Downloaded Vice to Uploaded Virtue

Libertarian perspective on cyber-censorship in the age of OnlyFans

The pandemic shut down most of the world in early 2020. More accurately, governments shut down most of the world in response to the pandemic, but the net result was that, almost overnight, whole industries collapsed and millions of people around the world faced unemployment. Seemingly, the only people still working were those ceaselessly sending bills to the unemployed for items such as rent, utilities, and telephony.

TRIGGER WARNING: This article discusses mature themes, including pornography and related topics. There is light at the tunnel’s end, but if such matters offend you, please stop reading now. You may always catch the next article.

This is when the platform of OnlyFans came to mainstream attention. Founded in 2016, OnlyFans offered a medium through which creators of pictographic and video content could monetize their work by selling it to a dedicated following, who would also subscribe to support them. Additionally, creators could monetize access to themselves through more exclusive interactions with subscribers, such as “VIP lounge chats” and virtual one-on-ones.

Though OnlyFans was not specifically intended as a medium for hosting pornography, the platform quickly became favored for such exchanges. The paywall theoretically ensured that subscribers were of legal age (18+) and supposedly made the uploaded content more difficult to pirate.

It was, therefore, a natural fit that people desperate after their livelihoods had instantly vanished, and with squat else to do since the government had even cordoned off parks and beaches, wound up on OnlyFans, shaking their asses for the masses. Ordinary, everyday people tried their hand at producing adult content, with many women capitalizing on the “girl next door” image, made especially plausible by the fact that they were the girl next door. By 2024, OnlyFans had counted 190 million users, and at present, its owner estimates its value at $8 billion.

As with any human endeavor, there are always individuals who excel beyond the bell curve. One such person was Bonnie Blue, a 26-year-old content creator from the UK who joined OnlyFans in 2023. From the outset, Blue elevated her marketing strategy to a different level, gaining notoriety and a considerable number of subscribers, by visiting universities across the UK and Australia, where she offered herself to male students.

In a parodic twist on the Steven Crowder meme in which he sits on campus behind a pop-up table bearing a sign which invites progressive students to “change my mind” through spontaneous debates, Blue held up a sign reading, “Bonk me for free; let me film it.” Her marketing, targeted at virginal freshmen, ignited a wave of outrage, one she rode all the way to the bank.

After bonking her way through fraternities, Blue went viral. Not in the epidemiological sense (she insists on the use of prophylactics and venereal pre-screening of participants), but in the sense that news of her exploits spread far and wide. Blue next travelled to Cancún, Mexico, to film herself in action with 122 spring-breakers over 21 days. She leant heavily into marketing her dalliances as involving the “barely legal” (all participants were required to prove themselves 18+ and sign consent forms). She even claimed to have included the young men’s chaperoning fathers in the acts, though no evidence substantiates this claim.

The uproar against such “indecent” marketing generated even more buzz through civic discussions surrounding consent, majority, and exploitation. Most importantly for Blue, however, the stunt netted $200,000.

Adding to her infamy, it was revealed that Fiji had deported Blue as someone deemed “harmful to the image of Fiji” after she flew there to film additional content with “barely legal” fraternity boys. Australia subsequently revoked her visa, citing her work through OnlyFans as a violation of the visa’s prohibition on employment, though the ban appeared more responsive to a popular Aussie petition to kick her out.

Back in the United Kingdom by January 2025, Blue heavily promoted a new stunt, inviting men of all ages, including “unhappily” married men who wished to “get cheating out of their system” with her. Ultimately, she broke a world record by servicing 1,057 men in just 12 hours. None of the men paid for participation, so it was not technical prostitution, yet Blue’s earnings via the footage’s distribution on OnlyFans were estimated at $818,000 per month.

Ratcheting up the sensationalism, in June 2025, Blue proposed a “petting zoo”. In this stunt, she would be shackled and gagged naked inside a glass case “open to the public,” and men would do and view her as they pleased. She aimed to double her previous record by consorting with 2,000 men.

At some point, one is reminded of that scene from Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, in which the Monster is playing with the village girl by the well. She peers down the hole and jejunely asks, “What shall we throw in now?”

Despite Blue being a high earner for OnlyFans, the platform could tolerate no stunt which appeared to lack full consent, so it permanently cancelled Blue’s account. Undeterred, Blue migrated to Fansly, a platform she describes as more “sex positive.” Her unaffected accounts on TikTok and Instagram now guide younger cohorts towards her paywalled adult content, provided such users can prove themselves 18+.

Presumably, some of her previous followers on OnlyFans will also migrate, unless there exists a form of “user equity” built into OnlyFans, such as account balances or customer-loyalty rewards. (Genuinely I love my readership, but I will create no account on OnlyFans just to research this detail!) Thus, the dissociation between Blue and OnlyFans may prove a major disruption within the adult content-hosting industry.

Conservative Backlash

Since 2024, several conservative commentators have blasted Bonnie Blue along predictable lines. Personalities such as Sargon of Akkad at The Lotus Eaters, Paul Joseph Watson, and Sydney Watson (no relation) have hurled at Blue all the usual insults associated with public displays of female lasciviousness, insults unworth repeating here.

These commentators have called for Blue’s cancellation. Though I greatly appreciate their perspectives on other matters, on this one, they are dead wrong. Their position arises from a concern for societal morality, so it may be said that they are wrong for the “right” reasons. However, their proposed solution of cancellation does not accomplish the outcome they seek.

Worse yet, their solution shortsightedly misses the essence of free speech, a principle on which their careers depend, thereby exposing society to harm greater than anything Blue could ever inflict.

