Well, congratulations, Salt Lake City! You did it! One of the cities in the United States that is most well known for its prudish attitude towards sex in the nation has ranked at number 3 nationally for OnlyFans spending per capita. Oh yes, friends, the very same city that is the home and capital of operations for the Mormon church. I like to imagine they’re just as proud as I am.

What’s the number breakdown? Glad you asked! So according to recent data, $412,038 was spent per 10,000 residents annually, resulting in a total of $8.2 million spent on OnlyFans in 2025, which averages out to roughly $45 per adult logging in and forking over credit card deets. They beat out Denver, Seattle, Las Vegas, and— this one caught me by surprise— Miami! Were this particular ranking an Olympic competition, Salt Lake City would have made it up onto the platform to accept the bronze medal in spank bank spending. 

OnlyFans is… everything that Utah traditionally isn’t. Think about it! OnlyFans is the place on the internet where people can be most open about their sexuality. It was literally built on the premise that sexuality is normal, healthy to express, and (frankly) it’s profitable. That’s not usually a preacher’s number one talking point in the pulpit on Sundays, but neither is my next point: OnlyFans puts women completely in control. OnlyFans creators— who are mostly women— have the ability to set their own rates for the content they create (that they maintain ownership of), get to set their own hours for creating content and interacting online, and basically answer to no one unless they’ve got a generous tipper in the DMs they’re extra attentive to. Oh, and consent? Consent is everything on OnlyFans. Every single transaction is done via intentional opt-in, and models have the right to turn down any requests they don’t want to fulfill. Clearly, the patriarchy didn’t sign off on the business model, but that doesn’t appear to bother Salt Lake City residents, conservative capital or no. 

Utah is a state that is widely known for its deeply religious, socially conservative, buttoned-up aesthetic that makes up the public culture. And yet, they’re quietly racking up a top-3 national ranking on the internet’s favorite naughty little corner. To be fair, online platforms offer a level of privacy that tends to make social barriers that are present offline disappear. But the irony of it all has to be noticed, poked at, and possibly mocked just an eensy bit for funsies. 

If you’ve been reading this with your pearls firmly clutched in your hand: relax the grip, and chill. If you’re from Salt Lake City, the money suggests that you’re already curious, and could do with logging in and seeing what all the fuss is about. If you want to get more specific… why not go see what Hotwife OnlyFans creators are up to? Statistically speaking, someone in your area code already has, might as well join them!

Apparently, Elle Fanning was on OnlyFans. Yes, that Elle Fanning! But before you get excited and go hunting… it was for role research. Not only that, but she had a full writers’ room with her as the gang did the leg work necessary to figure out how to best tell the story of a pregnant mom down on her luck who turns to OnlyFans to support herself and her soon-to-be-babe. 

If you’re a person with an Apple TV subscription, get excited, because Margo’s Got Money Troubles is coming your way on April 15th. Appropriate for those of us in the United States, because that’s Tax Day as well. Yippee. Anyhow, the show is based on Rufi Thorpe’s 2024 novel about Margo. She’s a pregnant woman who starts an OnlyFans to make sure she can make ends meet. Elle Fanning plays the role of Maro, hence the need for some extra spicy research. 

So what exactly were Fanning and co researching during their moment on the adults-only website? Well, in order to do justice to the role, Elle wanted to understand how the platform actually works. That… actually seems like a pretty important factor to consider, and the show creators agreed, so despite the social stigma associated with doing so, Elle Fanning created an OnlyFans. The full writers’ room was involved. Oh yes, they turned scrolling OnlyFans into a team activity for science! Executive Producer, Eva Anderson, was on the ball, clarifying that everyone who participated in team spicy scroll time had to give consent prior to being a part of that particular research session. I’ve got to hand it to Anderson for remembering that consent isn’t just important when one is engaging in sexual activity themselves, but also when consuming adult entertainment content with others present. Consent matters, and Eva Anderson made sure her team knew that. I’m here for it. 

Anyhow, Margo’s story may be fictitious, but for many women, it’s a reality they have to navigate. Pregnant OnlyFans creators actually make up a surprisingly large niche on the platform! There’s no shortage of expecting mothers who find themselves needing to make money to prepare for the arrival of a new baby, and OnlyFans offers women the opportunity to work on their own terms, schedule, and comfort level. Many of these women are just like Margo: a single mom-to-be who is using the tools available to her to create financial stability for her family. With a traditional job market that looks more closely for reasons not to hire than reasons someone is qualified for a job, OnlyFans gives pregnant women a means of earning a living when would-be employers would avoid hiring them solely because they’re going to be a mom soon. This is real life for many real women, and I for one am pretty stoked to see whether Fanning’s portrayal helps to normalize, rather than pathologize, moms who make money by sharing content on OnlyFans. 

