Latest news with #TimStokely
USA Today
5 days ago
- Business
- USA Today
Online, young female OnlyFans stars make their lives look aspirational. Is it problematic?
Online, young female OnlyFans stars make their lives look aspirational. Is it problematic? Show Caption Hide Caption Bids for TikTok pile up, with Amazon and OnlyFans founder in the race As a weekend deadline to find a buyer for TikTok approaches, bids for the short video site are piling up. Among the latest to throw their hats in the ring are Amazon and a group lead by Tim Stokely, founder of adult content site OnlyFans. Reuters Inside a sprawling six-bed, five-bath property overlooking Miami's Biscayne Bay, a new legion of OnlyFans creators is taking hold. In a May 14 TikTok that's since racked up 4 million views, the house's residents dance in barely-there bodycon dresses in front of brightly lit signs spelling out "BOPS." In another, they don matching cheetah-print lounge sets over the soundtrack of Lil Elt's 'Get The Gat.' They fly on private jets to the Super Bowl, own Porsches and Lamborghinis and rack up $4,000 dinner bills on a night out. It's all in a month's work at the Bop House, a content creator mansion where eight Gen Z OnlyFans creators produce content for their combined following of nearly 90 million users across social media platforms. 'I love what I do, and it's so much fun,' says Sophie Rain, the 20-year-old who co-founded the Bop House in December 2024. After launching an OnlyFans two years ago, she quickly became one of its top earners, bringing in $43 million in her first year. 'It gave me so much freedom." The content creators, who say they collectively brought in $250 million last year, feel their lifestyle offers them financial stability and freedom. But teenagers, particularly young girls, who see TikToks showcasing the content creators' opulent lifestyle, may get the impression that being an OnlyFans star is aspirational. While creators in the Bop House spoke openly with USA TODAY about their hardships growing up — and say they're not trying to be anyone's role model — their online content rarely touches on their complex backstories. Intentional or not, those omissions create a disconnect with viewers who don't see the challenges that lead women to seek out careers in adult entertainment, says child psychiatrist and Yale School of Medicine Professor Yann Poncin. 'I do think it creates an unrealistic sense of reality,' Poncin says. 'This just really presents as an exciting lifestyle. These girls seem to have it together. They have things, they have money, they have the shining objects.' More: OnlyFans, AI and 'sexy selfies' are impacting girls. This author wrote a book about it. Who are the members of the Bop House? Rain founded the content creation house with Aishah Sofey, and other creators between the ages of 19 to 25 have since joined, including Camilla Araujo, Alina Rose, Summer Iris, Ava Reyes and Julia Filippo. They split the house's monthly $75,000 rent and use the space to film OnlyFans and social media content. Their posts toe the line between sensual and sexually explicit but never involve full nudity. The name 'Bop House' nods to the Gen Z slang term "bop," meaning a woman who has had many sexual partners. Many of their videos poke fun at the term, and they respond to commenters saying they should 'get a real job.' It was, in part, the critics that inspired Rose to move into a house with other content creators. "They're going to call us bops no matter what," she says. So they leaned into it. Rain grew up in a family of six that relied on food stamps. She's now their primary breadwinner. Fans pay $4.99 a month for her content, with the option to pay more for daily photos and messages. She paid off her parents' mortgage and $15,000 in property taxes and gifted her older brother his dream car, a BMW M2, with her salary. 'It's honestly very stressful,' Rain says of supporting her family. 'It's such a blessing in disguise, though, because they can come to me if they need anything.' Rain considers herself a feminist, and hopes the Bop House will help de-stigmatize adult entertainment creators. Still, every now and then, she hesitates to press 'post' knowing how young girls might interpret her videos. 'I definitely think heavy on that,' Rain says. She wants young girls to pause before jumping into OnlyFans, because it's a "big life change with a lot of stigma around it." Still, she hopes the Bop House will help decrease that stigma around being an adult content creator for future women. How the young people interpret social media, influencers Poncin says teenage years are a critical time when girls start developing their identity and determining who they are in relation to their larger peer group. Influencers and celebrities now play a part in shaping how teenagers perceive themselves. 