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Wait I always thought most OF models were making videos with their boyfriends. Now you're telling me they're just actors?
I always thought it would be fun to make videos in the former scenario, but certainly not the latter.
I'm reading your post as half tongue-in-cheek but I want to reply at length anyways (although perhaps this is all obvious):
I would say the most common and successful genre is OnlyFans "performers" who "collaborate" with other performers. It's a big world out there and people will pay for a lot of things and you can make it doing solo "content" or "chat". But even a lot of that is buttressed on an ecosystem of OnlyFans performers collaborating with other performers.
Basically it works like this: OnlyFans stars are all messaging each other or networking in groupchats to figure out who they're going to fuck next. There's a lot of gossip about who's good to work with and lots of rumors about bad experiences with particular stars. Most of this content is amateur, by which I mean, it's not produced by big porn studios. A lot of OnlyFans content now does rely on hiring professional cameramen who film the content to look as if it were amateur. Lots of it is still done with just "ring lights" and some strategically-placed phones on record. Big porn studios have moved upmarket into really emphasizing higher-quality cameras and photography, logistics, and elaborate scenes. A lot of performers will also do a mix of OnlyFans and studio porn, depending on what their mood is.
There are a lot of advantages to constantly "collaborating" with other performers:
My friend, for example: His largest audience comes from Instagram, where he creates fairly tame videos / reels meant to advertise himself to a general audience. (Maybe he does a quick video of himself telling a story about something that happened to him today in his car, maybe he does a clip with a flirty caption where his ass looks good as he does pull-over rows at the gym.) You click through to his twitter, and he obviously has an OnlyFans, although he mostly hints at the truly hardcore stuff and you have to pay to see it. (Lots of performers post sex clips right there out in full, some approaching such length you wonder why anyone would bother to pay for the full version at all.) My friend has told me he's very cynical about how he produces content: he aims to film one new "collaboration" a month, and he spins a few clips from one video into enough advertisements to make enough tweets about it for a full month. He tells me that the kind of men he has sex with on camera aren't really the kinds of men he likes to have sex with off camera, although it looks to me like he has a good time. His fiance is pilled on all of this and doesn't seem to mind. My friend, in fact, rarely mentions his fiance at all, to the point that unless you very devotedly followed his content you would probably assume he were single and maybe even dating around.
I'll add for color a few details that are particular to gay world.
In gay world, everybody knows who the big porn stars are. They are minor celebrities. Some are celebrities. If you go to enough gay clubs in big cities you'll run into them. Everybody knows who they are. They are not really excluded in any social scenes, usually quite the opposite. Imagine if you went to a friend's large 100+ birthday party and Bonnie Blue was there. You go out to your local bar and Mia Khalifa is there. You go dancing and there's Elon Musk cavorting with Aella. What I mean is that there is no separation where porn is relegated to a seedier subworld you have to seek out to access. It is simply the default. If I went clubbing with my friend, people would recognize him.
Which is to say, if you're fantasizing about this life at all, you have to really enjoy sex with strangers. And with any success with becoming a celebrity. With very few exceptions. I have yet to hear someone recommend it whole-heartedly at all. Mostly, the ones who come to like it come to feel as though they've learned something about human nature the rest of us can't know. It's actually ironically very similar to the attitude I pick up from DC politicos who think they "know how the sausage is 'really' made". They think they have special access to some knowledge about the human condition. And it makes them a little jaded in all ways.
I'll add, as a final thought, pardon me if this is Too Much Information, that sex with porn stars is not something I would recommend either. It's very mechanical and lifeless. And in person many of them look way more fake blond and spray-on suntanned and gussied up than you would think from the pictures. The act itself is very mechanical. I've had this argument with some friends before, and some of them have told me I'm crazy. But for anyone here who feels like they're missing out I would say in strong terms that, from what I've experienced, you're not really missing out on anything you should feel jealous about. Unless you really, really like having lots of sex with strangers.
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How do you feel about professional wrestling?
I don’t have stats on the OF talent base, other than knowing it has pretty extreme earnings disparities. It is possible that the bulk of content is small-scale amateur film by couples even while the bulk of the cash goes to a smaller pool of celebrities. Can’t say I find it likely compared to the alternative where almost everyone is shooting solo videos.
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