If you, like me, are counting down the days until the premiere, we’re not too far away! Margo’s Got Money Troubles drops on April 15th, and I guess we’ll all get to see whether or not a mainstream show on Apple TV+ shifts the stigma around OnlyFans creators. That would be a very welcome— and needed— change, not just for mothers and mothers to be, but for all content creators who are simply showing up to fulfill a demand. Either way, I’m rooting for Margo, and the whole writer’s room that did the legwork to try and make sure they tell her story properly. 

If there’s one thing I can say for Sophie Rain, it’s that she sure does know how to make a wishlist. OnlyFans’ favorite Christian good girl has announced her dream collab, and it turns out that the partner in question is none other than Cardi B. Coincidentally, the rapper is also an OnlyFans creator, so… it’s not actually that far-fetched!

Sophie Rain is (currently) a 21-year-old social media sensation and OnlyFans creator who appears to be the top-earning OnlyFans creator of all top (for now, anyway). She got her start as a Teen OnlyFans creator when she was only 19 after setting up her page in May of 2023. She co-founded the Bop House (an infamous creator collective for barely legal content creators) with Aishah Sofey in December of 2024, then split from the group in July of 2025. She went viral in late 2024 for claiming to have earned $43 million on OnlyFans in her first year as a content creator on the platform, despite never having sex on camera— or at all. Rain is a devout Christian who claims to be saving herself for marriage, and despite not sharing explicit content on her page… baby girl makes bank!

If you don’t know who Cardi B is… how? She’s a Grammy-winning rapper, known for WAP, and Bodak Yellow amongst her other works. She’s basically hip-hop royalty, and would be a dream collab for anyone, but especially for a content creator looking to branch out from OnlyFans eventually. She recently released her second studio album Am I the Drama? to no small amount of critical acclaim. Cardi B also joined OnlyFans in August of 2020 as a way of connecting with fans during the pandemic— however, much like Rain, she doesn’t post explicit content on her page. The rapper uses her page exclusively for sharing BTS content, addressing any rumors about herself that pop up in the media, and to have a way to give her fans who are willing to pay for it more access. 

Sophie Rain was recently on TMZ in Beverly Hills, and didn’t miss a beat when asked about who her dream collab partner would be. Said Rain, “Cardi B would be sick. I love Cardi B!” She didn’t offer up any details on what that theoretical collab would involve, but it’s safe to say that it probably wouldn’t be anything that their existing subscribers would expect. I mean, you’ve got two OnlyFans creators who kick ass at creating content that their subscribers love without sharing anything explicit… brand managers everywhere can only dream of such an opportunity!

This isn’t the first time Sophie Rain’s expressed interest in working with a musician. At one point Sophie was somehow in communication with Drake, and said that being in one of his videos would be “a dream.” She’s also unapologetic about her crush on Bruno Mars, showing the world that girl has a type: rich, famous, and preferably with a recording contradict on lockdown. 

Rain has been open about her desire to cross over from OnlyFans into mainstream music and media. Pitching the occasional collab idea to rappers she loves seems to be one of her strategies, and given how she and Cardi B both occupy the same non-explicit OnlyFans middleground, it’s not a bad idea! They’ve already got a platform and an audience ready to go, OnlyFans’ reputation is already doing the heavy lifting. Why not see what happens? 

Regardless of whether or not Cardi B (or Drake, or Bruno) goes for it, I hope that Rain doesn’t give up her musical aspirations. She’s got more moxy in her pinky finger than most people experience throughout their entire lifetime, so odds are that eventually her openly dreaming on main will pay off. 

If you’re a parent, you’ve probably been in the following scenario at some point: you’re on a plane for a flight that feels much longer than it is, your young child is absolutely losing it, and out of nowhere, a flight attendant appears out of nowhere with a snack in her hand, and an encouraging word on her lips. You’d still swear in court that that woman is an angel who deserves every nice thing— and she does— but would you be surprised to learn that same woman might clock out and capture spicy content in the hotel mirror? Well, you probably wouldn’t be learning that at all, because flight attendants keep that part of their lives on lockdown for a reason. 

