If the medium of porn is good for one thing, it’s audience participation.
Besides that now infamous interactive episode of Black Mirror, I can’t think of another televised mode of entertainment which aims to involve its watchers and their digits – you know, to press pause on the action – quite so much.
Don’t play coy. You know what I’m talking about.
But a new generation of porn stars – with the help of social media and live streams – have blurred the boundaries between entertainer and active observer, stepping out from behind the television screen to create more authentic experiences of sex on film.
The newfound liberation has seen the creation of the so-called ‘Fuck A Fan’ movement – along with its very own hashtag. It’s pretty self explanatory. Like Ronseal, it does what it says on the tin and coats wood in viscous liquid.
As with much of the online porn content easily-accessible today, it all started on Twitter with the delightfully twee concept of a raffle.
The prize? Not a hamper full of rank chutneys, nor a voucher for 27 per cent off your local family photography studio for a day of torture.
It’s simple: Porn stars raffle tickets to fans who can enter a competition to fuck them. A little light torture might just be on the menu, then, if that’s your bag.
As with porn itself, the realms of the Fuck A Fan movement are as varied and diverse as the pages of Pornhub. It’s all at the discretion of the competition-runner.
And with the realms of escorting and porn meeting in the middle of this sexually-liberated Venn diagram of penis in vagina action – or not, as the case may be – Fuck A Fan doesn’t seem likely to slow down.
UNILAD investigated further.
Jane Way, an adult actor and escort reclaiming the slur ‘hooker’ as part of their sex work is a seasoned pro who has ‘always been down to fuck fans’.
How the non-binary sex worker came to the Fuck A Fan movement mirrors that of most of the other porn stars who advertise the service on Twitter.
Jane said they’ve always wanted to be in porn and even kept a countdown to turning 18 – when you can legally start working in the industry – in their journal as a kid.
After working in amateur porn – with sites like MyGirlFund – they landed roles on live porn shoots at Oasis Aqualounge, and their fan base ‘grew from there’.
It was enough to allow Jane to make a living as an independent escort with their porn fans signing on as clients for the past two years.
Jane explains the raw appeal of the Fuck A Fan movement:
It’s really great to get people through my door who have watched my videos and seen me online and are excited to experience me for themselves.
I want to be able to meet with people who consume my work. They support me and my business and booking a private session with me is another way to do that.
I’ve always been down to fuck my fans. Honestly there isn’t much difference, whether a camera is there during a session or not. At least for me.
I’ve never had a bad review in my life, and I love being one-on-one with clients!
Karla Kush, an adult actor, porn star, sex worker – ‘or whatever term people prefer’ – is new to the Fuck A Fan movement.
But 12 hours after her first Fuck A Fan went live, she told UNILAD:
For me this contest is absolutely a way to connect me to my fans and show the world that porn stars are real, professional, business people, who want to feel successful and respected among our peers as well as our consumers and fans.
While the increased audience participation in their work is very welcome, Karla adds, the Fuck A Fan concept is ‘just basic business’ if you ‘neutralize’ the notion of what you win.
Karla simply asks her fans purchase a lifetime subscription to her private Snapchat in order to be entered into the Fuck A Fan raffle – adding it’s a good deal for thirsty consumers because ‘even if they don’t win they still get access to my private Snapchat for life’.
So, down to business. Jane, who has been running these contests for some time, tells UNILAD they sell between 50 and 100 tickets, on average, per raffle.
Adding it’s ‘sometimes more, sometimes less’ Jane looks to make $400 in sales because that’s their hourly escorting rate and ‘anything after that is icing on the cake!’
Both Jane and Karla agree the most lucrative part of porn is not shooting scenes but other avenues of adult entertainment. For Karla it’s event hosting, feature dancing and webcamming as well as online services like this.
For Jane – who has entirely funded their ‘legacy project’, a production studio going by the name Porn’s Not Dead, from money earned as an escort – the most financially viable avenue is escorting, and Fuck A Fan is simply a more innovative extension of this aspect of their job.
‘I’m proud my successful sex work businesses gives me the ability to create art,’ the self-titled prostitute added.
Jane, who equates their own personal participation in the movement with escorting, welcomes all entries to their Fuck A Fan contests, explaining only winners are screened – mandatory and thorough, for health and safety, FYI – ‘so it’s pretty low risk to enter for those who try to keep their activities private’.
For some hopeful winners, the chance for the encounter to be filmed is a plus, however, and Jane charges extra for recording to ‘create some beautiful things’ with clients, some of which get distributed with client permission.
They add it’s a way fans can understand the work of those they admire better, calling it a ‘great segue between our world and theirs’.
