“I watched this documentary about a girl who created an OnlyFans account during the [COVID-19] pandemic and got pretty good money. So I thought, why not?” said Ronny*, 26, in Bandung, West Java.

Ronny is among the many Indonesian users of OnlyFans, a London-based content subscription service that is particularly popular among sex workers. OnlyFans also hosts other content creators, such as fitness gurus and musicians.

Despite the country’s antipornography law leading several public figures to serve jailtime after their sex tapes were leaked, some Indonesians still decide to make use of OnlyFans, offering X-rated content to their paying “subscribers”. Many do it for reasons more casual than popular local creators, such as the half-Indonesian Connell twins and Tatum Zulaika, an Indonesian who lives in Australia.

Curiosity was the main motivation for Ronny, who is a lab technician by day, in joining the site. Before registering an account in late 2020, he already enjoyed posting revealing pictures of himself on Twitter. He decided that’s where he would start with OnlyFans.

“In the beginning, I only uploaded pictures of myself shirtless or perhaps wearing only underwear (on OnlyFans). Later, I thought, people already paid for my content, why not give them more?”

Bella Ryland from Bacchus, who represents UK PR for OnlyFans, representative told The Jakarta Post via email that since the start of the pandemic in the beginning of March, the platform has indeed seen an increase of 75% in new sign ups with currently around 200,000 new users every 24 hours.

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