When Bree Solstad was kneeling beside the tomb of St. Claire in Assisi, Italy, in 2023, her life began to change.
A force compelled Solstad to genuflect and cross herself as she entered and exited the basilicas and cathedrals of Florence and Rome. Solstad, however, felt disgusting and guilty when she returned from her trip. She had spent a decade in the pornography industry.
Solstad told the Daily Caller she converted to Catholicism in April.
Financial incentives are pushing young women like Solstad to flock to an increasingly popular app called OnlyFans, where lewd material prevails. Solstad, who posted such content on the network, says women “don’t have a chance” nowadays in avoiding the temptations of modern society. Luckily, however, many are waking up to the downsides and choosing a different path.
“The perversion of our society and pornification of our culture is everywhere, not just in entertainment, but everywhere,” Solstad explained to the Daily Caller. “I recently ran out of blush, and I was thinking, ‘What is this blush that I really liked using back then?’ And I look it up, and the name of the blush was ‘Orgasm …’ Does it really have to be called that?”
Her journey in the adult content world wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be.
“Now in society, it seems almost like there’s a shift. Before it was embarrassing to be in porn and was something that you would hide. Now it’s empowering, like girl power,” she said.
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British tech entrepreneur and investor Timothy Stokely launched OnlyFans in 2016. He previously owned two other adult entertainment businesses, GlamGirls and Customs4U, according to Business Insider.
OnlyFans is a subscription-based service where creators can charge anywhere from $5 to $50 a month for viewers to see their content and interact. The app saw an explosion during the COVID-19 pandemic: Approximately 200,000 users signed up daily between the months of March and April 2020, Business Insider reported. OnlyFans had 384,000 creators in 2019, but in 2020, the number skyrocketed to 1.6 million, the company’s financial report says. In terms of users, the app leaped from 13.5 million to 82.3 million within the same time period.
Transactions on OnlyFans also rose seven-fold to $2.4 billion, the Financial Times reported.
Celebrities have taken a liking to the platform and have found astounding financial success: Famous actress Bella Thorne rakes in $11 million monthly. Rappers Cardi B and Iggy Azalea follow with $9.5 million and $9.2 million, respectively. Coco Austin, a model and actress, is at the fourth place spot with $9 million a month and adult actress Mia Khalifa makes $6.5 million, according to Lad Bible.
OnlyFans did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
HOLLYWOOD, CA – NOVEMBER 14: Iggy Azalea attends the Fashion Nova x Cardi B Collaboration Launch Event at Boulevard3 on November 14, 2018 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Fashion Nova)
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – OCTOBER 28: TV Personality Coco Austin attends the Angel Ball 2019 at Cipriani Wall Street on October 28, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Mark Sagliocco/Getty Images)
The profitability potential entices young women across the globe, but according to Influencer Marketing Hub, 10% of OnlyFans users are earning 73% of all the money on the platform.
Those who have dipped their feet, toes and other parts of their bodies into OnlyFans know this all-too-well.
“I was never very successful,” Solstad said. She expected this, however, since her goal was for OnlyFans to be a mere supplement to the X-rated content she was doing elsewhere.
Solstad told the Caller about her experience interacting with her subscribers, which might not be an apparent feature to outsiders. She would have Skype sessions with certain “regulars” and developed relationships with them, allowing these men to masturbate while she belittled them.
It’s not only women who are harmed by sex work, but men, too, Solstad said. The tables have turned, and she feels like she objectified men, rather than the other way around.
Solstad also felt enslaved.
“I was really miserable. I was angry all the time, really irritable, and I was going to therapy once a week. There was a period when I went twice a week. And it wasn’t until I truly allowed God, Jesus and Mary back into my heart that I started to feel actually happy with myself and proud of myself,” Solstad explained.
Content on OnlyFans can be a lot more addicting than porn, due to the interactive features, Licensed Clinical Psychotherapist Dr. Dawn Elise Snipes explained to the Caller. These features can lead men into thinking they’re forming an actual relationship.
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Former OnlyFans user Jada Bell says she managed to earn an impressive income by sharing explicit content on the site, but she quickly felt the weight of that pressure. While she set limits about what she was willing to share online, her morals and ethics were tested: Bigger risks could lead to even larger payouts.
According to Jada, she joined OnlyFans at the tender age of 19 and quickly earned as much as $10,000 in her first month posting explicit content.
“I didn’t post pornography or sex work, like it’s mostly used for. But since I knew that was what it was used for, I did take advantage of that and promoted a little bit more sexual content, being in lingerie or a bikini and things like that,” she said. “And I was really just trying to get fast money, really fast.”
“And that was very addictive, very, very addictive,” she explained.
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Like Solstad, Jada believes sexual OnlyFans content also harms men.
“You’re preying on men with sicknesses, men that really need to get help.”
Jada said she had made more money than some of her peers because she had a significant following on social media and was able to parlay that to paid subscribers, which isn’t the case for most OnlyFans girls. She knows women who are either losing money or making just enough for rent, and they could probably be working any other job.
Ultimately, Jada says she decided to quit the app in November 2020.
“It’s just not worth your morals,” Bell said. “You’re thinking about right now instead of the future, and I would really make some bigger goals for yourself.”
