The social media world is changing. Facebook has laid off thousands of workers. Twitter is increasingly becoming a shell of its former self. Instagram has lost enormous ground to TikTok—and the latter is siphoning YouTube’s revenues. And even TikTok itself is slowing.
Maybe we are coming up on the ending of the Social Media Era, a strange time period in recorded human history that is one part enlightening and one part frightening. At its best, it has forged connections and established communities; at its worst, it has proven to be socially and politically disruptive.
Privacy concerns, disinformation concerns, bullshit “free speech” debates, and the fact the social media industry is essentially a two-headed monster at this point (Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Google/Alphabet) has obviously led to an erosion in users. Aside from keeping up with friends, I barely use Facebook. I deleted Twitter off my phone after Musk took over and I’m barely using it. I’m not on Instagram very much, either.
For over a decade, social media, especially Twitter and Instagram, has served as the backbone of adult entertainment marketing. Livelihoods have been made and broken by social media. In fact, the current behemoth of the adult industry, OnlyFans, is a direct result of it.
Let’s face it, the social media party is over.
However, the gravy train might be—scratch that, is coming to an end. What that end looks like is as good as anyone’s guess.
Adult creators and adult entertainment activists are understandably bemused over their accounts being suspended or deleted, while other accounts seemingly get away with much more explicit content. The account suspensions are no more aggressive than in years past, but a breaking point seems to be nearer than farther at this point. There is already a lawsuit in the works, instigated by Alana Evans’ APAG union.
Twitter, now led by center-right technocrat Elon Musk, has essentially made clear its “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach” policy. The arbitrary practice of shadowbanning was reaffirmed by Musk in November. Many adult creators and other sex workers have seen a noticeable drop in engagement, including the ones that create content for my platforms.
Tumblr did announce that it was going to allow adult content again after four years. Unfortunately, it has not translated into a significant turnaround in traffic on the platform just yet.
For those that don’t remember, the old school way of marketing adult entertainment on the Internet was forums. Forums have been, and still somewhat are, all over the place, even though most of them fell off by the wayside as usage of platforms such as Twitter and Tumblr grew. Perhaps we’ll see a regeneration of that, granted it will be complicated even more so these days with the draconian FOSTA/SESTA laws—which has still yet to see a single successful lawsuit as of this writing.
Is the adult industry ready for a post social media world? Of course not—and the clock is ticking.
In essence, with heavily-relied-upon platforms in decline or in sluggish recovery, a befuddling regulatory environment, and options fizzling out (see AVN Stars and Switter), what is going to be next for the adult industry? Is the adult industry ready for a post-social media world?
The short answer is no. I think the social media erosion is going to cause a significant talent drain, especially if creators have not shored up other areas of marketing and reach, such as building personal websites or building email lists. The pendulum that shifted power heavily to models in the wake of the OnlyFans Revolution is going to swing back to studios and producers.
An unfortunate aspect of the adult industry is how slow it can be when it comes to adapting to consumer behavior. It took over a decade—from the introduction of adult content in Google’s search results back in 2007 to the explosion of OnlyFans in 2020 and MindGeek being forced to verify users on PornHub in 2021—for the industry to meaningfully address the wage-and-revenue-killing issue of consumers taking the path of least resistance when it comes to watching adult content.
I’m not predicting a total collapse of the adult industry—it hasn’t happened and it probably never will. Sex is an element of human nature that has been commercialized in some fashion since time immemorial. That’s not going to change. However, the industry cannot afford to take over a decade to respond to what is a clear decline in social media usage. In fact, the adult industry should have been moving away from such a social media-heavy business model 2 to 3 years ago.
It’s time to be proactive about it
Social media is a bit too dynamic for me to make any predictions, let alone guess who will fare better than others. Nevertheless, the data is clearly showing a slow down on various fronts. But as the scene changes, there are key things that adult creators and producers must do:
- Start building websites again. This website here took me a week to put together. However, I am also a guy that has built websites in some form or fashion since 2004. This entire website is a catalog and a hub. Put a site up, optimize it, and start trying to win traffic over on Google. Most important, websites are a great way for your fans to keep in touch with you in the event that your social media accounts get compromised or suspended.
- Build your mailing lists. This should be an every day thing. Collect as many email addresses as you can from your consumer base so you can communicate with them directly. It will be the most durable promotional tool you will have.
Let’s face it—the adult industry is not ready for a post social media world. The decline has come faster than most industry professionals realize and, to be frank, I don’t even think it’s hitting a lot of people in this industry yet. Nonetheless, creators, performers, and producers need to start getting prepared for the future—starting right now.