Meet Jenna. She’s a flight attendant by day, and an OnlyFans creator by night, quite frequently using her layover time in hotel rooms to capture content that makes bank on OnlyFans. She loves her cabin crew gig, because let’s be real: getting paid to fly internationally is the adventure of a lifetime! And her OnlyFans side-hustle gives her extra income to enjoy while she’s on that grand adventure— also the added bonus of getting to explore a different side of herself in a way that lets her get exactly as creative as she’s comfortable getting in front of the camera. However, due to wanting to keep her job as a flight attendant, Jenna has to keep her OnlyFans page a secret from her family, friends, and colleagues. She’s essentially living a double life, but not because she’s ashamed! She’s keeping the spicy side of herself hidden because everyone else would make it weird. 

Before anyone is like “maybe she should get a different job,” excuse me? Flight attendants aren’t waitstaff with wings. They’re highly trained safety professionals who can handle CPR, emergency evacuations, de-escalation, and even help navigate medical crises at 35,000 feet. Passenger comfort is a part of the job, but that massively undersells the importance of what they do when they’re literally the whole reason flights aren’t chaos from start to finish. These are people that we need badly, and losing a good one over a ring light and a subscription fee would be ridiculous. 

With OnlyFans creators who maintain careers outside of content creation, the leak-to-resignation pipeline is a very real thing. Jenna’s not being paranoid, she’s being strategic, because she’s seen what can happen when someone’s carefully hidden page is discovered. There’s a pattern to the way it typically goes: a talented, mission-driven professional who is probably underpaid quietly supplements their income on OnlyFans. The secret gets out, there’s a public pile-on, and then the professional who was showing up because they believe in the work they wanted to do is forced to resign. Numerous teachers across the US and the UK have either resigned or been fired in the past few years when their OnlyFans pages are discovered, despite there being no crossover between the two very different roles. In multiple cases, students went looking to find pages, and then reported them to the teacher’s colleagues and administrators, turning them into involuntary enforcers of social shame. The bitter irony of it all, is that many of those teachers stayed in the profession long after their OnlyFans income made teaching financially unnecessary, because they genuinely cared about their mission, but when the secret was leaked; that was it. The stigma against OnlyFans creators didn’t actually protect anyone, but it did cost the world some very dedicated educators. 

Allegedly, 60— 70% of OnlyFans creators keep their content creation work hidden from their friends, families, and other employers. The psychological cost of leading a double life, constantly checking privacy settings, and fearing discovery every moment, leads to anxiety, burnout, and even consistent panic attacks. Not from the work, but from the secrecy the stigma demands. The content isn’t the problem, the peer-induced shame spiral is. More than one educator who kept her profile hidden has eventually given up, resigned, and found herself keeping company with the Hottest OnlyFans creators when she just couldn’t take it anymore. 

So, to Jenna: here’s to staying in the skies, doing safety briefings, handing out pretzels, and being excellent at a job she clearly loves. May your next landing be smooth, and your layover exactly long enough to capture content that clicks with your subscribers. May your skies always be clear, and your hotel room lighting always be perfect. 

Google went from “Don’t Be Evil” to letting anonymous trolls delete your content from the internet in minutes — and has no incentive to fix it

In 2000, Google adopted an internal motto that would become one of the most famous phrases in corporate history: “Don’t be evil.” It appeared in their corporate code of conduct, served as the Wi-Fi password on employee shuttles, and was cited by Google’s own founders in their 2004 IPO letter as a guiding principle. It was, for a time, one of the few examples of a tech company articulating a moral compass in plain language.

Then, in 2018, Google removed almost every mention of it.

The phrase had lived at the top of the company’s code of conduct for nearly two decades. Following a corporate restructuring under parent company Alphabet in 2015, Alphabet adopted the softer “Do the right thing” as its own code. Google initially kept “Don’t be evil” — until late April 2018, when a revision scrubbed it from the preface entirely. One lonely mention survives at the bottom of the document: “And remember… don’t be evil.” A whisper where there used to be a declaration.

The timing was notable. The removal coincided with a wave of employee resignations over Google’s involvement in Project Maven, a partnership with the U.S. Pentagon to develop AI for military applications. Over 4,000 employees signed a petition against the project. A dozen left entirely. Google’s former Head of International Relations, Ross LaJeunesse, would later write that the motto “was no longer a true reflection of the company’s values; it was now nothing more than just another corporate marketing tool.”

