not look like they were paying for you, basically Well, you ruined the surprise. I was gonna ask you who Annie was, but surprise. Oh, sorry. Did everyone get that? It's his little sister So why did you other than the fact that you're a sister, or maybe your sister was a key component of why you wanted to look into Oly Fans, but what set off you making a whole series about Only Fans Well, So Only Fans took off as a platform During the pandemic, when people, you know, for all the obvious reasons, people were at home, people were out of work peopleople were lonely I And in the five years or so since, which takes us right up to when I think we started working on this It had exploded to the point where The numbers were just astonishing. L I don't remember where they were exactly then, but now We're talking about More than four hundred million people on there as Subscribers and for pointoint five million, I believe as creators. These are just Unfathomable numbers because it suggests that this is this thing that, you know one might be tempted to think is a you know, fringe activity that is like happening on the margins is in fact utterly mainstream Um And I just had no idea what was going on there. ome as I said before, was sort of confused about why someone would want this. And because you know, I'm not trying to be polyanistic. I understand why people look at pornography, but this thing where you're like engaging in a fantasy relationship It didn't speak to my needs And so I think I wanted to understand like what was making this thing so popular and what were people getting out of it on either side of the equation A really surprising thing, I think that we learn in the show or is just true about On Fans You know, Leon, you were speaking to just the size of the platform, which is which is really incredible. A surprising thing for podcasters, I think, is that there's no algorithm Meaning there really isn't a way for only fans. It is a very modern platform as we were talking about There's no way, for instance, for users to search for specific creators on the platform or even a specific type orr even a specific type. There's no there's like no real sort of like tagging, I guess, you could say and also You don't really have a FYP. You don't really have a sort of feed that's being delivered unto you based off of your behavior, right? Yeah, which I would have expected that like any other social media platform in the year twenty twenty six whether it's TikTok or Instagram or Twitter All right you log on and you're bombarded with recommendations. like maybe you'll like this person, mayaybe you like this person, like scroll scroll, scroll until you find someone and you want to Pay. U And instead, it's like a very web one point zero structure where you sort of have to know that someone is on there whom you want to look at in order to even know where it look. there's no There' not even ask Jeves. There's no You have another exact screen name. And I think, know the sort of interesting result of this and Graceie can speak to this is every individual creator is sort of it's incumbent on them to promote themselves in a sort of a hand to hand combat kind of way. So you go on As a creator, you go on Reddit and you post in various message boards to say who you are, what you look like, what you do, what your kind of person you are. You go on Twitter, you promote yourself in this very like u kind of O person at a time kind of way. And it feels kind of like a throwback. And I don't know, we asked a lot of people like why don't they have a more modern recommendation engine And the only thing we really heard that felt compelling was that By doing it this way, only fans kind of farms out the promotion of the website to individual creators So if it's your job to make people aware that you have an account, then you're promoting only fans for free, basically. Yeah, And I'll just add to that. Only Fans at the time that we started this, we found out and this is an exact number or quote, but Only Fans itself, the company has like fewer than a hundred employees. And that shocks a lot of people. But if you go onto the interface, you'll see they don't even have an app So you cannot get it in the app store. It is a browser. It is completely bare bones because honestly, they don't have an incentive to optimize it. They're the most efficient company in the world. Yeah in terms of headcount to revenue. Yeah, they're already bringing in billions of dollars just with what they have. So if someone, if it's hard for users on the creator or the subscriber side, they're like, all right figured out. So I think that's probably why mixed with whether this is intentional or unintentional on the side of O fans, there is something that makes it feel special by not having an FYP, right? You're like, oh, I heard my coworker has an only fans or like I wonder if this influencer has an only fans and you actually have to go there. because in my anecdotal experience Subscribers are not there to just be like, I I'm going follow someone new. They usually have you know, one to three creators that they really like that they found through another channel, whether it's TikTok or Instagram or Reddit or whatever. and they that's really what they're there for This is funny to me because I had this realization when Emory and I were listening to the show Um and we were texting each other about it I immediately texted Amory. Only fans is like podcasts for porn. Yep. whichich is to say that both of these forms are also separately podcasts for porn as well That's right. interviewed a guy. sorry to interrupt you, but I don't, on. can't let an opportunity go by without mentioning this. There's a guy who became famous as like a YouTube streamer N name's Adam twenty two. I don't know if anyone rings a bell for anyone, but he U podcast with his wife. It it's a podcast freely available. You can listen to it