'This is a time when you try on essentially different outfits of identity. 'Who am I? What am I? What am I becoming?'' Poncin says. Now, when he asks young people who they want to be when they grow up, 'influencer' is a common answer. Some of the commenters on the Bop House's TikTok account agree. 'I wanna be like you when I get older,' one follower wrote under a video of the women dancing. "I need to join the bop house,' said another. The hormonal and biological changes young women experience throughout their youth make them more attuned to social comparison, something social media can heighten as teens count their followers and likes. What the viral Bop house videos are leaving out Rose attributes her start on OnlyFans to a lack of options. After her mom kicked her out at 18 years old, she was paying her cousin $300 a month to sleep in a room she was sharing with two other people Los Angeles. She scraped by making $800 a month working dishwashing jobs but eventually took up stripping at a nude club, where she made better money. 'I didn't have money to pursue anything else. It was very depressing,' Rose says. When the strip club closed during the pandemic, she turned to OnlyFans. She says the platform provides a safer work environment than the strip club, where she faced daily sexual harassment. Still, it's not a field she would ever want her younger sister or any other young girl to get involved in. 'I'm not somebody that they should be influenced by or look up to, because I don't think OnlyFans is something that they should want to do,' Rose says. 'OnlyFans should only be a thing because they lack the resources, and they really need money.' Reyes says she considers her audience demographics when posting for that reason – on Instagram and Twitter, where her audience is largely men, she frequently posts photos in bikinis and lingerie but keeps her content more PG on TikTok, where she knows younger girls are seeing her videos. She tries not to spend too much time in her comment section and doesn't concern herself with online discourse about her work. 'I just don't even really think about it that deep,' Reyes says.' 'I don't really care about if other people think that it's wrong or right, I just live my life and make the money.' More: An OnlyFans model's viral documentary and why it sparked a major conversation about sex 'I want them to know that we're human' Since its founding in 2016, the market for OnlyFans has exploded. The platform brought in $6.63 billion in revenue and boasted 4.12 million creator accounts by the end of 2023, a 29% increase from the year prior, according to regulatory filings from its parent company. The platform is unique in that it doesn't have an explore page function. It requires fans to type in an OnlyFans creator's user in a search bar to find their content, posing a challenge to unknown creators looking to get their start on the platform. It's nearly impossible to gain new subscribers without already having a strong presence on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and TikTok. This shift marks a generational change in how adult content is consumed. Millennials and Gen Xers didn't get to know adult entertainers unless they were watching porn, but social media has peeled back the division between creators and their viewers. Rain considered herself a 'nobody' in high school who kept to herself, and is adjusting to the changes that came with being in the limelight. Before she started an OnlyFans, she had never traveled by airplane. One of her most exciting moments was using her OnlyFans profit to fund a two-week trip to Japan with her older brother. 'It's a sex website, but it's so much more than that,' Rain says. 'It's a way to get connected to people and try new things and see new things.' Rose doesn't want to be on the platform forever. Eventually, she plans to use her OnlyFans salary to take up professional gaming and singing full time. 'People really think that we're not real humans, just because we have OnlyFans, and they see us as less than a person,' Rose says. 'I want them to know that we're human.' Rachel Hale's role covering Youth Mental Health at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal Ventures and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input. Reach her at rhale@ and @rachelleighhale on X.
