Dirty Jocks: The Scottish Boys of Onlyfans
Scotland, at least in the conventional sense, has never really had a porn industry. In the past any wannabe Scottish performer would have had to relocate to England in order to make a living having sex on camera. Particularly, it must be said, if you were gay. Even then for all but a lucky few it probably wouldn’t have been enough to pay the bills. While the UK has a history of cultivating an abundance of homegrown pornographic content for straight men — from pay-per-view TV channels like Babestation to lads mags and page 3 — the same can’t really be said when it comes to content for homosexuals. The little scene work that is available for gay performers in the UK is notoriously low-paid, with some reportedly being offered as little as £50 for a whole day’s work. The harsh truth of it is that if a gay man wanted to make money doing porn in the UK, he would have to supplement that income with go-go dancing, cam shows, escorting, or any other form of flexible work. That is, until now.
The birth of sites such as Onlyfans has ushered in a new age of the localized porn star. Onlyfans is essentially just like Instagram only without the censorship. Models set up a page and dictate the price of a monthly subscription, usually somewhere in the range of £5 — £20. Then they post content to their feeds that can be seen only by the eyes of paying subscribers. In the case of Onlyfans the site takes a 20 per cent cut of any earnings an individual makes, leaving a hefty proportion of the profits going straight from consumer to performer. Whatever you may think about the purported negative effects of watching pornography — from addiction to sexual dysfunction — Onlyfans essentially negates what has long been considered the industry’s most toxic attribute: the exploitation of sex workers. While tube sites thrive upon the often illegal uploading of new scenes, haemorrhaging both the filmmakers and actors capacity to turn a profit, subscription sites are once again leading people to pay for the porn they watch (and therefore financially support the actors that please them).
Yet perhaps the biggest difference between Onlyfans and run-of-the-mill porn sites is that subscribers are free to direct message the models whose content they pay for. Should they have the funds subscribers can also request that performers film private scenes catered specifically for them. It is, in essence, an interactive and personalized form of consuming porn. Not to mention extremely lucrative, with some models making over £100,000 a year.
It also means that potential models no longer need to travel to London or go through the process of casting to become a profitable sex worker. All they need to do is create an account, post some content, and find an audience. Scotland now has a porn industry, which, even during a nationwide lockdown and global pandemic, has continued almost unscathed. This democratisation of pornography has also allowed for a more diverse range of models. Unlike a studio Onlyfans doesn’t discriminate or police what kind of body type is suitable for the camera.
Take the Twitter user @RMWXX, or XO to use his porn name. He’s what you might call a bear — a particularly cuddly looking one. He is pale, hairy and built like a rugby player. And though he certainly doesn’t look like the tanned, chiselled and largely hairless models of the world’s most popular gay porn studios, he has nearly 20,000 followers on Twitter and a thriving Onlyfans business. XO started posting on Onlyfans around November 2019 “as a vanity project” he told me. “I thought it might help to build some self-confidence. Although I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find I already had the confidence, it was just wrapped in a layer of fatty self-doubt”.
Unlike Facebook and Instagram, Twitter doesn’t consider pornography as a violation of the platform’s use; therefore it has become the main marketing tool of Onlyfans models. While some compartmentalise their porn persona by maintaining a separate “everyday” Twitter account, XO’s are one and the same. Scrolling through his Twitter account you’ll find snippets of scenes of him with other models sandwiched between political commentary and photos of his dog. “I don’t consider myself to have a brand, but if I did I’d like to think it’s that I’m approachable, or relatably average”.
XO checks his Onlyfans account numerous times a day, ensuring to reply to every message that a subscriber might send him. “That’s part of the success. Professional porn is very un-relatable, but because Onlyfans is more ‘amateur’ it makes people feel like they can get closer to you”. However, this certainly isn’t an approach that is shared by all of Scotland’s Onlyfans models.
Richard (@richardreid95) started his Onlyfans just after Christmas in 2018. He was working at KFC, a job he didn’t like, when his hours got cut by half making it impossible for him to pay the vet’s bill for his sick dog. He needed a quick source of income, at least around £200. People had half-jokingly suggested he start an Onlyfans page before. Richard had posted some risqué pictures on Instagram and amassed a decent following eager to see more. This already established audience meant that within twenty-four hours of setting up his account he had made nearly £400. “I thought, fuck it” he said “Might as well keep going”.
Over the phone Richard told me that, to begin with, he spent a lot of time building up his following. Richard is a talented photographer and the photos that brought people to his Instagram are more artistic than erotic, even if they do feature him in his underwear. He knows how to light a shot, how to film a sex scene. So he put effort into creating content, both individually and with others. On his best month he made around £2000, making him one of the highest earning Onlyfans boys in Scotland. “But the more you post, the more people want”.
Richard isn’t as close to his fans as XO is. Nowadays, he says, the only time he logs on to Onlyfans is to post content and withdraw money. “I don’t owe these people anything. They get carried away with the idea that because they pay you for something sexual that they deserve more from you. A guy complained to me before about not replying, even though he’d tipped me. But I’ve got a job, I’ve got friends, I’ve got family. I don’t have the time to be chatting to folk constantly”. Before lockdown Richard was working full-time in a bar using whatever money he made on Onlyfans to buy stuff that he wanted but didn’t necessarily need: a Nintendo Switch, a PS4. Frivolous spending aside, however, Richard’s story highlights the kind of salvation offered by Onlyfans, especially to young people trapped in low-paid, precarious work. Best of all, he says, “I’ve never had to worry about paying a vets bill again”.
