How OnlyFans Beat Its Competitors & Transformed Gender Dynamics

In this insightful episode, the presenters explore the fascinating psychology and economics behind OnlyFans, explaining how the platform outperformed traditional cam sites by inverting the typical sexual marketplace. They discuss a piece by Aella, delving into how the dynamics shifted, with women now aggressively marketing their content to men, who became the primary financial supporters. The episode covers the tipping culture, the rise of agencies, and the overall business model that led to OnlyFans' unprecedented success. They also touch on the personal and societal implications of these changes and venture into broader discussions on masculinity and online marketing strategies.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. This is going to be an interesting episode. We're going to be talking about the psychology of OnlyFans and how it used psychology to beat the other sex apps online. And because it's a fascinating story. We'll be mostly reading a piece that Ayla wrote on this.

Oh, cool. For the show. She's been on episodes before. Really, really fascinating piece on how psychologically and economically OnlyFans outcompeted the traditional model of online streaming and how it created a marketplace in which the male and female roles were switched in which females. Generally when you're dating or something like that you know, females are the people who guard sexuality.

Like they gatekeepers of sex, gatekeepers of sex. There's fewer of them that want sex than men. Generally very few men are going to turn down sex. If women are going around asking them in a bar or something like that, which means that, you know, men need to reach out more. They need to [00:01:00] be more prolific in how they reach out and women will see them as creepy when they reach out.

Where OnlyFans flipped that, where women needed to start reaching out to men because men became the biggest source of money. Women were using their sexuality in this way. And so women needed to like aggressively cross post on Reddit and stuff like that. And then reach out to guys in a way that guys saw as creepy.

Speaker: So what's happening is we've

Malcolm Collins: created this inverted sexual marketplace, which is really fascinating.

Speaker: All

Malcolm Collins: right,

so here, she's talking about the older way that apps used to work. You get money through two methods, either live tips or the room typically witnessed by all the other members of chats, or you can get taken private. a one on one pay flat rate minute show. Different cam sites focused on varying points on the spectrum between these two methods, but everyone knew the serious money was in the live tipping.

Privates capped you at around 3 a minute, but tip based income could average up to 20 a minute. So this is really interesting. So the private [00:02:00] room wasn't what you wanted, what you wanted was to be in an environment where people were tipping, which I wouldn't have expected in this older model. So you had to, to word it differently for the audience, you had these like rooms where you would act for a large group of people and that group of people would attempt to tip you.

But individuals from that group could pay extra to get access to you. Individually, but the live room was seen as more profitable, which I think inverts what a lot of people would expect.

Speaker: But that's because Ayla discovered early on that you could play people off each other. It was so dynamic.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. To keep going here.

She, she talks about this. The psychology behind high earners for live streaming went something like this. You, the aforementioned hot girl, have an established audience of regulars in your audience. Each man can see the other men talking to you and giving you money. The men are implicitly ranked by dominance, which is determined by how much attention you pay to them, which is in turn determined by how much money they give you.

This leads to whales, and soon, 80 percent of [00:03:00] your income is from one to two big players. These people are incentivized not just by making you happy, but by making you happy in front of all the other men. The system is competitive. To be a good cam girl, Take your biggest tippers and put their names and lights behind you so everyone else can see them.

Call them heroes, knights, grant official titles. Only the richest will survive. I signed up for OnlyFans in 2017 before Leo took over and I thought it sucked. I posted some cute videos or whatever, but nobody used it. The tips were negligible against the 10k months I was accustomed to. The problems were obvious to me.

It was impossible to have whales compete against each other. What were the incentives for big spending? Of course, I was wrong. Unable to see outside my local minima. Only fans ended up dominating, decimating the previous camming rural landscapes. Nowadays, camming audiences are a fraction of their previous highs and many of the girls who still cam use it explicitly to funnel into their OnlyFans. So [00:04:00] how did it succeed so hard? So first, fascinating that she sets up this world before OnlyFans. Where you made money by paying men against each other and even like putting their name up in big flashing lights and everything. Wow. What's interesting to me is this is clearly playing to a sexual subtype that doesn't include me or most men.

I would find it really gross. doing this. I mean, keep in mind, like, I'm a man. I don't want my wife out there, like, showing herself to tons of other men, right? Like, that's not awesome. So, even if I was the guy who was paying the most and getting the most public attention from this woman, I still know all the other men are seeing her and giving her money.

Speaker: Well, so you also would have no interest in going to a strip club, right? No, it's a disgusting idea. Why would I? It's a disgusting thing. Like, there's clearly, though, an audience of people who see Seem to enjoy that.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. [00:05:00] Okay. Hold on. I'm walking this back in my brain. Now. So the pre only fans sites were targeting the strip club audience, but yeah,

Speaker: yes, it's like an online strip club.

With more interesting dynamics. It's way more intellectual

Malcolm Collins: yet is targeting a new audience and in a new way. So I'm wondering, how do you think only fans want? You can see the problem that she has laid out here. How do you think only fans was able to succeed where these other sites weren't given the situation before the new CEO?

Speaker: I'm, I'm stumped. I'm not, I'll give you a

Malcolm Collins: hint before we go further and I'm going to see if you can break it.

Simone Collins: Do

Malcolm Collins: not think about what the audience wants. The audience isn't actually that important to this. They might have a slight preference for the new model, but it's not what drove the change.

Everything has to do with the cost of advertising.

Speaker: [00:06:00] Did it make really low payment thresholds? Was it about driving women more to them? And then the women would promote it? I really don't know. Well, we'll see.

Malcolm Collins: I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna give an answer because now the audience is hooked, maybe. So I will put two images on stage here where she is making little drawings.

I love Ayla's terrible drawings where she does like the big boobs and the, the outfit and everything. And so just her one drawing, I actually need to describe this drawing rather than send it to you because it'll be so fun for the pod