{"title":"Beyond the Gig: Selling Intimacy as Labour on OnlyFans.","authors":"Pierre Brasseur","doi":"10.1111/1468-4446.70162","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article develops the concept of total self-commodification to account for a form of platform labour whose unit of extraction is the creator's continuous intimate self. The empirical case is OnlyFans, the largest subscription-based adult content platform. Drawing on 45 in-depth interviews with creators in France, Belgium and French-speaking Switzerland conducted between September 2024 and March 2025, and a documentary analysis of fourteen versions of the platform's terms of service across 2019 to 2025, the article makes three contributions to the sociology of platform work. First, situating the analysis within recent scholarship on relational labour and its economic-sociological genealogy, platformised sex work and payment-ecosystem governance of adult content platforms, the article specifies the value-form through which the self functions as enterprise: a single platform-mediated feedback loop in which subscriber dynamics, self-presentation and earnings become operationally indistinguishable. Second, the article reframes structural vulnerability as a mechanism of platform governance, anchoring the claim in the precarity-theory tradition and in recent work on the payment-processor regime that conditions adult platform operations. Third, the analysis offers an infrastructural intensification of the Foucauldian account of the entrepreneurial self: on OnlyFans the regulatory ideal of the enterprising self becomes operationally indistinguishable from the labour process itself, while creators' own recognition of their activity as work remains partial and oscillating: an incompleteness, we argue, that the platform's economic model actively exploits.</p>","PeriodicalId":51368,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6000,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"British Journal of Sociology","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.70162","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"SOCIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
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Abstract
This article develops the concept of total self-commodification to account for a form of platform labour whose unit of extraction is the creator's continuous intimate self. The empirical case is OnlyFans, the largest subscription-based adult content platform. Drawing on 45 in-depth interviews with creators in France, Belgium and French-speaking Switzerland conducted between September 2024 and March 2025, and a documentary analysis of fourteen versions of the platform's terms of service across 2019 to 2025, the article makes three contributions to the sociology of platform work. First, situating the analysis within recent scholarship on relational labour and its economic-sociological genealogy, platformised sex work and payment-ecosystem governance of adult content platforms, the article specifies the value-form through which the self functions as enterprise: a single platform-mediated feedback loop in which subscriber dynamics, self-presentation and earnings become operationally indistinguishable. Second, the article reframes structural vulnerability as a mechanism of platform governance, anchoring the claim in the precarity-theory tradition and in recent work on the payment-processor regime that conditions adult platform operations. Third, the analysis offers an infrastructural intensification of the Foucauldian account of the entrepreneurial self: on OnlyFans the regulatory ideal of the enterprising self becomes operationally indistinguishable from the labour process itself, while creators' own recognition of their activity as work remains partial and oscillating: an incompleteness, we argue, that the platform's economic model actively exploits.
期刊介绍：
British Journal of Sociology is published on behalf of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is unique in the United Kingdom in its concentration on teaching and research across the full range of the social, political and economic sciences. Founded in 1895 by Beatrice and Sidney Webb, the LSE is one of the largest colleges within the University of London and has an outstanding reputation for academic excellence nationally and internationally. Mission Statement: • To be a leading sociology journal in terms of academic substance, scholarly reputation , with relevance to and impact on the social and democratic questions of our times • To publish papers demonstrating the highest standards of scholarship in sociology from authors worldwide; • To carry papers from across the full range of sociological research and knowledge • To lead debate on key methodological and theoretical questions and controversies in contemporary sociology, for example through the annual lecture special issue • To highlight new areas of sociological research, new developments in sociological theory, and new methodological innovations, for example through timely special sections and special issues • To react quickly to major publishing and/or world events by producing special issues and/or sections • To publish the best work from scholars in new and emerging regions where sociology is developing • To encourage new and aspiring sociologists to submit papers to the journal, and to spotlight their work through the early career prize • To engage with the sociological community – academics as well as students – in the UK and abroad, through social media, and a journal blog.
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