SITES like OnlyFans have become big business, attracting millions of subscribers who spend their hard-earned cash on their favourite content creators.
But a psychologist has warned that it’s important users are able to separate fact from fiction when it comes to their online habit.
Today, in the final part of a special series looking into the phenomenon, Professor Ewan Gillon, from First Psychology Scotland, has his say on the site.
He said: “There is nothing wrong with paying for content and subscribing to anything that you enjoy provided it is legal.
“However, we all have to be aware that building unrealistic or obsessive relationships with an online personality has the potential to be problematic to us in a range of ways, including encouraging us to spend more money than we normally would or imagine that there is a stronger bond than that actually is.
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“We just need to take care. The internet is not a replacement for real, proper functional relationships and we need to remember this.”
Ewan, whose counselling services has practices throughout Scotland, said one of the difficulties with forming a relationship with someone on OnlyFans is that it’s fully based online — and so the rules may seem different from everyday life.
He explained: “The online environment is really very different to in person meetings, and it is very common that we become less inhibited online than we do in reality.
“This means we might say and do things that we would not actually feel comfortable with elsewhere.
“This may be considered an opportunity for people who are shy, but can also be dangerous too in encouraging more extreme behaviours that could come back to haunt us in different ways.”
Although it might not be someone’s priority when the cash is rolling in, the psychologist also reckons that content creators need to protect their own mental health.
By putting themselves out there to the entire world, they’ve immediately given up any anonymity.
And that makes it very difficult to delete any trace of their OnlyFans’ history if people ever regret their decision to post on the social platform.
Ewan says: “Online behaviours through social media, websites and so on are essentially recorded and therefore can become a permanent imprint that we will essentially carry with us into the future.
“We often see this in tweets made by somebody many years ago coming back to haunt them.
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“We don’t think about this as our immediate concerns and lifestyle in the present may not be impacted.
“It is something to be aware of in terms of how these might affect us in the future which is something we may not think about.”
Another issue for creators is the presence of internet trolls.
Some can be particularly nasty and even lead to people leaving OnlyFans or social media for a period of time.
This is another consideration for anyone considering joining the subscription service.
Ewan adds: “The online environment can provide the opportunity to say and do things that we wouldn’t normally because we can hide our identity behind internet personas.
“This means that the rules/norms we are all usually subject to no longer apply and therefore people feel disinhibited and are able to behave in ways that are more unpleasant or extreme because the consequences are less.”
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