You might wonder what any of this has to do with a copyright law written in 1998. The answer is everything. Because the same company that decided “Don’t be evil” was no longer worth saying out loud has also built the single most exploitable content-removal system on the internet — and has made deliberate choices to keep it that way.

The Weapon Google Hands to Fraudsters

Here’s what bad actors can do today: submit DMCA requests that look valid on paper, then let Google’s default “remove first” machinery do the rest. In practice, that can mean pages vanish from search results fast, with little friction up front and no meaningful verification that the filer is who they claim to be.

That isn’t a hypothetical. That’s how Google’s DMCA takedown process works right now. And while the Digital Millennium Copyright Act itself has serious structural problems, Google has made a series of deliberate choices that go far beyond what the law requires, turning a flawed system into a weapon optimized for abuse.

This is what a fraudulent-looking DMCA notice can look like: generic sender, vague work identification, and a sprawling URL list — exactly the kind of filing that makes abuse hard to detect at scale.

Who’s Getting Hurt

The damage isn’t theoretical. It’s happening to real people, and it cuts two ways.

First, there are the creators whose identities are being weaponized against them. Top OnlyFans creators have discovered that unverified filers are impersonating them to file fraudulent copyright claims, using the creator’s own name and content as the basis for takedowns against publishers who feature them. Many creators without professional representation are watching their traffic collapse and have no framework for understanding why. The mechanism of attack is invisible to them. They see the symptom. They never see the cause.

“My agent brought these fake reports to my attention — I didn’t even know this could happen,” says Kayla, a top 1% OnlyFans creator. “I was shocked. It’s almost as bad as finding out you’ve been leaked. Other creators who don’t have agency representation lose traffic to their pages and have no idea why it’s happening or what to do.”

Then there are the publishers. Ad networks, roundup sites, and independent media outlets whose legitimately published content gets ripped out of Google search results overnight. They lose time, money, and traffic fighting bogus claims — and by the time they successfully counter one fraudulent takedown, the damage has already been done and hundreds more notices are waiting.

Matt M., a top creator agency owner, describes the operational reality: “We lose time and money fighting these bogus claims. In the end, it’s the creator who suffers. Some of them have been manipulated into paying for takedowns to protect their brand. What really happens is they lose access to the promotion they’re paying for from ad networks, so they’re effectively paying twice and losing traffic. I don’t blame the creators for this — these scammers make it sound like they’re some kind of intellectual property lawyer protecting the creator against theft.”

On the publisher side, the operational toll is just as brutal. Benjamin, a COO at a web publishing company, describes a business that’s been forced to build an entire role around fighting fraud: “We manage dozens of niche websites where humans compose longform editorial content and perform investigative journalism. We’re overly cautious about ensuring the graphics on our sites are eligible and fair use. And yet, we now have to have a full-time employee who does nothing but receive DMCA takedown notices, respond to explain our position, and then track and follow up on each one because Google is only reinstating our pages about 60% of the time on the first attempt.” The economics of abuse have made it even worse: “We’ve seen a huge increase in unethical providers on websites like Fiverr who will file DMCA takedowns anonymously for less than $10. This DMCA fraud is a daily struggle.”

What connects all of it is the same structural failure: Google processes takedowns from unverified filers at scale — and the people on the receiving end have no fast, affordable way to fight back.

Seven Things Google Could Do Tomorrow (But Won’t)

The DMCA requires platforms to process takedown notices “expeditiously” to maintain safe harbor protection, but nowhere does the law require Google to accept unverified notices, prohibit identity confirmation, or prevent flagging suspicious patterns. Google has chosen to do none of the things the law would allow. Every change below is legally permissible. They choose not to because the current system costs them nothing.

1. Verify the identity of complainants. Anyone can file a DMCA takedown with a self-attested name and zero identity verification. Fraudulent senders routinely use generic names like “DMCA Manager,” burying their filings in a sea of identical-looking notices. Google could require verified accounts or confirmed business entities before processing notices. The law requires a perjury statement that the filer is authorized to act on behalf of the copyright holder, but Google never actually verifies that claim. This is the single highest-leverage change Google could make, because every other reform depends on knowing who is actually filing.

