Bonnie Blue knows exactly how to keep the world talking about her. If this wasn’t apparent already, from splashes across tabloids, to the endless green-screen comment pieces ranting about her on TikTok, it will be now. A new Channel 4 documentary, 1000 Men and Me: The Bonnie Blue Story has aired, and, in it, we follow Bonnie over the months where her career exploded.
We see behind-the-scenes on her now infamous ‘record-breaking’ gang bang, where she invited 1000 ‘normal’ men to have sex with her, over a day. We hear her marketing strategy, how she took the wording ‘barely legal’ from the media and spun it, knowing the reaction it would cause. We see how deliberate her rage-baiting is: the documentary ends with her flying to Romania to meet Andrew Tate, who is facing charges of rape and human trafficking, which he denies. She knows it will enrage people, and drive more viewers to her content so… she does it.
She’s on a mission to be “the most famous porn star in the world”. She wants to be making £5 million a month. In the documentary, her mum says her daughter is earning a million per month, adding that those who judge her would quickly change their opinion, if they too were earning those astronomical figures.
It’s a marketing strategy that makes people very, very angry. But... it works. She tells us, the documentary viewers, that she’s happy and in control, and I believe her. “Other people have hobbies — they want to hike or do marathons — for me, I wanted to give and receive pleasure for 24 hours,” Bonnie told Cosmopolitan UK, when we interviewed her back in April this year. Gang bangs are her kink. The work she finds most rewarding is having sex with normal people and filming it.
But, while she may be in control, the environment she is thriving in feels completely out of control. We now exist in an attention economy — this applies across the board, whether you’re a sex worker like Bonnie or a TikTok comedian — because a huge proportion of your job essentially becomes ensuring that eyes reach your content. And, in this current landscape? Extreme content pulls the viewers in, in their millions. It’s this that I think we should be concerned about, not the individuals who exist within it. As they say: don’t hate the player, hate the game.
Watching Bonnie Blue come up with more and more wild ways to enrage the public, even as she receives hundreds of death threats a day, feels like we’re stuck on a runaway train. When will the stunts end? Will we just keep seeing the challenges getting more and more extreme? How does that impact how we view our own sex lives?
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Behind the scenes
I’ve worked on two major investigations looking into the adult film industry, and travelled across the world to meet performers and watch them at work, on set. I’ve seen, first hand, how the content that they photograph and film is only a small percentage of the job. They have to hustle hard to ensure that their work is seen, and paid for.
While sex workers are now all across our social media channels, their reality is vastly different from other influencers. They work in an industry that’s being, increasingly, pushed underground. Whether you agree with their censorship or not, this is their reality — and it impacts what you see on social media, and in the press.
They aren’t allowed to advertise their work, apart from on adult-only channels and platforms. They have difficulties opening bank accounts and they have multiple social media accounts, as so often they’re reported and taken down. Legislation, across the world, is cracking down on sexual content online. OnlyFans also doesn’t have a ‘Discover’ page like other social media platforms.
All of this means that creators have had to find their own way to ensure that the content that they make a living from reaches those who will pay. In a world where free porn is just a click away, this isn’t easy.
When I met OnlyFans creator, Andy Lee, who features in Bonnie Blue’s documentary, he showed me around his studio. Then, in the following months, I saw those sets pop-up, in viral videos that were deliberately designed to shock (and turn on) the public, including a ‘leaked’ video of an officer seducing a prison inmate. Andy, like Bonnie, knows how to keep his name, and work, in the headlines.
“The problem you have, being a sex worker and content creator, [is that] you can’t advertise your work,” he says. “The only way to do [it is with] a wild stunt to get people talking. And once you do a wild stunt, you become yesterday’s news, and you have to do something more wild… I don’t know where it ends.”
Five years ago, for an investigation looking into how we ignored the adult industry’s #MeToo moment, I learned how, in some of the big name production studios, a way to make more money was to do a ‘first’ or have a niche. As with any marketplace, rarity adds value. This was taken advantage of by agents, who received a cut of their star’s work and would withhold fees to make them do scenes they didn’t want to.
Each of the performers I spoke to for that piece saw OnlyFans, and other similar platforms, as a way to take the power back into their own hands. They could work for themselves, without agents or big studios exerting that terrifying control over them. But as OnlyFans, and other similar platforms continue to grow, will we see performers being pushed into creating even more niche, or starring in extreme, content to stand out?
Especially as it’s only the top performers who make the big money we see hit the headlines (the average OnlyFans creator earns just $1,300 (£984) a year, while those in the top 1% earn roughly $18,700 (£14k) per month). For some, this may be within their comfort zone. But, for others, could they feel the pressure to push their boundaries to stand out in an ever competitive market? And will that, in turn, send the message that sex is all about the extremes, to those who are watching?
“Normal advertising and payment mechanisms are not available to those involved in sex work, which has only boosted the rise of a host of self publishing platforms, offering ease of global publishing for anyone wishing to monetise content,” explains Anna Richards, CEO of ethical sex platform FrolicMe. “It all seems so easy for anyone with a smart phone. However, this should not be the narrative for young people with little or no sexual experience trying to model themselves on success, via such extreme ways. Young people could believe that they too can achieve a similar overnight wealth if they but create a big enough stunt.”
