A lot to unpack here.

She said the people she chatted to often seemed “really nice” but were obviously lonely, making the whole process feel sad, especially as she was not the person she was pretending to be.

I feel like this summarizes the time we're living in. Some poor bastard somewhere sitting on his computer chatting with some lady he believes he is paying for attention, but in fact he is just being pitied by some unnamed underpaid worker in the Philippines. Meanwhile they're both filling the accounts of an online influencer and some onlyfans tech bro, both of whom are surely completely miserable in their own right.

Paying someone else to chat doesn't necessarily surprise me (some OF models have ridiculous amount of subscribers), but they could easily pay more than $2 per hour. Not sure how many messages they have to deal with but what's stopping them from stacking multiple people's pages at the same time? Sucks for the dudes paying for this stuff but I guess you should know what you're getting into by paying for this content online.

Pretty vile system we have created. The society exploits women for their sexuality, OF exploits lonely sadsacks, OF models exploit the underprivileged by outsourcing the demeaning work of chatting with weirdos, etc etc. Shit's just sad.

A Philippines-based woman has described how "heartbreaking" it is to get less than $2 per hour pretending to be much better paid OnlyFans models in online chats.

Article is worth reading, IMO.

'Icky and heartbreaking': The $2 per hour worker behind the OnlyFans boom

Chris Vallance
Senior technology reporter

A Philippines-based woman has described how "heartbreaking" it is to get less than $2 per hour pretending to be much better paid OnlyFans models in online chats.

The platform works by linking creators of explicit content to users, who pay a subscription to access their material and chat online.

However, while high-profile creators can earn large sums of money, the job of interacting with fans - and attempting to sell them images and videos - is often done by low-paid people, employed by third parties, such as the person the BBC spoke to.

A union representing such workers - known as "chatters" - told BBC News it was concerned about the "largely unregulated nature of this type of online work".

OnlyFans, which generated $7.2bn (£5.3bn) revenue in 2024, declined to comment but its terms of service state that its business relationship is solely with the content creator.

'It's really not pleasant'

The BBC is not naming the woman it spoke to in order to protect her identity.

Employed by an agency used by the model she was pretending to be, she says she first took up this type of work to support her family during a period of lower income, earning under $2 per hour and working an 8hr shift five days a week.

She would be set targets to earn the model hundreds of dollars worth of sales of pictures and videos during her shift.

The most popular creators on the platform claim to earn millions of dollars per month.

A more recent period of chatting work with a new agency offered improved conditions and pay, though still less than $4 an hour.

She said she knew the work would involve explicit content - but even so "sexting" was unpleasant.

"It's kind of icky when you think about it, because you'll have to do sexting a lot of times, like, several times in an hour because, you know, you'll be talking to several fans all at once".

She said the people she chatted to often seemed "really nice" but were obviously lonely, making the whole process feel sad, especially as she was not the person she was pretending to be.

That dishonesty troubled her, she said,

"Technically, I'm scamming them, because I'll be sending all those photos and videos to them, and I'm just after the sale," she said

Indeed the use of chatters has lead to legal cases against OnlyFans and the agencies who employ them, by users and law firms who feel the practice is deceptive. So far none have succeeded.

Some fans the chatter said would ask for "really weird, kinks or fetishes" which she could generally tolerate - but not always.

"There are days where I feel like, 'what the hell am I doing here?' because there are days that it would really take its toll on you".

Asked if she felt exploited, she described accepting an under two dollars an hour pay rate as "not her finest hour".

"It's really not pleasant, you know? You're going to question yourself. Your morality, even, and even your conscience," she told the BBC.

"It's really kind of heart-breaking, especially knowing that the agency is getting way more," she added.

The chatter also described concerns about potential legal risk in taking on the work, given relatively tough anti-pornography laws in the Philippines.

The BPO Industry Employees' Network or BIEN is an independent union representing workers in the outsourced business process jobs in the Philippines.

Mylene Cabalona, its president, told the BBC that "while the Philippines does have relatively strict laws regarding pornography, our main concern as a union is the largely unregulated nature of this type of online work".

This raised, she said, serious concerns about workers' exposure to "potentially egregious or harmful content, as well as a lack of clear guidelines on safety, accountability, and worker protection".

But there were also advantages to outsourced digital jobs, including chatting, which could, Cabalona said, allow workers to earn income from home, while supporting clients or platforms abroad.

"These jobs can also offer higher potential income compared to some local entry-level jobs and provide opportunities to develop skills in digital work," she noted.

In the article the chatter is a woman but it can just as easily be a man. So all those customers are sexting with men half the time, heh.

Pretty depressing all around, but man you have to be willfully gullible to believe you'd be talking to the actual performer...

I did a tiny bit of basic research ignoring the nature of the work and looking at the $2/hr. In Manilla, you're renting a bed and barely making it. But in a secondary city, you might be able to rent a small house and have fibre (but need a UPS and probably mobile backup just in case). At that rate, apparently you can probably save a little bit each month and get ahead, and not be living right up to the edge of your means.

So if they could get, like, $3/hr, it would make a really nice difference. Neverminding the nature of the work.

That bbc article is paywalled.

Makes absolutely sense to continue working on this job, even though you hate it. No one forces you to work for adult models. There are always other opportunities. But that would require courage.

And complaining about how much the creators earn versus how much they earn; you don’t say? This is part of this fucked up capitalistic world. 99% of employers are like that.