The news that OnlyFans, the premier site for user-generated adult content, was experiencing a traffic boom amid the COVID-19 pandemic prompted The American Conservative to, well, lose its goddamn marbles.
In a column published on April 22, Charlie Peters began his ill-advised essay as follows: “Every now and then, the modern world produces a trend so ghastly you can’t help but sit back and think, would a global Islamic Caliphate really be that bad?” It didn’t get much better from there.
On April 30, veteran porn actress Brandi Love—herself a pro-Trump conservative—responded to Peters’ absurd piece with an op-ed in The Federalist that took it apart it piece by piece, citing everything from First Amendment rights to Republicans’ well-documented love of porn to how camming sites like OnlyFans have provided many people with feelings of comfort during the novel coronavirus crisis. (Heck, even Beyoncé’s a fan.)
“I could count dozens of emails, texts and DMs staying, ‘Thanks for keeping me sane while I’ve been locked up. This has been my release,’” explains Love, who’s spending around 6-12 hours a day during the current lockdown creating at-home content. “And it’s not just a sexual release. With camming, it’s seeing other humans. It’s unhealthy to be alone.”
As a pro-Trump porn star, Love is something of a rarity in the adult industry, given its decidedly liberal bent. But it hasn’t stopped her from being one of its hardest-working women. “On set there have been times where conversations get heated, and I’ll stand up and go, ‘I’m going to have to disagree, and maybe it’s best if we don’t talk politics on set.’ But I’ve never not worked with somebody because of their political bent. I could care less,” she tells me.
There was a whole lot more where that came from.
Read more: The Daily Beast
