When a child star joins OnlyFans

Days after she turned 18, Tay Tian launched her OnlyFans account. Within three hours, Tian, who is better known to the internet as “Lil Tay,” claimed she had already made over $1 million.

According to a purported screenshot of the backend of her OnlyFans account, the influencer’s earnings were largely split between $19.99 subscriptions and payments sent over direct messages seeking exclusive content. She also appeared to make over $26,000 in tips. Tian posted this screenshot on her Instagram account, where she has almost 6 million followers and had been teasing the arrival of “Freshly 18” content for weeks.

OnlyFans is basically shorthand for amateur porn, and although it launched in 2016, it rose to mainstream prominence in 2020 as a way for not just sex workers but also influencers, celebrities, and everyday people to monetize their bodies. The platform has tried to rebrand as a space for SFW content in addition to NSFW content (it also prohibits a lot of kinds of sexually-explicit content), but everyone still associates OnlyFans with porn.

Tian has leaned into this association to market her OnlyFans account, calling herself “The youngest girl on OnlyFans” and wearing a t-shirt that says “Pornstar In training.” But she has yet to post nude or sexually-explicit content, TMZ reported, instead selling pictures of herself in bikinis and revealing outfits that are similar to what she already posts on Instagram.

This is the most common way that influencers and celebrities who aren’t sex workers (like Tana Mongeau and Bella Thorne) use OnlyFans, and the idea that they might show or do more is enough to reap millions. Some celebrities have joined OnlyFans only to quickly abandon their accounts after the initial payday, while influencers like Mongeau continue to use it as a major stream of income. There are also shady OnlyFans agencies that employ people to impersonate the influencers and chat with their patrons for them, allowing the influencers to passively profit through a kind of unregulated scam economy.

There was a predictable outrage cycle around Tian joining OnlyFans that included false allegations of her selling “child porn” to “pedophiles” (the appropriate terminology is child sexual abuse material, and that’s not what this is). People have claimed that Tian is secretly still underage (and in fairness to them, she frequently lies about her age) and that she released content at 12:01 AM on her birthday—making it technically illicit material (she claimed to have filmed it at that time, but it wasn’t posted until days later).

Some of the outrage is obviously warranted. We live in a culture that fetishizes youth and outright encourages the grooming and sexual abuse of women and girls. There’s no doubt that Tian, while still underage, appealed to this culture to profit from it. But in classic internet fashion, the facts of the case have been distorted and exaggerated and the real villains in this story have been downplayed in favor of demonizing Tian and the entire OnlyFans platform. Viral posts have called to imprison Tian and ban OnlyFans. Some of those posts are coming from manosphere accounts who want to strip sex workers of their autonomy and platforms so they can be more easily exploited (the Andrew Tate model).

Tian grew up in an entire ecosystem of child exploitation, although it had nothing to do with OnlyFans. Since she was 10, Tian has been a kind of child actor who starred in crude skits designed to go viral. She “flexed” and used racist slurs while holding other people’s money, sitting in other people’s expensive cars, and standing in other people’s expensive homes. Her brash and offensive content, juxtaposed with her youthful appearance, was catnip for social media. And as investigative reporting showed, the “Lil Tay” persona was the brainchild of her YouTube drama-obsessed, slightly older teenage brother, who was exposed at one point for yelling at Tian from behind the camera until she cried.

You can argue that these children were failed by their parents (I would) and also by the Hollywood influencer industry that quickly signed them and helped their careers along. Influencer managers have overseen dozens of similar child performers, many of whom are exposed to grooming and other kinds of abuse at home and in the industry.

One of Tian’s storylines as “Lil Tay” was a feud with Danielle Bregoli AKA Bhad Bhabie AKA the “Cash me outside” girl from “Dr. Phil.” Bregoli and Tian have followed similar paths of viral infamy. They were both widely hated as children for their personas (which the adults around them profited handsomely from), they both appropriated Black culture, they both made music that is unfortunately pretty catchy, they both later joined OnlyFans, and they both alleged severe childhood abuse. Bregoli has recently talked about being sexually abused as a child by her mother’s former partner and by her former bodyguard, and she also alleged abuse at a troubled teens facility she was sent to after appearing on “Dr. Phil.”

Tian’s abuse allegations are murkier, because her entire life is wrapped up in hoaxes, manipulation, and unanswered questions. In 2023, after years of relatively offline peace, Tian re-emerged with a post claiming she and her brother were dead. They were soon revealed to be alive, but it’s still unclear exactly where the hoax originated. Tian’s accounts—and it’s also never quite clear who is running her accounts—have referred to the death hoax as a product of hacking. But shortly after, she started releasing music. It felt like a twisted kind of promo campaign.

Tian’s accounts have also alleged that her father was physically abusive to her, which he has denied. Tian’s parents fought back and forth for custody and control of her career while she was a minor, with her father seemingly wanting her out of Hollywood and back in school. For a while, she was. Eventually, her mother won full custody, Tian appeared back online, and the case is moot now that she’s an adult.

I wouldn’t say joining OnlyFans as soon as she legally could and using “Please don’t tell my mom” to advertise it is a happy ending for Tian. That being said, I do think it’s telling that some people only got upset about her being exploited after she became an adult who can presumably profit autonomously and make her own decisions. The problem isn’t with the existence of OnlyFans or sex work, which Tian doesn’t even appear to be doing. It’s more so that children can be abused in front of the entire internet for years without consequences, while countless more children are abused behind closed doors. And the answer isn’t arbitrary censorship or manipulated outrage.

I spoke about all of this on this week’s episode of “Power User,” Taylor Lorenz’s excellent podcast that particularly focuses on free speech online. If you want to hear more about this, give it a listen. And if you appreciate my reporting, please consider upgrading your subscription for just $5. You’ll get access to my paywalled stories and more.

Thanks so much for reading, and until next time.