Despite not cultivating a close relationship with his fans, Richard exploits a particular niche in the market: the well-endowed. Yet even just within Scotland, there’s competition. The Twitter user @hung_scottish started his Onlyfans as a way to boost his confidence after a hook-up told him he had a small cock. “I just wanted the attention. Then I figured, may as well make some money from it”. Now he has over 10,000 followers on Twitter, most of whom are drawn to him purely for the size of his boaby. Though he earns a respectable salary at his day job, @hung_scottish runs his Onlyfans like a lucrative wee side business; on his most profitable month he made just short of £1000. “I monitor it closely, set myself targets of what I want to achieve each month. Then I work towards that and can relax a bit when that has been met”.
But even though having a big dick is fetishisized to the point of obsession within the gay community, the reality of it isn’t always so rosy. @hung_scottish started his account as a way to banish a feeling of inferiority instilled in him by a size queen hook-up. Yet that feeling of self-consciousness doesn’t suddenly vanish just because you make money from your member. “I go in phases of thinking it’s quite a big dick, and then looking at other guys and feeling shit. I’m also really conscious not to take shit photos or videos. People want to see a big dick — if I start putting out content that’s not a very flattering angle or whatever, they might be disappointed”.
A similar issue affects Twitter user @ScottishHung (I told you there was competition). He originally just started sharing photos of himself on Twitter. The first few he posted didn’t garner much attention, but a short video he uploaded last August resulted in him gaining nearly 4000 followers immediately. In February, after a few months of followers suggesting he set one up, @ScottishHung started an OnlyFans. Now he has over 25,000 Twitter followers and the money he has made just paid for the redecoration of his flat. “I take everything with a pinch of salt. Some people talk to you as if you are the dick. But I’m a person; I’ve got feelings”.
Unlike the others I spoke to, @ScottishHung doesn’t post pictures of his face on Twitter. “It’s mainly a work thing. I work with a few other gay guys and Edinburgh is a small town. On my Onlyfans I actually have a picture of my face, so if people want to see me then they can pay for it. I just don’t see the point in letting people know if I don’t have to”. He hasn’t told his family about his Onlyfans fame, although a few of his friends know (“One of them recognized my flat from the pictures”). Richard and XO, on the other hand, are very open about this source of income to those closest to them. As XO says: “My mum can’t really complain about it when I’m paying for lunch”.
All of these men fill different niches: Richard is the youngster with an enviably sized unit; XO is the everyman; @hung_scottish dresses formally for work and says that “some folk have a thing for guys in suits”. But they are united by one thing: their nationality. Being Scottish might not hold much of an allure for people living in the UK, but nearly everybody told me that overseas subscribers definitely view it as an appealing factor. Americans, in particular, like the idea of seeing a true Scotsman in all his glory. @ScottishHung has had requests to talk more in his videos so people can hear his accent (which, as far as Scots accents go, isn’t even a particularly strong one). For all the flack Scottish people might get for their pale skin or ginger hair in other settings, on Onlyfans these things become another way in which to make your personal brand more marketable.
Onlyfans allows those with even just a modicum of social media fame to capitalise on their bodies in a manner that doesn’t kowtow to brands or reality television. As a story Richard told me emphasizes, the nature of that fame doesn’t even need to be positive.
Just after Christmas last year a couple of Glasgow gays were involved in a minor scandal after they uploaded an Instagram story of themselves posing in-front of a homeless person’s tent in the city centre. There was widespread condemnation of them on Twitter, with people going as far as to send death threats to the two boys involved. As is turned out Richard had filmed a scene with one of the boys a few months previous. So, sensing an opportunity, he tweeted to remind people that if they wanted to see one of the culprits be sodomised then they could subscribe to his Onlyfans. What followed was the biggest spike in subscribers he had received in months.
When I asked the guys I interviewed whether they might have considered a career in porn if it wasn’t for Onlyfans they all said no. They said the process of casting was too intimidating, or that they simply had other career goals they valued more than working full-time in porn. Now, though, after a few months of creating their own private empires, many of them would consider making a more conventional studio film (as long as the money was worthwhile).
In the early weeks of lockdown a joke circulated among the gay Twitterati that suggested starting an Onlyfans as a last resort to survive the oncoming economic hardship. But in Scotland, at least, this is not how many of the most popular gay models on the site conceptualise it. To them this isn’t a last resort. They do it because they like the money, the attention, and not, for the most part, because they view sex work as something to be turned to when all other options have been exhausted. Onlyfans has created an emerging generation of men who can harness their sexuality for profit, even while maintaining full-time jobs. And in many cases their subscribers don’t just pay for the content they post, but the sense of connection they provide. So that, even in a world where an internet connection can provide you with millions of hours of free pornography, there are many who would rather spend money to fulfil a particular fantasy — whether it be sparked by a social media scandal or an Outlander boxset.
In the age of Onlyfans, it seems, looking underneath the kilt of a Scotsman has never been easier or more profitable for the kilt-wearers themselves. The nature of porn — and, more importantly, how that porn is monetised — is changing. Whether Onlyfans will last as the primary provider of a more personalised kind of porn cannot be certain (another website, JustForFans, has already poached many Onlyfans models by boasting of a smoother user-experience). But what is certain is that Scotland finally has a porn industry; and in all likelihood, it’s here to stay.
