From Ragless to Riches

In the past, losing one’s shirt referred to losing all of one’s possessions. These days, losing your shirt could be the first step towards making it big. As long as you lose your pants, too. (You might as well knock your socks off while you’re at it.) We’re talking about one of those social networks that people don’t really like to talk about (or explain how a related bill showed up on their credit card statement). For more, we should probably start … where else? … somewhere in Florida. “In the mornings, the workers of Bryce Adams’s OnlyFans empire buzz in through a camera-wired security gate, roll up the winding driveway that cost $120,000 to pave and park outside Adams’s $2.5 million home-office-studio complex. A large American flag waves from a pole above their office door. So does a banner depicting Adams, in tight shorts, from behind.” Drew Harwell in WaPo (Gift Article): Inside an OnlyFans empire: Sex, influence and the new American Dream. “America’s social media giants for years have held up online virality as the ultimate goal, doling out measurements of followers, reactions and hearts with an unspoken promise: that internet love can translate into sponsorships and endorsement deals. But OnlyFans represents the creator economy at its most blatantly transactional — a place where viewers pay upfront for creators’ labor, and intimacy is just another unit of content to monetize.” (All these years I’ve been failing to monetize my newsletter when I should have been trying to monetize my unit.)