anywhere. He and his wife interview a different only fans creator on the podcast every week They do like a Mark Maron style inside the actor stududio style interview with her where they talk for hour, an hour, twenty minutes And then the conversation ends and they all have sex together And that part is available as a video for money on onlynly Fans. O onlyly fans. It's an amazing I mean, it's an amazing idea for a Bodast. G greatreat crossover. But both of these forms of media, I think kind of struggle with discovery, peopleople know finding what they're looking for beinging a podcaster is like maybe in some ways being an O fans creator and that you you don't just need to make the content. You really have to market it. what we're talking about Does any of that ring true for you all as podcastters who made a podcast about only evans Yeah. I mean, I think I realized pretty early on that a lot of the work that and only fans creator does is marketing you know, self promotion, kind of like all the same things you do if you're journalists on substack. It's like I think the labs Yeah, exactly. Yeah. you're you're trying to link, you know,'s I think it replicates a the same Uh mechanism for growing one's audience that you see in any other realm. I think it's just like the structure of the social web, which is that as people become divorced from institutions and become their own personal brands, you are Uh, if you want to make more money today than you did yesterday. you have to keep selling yourself. Uh, one of our early like, I don't know thoughts of what our angle might be here is like, oh Maybe We're all just only fans creators now Some of us So blog post on Substack and others sell Racy photos, you know Corn dog squishing videos. ye. Yeah. Yeah, we're all only fans creators in And we're all whores. And anyone, as someone who gets called a whore online all the time, like we you are selling your mind and body every day to make money. So I just want you guys to know everyone in here unless you're living off your parents' money, which is a different kind of war. No But I want to say as far as the marketing, you know, that's something I was this is my first podcast project, which I got incredibly lucky about. All of my other podcast friends hated me. But I'm a stand upp comedian, and so I am for better, worse very used to that relentless marketing grind. But a lot of creators we talk to kind Look back on their earlier days and realize, oh my God, so much of this is marketing. It's more than creating the actual content and chatting to people. It's going viral. It's like trying to goingir Instagram on TikTok. posting you know I spoke with an agency and they were like, if you're already posting, like come back and talk to us when you're posting five times a day on TikTok, just on TikTok So I know.s And I mean, they're little things. they're not these are not, you know, it's just like,, I'm doing a dance or like cinnamon challenge or whatever. But so that is when and this is something we can get into later, but that is really a huge incentive of why creators work with agencies. It's not that they They can't You know, it's not so much the chatting or the creation, it's the constant marketing push across all social media platforms. We're going to talk more about agencies because this is an important part of the business, but I want to hear from another clip from the podcast because this also speaks to the marketing aspect. This is a creator named Belle Grace that you talk to. And to your point, Leon, Belle Grace blows up accidentally during the pandemic through the act of marketing herself. She's posting videos on TikTok to try to get people to her only fans page. And in December of twenty twenty, one of those TikTok videos goes viral. The timing is great because she's just quit her day job because she's starting to make more money on Only fans And let's listen to a bit of what happens when the video goes viral I was just like, o my God, this is like absolutely like life changing. it couldn't have happened at a better time of me like leaving work. and then going viral, it would just like kind of like toed it all off. I always believe that things are just meant to be And I just think that was just meant to be According to Bell, the video got fifty eight million views which translated into a massive jump in profit on Omi fans. Yeah, so I can actually pull up my starts. justust give me a second So September added three thousand two hundred dollars In October four thousand nine hundred dollars In November I did eight thousand two hundred dollars In December I did fourteen thousand three hundred dollars And then are you ready for this one This was my biggest jump In january twenty twenty one I did thirty eight thousand nine hundred and forty five. That's Leon at the end, I think I had to hear that just for Leon's gasp because it stopped me in my tracks too hearing that number. I think it captures what a lot of us were hearing. And we have a picture of the earnings statement, I believe. that we can show here just to prove these numbers climbing up and up and up. Th this is monthly income from On fans for Beel Grace. So Gracy How unusual is this? and What can you say about, I don't know how many subscribers you have currently. but do your earning statements look like this? Yeah, wayay more'. Actually. drrinks on me after this. Well, one of the things that we learned, which makes sense is, again, I can't even remember the exact statistics anymore, but I think I know what you're gonna to say. Yeah. ninety five percent seventy five percent. seventy five percent of creator yeah, ple thank you. seventy five percent of creators make three hundred dollars a month or less. Yeah. So this is this is definitely an exception. Also relatable to podcasts where it's like top twenty five per percent of podcasts the rest do not. Yeah. go ahead. You know, and reminder