WIRED
29-05-2025
- Business
- WIRED
OnlyFans Turbocharged Sex Work. Now Its Founder Is Targeting the Whole Influencer Economy
May 29, 2025 3:53 PM OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely tells WIRED his new platform, Subs, will help creators earn more money, using longform video, video calls, and a suite of AI features. The founder of OnlyFans, Tim Stokely. Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Photograph: Tim Stokely All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. When Tim Stokely officially stepped down as CEO of OnlyFans in 2021, three years after selling the company that he founded to billionaire computer programmer Leo Radvinsky, he took time off to figure out his next move, but 'conversations with creators never really stopped,' he says. By then, the creator-driven platform had become famous for mainstreaming influencer porn, transforming the sex worker economy into a robust business. As the pandemic forced everyone inside, rewiring our relationship to work and self-pleasure, OnlyFans took off. Even though Stokely was no longer affiliated with the company, he still wanted to hear from creators. Some expressed frustrations that OnlyFans felt 'limited' in what it offered—creators who sell sex are especially dependent on X to boost subscriptions on their OF pages—while others shared desires of wanting a new platform that was more 'brand-friendly.' Those discussions led to Subs, Stokely's new everything-in-one creator platform that, to the untrained eye, looks like a repackaged version of OnlyFans, swapping its bland white-and-blue layout for a bolder interface and polished design. Philosophically, Stokely says the two platforms are worlds apart. Subs, which launched in May, was built on core principles—'freedom,' 'visibility,' and 'more ways to earn'—grounded in a belief that creators should have 'true ownership over their audience and growth.' 'Subs is about building real careers, not chasing trends,' Stokely says. And I want to believe him, it's just that everything Subs offers already exists in one format or another. I'm told they designed it to help creators who want to move from free to paid content build audiences more easily by simplifying the platform experience. I'm told there are all sorts of 'original' elements—only 'Shows,' its longform video feature for 'deep storytelling,' is basically YouTube, and the 'Explore' feed, a mix of photos and video, is familiar to anyone hooked on the visual narcotic of Instagram's grid. Subs, which Stokely says is all about providing 'multiple, reliable income streams,' also provides one-on-one video calls—but so does Cameo. Subs declined to share the number of current users on the platform. I wouldn't bet against Stokely just yet though—he's got a canny foresight for this sort of thing; before OnlyFans he ran Customs4U and GlamWorship, modestly successful softcore-cam sites. But it's hard not to wonder if the era of Peak Influencer has already passed. It's hard not to wonder if the market has gotten so crowded to the point that it's near impossible for creators to gain genuine influence anymore. Fifty-seven percent of Gen Z say they want to be an influencer but the profession has already seen a surplus of creators, with more than 50 million influencers globally. Can Subs cut through the noise and the increasing burnout felt by creators? Stokely doesn't seem phased by that risk. It's about 'sustainable growth rather than fleeting fame,' he says, noting that the creator economy is expected to double in size over the next handful of years. That much he is right about—globally, it's projected to hit half a trillion dollars by 2027. Like OnlyFans, Subs features both safe-for-work and adult content, of which creators take an 80 percent earnings cut. (To better create 'a balanced ecosystem,' but also to keep users safe and comply with global regulations, Stokely makes clear that adult content is paywalled behind subscriptions and DMs). New personalized features, including collaborator revenue splits and referral earnings, do seem like a necessary improvement, however, in addition to its future AI offerings: auto-captioning, growth insights to help creators scale faster, and personalized content recommendations. 'We're committed to using AI ethically,' he says, where AI tools help creators 'enhance their creativity, not replace it.' For as long as I have covered Stokely—since 2019, before OnlyFans became a cultural talking point—I got the sense that he wasn't fully OK with OnlyFans being primarily viewed as an adult platform. It seemed like he wanted it to be more than that but it never shook the stigma, and probably never will. It makes his gamble on Subs all the more compelling. 