Ari Kytsya was invited to be a guest lecturer to 1,200 Psych 201 students at the University of Washington, and man do I regret not having vodka on hand for my coffee while I talk about this. It went over about as well as you’d think it would, and the citizens of the internet are justifiably irked. It might shock you all to learn that I’m one of them, but maybe not for the reasons you’d think. Sex work absolutely deserves academic space, but do I think Ari is the ideal ambassador for that job? Absolutely— and I cannot emphasize this enough— hell no.
The TikTok influencer and OnlyFans star was invited to speak with a classroom full of students who are studying psychology. Human sexuality is a big part of what makes our brains tick, obviously. OnlyFans and adult content are also components that go into the makings of the modern adult brain. The adults-only platform has completely reshaped digital intimacy, parasociality, and sexual identity. It’s also given adult entertainers way more agency to protect themselves and their financial interests than they used to have. Psychology and sexuality students do need to hear from sex workers about their experiences, and they also need to hear from adult content creators about the realities of their field of work. Boundaries in a digital world, burnout, the importance of consent (and what that even means), the stigma that adult content creators face, navigating fan dynamics— all important topics that need to be studied by the people who are learning how to help others manage their own brains. That said…
It’s hard for me to think of a choice that is more wrong for this guest speaker position than freaking Ari Kytsya. Well, maybe Bonnie Blue, but I’m trying real hard to forget she exists. Ari’s entire influencer brand is built around marketing her “OnlyFans lifestyle” to teens, getting them to buy into the life of a content creator before they’re even old enough to vote. Her entire social presence glamorizes sex work as some sort of luxury lifestyle pipeline to a demographic that is still stressing over whether or not they’ll make the varsity cheer squad next fall. Ari discusses the downsides of the business as well, but with nowhere near as much weight as she gives the “look at what I’ve got” side of her life as an adult creator. Her content reinforces to girls that they need to sexualize themselves earlier to achieve that same kind of life. That’s not education, that’s marketing, and it’s cultural harm. Teen girls already face insane amounts of online sexualization, and Ari’s content only turns up that pressure. I promise you, the youths do not need yet another voice telling them to monetize their trauma before age 20.
My other big beef with Ari? She doesn’t exactly deliver the content she advertises. She talks a big game on her social channels about the explicit content she’s going to drop, gets her fans worked into a frenzy over it, then slaps a heavy price tag on the final product, only for it to fall way short of the promises she made to her audience. Her subscribers frequently complain that she consistently over-promises and under-delivers on her explicit content, that her content is frequently recycled and heavily censored, and that her army of devoted social media followers (many of whom are not actually consuming her adult content on OnlyFans, btw) will lambast anyone who dares to leave a critical review when the promised content falls short yet again. If you’re going to have someone show up to teach students about the life of a sex worker, maybe choose someone who actually— oh, I don’t know— does the work. The academic absurdity of a psychology professor elevating someone whose customers feel misled is just… save that ish for the business school.
Ari Kytsya doesn’t have the sex-worker experience that these students need insight into, but sex workers should absolutely be a part of the academic conversation. Human psychology is an ever-evolving thing, OnlyFans isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and creators have valuable input on human behavior and sexuality that needs to be studied. Universities need to be bringing in sex workers and adult content creators who can speak on the importance of consent culture, and what consent truly means in the first place. OnlyFans creators are in a better position to speak with authority on boundaries surrounding parasocial relationships than just about anyone else online. And digital safety and stalking prevention? Adult creators are practically writing the “how-to” manual on those things because they’ve had to more or less figure it out on their own. The toll of the emotional labor that goes into making sure that you’re able to show up to create content and feed the algorithm so that your work gets seen is also a topic that OnlyFans creators know inside and out, along with how to handle burnout and personal harm reduction. These are all topics that need to be studied as we continue to learn more about the impact that digital intimacy has on our humanity as a whole, and these topics need to be addressed by creators who can actually articulate a lived experience rather than presenting curated marketing content surrounding an “OnlyFans lifestyle.”
There’s a whole host of adult content creators who are more deserving of that guest spot than Ari Kytsya. Veteran cam models with long-term experience, creators who are actively discussing issues faced by sex workers and adult content creators (boundaries and enforcing them, burnout, and the emotional toll), and sex workers who understand and educate others about platform economics and safety protocols are all at the top of my list. Honorable mention goes to advocates who are pushing for legal reform that leads to better protections for sex workers, and data-literate creators who can explain how to look at things like analytics, fan behavior, and sustainable business models (but again, that can be saved for the business school).
People can argue all day about whether or not Ari actually lectured, but the real point is that she shouldn’t be— not in Psychology 201, anyway. Sex workers absolutely belong in academic spaces, but the qualifying factor for who does and does not get to speak shouldn’t be virality. Someone who practices glam-aesthetic-teen-targeting the way Ari Kytsya does definitely shouldn’t be on the list of what makes an ideal speaker either. If academia really wants to study the effects of sex work and adult content creation on human psychology, they need to amplify real sex workers instead of someone who treats sex work like a money-making mood board on Pinterest.