2. Create a trust scoring system and verified publisher whitelist. Google processes millions of takedown requests annually. They have more than enough data to flag patterns of abuse — high-volume filers who get counter-noticed, notices that consistently target competitors rather than actual pirates. Google already does this in other contexts: think Google Ads quality scores, think search spam detection. The technical infrastructure exists. The will does not. Taking it further, Google could create a verified publisher whitelist — trusted publishers with clean compliance records receive “notice and review” treatment rather than instant “notice and takedown.” When a takedown targets content from a verified publisher, Google holds it pending brief review instead of auto-removing it. Unverified filers and unknown entities get standard processing. The current system doesn’t bother to distinguish between a publisher and a pirate. Google could make that distinction tomorrow.

3. Add a review window for suspicious notices. Instead of removing content the instant a notice arrives, Google could hold flagged notices for 24 to 48 hours of review. The DMCA says “expeditiously.” It does not say “instantly.” Google already takes days to process many notices anyway.

4. Require specific identification of the copyrighted work. Fraudulent takedowns are routinely vague about what’s supposedly being infringed. The law already requires identification of the copyrighted work — if it’s missing, the notice is technically deficient and Google has no obligation to act. In practice, they process incomplete notices because it’s easier to take things down than to push back.

5. Make counter-notices frictionless. Filing a takedown takes minutes through Google’s web form. A counter-notice requires the victim to provide personal contact information (which gets forwarded to the attacker), submit legal declarations, and wait 10 to 14 business days. Google could streamline this with an equally simple form and a one-click counter-notice option. They don’t.

6. Penalize repeat abusers. Google has a repeat infringer policy for people whose content gets taken down, but no meaningful repeat abuser policy for people who file fraudulent notices. There’s precedent for this: the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) imposes fines of $500 per violation for unsolicited robocalls — real financial consequences that changed the economics of spam overnight. Google could apply the same logic: track abuse, escalate consequences, suspend filing privileges for filers whose notices are consistently bogus.

7. Publish transparency data at the complainant level. Google’s Transparency Report shows aggregate data but doesn’t reveal which complainants have high rates of rejected claims. Publishing that data would let the public (and courts) see who’s actually weaponizing the system.

The common thread: Google has optimized entirely for minimizing their own legal risk and operational cost. Their safe harbor protection doesn’t depend on accuracy. It depends on speed of removal. They’ve outsourced 100% of the consequences to everyone else.

How Google Weaponizes “Transparency” Through Lumen

Google sends copies of DMCA takedown notices to the Lumen Database, a Harvard Law School Library–affiliated research archive housing nearly 70 million takedown notices referencing well over 10 billion URLs. In theory, this creates transparency: the public can see who is requesting content removal and why.

In practice, the transparency is far thinner than it appears, and that’s by Google’s design.

Google’s own policy states that it generally shares the requestor’s name on copyright and trademark notices sent to Lumen. But “shares a name” isn’t the same as “verifies an identity.” The system still allows completely self-attested identities — names like “DMCA Manager” — to flood the record unchecked. Google never confirms that the person behind the name is real, that they represent who they claim to represent, or that they have any standing to file in the first place. The result is a database full of names that may as well be pseudonyms, with no mechanism to connect patterns of abuse across filings or hold repeat offenders accountable.

This matters because the DMCA statute itself requires that a takedown notice include the identity of the complainant. The entire premise is accountability: someone is making a legal claim under penalty of perjury, and the target should be able to evaluate who filed it and whether to counter-notice. When the name attached to a filing is functionally meaningless — self-attested, unconfirmed, and shared by thousands of other notices — that accountability collapses. The filer’s identity exists on paper. It doesn’t exist in practice.

Compare this to other platforms. When Reddit, GitHub, Medium, or Vimeo submit notices to Lumen, the sender information is often verifiable and intact. Google, by far the largest source of notices in the database, accepts whatever name a filer types into a form and passes it along without verification. The sheer volume of unverified Google notices dilutes the entire dataset, making Lumen’s research mission exponentially harder.

And Lumen’s own researchers have documented exactly what this enables. In 2022, Lumen Research Fellow Shreya Tewari identified more than 33,000 DMCA notices that appeared to be part of a coordinated campaign of fraudulent takedowns built on back-dated articles used to suppress legitimate journalism. Follow-up research brought the total to over 89,000 apparently fraudulent notices, used to suppress news coverage of corruption, drug trafficking, and political misconduct. The playbook is repeatable, scalable, and — thanks to Google’s lack of verification — virtually risk-free.