And with Blue having already conquered that market, what else could creators do? Where else is there to go? “The bar is already set so high,” says Anna. “The greater the wealth is mirrored by the greater the stunt. This could be seen as the only way to achieve.”
In the documentary, we see Codie, an OnlyFans creator, who had — up until filming with Bonnie Blue — only done solo content or scenes with her boyfriend. She’s now about to film her first gang bang. She’s not being paid. Instead, she will be tagged by Bonnie Blue, and that, alone, she says, will be enough — it will up her views and her follower count, which, in turn, will increase her paid subscriptions. It’s the same, we’re told, for the other performers on set.
It’s this I found to be the most uncomfortable viewing, watching how Bonnie’s marketing techniques are copied by others younger, and arguably, with a lot less control. Bonnie Blue now has a lot of financial stability, at a level that other performers do not have. I also believe that performers should be paid for their work — not in social media views.
However, I also don’t want to make any assumptions on why, or what, drives a performer to make the content they do. I have met so many performers who have naturally fallen into niches that work for them, their individual sexual preferences and boundaries. We also don’t make sweeping statements as to what it’s like to work in the hospitality industry, so we shouldn’t within sex work. It’s too broad.
Stunts are also not the only way to get attention on social media. Rebecca Goodwin is a hugely successful OnlyFans star who is open about the double standards women face when it comes to sex work, and uses her lived experience and comedic style to go viral — and therefore drive people to her content.
In the documentary, Bonnie is asked what she thinks the impact her content could have on those younger than her. Could young women see her and think they need to replicate her? Bonnie replies that she believes it’s down to parents, and the conversations they have with their children, explaining: “[It’s about parents saying], ‘Hey there’s also people in the world that do mass murders, it doesn’t mean you do that. There’s people in the world that do gang bangs, you don’t also have to do that’.”
A large amount of the rage on the internet, right now, is directed at Bonnie — and others like her. They see her extreme stunts as fuelling misogyny and pushing dangerous ideas surrounding sex. But, instead of lying all the blame on individuals, shouldn’t we be examining how this industry is designed, and, ultimately, who is making the most profit off of that design? OnlyFans’ parent company, Fenix International Limited, reported a gross revenue of $6.63 billion in 2023. Despite this, the company maintains a small core team, with 42 full-time employees (FTEs).
“As someone in this industry working with professional porn models, I am always considerate of everyone’s health and wellbeing being paramount to creating sexual entertainment,” says Richards. “Money can be made creating and promoting healthy sexuality. But self-publishing platforms need to take responsibility for what they publish. They must be aware of the message the content they feature promotes, and not just on their benefitting from extreme sexual content.”
OnlyFans did shut down Bonnie Blue’s account, after she announced her ‘Bonnie Blue petting zoo’ which would allow members of the public to touch her, or have sex with her, while she was tied up in a glass box. At the time, when we reached out for comment, an OnlyFans spokesperson told Cosmopolitan UK: “Extreme ‘challenge’ content is not available on OnlyFans and is not permitted under our Acceptable Use Policy and Terms of Service. Any breach of our Terms of Service results in content or account deactivation.”
Ultimately, while this sex stunt extremism is nothing new, with stars taking part in content that promises ‘record breaking gang bangs’ for decades, what is new is how blurred the lines are between social media star and sex worker. The content we view isn’t just found on adult sites, but it’s being talked about on social media, on television, and in the media. Ironically, this is (in part) a result of a societal wish to hide porn away, and not talk about it. Stars have had to find ways to market themselves, and extremity is rewarded.
But this isn’t just an adult industry problem, it’s a universal one. The online world we now all exist in pushes so many of us, in different ways and in different industries, to perform in an outrageous or extreme way to get attention. Think of the YouTuber controversies we’ve seen in recent months; the content creator houses popping up on both sides of the pond.
It also offers up, for us all, content to feast on.
We, of course, need greater comprehensive sex education, and for that to include porn literacy. We also need to get a lot better about having judgement-free conversations about sex workers and the choices that they make. But we also can’t just turn around and ignore our part in it all. If we don’t like the impact this new era of sexual extremism stunts is having — on the creator and on the viewer — then we need to learn not to reward it with our views... or our rage.
Catriona Innes is Commissioning Director at Cosmopolitan, you can follow her on Substack and on Instagram.
Catriona Innes is Cosmopolitan UK’s multiple award-winning Commissioning Editor, who has won BSME awards both for her longform investigative journalism as well as for leading the Cosmopolitan features department. Alongside commissioning and editing the features section, both online and in print, Catriona regularly writes her own hard-hitting investigations spending months researching some of the most pressing issues affecting young women today.
She has spent time undercover with specialist police forces, domestic abuse social workers and even Playboy Bunnies to create articles that take readers to the heart of the story. Catriona is also a published author, poet and volunteers with a number of organisations that directly help the homeless community of London. She’s often found challenging her weak ankles in towering heels through the streets of Soho. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter.