'Subs isn't about one type of content, it's about every creator's potential,' he says when I ask if he wants the platform to be associated with adult content. I don't completely buy his answer but his use of descriptors during our correspondence—'brand-friendly,' 'balanced ecosystem'—tell me everything I need to know. What I don't know is if any of this will work. The creator ecosystem today, which Stokely helped mold, is not the same one he entered in 2016, when OnlyFans launched and well before TikTok became the next frontier of cultural production for young creators. The ecosystem has grown into a monster with infinite heads. It's saturated in creator apps that promote some version of what Subs is offering. Instagram has a tip jar. X users can subscribe to their favorite follows. Patreon remains a crowdfunding leader. Writers have Substack. Pornfluencers—the genre of content creators OnlyFans, and Stokely, gave rise to—are flocking to new portals of desire everyday: Fansly, FanBase, Fanvue, FanCentro, basically anything with the word Fan attached to it. That's the game now. The internet reengineered everything into a commodity, and the rise of social media supercharged that reality. Platforms are built on what economist Jeremy Rifkin calls 'access relationships,' where 'virtually all of our time is commodified' and 'communications, communion, and commerce [are] indistinguishable,' he wrote in his 2001 book Age of Access . Subs is just one option among a million others in this era of the subscription ouroboros. In April, another creator platform Stokely cofounded called Zoop, along with a crypto foundation HBAR, put in a bid to buy TikTok's US operations from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, but Stokely tells me he is now fully focused on Subs. He declined to offer any additional details about the proposed deal. Where Subs has a genuine chance of scale, of perhaps shifting the landscape like OnlyFans did in 2020, is by reintroducing a fabric of authenticity to online connection. Social media, for all its good, has also contributed to a swift rise in loneliness, creating all sorts of sticky parasocial relationships and anxieties. Brain rot is everywhere. The different ways we connect and show up online are infused with the foul smell of artificiality, as AI ushers in a volatile new world. According to a report by Typeform, there is now a credibility epidemic among influencers; 33 percent have admitted to buying followers or engagement. But it doesn't have to be that way. If OnlyFans was about the illusion of access, Subs has the opportunity to help make the promises of our social media contract real again—whether it works or not has yet to be seen.
Daily Mail
09-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
OnlyFans founder launches new platform with huge difference to popular adult site
OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely unveiled he will be launching a new platform with added features and increased simplicity for users. Stokely said the rival subscription service, Subs, is focused on helping creators build audiences more easily as well as making a simpler platform for users to transition from free to paid content. The OnlyFans founder posted on Instagram: 'Today, I'm beyond excited to share the launch of a platform we've poured our hearts into building for all creators.' 'Subs is your space to connect, create and turn your passion into a thriving community.' The site founder said that the simplicity efforts include an 'explore' feed similar to Instagram and a 'shows' feature similar to YouTube. 'There's a clear demand for a subscription platform that gives creators everything they need in one place,' Stokely told Morning Star. 'Creators have been telling me what they want, and that's exactly what we've built with Subs. It isn't just for one type of creator, it's for all creators.' Stokely's new features are set to be ad-free and direct users toward paid content, a feature that has been critiqued from OnlyFans audiences and users who rely on social media platforms to drive traffic. Stokely's new features are set to be ad-free and direct users toward paid content, a feature that has been critiqued from OnlyFans audiences and users who rely on social media platforms to drive traffic 'Creators need more than just a paywall,' he said. 'It's about giving creators everything they need in one place.' Subs 'shows' feature, Stokely explained, allows creators paid for content to lie behind their free content. 'With just one click, viewers can seamlessly unlock exclusive content, message the creator, or schedule a 1:1 video call. I think this is going to be a game changer,' he wrote on Instagram. Another feature Stokely boasted is the ability for creators to host one on one audio and video calls. 'We're not just building on what's been done before. We're creating something wider reaching, with unique and exciting features that allow creators to monetize more effectively,' he told Morning Star. The platform is intended for a range of creators, such as podcasters, athletes, musicians and adult stars. Challenges of the platform include restrictions of featuring both non-adult and adult content, which is not allowed on Google or Apple app stores. Subs will instead run on a web app, which Stokely said will help creators avoid in-app fees. Though Stokely sold OnlyFans to Leo Radvinsky two years after founding it in 2016, he remained serving as the platform's CEO until 2021. After stepping away from the platform, he said: 'I caught up with mates, went to football with my Dad, and travelled a bit. But I never really left the space. 'I get messages every day from creators, and so it wasn't long before I got pulled back in.' Stokely said: 'I can't wait to see the communities that will be built and the stories that will be told on Subs.'