Inability

In practical terms, were the likes of Sargon of Akkad and Paul Joseph Watson to be handed a magic wand which they could wave remorselessly to eliminate Bonnie Blue from society, they would surely flick that stick in a wink... and society would have to wait a whole forty minutes before some offshore camgirl materializes to take Blue’s place.

If Sargon and Watson wish to eradicate Blue’s millions of followers across three major platforms, then they may require a bigger wand.

Given that Blue is engaged in inflaming sexual appetites in a digital simulation of the world’s oldest profession, it seems improbable that demand for such content will vanish overnight, all else being equal. The imposition of prohibition may compel participants in the market to play a shell game to outpace the whack-a-mole enforcement, but ultimately, the content will continue to be produced and consumed, even if the creators and platforms change.

Amnesia

Were these conservative pundits’ memories longer than the brims of their MAGA caps, they might recall their own recent brushes with cancellation. Despite providing content which their audiences eagerly consumed, parties extrinsic to that market complained and succeeded in having these pundits deplatformed or demonetized.

The wiser course of action for such commentators would be not to demand Blue’s cancellation, as doing so only sharpens the figurative blade which their critics may one day wield against them. If anything, they could continue to criticize Blue (as they already do) and discourage people from supporting her content.

Better still, they could stop criticizing her altogether since such attacks only fuel her publicity. Indeed, it was these very pundits who first brought Bonnie Blue to my attention… so thanks, guys!

The desire to create mechanisms for cancelling purveyors of content deemed objectionable by such pundits, opens the door to censorship imposed by nameless, regime-appointed censors. Earlier, I deliberately used the term “free speech,” fully aware of the jurisprudential distinction between commercial speech (such as Blue’s) and political speech. Yet the official censors will make no such distinction.

Instead, impactful decisions about what speech is permitted and what is cancelled will increasingly be reduced to subjective, knee-jerk reactions. It seems that these conservative pundits have forgotten through what we lived scarcely four years ago, when any speech suspected of inducing “vaccine hesitancy” or questioning the utility of masks and quarantines, was swiftly deplatformed by unaccountable censors across various platforms, such as Facebook’s discredited FactCheckers. Untold hundreds of thousand of people needlessly suffered because those censors secretly decided that all mention of alternative remedies, such as ivermectin, should be purged . And now, Blue’s conservative critics wish to confer even more unchecked power on such censors.

Reconciliation

Though a pundit like Paul Joseph Watson characterizes Bonnie Blue’s subscribers as young men who dwell in their mothers’ basements, masturbating all day, that characterization may not align with reality. For all anyone knows, these are men who are successful for their age group, yet occasionally seek the thrill or comfort of Blue’s content. In fact, given the demands of their careers, they may lack the time or energy to form meaningful relationships with women, making Blue for the time being, their best substitute for authentic human intimacy.

As for Blue, she is selling the highly perishable commodity of her youthful attractiveness. In a world shaped by TikTok attention spans and hypercompetitive online platforms, Blue is keenly aware that she is burning her candle at both ends. She is maximizing a limited window of opportunity, and as the numbers show, she is earning enough money to secure her future, presuming she saves and invests wisely.

Thus, we have a provider producing erotic content and a subscriber consuming it, in a confluence of circumstances and desires. It may not be what you or I would choose for ourselves, but in general, sexuality is about what two consenting adults (or 2,000 in Blue’s case) decide to do with one another, outsiders be damned.

We may, as conservative pundits often do, raise the spectre of porn addiction and the noxious influence of pornography on human sexuality in the analogue world. Indeed, reputable studies make cogent cases for these externalities. It would not be unreasonable for adult-content platforms to include warnings about such risks, akin to those on cigarette packs which highlight the danger of lung cancer. Ideally, these warnings would be implemented voluntarily, rather than mandated by the government or compelled through lawsuits. A noteworthy example is PornHub’s Sexual Wellness Center, a database on human sexuality and its pathologies, curated by a clinical psychologist. (This detail I did personally research on my esteemed readership’s behalf... you’re welcome!)

What we cannot and should not do is paint all participants in the adult industry with a broad brush or impose our morality and preferences upon them. By all means, apprise them of the risks, but beyond that, they are adults whose choices deserve the same respect as our own.

Substitution

Perhaps Young Frankenstein’s village girl was profoundly correct all along that you have to fill a hole with something.

Were conservatives to succeed by some magical means in cancelling Bonnie Blue, they would leave millions of subscribers staring at blank screens. Into that void, similar content will inevitably rush unless displaced by messaging which is more wholesome and uplifting. Conservatives would do well to counter with narratives which promote their own values, such as chastity, tradition, family, and others.

Several entities have admirably stepped up to this challenge. Angel Studios is a subscription-based streaming service which hosts and produces content extolling virtues such as tradition, family, patriotism, chastity, and faith. Its productions are top-notch, on par with anything offered by Netflix. FaithStreet Films is another studio producing high-quality, family-friendly movies which showcase traditionalist values, particularly those relevant to Christian audiences.

Competing directly in a medium likely to attract some of Blue’s viewership, even video games have emerged, such as The Five Guardians of David and Gate Zero (currently in development), which engage and teach in biblical narratives, familiarizing players with scripture and its ethical framework.

Conclusion

Calls by conservative pundits for Bonnie Blue’s cancellation appear feeble, in that they tacitly admit an inability of conservative values to compete freely in the marketplace of ideas. It reveals a reluctance to confront the prurient opposition or to counter its reach with content grounded in principled tradition.

There will always be those who, due to their current circumstances, are drawn to adult content’s production or consumption. The stronger position, however, is not to shame, insult, or lecture them. It is to guide them by way of personal example, and to be present as a good friend when their hearts finally open to more wholesome messages.