Jada Bell – Sexual Revolution Has Destroyed Society
One of Snipes’ specializations is helping people get over porn addiction. The first thing men who are suffering from this should do is define their “rich and meaningful life,” and then identify how their addiction is interfering with that, Snipes said. They should also evaluate how its affecting their relationships.
Once that is figured out, men can start being more practical.
“Put on what I call nanny-wear on your computer to make sure that your firewall is strong enough to block OnlyFans and anything similar to OnlyFans, ideally blocking any porn as well, because porn can be a gateway,” Snipes says. The nanny-wear can also alert someone trustworthy to prevent one from consuming again.
“We need to help people replace what they were using with something that helped achieve the same goal. Were they engaging with OnlyFans because they were lonely? Okay, if you’re lonely, how can we address that in a healthier way that can help you meet in real life?” Snipes continued. “We try to help them create a schedule. Downtime is bad time because that’s time where you can get into your own head and start thinking about it. So helping them develop a schedule that is incompatible with OnlyFans can also be helpful.”
YouTuber and musical artist Iolande Melody was distraught when she discovered the trouble her friend was in after joining OnlyFans. This subject is one that is “very close” to Iolande’s heart.
The popular portrayal of this kind of work is “completely fabricated,” and nobody touches on how dark things can get, according to Iolande. Girls think they can easily make a ton of money just by posing in their underwear, but that’s not the case, she says.
During one disturbing exchange between Iolande’s friend and a male subscriber, his requests grew more and more extreme and pushed her well beyond her usual limits.
“He first asked for used underwear. He said, ‘Could you send me your used underwear with all types of bodily fluid on the underwear?’ And he was offering 40 pounds for this. And she was willing to agree to that. And then he said, ‘I have another request. Please don’t try and block or delete me if you think this is too weird, but I’m willing to pay a sizable amount of money for this if you’re willing to do it.’ And she was like, ‘Go on, tell me what it is.’ And he said, ‘I have a fetish to do with teeth. I would like for you to extract your teeth and send them to me. If you could try and retain as much blood as possible from the extractions and send that as well.'”
As disturbing as this sounds, Iolande says her friend entertained the idea.
“She had no money, and she believed completely that this was her only gateway out of poverty.”
Sex is now cheap and no longer a sacred, private thing two people who love each other do, which is destroying society, according to Iolande. It’s just a tool for financial gain.
If there wasn’t any demand, OnlyFans wouldn’t exist, conservative filmmaker and podcast host Robbie Starbuck told the Daily Caller.
“Men need to be leaders again and shape culture to build the world we want to see. A guy so desperate that he goes on OnlyFans to see a woman naked should be viewed the way we’ve always viewed a peeping Tom: creepy. Once we successfully categorize this as creepy, it becomes less socially acceptable to do these things,” Starbuck said.
The ability and desire to lead, provide, innovate and protect should define a man, and they should strive to build a world they want their daughters to live in, according to Starbuck.
“This needs to be an aspirational goal for men instead of the hedonistic values Hollywood has sold them. Those hedonistic values are like meth … It might make you feel good for a little while, but you’re going to destroy your life with it. ”
There seems to be a silver lining, as there are now various high-profile cases of former OnlyFans users quitting posting sexual content and turning to a more traditional, religious life.
Blac Chyna, famous rapper and actor who used to be married to Rob Kardashian, had reportedly raked in $240 million posting racy photos of herself on the app.
“It’s a dead end. All that stuff is a dead end, and I know that I’m worth way more than that,” she said on The Jason Lee Show in March 2023.
That same month, she got baptized and became a Christian.
“I was reborn on my birthday 5-11-22 🙏🏽 God is Good 🙌🏽,” Chyna wrote at the time.
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Popular TikToker Gwen the Milkmaid followed suit, abandoning OnlyFans and becoming more conservative.
In a similar instance, internet personality Nayla Ray had made $9 million on OnlyFans, but she too quit and became a Christian.
Young men are trending in a conservative direction, a Financial Times article from January shows, which coupled with online social media accounts that promote family farming, gives Starbuck hope.
“We need to continue this trend but with an extra focus on men modeling what what it truly is to be a man. It’s not parties, it’s not a harem of women and it’s not a fancy car collection. Your worth as a man is defined by the safety you provide your family, the love you have with your wife, who your children grow up to be, how you lead your community, how you take care of the body that God gave you and how you overcome adversity,” Starbuck told the Caller.
Young women, on the other hand, need to realize that the best men will not desire someone who easily reveals their intimate parts to the world. One this is made clear, less women will think this lifestyle is a good idea, according to Starbuck.
Both the public and private sectors have roles to play when it comes to reviving our culture, Starbuck said.
“The best thing we could do longterm is incentivize family. Higher child tax credits, nationwide school choice that allows homeschool as an option to take then money so more parents can afford to stay home from work and make culture celebrating family dominant once again,” he told The Caller.
Starbuck said it’d be nice if right-wing billionaires could fund alternative entertainment industries, since pop culture has always been a crucial part of a society and its behavior.
“Culture will decide our politics and our future. Will we win the culture war or not? That will decide the reality our kids live in.”
