There is also a darker side to “borrowing aesthetics made by children” especially on platforms like r/TikTokXXX, where the implication might be that the creator is underage. "There’s a porn version of everything popular, right after it becomes popular.” Tiidenberg points to porn websites, and even news sites, which have remade themselves to look more like TikTok in order to capitalise off the site’s huge popularity. “Porn has always been a ‘remake’ genre," she adds. This reflects a broader shift in tastes favouring ‘homemade’ porn videos, with ‘amateur porn’ being the most popular category in the US and third most popular worldwide, and an increase in searches for ‘natural’ bodies and authentic situations. Gen Z and young millennials are, after all, more willing to pay for adult content compared to previous generations – particularly if the star of the video is also the creator. Although, according to one of the sub’s moderators, only “30 to 40 per cent” of the videos on the sub have actually come from TikTok: most, he says, are using the sub and the TikTok aesthetic to get traffic and to tap into the app’s 18+ Gen Z audience. One of the largest, r/TikTokXXX, has more than 61,000 members, and has gained over 20,000 new subscribers in 2021 alone. After r/TikTok and r/TikTokCringe, the next most popular TikTok subs are r/TikThots, r/TikTokThots and r/TikTokHot. It should come as little surprise, then, that subreddits dedicated to posting NSFW TikToks are growing in size. This is where TikTok-style videos – posted on the app or across other platforms – provide a new way to cut through the noise. More recently, Instagram was denounced by sex workers after it introduced new updates penalising users who ‘implicitly or indirectly’ offer or ask for sexual solicitation, at a time when the community has been made particularly vulnerable by Covid-19.Ĭompounding this is the fact that platforms such as OnlyFans have ballooned in popularity during the pandemic. Instagram and Tumblr, for example, were extremely popular platforms among sex workers, before they started clamping down on them in the wake of FOSTA-SESTA. The bill, which was introduced in 2018, was an attempt to shut down the websites that facilitate trafficking, but a number barred posts from sex workers entirely to avoid any potential legal issues, often forcing them into more dangerous situations. However, since the introduction of FOSTA-SESTA, a US law intended to curb sex trafficking, it has been more difficult for sex workers to advertise their services online. This use of unpaid social media as a marketing tool for paid work elsewhere is nothing new.
Gwen says that in the past she has created a video on TikTok, screen recorded it and uploaded it straight to OnlyFans – without ever posting to TikTok. The demand for ‘TikTok-style’ porn videos, and the app’s superior editing tools, is fuelling the rate at which NSFW TikTok videos are crossposted to other platforms, such as Pornhub and OnlyFans. While nudity and sexual activity goes against TikTok’s community guidelines, a number of these types of videos slip past the algorithm – and besides, videos don’t need to contain explicit content to help performers drive traffic to other platforms.
Transition edits – which allow users to suddenly change outfits, or go from fully clothed to nude – are made easy on TikTok, and have emerged as a particularly popular feature among sex workers using the app. “It’s kind of like being at a strip club, when the performer does something exciting,” she says. Sam*, a 28-year-old sex worker from San Francisco, also uses the app’s editing features, such as to make her videos.
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