that we hear the success stories and not the other ones, which we did look for, but believe it or not, we did not find a lot of guests willing to talk about how little money they make on onlyn Fans U you know Belle, I think with her and she has said this, it was a perfect storm. She worked I mean, she also worked very hard. She worked consistently. She enjoys the work, but having that happen in COVID was just, you know, and then she she kept at it. she kept the momentum. So I've definitely seen spikes. I think I'm currently I have two pages I think I'm between like four and two percent. So that is what is that mean four and two percent? Top four Oh sorry, top like four and two percent. So someone like Belle is probably like under one percent. She's probably like the top six percent or something. Zero point six or zero point Yeah, zero point like zero point one is Sophie Rain, you know, who makes a ill Hundreds of millions of dollars a year. We all know who that is, right? Yeah. She's she will make I think that her top subscriber has paid her a total of seven point four million dollars. And most of it is for phone calls. One subscriber. Y paid one subscriber seven point four million. So it's like, and she will say this. It's like a lot of it is luck. A lot of it is, you know hard work mixed with luck. but yeah, I think U I think that is a very rare thing and that is kind of people see those numbers and they're like, I'm going to get on O fans. And it's like, all right, go, you know It's not going to be thirty four thousand dollars, right off the bat. Yeah. So the vast majority of creators are making three hundred dollars or less top percent less than one percent are making millions and millions Only Fans is valued at three point one five billion today. Can you break down a little bit for us how the company makes money and also like like how do you see that, Gracie? Like how does that work? How do you make money? How do I make? I don't. I'm a standup comedian. No. they take twenty percent of all earnings, which some people complain about, but for the most part, I'm like, if I didn't have only fans, this would be it would be different platforms that I would have to manage. I don't think I would make as much money. So for me, twenty percent seems like a low lift. And Apple takes thirty percent. Yeah. make it pretty normal. Yeah. So it' like twenty percent is actually pretty normal. Yeah, yeah. so I don't have a problem with that. And they're actually quite like when you check your weekly monthly statements, it actually just shows your net automatically. so they're not kind of dangling that. They're like, yeah, here's what you have So yeah, that's how they make their money. That's it. They just take hours. We have more of our conversation with Leon Nayfalk and Gracy Kanan on their new podcast About Only Fans In a minute This episode is brought to you by Prime. What if you had one more chance with the one that got away? Sam, you came home. Based on the bestselling novel from Carly Fortune. 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Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from City Space Productions, a creative studio from WBUR's businessus partartnerships teeam become a thought leader. Recruit new talent Reach new audiences, whatever your goal, we can help Discover how the magic is made at wbR. org slash creative Studio I want to jum ahead a little bit because time is just flying by as we knew it would happen. And I want to talk you mentioned agencies. So the top really successful creators can be represented by agencies. And Gracy, you talked about how you're offering the girlfriend experience. You're waking up in the morning messaging your subscribers as if it's like Good morning t whatever. and It was really good. Was that good? have a future? I could make a lot of money. Yeah, let's talk after You have a future. So one way to make a lot more money is to have people do that talk for you. Yeah, in a way, this was kind of the most to me intriguing this whole world is that People like Gracie who have how many subscribers did you say you have like I have like a little over six thousand right now. Okay, six thousand is a lot. And beginning when Grie and I first met, I think you had like eighty, right? And so you were talking to everyone yourself. Wow when you get Thousands Suddenly, you can't really keep up. and you haven't made this jump and but you've thought about it People can hire a company, essentially. There's a lot of these companies that are Sometimes called agencies, sometimes called management companies, Some people call them EPMps for obvious reasons And what they do is they take over your account you know, you set up like a dropbox or whatever, where you send you submit your content, someone else post it for you. And crucially They hire what are called chatters who will then chat for you with your subscribers. So you can have hundred conversations going at once because it's a hundred different people, some of them whom are You know men in the Philippines or in India or in, you know, other parts of the world who are being paid like two dollars an hour to have these Romantic, sexual, sometimes just normal conversations with people who think they're talking to They' a crush And so we interviewed a couple of these people who have this job. It's a really weird job as you can imagine A And you know, I think there's a the diffifficult thing here is like the user in many cases doesn't obviously realize that they're talking to some random person. and they're quite disappointed when they realize it Yeah, and this is so complicated because as you said, only fans really, it's been around since twenty sixteen, but it really blows up during the pandemic. When everyone is at home Everyone is lonely. You know we start hearing about the loneliness epidemic. and so you have potentially very lonely people who yes, they are