Lumen’s stated mission is to provide transparency on who sends content removal requests, why, and to what ends. Google undermines that mission not by hiding names but by treating self-attested identities as “good enough,” flooding the system with filings that technically have a name attached but offer no real path to accountability.

Why This Is an Antitrust Issue

In August 2024, a federal judge ruled that Google illegally maintained a monopoly in search. Judge Amit Mehta held that Google monopolized the markets for general search services and text advertising, controlling nearly 90% of computer searches and approximately 95% of smartphone searches. In April 2025, a second federal court found Google had also unlawfully monopolized the digital advertising market, with the DOJ declaring that Google’s “unlawful dominance allows them to censor and even deplatform American voices.”

As of March 2026, the fight continues. The case has moved into the remedies phase, where the DOJ has proposed major structural changes, including limits on Google’s search distribution agreements and the potential divestiture of Chrome. Google is simultaneously appealing the monopoly ruling. The case is expected to move to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Those rulings are what elevate Google’s DMCA choices from a policy problem to a structural one. When a single company controls the doorway to the entire internet — and two federal courts have confirmed that they do — running a sloppy, easily exploited takedown system isn’t just negligent. It’s a weapon that any third party can pick up and use to destroy a competitor.

Take the Button Away

Google doesn’t need Congress to stop making this easy. It can verify complainant identity privately, rate-limit high-volume filers, build an abuse score, and give verified publishers “notice and review” instead of instant deindexing. None of that requires a new statute — just the decision that the people who depend on Google’s index are worth the engineering hours.

Right now, Google’s DMCA pipeline is optimized for the only metric that protects Google: speed. Everyone else eats the consequences. They took “Don’t be evil” off the wall. The least they can do is stop handing strangers the button that makes people’s work disappear.

Shocker of all shockers, Ronda Rousey stumbled her way back into the spotlight, and used her moment to talk about… the work another woman does with her body. That’s not actually all that surprising, but what did catch people off guard was the way she took a shot at UFC’s pay rates first. What’s so remarkable about that? Well, Rousey’s been out of the UFC ring for… a mighty minute. 

Let’s meet the players involved, shall we? Ronda Rousey’s a former UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion who used to be the biggest star in the MMA sky. She hasn’t fought since December 2016 when she lost to Amanda Nunes in 48 seconds, pivoted to WWE in 2018, and is intending to return to the UFC fighting space on May 16th in a match against Gina Carano (a former MMA fighter turned actress who you might remember from The Mandalorian. The fight with Rousey is her grand return to combat sports too). Valentina Shevchenko is the current UFC Women’s Flyweight Champion. She’s a Kyrgyzstan-born fighter known as “The Bullet,” is one of the most decorated fighters in UFC history, and is still very much actively competing. 

Ok, so here’s what happened. At a press conference that was intended to specifically promote the Rousey vs. Carano fight, Rousey had herself a nice rant about how UFC underpays their fighters— reminder: she hasn’t fought for UFC in over a decade. Anyhow, Rousey claimed that top champions like Shevchenko (yes, mentioned her by name) are being forced to sell explicit images on OnlyFans in order to seek out an existence. If you think that Shevchenko had something to say about that, you’d be correct. 

Valentina Shevchenko took to Twitter on March 10, 2026 with quite the clapback. She said that while yes, some fighters are on OnlyFans— herself included— many of those fighters are using the platform as a modern way to connect more directly with their fans, not just as a way to make oodles of money (although there’s nothing wrong with getting paid). She threw no small amount of shade at Rousey making these claims after being away from MMA for so long, saying “Looks like Ronda slept too long after her last fight in 2016.” Zing. Shevchenko did indeed join OnlyFans in late 2024, but her content is strictly behind-the-scenes training, lifestyle content, and travel. She doesn’t create or share adult content on the platform, but if she did, that would be her choice. OnlyFans is incredibly strict about consent, and ensuring that everyone on the adults-only platform is only sharing content they want to create and share with subscribers who want to see it.  

See also: we know by now that Shevchenko is hardly alone. Professional athletes across a broad range of sports utilize OnlyFans for reasons that are entirely their own, but there are two biggies that tend to pop up: 

1. They want to make money on their own terms: when athletes are off-season, between contracts, or underpaid by their leagues (which according to Rousey, the UFC is guilty of), athletes are left to find a way to fill in the financial gaps. OnlyFans allows them to do that. 
2. They’re looking to connect more authentically with their fans: official team/league PR machines are highly sanitized and corporate. OnlyFans allows athletes to share content and connect with their fans in a way that is more authentic to them, and more personal for their fans. 

