After nearly two decades in adult entertainment, Colton Long, better known as Teddy Bryce, is retiring from OnlyFans. There’s no scandal, and he isn’t burned out on the industry. His business grew too fast to keep up with, and his story could point to where a lot of creators may end up.
Long’s career has run through studio porn, escorting, fan sites, and OnlyFans, and he has long treated that income as a way to fund something else, from education to apprenticeships. Some of those plans didn’t pan out. The one that did is Strapp Metal, the queer fashion and fetishwear brand he started with his partner, Lee Finnigan. It mixes eroticism, heavy metal imagery, and queer art across underwear, harnesses, and T-shirts, and recently added a “Romantics” line built around lingerie and blending masculine and feminine looks. Long, who has a degree in painting and sculpture, draws many of the graphics himself and commissions other queer artists for the rest.
The brand grew faster than he expected. Long says it left no time to upload, chat with subscribers, or stay consistent, so he was “kind of forced to quit, in a way.” He didn’t leave because the platform stopped working for him. He left because something else started working better.
In fact, his experience as a creator is part of the reason he’s so prepared for the jump. Running an OnlyFans page means being fully self-employed, teaching yourself video editing and social media, reading an audience, and managing a brand that never really shuts off. Those are basically the same jobs a founder does. Strapp Metal seems to have proven a steeper climb than the creative side suggested, with manufacturing, shipping, and customer service demanding as much attention as design. But Long has plans for events, wholesale, and a broader lifestyle line, and he’s retiring the Teddy Bryce name to introduce himself as Colton.
Long’s path is one of several that creators have taken recently, and the most visible example may be Lily Phillips. The 24-year-old, who built a following with attention-grabbing stunts, has said her adult work will take “more of a back seat” as she works on diversifying. She has talked about wanting to do television, presenting, and more YouTube, and has already appeared in “Headline Newds,” a series that uses OnlyFans creators to explain the climate crisis, in a segment filmed from a double bed. Phillips isn’t announcing a clean break from the platform. She’s trading on a following she built to move toward mainstream media.
Others are choosing different potential edits. Isla Moon put her creator income into a production company and spent $4.5 million on a reality series. Wrestler Jordynne Grace reportedly closed an account headed toward a million dollars to sign with WWE, while former champion Mandy Rose says she’d answer a call from the company.
Most creators rarely vanish. Instead, they convert what they’ve built into something new. Their following becomes a platform for TV, a customer base becomes a fashion label, and income becomes seed money for a studio.
But exits are seldom tidy. Long himself doesn’t pretend he’s shutting the door for good. “I don’t believe any sex worker that says that they’re never doing it again,” he says, arguing that sharing that part of themselves is something many people never fully outgrow. He expects some version of it to stay in his life. Stigma can follow a creator into any new venture, and the same banks, tax rules, and audience expectations apply wherever the next business lands. Maybe that’s why leaving still looks like a gamble?