Meanwhile, Karla – a mum-of-one with fellow actor Alex Jones, who was scouted through her webcamming career in 2012 but prefers the acting required in big productions – is treating her entrants akin to new talent.
The whole encounter will be filmed and published, as with any other porn shoot. For Karla, Fuck A Fan is as far away from escorting as sex work can get; invariably always professional rather than personal.
The conditions Karla requests via screening include the fan who wins ‘to adhere to the same standards as any other talent’ and be 14-day tested at an industry standard facility before filming.
Ideally, she’s looking to invite ‘a healthy, happy, respectful person with a good sense of humor and hygiene’ into her industry.
Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out for the first winner:
It’s a two-way street, Karla muses:
This is the first time ever in the history of porn that we can humanize the connection between adult actors and their fans outside of escorting situations and adult conventions.
In the beginning of my career I don’t think I would have been comfortable doing a Fuck A Fan contest just because it might have felt unsafe.
Now I’ve been in the business for over six years, I know my fans and myself well enough to handle my personal contest in a way that makes me feel comfortable and safe.
This approach frees Karla – whose second Fuck A Fan contest opened four days ago – of any legal grey areas, too, where paying for private sex akin to escorting or prostitution is illegal without the proper documentation.
Jane, meanwhile, lives in Canada where it’s legal to sell sex independently, illegal to buy, but ‘pretty low risk’ all the same.
Jane continued:
I personally believe that all sex work should be decriminalized, but that’s not the world we live in. That’s part of why we screen, too, we’re trying to scope out cops. No one wants a session to turn into an arrest.
This speaks to a further purpose Fuck A Fan serves for both sex workers – despite their differing approaches – and the wider health of the porn industry in debunking perceptions about sex professionals through genuine human connection.
Karla laments the fact ‘targeted discrimination’ is an everyday obstacle of being a sex worker in a microcosm of a ‘society obsessed with sex whilst simultaneously desperately condemning all those who proudly participate in the sex industry’.
Jane believes this movement breaks down some of the barriers of ignorance which lead to the ‘harassment, bullying, and abuse’ the actor knows the consequences of ‘all too well’.
The discrimination seems heightened nowadays thanks to social media, where according to Jane it is ‘hard to enforce boundaries’.
Jane added:
We’re sometimes too accessible to fans. You need to have thick skin to be able to put yourself and your life out there for fans and haters alike to consume.
Citing a spate of suicides from within the porn industry, Jane said it’s hard work – and sometimes very dangerous work – due to stigma and its impact.
You might remember August Ames took her own life aged 23 on December 5, 2017.
Olivia Lua, also 23, died in January 2018, one of five cases of an adult actor passing in those twelve weeks, including Olivia Nova, 20, Yurizan Beltran, 31, and Shyla Stylez, 35.
Ames’ death has been linked to cyber-bullying – as well as more recent allegations of malpractice on her final shoot, days before her death, according to Jon Ronson’s serialised investigation, published as the podcast, The Last Days of August.
Undoubtedly, Jane is right to state the dangers of discrimination online. But out of the close connection social media can offer porn stars and fans, the Fuck A Fan movement has been born.
It’s a movement which could release participating actors of their reliance on the mechanisms of an ever-innovating industry sometimes shackled by a select group of bad agents, producers, directors and an old vanguard of actors who champion archaic modes of consent.
Karla is glad she entered porn during a social media age – even though she has a difficult relationship with Instagram after the platform deleted her account for a third time and says this is just one of ‘many negative aspects of having to use social media as a requirement of your job’.
But according to Karla the beast has ‘innovated’ the relationship between fan and performer and given professionals ‘so much more control over our revenue and our careers in general’.
Aside from the heightened humanisation which comes with ‘getting a glimpse into [their] lives, personalities, and politics’, the accessibility is also a ‘a useful tool for managing a fanbase’, Jane says.
Unfortunately, social media is a melting pot of good, bad and ugly; at least this microcosm allows people who work in sex entertainment to take matters into their own hands.
Jane concludes:
Fuck A Fan raffles offer another way for fans to interact with their favorite stars. Winning the raffle and getting to meet this person you idolize, it definitely makes us into a person.
People need to realize that we’re human beings. Whether you hire us for a session, or win our raffles, you’re interacting with a human person.
We have good days and bad days, we have likes and dislikes, and the sooner fans and the general public realize that, the better life will be for those of us on the job.
Undeniably, the Fuck A Fan movement will, with each blow job and money shot, help civilian participants get to know what it takes to be a porn star and will blow the doors off the historically elusive industry, which has been relegated to the top shelf at the detriment to those who work within.
And if you can have some sexually-liberated fun at the same time, so be it.
If you have a story you want to tell, share it with UNILAD via stories@unilad.co.uk.
A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.