Last year, I watched Vice's video interview, "The Downfall of GlitterForever17’s YouTube Empire." It essentially recounts GlitterForever17’s time online, her rise to fame, OnlyFans career, and subsequent spiral. During the interview, GlitterForever17, Breland, reflects on her time on OnlyFans, describing it as "the unwanted gift that keeps giving," as she still uses it to pay her bills. When I first heard it, I felt so deeply unearthed; never had anyone described my experience with sex work so perfectly and concisely. Unfortunately, like Breland, sex work has become the unwanted gift that keeps giving.
For a really long time, I’ve had a complicated relationship with sex work. I went from initially feeling like I had no business claiming the identity to having the work completely destroy my self-image. More recently, I came out as a retired (semi) sex worker in tech spaces. It’s been a process, one that I’m sometimes more at peace with than others. Nonetheless, I would venture to say that the last three years of sex work have felt utterly deflating.
When I first started in sex work, it happened totally by chance. I was creating content on Tumblr (lol), focusing on art, fat fashion, and body positivity. A number of people with fat fetishes began sliding into my inbox. Initially, I ignored them, but when offers of cash payment entered the picture, my perspective changed.
I'm embarrassed to admit that I was completely naive to the situation. In retrospect, I definitely think most of those men were predatory. I mean, it’s pretty fucking weird and highly inappropriate to slide into someone’s DMs offering to pay them to eat on camera, especially when all that person did was post themselves in a rather questionable head-to-toe American Apparel outfit (it was the time, cut me a fucking break). I knew a lot of these men were a little weird, but I wrote it off and convinced myself that this was different for whatever reason.
I wish I could say it was solely financial desperation, but that wouldn’t be the whole truth. Sure, I needed the money and wanted it, but I was also really stupid with it (see: Jeffrey Campbell Litas and well shots on me). I was also really ignorant of my own mental health at the time. I wouldn't say I was particularly well-adjusted emotionally after a childhood with unhealthy familial dynamics. So, for whatever reason, I had this completely unwarranted confidence, which, to be honest, is probably just me being 21. People in their early 20s are crazy, and if you happen to be reading this in your early 20s, I can promise you that you are actually certifiably unhinged.
That being said, I take some accountability for the fact that I should have done a bit more research. It wasn’t like I didn’t know about weird sex shit or didn’t know where to find it. Trust me, I had already been moonlighting as a very hot goth and much older cyber babe on Vampire Freaks (RIP). So, I had seen enough. Sometimes, I think that maybe, just maybe, I was flattered that someone saw me as hot and sexual, not some fictitious cyber babe I had made up. But I choose not to dwell on that too long. Still, my actual knowledge of sex work was very limited to stereotypes that I had seen in porn and media. I most definitely wasn’t tapped into the community.
At any rate, I did the fucking thing, and I’m here today still doing it, much to my fucking dismay. I really do not enjoy doing sex work, and for a while, I thought I was financially stable enough to walk away completely. I proudly declared I had retired to just about everyone. I had a cushy tech job, comfortable savings, and a clear financial plan. I walked away because I knew I couldn’t balance a full-time 9-5 with the other career goals I had. Truthfully, I never wanted a career in sex work. In my time away, I was able to take a product management course and eventually became certified, with plans to transition into product management from marketing.
Then, in a moment that felt like a true acid trip from hell (not mine, thankfully), my sense of security in tech completely changed. In all his ketamine haze, everyone's favorite alleged neo-Nazi to bully bought Twitter, causing a major shift in social media and the larger tech community. Soon after the deal went through, I decided to return to clip work. Something about this acquisition felt particularly destabilizing, so I thought returning to sex work and diversifying my income stream would provide additional security. As someone working as a social media strategist at a tech company, I knew that whatever little games Elon was playing were going to majorly disrupt both industries my career spanned. Call it paranoia, call it intuition, call it finally listening to Azealia Banks, but I sensed that something much worse was coming.
In November 2022, Elon laid off roughly half of Twitter’s workforce, continuing the layoffs into 2023. His actions not only completely destroyed the usability of the app but also set into motion a new frame of thinking among tech executives and leadership. And don’t get me wrong; it’s always been “appease the shareholders” (which is obviously my first priority as a worker!), but something changed, and true unchecked greed really set in. While I have, at best, negative feelings about Elon, the fact remains that he has influence in tech, and his actions set off a chain of reactions. Things across the industry continued to worsen in the coming months (and years), and in early 2023, I was laid off.
My layoff happened during the first initial waves of mass tech layoffs, a time that looks like child’s play given the current tech landscape. I was obviously panicked; I ugly cried for weeks. Unfortunately, at that time, I was grieving the very sudden and quick passing of a friend, making the grief feel all the more compounded. I spent a lot of time continuing to look for work, which took months to find.
Sex work, much to my dismay, was a lifesaver during that time. It gave me security. Once again, it was back to giving, even when I didn’t want it. But wanting and needing are two very different things. It still gives.
The reality is that no matter how I feel about sex work, I work in an industry that is far too unstable not to have additional income. At least, that’s my opinion, which, of course, is informed by the type of work I do within tech.
In more recent weeks, I’ve found myself wondering what that magic little number will be that will allow me to fully walk away from sex work again. When will I feel secure? What does security even mean in 2024? When will continuing to do sex work actually hinder my ability to succeed in other parts of my life? Can I continue to balance a full-time job, sex work, working to become a social media thought leader, and trying to build out this site into something bigger without utterly crashing? I don’t know, and I wish I did.
What I do know is that I’ve had to spend a lot of time recently examining my relationship with money, something I greatly detest but see as a necessary evil for long-term financial and life gains.
I can't lie; for a while, I thought not liking sex work made me an unappreciative, bad, and morally corrupt sex worker. I know many in the community have worked hard to reclaim sex work, focusing on all the empowering aspects of it—something I needed to see to get through particularly dark moments. But honestly, I don't feel particularly empowered by sex work, and I haven't in a long time. For a while, I felt that not talking about or even acknowledging my authentic feelings would be the best for the community. But I can't let those deeply irrational thoughts win. Sex work and sex workers are nuanced, and not living authentically does a disservice to everyone.
So, if you were to ask me about my feelings about sex work after all of this, I’d have to trace it back to social media, as it always does with me, and defer to Breland: it’s the unwanted gift that keeps giving.
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