Athlete OnlyFans creators are doing a phenomenal job of using the platform as a connection tool, and revenue stream. Fans who want access to more will happily pay for it, and athlete creators who want to share more adult content have a space in which they can do so behind a paywall. There is nothing wrong with sharing explicit content on OnlyFans, but the platform is so much more than spicy nudes. There are artists sharing exclusive content on OnlyFans, chefs sharing cooking tutorials, and musicians who release exclusive tracks on OnlyFans before they share anywhere else!

Let’s give Shevchenko her flowers, shall we? She’s a champion who didn’t let a baseless claim slide. She responded with facts, a clapback, and a hair toss. She’s unashamed of showing up in a way that feels authentic to her on a platform outside the UFC’s polished media bubble that allows her to connect with her fans in a way that benefits everyone involved. Shevchenko’s use of OnlyFans is totally normal, cool, and— let’s be honest— just frigging smart. The real problem is the stigma, not the platform. Rousey may have intended to throw shade, but all she did was remind everyone that Shevchenko’s still thriving in the cage, and she isn’t. 

It was the foot pic heard round the world. Benny Blanco’s untidy tootsies graced the public in a podcast clip, and the internet immediately caught the ick. Several commenters were ready to duel at dawn over some less than picturesque toes making a guest appearance, but those pearl-clutching yahoos forgot to consider an important factor. The foot fetish corner of OnlyFans doesn’t stay exclusively in their kinky corner, and they were all about it. Turns out that Benny Blanco has a few people riding hard for his dirty feet, and it really shouldn’t have been as surprising as it was. 

So Benjamin Levin is the legendary hitmaker behind massive pop songs for artists like Rihanna, Katy Perry, Ed Sheeran, and Justin Bieber. He’s a mult-platinum producer and songwriter, and (perhaps most notably) devoted husband to Selena Gomez. His known for his quirky and slightly chaotic personality, and hosts the podcast Friends Keep Secrets. He’s not just some rando who showed up to an interview with dusty toes, he’s a very rich, very famous dude who showed up to an interview with dusty toes. 

A clip from his podcast has been doing rounds online where viewers can see that he’s barefoot. The camera catches his feet, and viewers noticed that they look… not exactly freshly pedicured. Social media did the thing that it’s best at, and hordes of people shamed someone they’ve never met for doing something that harmed approximately no one. Thousands were typing at Benny to “put those dogs away,” while offering their 2 cents to the hygiene discourse. Y’all, pennies have been discontinued, and this bizarre micro-scandal only erupted because we’re all addicted to scrolling the gram while we’re avoiding making actual social contact with a human in real life. Touch grass, yeesh. 

Turns out I’m not the only one who felt that way, because Danielle Lanza rode in to the rescue. Lanza’s an OnlyFans creator known for her foot-focused content, and fetish-friendly branding. She’s built a niche audience around feet that are realistic, and not over pedicured into Barbie-esque extremes. She publicly said that she though Benny’s dirty feet were “kinda hot.” The internet once again had big feelings about the whole thing. Some mocked her for admitting she was attracted to dirty feet, some clutched their pearls over a woman expressing an opinion about what she finds herself getting hot and bothered about. Here’s the deal though… if anyone knows about what kind of feet people are going to be attracted to, it’s a foot fetish content creator on OnlyFans. 

The foot fetish niche is an economy all on its own, because it’s easily one of the most popular niches on OnlyFans. They’ve got a whole ecosystem built around: soles, socks, pedicures (or lack thereof), “after the gym” realism, heels, stepping in foot, and honestly just about anything involving feet that you can think of. Foot fetish OnlyFans creators regularly market their imperfect feet as part of the appeal, because the energy isn’t always pristine, and the desire isn’t always for “spa day” perfect feet. Sometimes the vibe is “I just got home after a long day and kicked my boots off,” and foot fetish creators know how to appeal to audience members looking for exactly that. 

The exact same internet that shamed Benny Blanco for daring to be a person with dirty feet online is the exact same internet that quietly funds niche fetish economies. We love to pretend that all desire is aesthetic and curated, but the reality is that desire can get really weird! Also dusty. Danielle Lanza didn’t embarrass herself by saying “that’s kinda hot,” she just read the room and clocked that there was a hot pair of feet at the center of the controversy. 