paying to talk to someone like you Gracie or someone like Bellegrrace or whomever And it's really easy to forget that you're paying for that relationship and to feel like it's Authentic And you also talk to someone who works at an agency in the podcast And when you know, when you ask him about does he feel conflicted about, you know, these customers feeling taken advantage of, feeling like em their emotions are being manipulated, He just says Well, yeah, but I mean they had to have known this was never a real relationship. but it How do you think about that, Gracie as a creator? Because these are very lonely people who you're talking to every day and you have to You have to balance their real feelings with also This is how you might pay rent Yeah, well, first of all, I want to say I am a huge like advocate for subscribers. like I love my boys. Like truly, I and I will say yes, there is a stigma. and yes, it's correct that a lot of them are Lonely, don't have social skills or definitely are those people. But a lot of my subscribers, they're like pretty happily married or just like on it to support me or on it for fun or whatever. but I will say, you the agency, the manager of the agency we spoke to, he works at a boutique agency. He has you all American really trained chatters And I didn't judge him for doing that. No, I did I know, I know. It was weird. was because I was like because he said, you know, this is a business. We do have to pay ourselves, we have to pay the creators. But can we do that while making these people still feel cared for? He goes, I have a lot of people working for me who chat who care about the subscriber that they are assigned to. so I'm like, it's weird because you are still getting that hair. which is it's so weird for me to say as someone who really likes my subscribers. But then there's the other side of that, which is, you know, we talk to this basically cam girl farm Kingpin in Romania And he's just like, I don't care. I pay my chds two dollars. takeake these guys for all theirre worth. Like you by any means necessary. And I think I have like huge we all that had huge moral problems with that. And I didn't see a big difference between that guy who was like unapologetic about his you know The fact that he was taking advantage of specifically American men. He had this whole riff about how American men are especially easy to manipulate because we have soft hearts They have not seen war. Yeah. You could be called worse things than having a saturn. Yeah And then this other guy who is this like Los Angeles you know agent basically, was kind of explained to us like the way I sleep at night is I think to myself Men are paying for someone to pay attention to them. and guess what? someomeone is. It may not be the person that whose name is on the account, but like someone's doing that, and that's what they're paying for Still a connection. Yeah. But I feel like I have some subscribers where if I had a friend chop tack chat for me because apparently I can't is I think I have subscribers who would rather talk to someone than not talk to me at all because I can't get to them. So it's I don't know. it's confusing. It's a gray area for me We have some audience questions. obviously everyone wants in on this conversation and we are running out of time and it's so frustrating. By the way, you must listen to the podcast. The first three episodes right now are out. There are six parts, she mentioned that head of a management company in Romania, There are so many great amazing characters voices that they heard from in this podcast series. so please please listen to it. But I do feel like we should ask I hate asking AI questions, but we have to talk about AI because when we talk about chatters and we talk about the future of this, you also talk to someone who has made an AI creator on Oly Fans. So do you personally worry as a creator, Gracie, about AI swooping into the Oly Fans marketplace? And Leon, based on the people that you talk to, is that a direction that you think U the sex industry might go in It's even more it's like a step further than the person in the Philippines in a way. I personally don't worry about it for me. I think that the people who are gravitating towards AI creators are also the people that are gravitating towards but creators that are completely run by agencies. So I don't view it as a threat to myself at all. I just think it's more a continuation of this like weird dystopian world, especially when you look at these AI creators on Instagram and you have real human men being like, you are so gorgeous. then it's just like, whoa, where are people's minds. So I think it's more disturbing, as we all know, than a I think that people will Maybe this is optimistic, but I don't think there is a replacement for human connection I think the chatters are not long for this world because ye I think you human chatters. Correct. Yeah. I think an AI will not make those weird grammatical choices that tip me off to the fact that I was talking to someone in a foreign country. We talk to a few men who are like, I would rather be duped by an AI than realize that I've been spilling my guts to some random guy who I' who I, you know who actually heard what I was saying, you know, like I think people and we've seen this, like People like talking to their chat bots A lot of people do it, rightight Gracy? Yeah. So we. So I think I just think that the chatting function, I would expect will be taken over by AI. ye How do you feel about the morals of all of this and like sort of on balance only fans good Only fans bad somewhere in the middle, just a continuation How did you come away from this project feeling about it as a platform It's doing more harm than good to speaking to the loneliness I honestly came out of this platform or out of this project more confused and less opinionated than I did when I went into it, I feel like