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely launches new rival content platform
British tech entrepreneur and OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely has unveiled details of his new 'creator first' rival platform called It is described as a 'new global subscription platform built for all creators, from podcasters and athletes to musicians, influencers, adult creators and more.' will focus on a broader range of content than the adult material that dominates OnlyFans and for which it is best known. The mobile-first platform combines video hosting, paid subscriptions and 1:1 interaction. He said: 'There's a clear demand for a subscription platform that gives creators everything they need in one place. Creators have been telling me what they want, and that's exactly what we've built with Subs. It isn't just for one type of creator, it's for all creators. 'If Kylie Jenner converted just 0.5% of her Instagram following onto Subs, with a $10 per month subscription, she'd generate around $20 million per month in income from subscriptions alone.' It includes a YouTube style 'Shows' feature allowing creators to 'host long-form videos, podcasts, and series with built-in discoverability' as well as one to one audio and video calls between creators and subscribers. Content on Subs is moderated using including AI-powered tools and what it describes as 'rigorous age and identity verification.' Stokely added: 'We're not just building on what's been done before. We're creating something wider reaching, with unique and exciting features that allow creators to monetise more effectively," said Tim Stokely. The Essex born businessman known for his lavish lifestyle and once dubbed 'the king of homemade porn' founded OnlyFans in 2016 with his older brother, Thomas Stokely, and with the help of a £10,000 loan from his investment banker father, Guy. The internet content subscription service had built up 130 million users by the time he stepped down as CEO in 2021. He had sold his 75 percent stake in parent company Fenix International to Leonid Radvinsky in 2018 and is reportedly worth around £100 million. He lives in a six bedroom mansion in Bishop's Stortford that reportedly boasts a games room, fluorescent modern art sculptures and a purple pool table.
Cision Canada
08-05-2025
- Business
- Cision Canada
ONLYFANS FOUNDER, TIM STOKELY, UNVEILS SUBS.COM: A NEW PLATFORM FOR ALL CREATORS
LONDON, May 8, 2025 /CNW/ -- From the founder of OnlyFans, a brand-friendly, creator-first platform that empowers every type of creator to build their community and 'Get More Subs' (subscribers). Tech entrepreneur, Tim Stokely, announces the launch of a new global subscription platform built for all creators, from podcasters and athletes to musicians, influencers, adult creators and more. Designed by Stokely using his knowledge as a leader in the subscription economy, Subs is a mobile-first platform that combines video hosting, paid subscriptions and 1:1 interaction in one streamlined platform. "There's a clear demand for a subscription platform that gives creators everything they need in one place. Creators have been telling me what they want, and that's exactly what we've built with Subs. It isn't just for one type of creator, it's for all creators," said Tim Stokely, CEO and Founder of Subs. "If Kylie Jenner converted just 0.5% of her Instagram following onto Subs, with a $10 per month subscription, she'd generate around $20 million per month in income from subscriptions alone," Stokely added. More Discoverability. More Ways to Earn. Subs offers creators an all-in-one platform with features like: Explore - discovery feed helping creators reach new audiences Shows - host long-form videos, podcasts, and series with built-in discoverability 1:1 Audio and Video Calls - earn from real-time conversations with subscribers Revenue Sharing - collaborate and split income with other creators Partner Program - two-tier referral system rewarding creators and agencies for driving growth Safe. Secure. Inclusive. All content on Subs is moderated using advanced systems, including AI-powered tools and rigorous age and identity verification. This ensures creators can build communities and earn income on a safe platform, no matter their content category and without being boxed into a label. Turn Viewers Into Paying Subs Designed with creators in mind, Subs simplifies the path from viewer to paying subscriber, turning audiences into income. "We're not just building on what's been done before. We're creating something wider reaching, with unique and exciting features that allow creators to monetise more effectively," said Tim Stokely. Through its Shows feature, Subs offers a YouTube-style viewing experience, but with a creator's paid profile sitting directly behind the video. With just one click, viewers can unlock exclusive content, message the creator, or schedule a video call. By providing creators with a seamless way to monetise this traffic, Subs makes it easy for creators and celebrities to quickly convert their followers into paying subscribers (subs).