Listen, if a Grammy-winning producer can’t show up barefoot without it causing a national upset, what hope is there for the rest of us who are doing good just to shower every now and then? Maybe instead of humiliating himself, Benny was just accidentally marketing himself to a demographic he didn’t even know he had. The real moral of the story here is to never ever underestimate the foot fetish community. They’re everywhere, and they’re paying attention. 

Well, here are once again, gathering to discuss Sophie Rain’s handling of online naysayers. This time, the person she’s being held up to is Justin Gaethje, a UFC champion fighter who didn’t make nearly as much as Rain, during the same span of time. Here’s the deal, if you’re really that upset that an OnlyFans creator out-earned your favorite cage-fighting titan, then here’s your sticker for finding the internet’s current favorite ‘moral economy’ debate. 

If this is somehow your first time hearing about Sophie Rain, here’s your quick primer on her badassery. She’s an OnlyFans creator and digital influencer with a very public persona who is currently the most likely candidate for “top-earning creator of all time” on OnlyFans. Her content is always engagement-heavy, and her ginormous online following keeps it that way, ensuring that her reach continues to spread wider and wider in traditional media. She’s also classy af, and doesn’t generally fall into the kind of digital drama that many people associate with OnlyFans creators (looking at you, Bonnie Blue). 

Justin Gaethje is a UFC fighter and interim lightweight champion who is known for a fighting style I can only describe as rugged, and a very well-established media presence. He’s got a high-profile bout history, that sought after championship status, and quite the reputation for being one of the sport’s scrappiest, and more entertaining athletes. 

Both Gaethje and Rain enjoy high-visibility careers that depend on fan engagement, but in completely different arenas. Since 2023, Justin Gaethje has reportedly earned $2.4 million across his career (per the recent viral moment, anyway), and Sophie Rain has allegedly earned over $100 million from OnlyFans. Rain’s revenue is purely platform driven, where Gaethje operates within a multi-fight prize structure, but it is important to note that these figures come from the viral social media tête-à-tête, where naysayers were scoffing at the idea of an OnlyFans creator far out-earning their favorite UFC star. Some commenters attempted to belittle Rain by saying that she only does “3 streams monthly” to earn what she does, so Sophie did what she does and responded with class. 

Why the eyebrow raising? The usual reason: the debate between “real jobs” and 24/7 hustle culture. OnlyFans creators get dismissed for not having a “real job” when the grind required to be successful as a creator is more intense than mat stink after a month of UFC training. “3 streams monthly” is a gross mischaracterization of the never-ending content machine that Sophie has honed down to an art. She has a 24/7 working loop of replying, filming, editing, posting, and monetizing engagements that all continues to feed back into keeping her fans and subscribers engaged, and opening their wallets to spend money on her content. Gaethje fans may be critical of the income disparity and the so-called legitimacy of online content work, but there are parallels to be made between the UFC world, and being a content creator on OnlyFans. Both come with no shortage of risks, rabid fans, and no small amount of pressure to show up and perform in a way that is pleasing to the intended audience (who will have some BIG feelings if you change things without warning them). 

Here’s the deal: we love pay transparency in this day and age. The fandom economy is nothing if not driven by fans doing their part to make sure their person is out-earning everyone else (because that $5 weekly tip totally makes a difference when there’s thousands of you doing it). OnlyFans offers creators the unique opportunity to market directly to their fans, and gives fans the inverse of that same rare opportunity, allowing them to have more access to the creator they enjoy following. Audiences highly value connection and risk bearing in different formats, and OnlyFans makes seeking those different formats much easier than having to wait around for another fight. And be so for real: look me in the digital eye and tell me you wouldn’t pay a modest subscription fee every month for the opportunity to see shower selfies from your favorite UFC hottie? 

If Gaethje wants to attempt to close the income gap between himself and Rain, maybe he should join the hosts of Athlete OnlyFans creators who are thriving on the platform, and even using their earnings to pay for training. If your favorite athlete wants to monetize fan love directly, OnlyFans is quite literally a platform made specifically for that. There’s no ref, no publicity team calling the shots, just a TOS agreement, and creators showing up however they feel most authentic doing so. 

To my girl Sophie, I’m so proud of you for continuing to stomp all over the expectations that others keep putting on you. Gaethje, if you join OnlyFans, make sure to make nice with Rain. She’d be one hell of a mentor.