As she followed reports of the chaos within Twitter, OnlyFans creator and artist Stephanie Michelle fretted over what losing Twitter would mean for her livelihood. She had already faced suspensions and content strikes on other platforms for sharing her artwork, much of which features abstract depictions of naked women.
“Starting from scratch is so demoralizing and so humiliating,” said Stephanie Michelle, who only wanted to be referred to by her stage name out of concern for her safety. “You feel like all of these platforms are laughing at us, like, ‘Haha, you think that what you have earned is worthy. Well, we can take that away from you in a flash.’”
OnlyFans allows creators to directly interact with paying subscribers, but creators note that it isn’t a platform for sex workers to build community because it’s a subscription service, not a social media site.
Twitter is one of the few platforms that allows explicit content. In recent years, it has become the center of a flourishing community of sex workers who connect with fans, advertise their content and educate other “Not Safe For Work” creators. But with Twitter’s future in question after Elon Musk’s takeover, sex workers who spoke with NBC News said they are worried that the community they built and depend upon will be fractured across social media platforms that don’t tolerate explicit content.
A spokesperson for Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
I genuinely feel like it [Twitter] saved me.
-CAITLIN REID, A COSPLAYER AND ONLYFANS CREATOR
Sex work circles have existed on Twitter throughout the platform’s history, and more recently have become a haven for adult creators funneling in from other sites. In 2018, for instance, U.S. law enforcement agencies shut down the classified ads site Backpage and, later that year, Tumblr banned porn. (Tumblr announced earlier this month that it will allow nudity, but not sexually explicit images, on the site again.) The pandemic and subsequent OnlyFans boom brought a new wave of adult content creators to the so-called sex work Twitter.
Many sex workers said Twitter is a necessity for them as it allows them to advertise their services, from one-on-one cam sessions to fetish art commissions. It also provides a vital centralized space to share resources.
“So much of sex worker tradition has always been word of mouth because it’s protective,” said Twitter user BotticelliBimbo, who is a stripper and Columbia University graduate student. She only wanted to be referred to by her Twitter handle because she feared jeopardizing her academic future.
“It’s like every other marginalized community," she said.
BotticelliBimbo said that she started dancing because of sex work Twitter. If she didn’t have the network of other strippers, she “would have never known all the small nuances of dancing,” such as proper club attire. She was able to relocate from Austin, Texas, to Houston, she said, because other dancers advised her on the local club scene.
The online sex work community is also tight-knit, so it’s also become a space to warn others of potential dangerous customers. When a woman went missing after leaving a Houston strip club last year, strippers based in that city turned to each other for support.
“The only reason anybody knew in the community was because everyone would tweet about it,” BotticelliBimbo said.
Because sex work is so widely stigmatized, sex workers rely on each other for mutual aid and support.
Caitlin Reid, a cosplayer and OnlyFans creator, said that she was able to raise enough funds to leave an abusive relationship and move to a different city because of the sex work community on Twitter.
“I genuinely feel like it saved me,” Reid said in a message.
Stephanie Michelle said she created a group chat of over 30 adult performers to boost each other’s content and educate each other on how to maintain their social media presences.
When Instagram and TikTok update their terms of service, for example, Stephanie Michelle said that the group keeps tabs on the platforms’ explicit content policies to make sure they won’t be flagged. They also update each other with their new social media handles if their accounts are taken down.
The sense of community on Twitter also humanizes sex workers because it’s so candid, she said.
Twitter “allowed sex workers to be viewed as fully functioning three-dimensional humans,” Stephanie Michelle said. “I was someone who hopefully had a little joke here and there, or shared how passionate I was about this new anime, and creating these connections with people who probably joined you just to follow boobs, and then realized, ‘This person has a life. This person has a family, has ups and downs.’”
Morgie Mog’ronn, a former sex worker and current artist who specializes in fetish art under the Twitter handle pogf_olio, noted that the NSFW art community has been crucial for her commissions.
Morgie, who only wanted to use her artist pen name out of concern for her safety, considers herself “pretty lucky” for a “relatively unknown artist” because she was able to build a following of 4,000 in the last year through adult content Twitter.