Interview by Maddie Adore
Portrait by Charlie Bibby

MA To what extent are the desires we think of as genuine shaped by algorithms?

PN We've always been shaped by the media, but now culture emanates differently. In the past, we were all watching the same MTV music videos and dressing the same; now the media has learnt to pick up on our most primal impulses, feeding us the most stimulating content. It’s hard to reach a comparable level of stimulation away from our devices because it feels so good to keep scrolling, soothing and gratifying ourselves with content perfectly adapted to us. Content is extremifying, intensifying our latent desires into increasingly niche areas. Pornography has pioneered much of the internet. Our virtual culture is becoming angrier and more bizarre. On porn tube sites, there’s a trend of absurd sexual imagery, where it’s uncertain whether we’re supposed to feel arousal or shock. We've seen that trend disseminate from pornography into wider online culture.

MA What have sex workers contributed to the architecture of the internet?

PN Throughout the history of online pornography, there have always been women and sex workers who weren’t just advertising, creating and popularising content, but also running companies, coding and developing platforms. Babes4U was one of the world’s first streaming sites, pioneering the use of customers’ credit cards online. The woman who founded it describes how strippers on the site were essentially giving their johns one-on-one computer classes. The tycoons who run pornography today remain mostly hidden, which is problematic. They’re making money in an industry where performers have to bare all and lose control over their image once it’s online, so it's galling to have the people profiting from this saying, “I’d like to protect my privacy, and that is my right.” 

MA Some OnlyFans creators distance themselves from the term “sex work”, describing what they do as “platform capitalism” instead. How does this impact the way we understand labour?

PN We’ve been taught to treat how we portray ourselves online as part of our identity, so online work becomes an expansion of that. Bryce Adams would say the sex is incidental because she’s really selling access to her life. Going to a porn studio where you have no control over the footage seems distant to her: she’s an online entrepreneur, monetising her image, so even if many of the acts are similar, it feels different. As an entrepreneur, you control your own time, but you also work all the time. We live such virtual lives that you reach a point where you think, “Why don't I charge for this?” Whatever stigma once surrounded sex work as a moral issue of selling access to yourself, influencer culture has made it something that many people now strive to do.

MA OnlyFans lowered barriers to becoming a creator, but it also lowered the barrier to becoming a client. For £3 a month, you can buy access to a sex worker’s attention. How has what you term “the masturbatory business model of the internet” democratised the purchase of intimacy?

PN In the past, you had to walk into a shop or peep show. Now you're alone with your device, and anyone can explore sex at the click of a button. Paying for erotic intimacy has developed similarly: you can do microtransactions and start exploring in a different way. Anonymity is also important. As a buyer of sex online, you don’t have to worry about being seen at the strip club. For better or worse, the virtual economy is enabling us to indulge our most secret desires in a way previous generations could only have dreamt of.

MA The book shows the extent to which payment processors and banks have become the arbiters of sexual expression online. How did Visa and Mastercard end up with that power?

PN For credit card companies and banks, the early internet was an opportunity to encourage virtual transactions. The only people who dared use their cards online were horny, so a huge amount of early transactions related to porn. There’s an ecosystem of payment processor middlemen who handle transactions, policing sites in accordance with Visa and Mastercard rules. Porn might seem completely unregulated, but lawyers working for payment processors set tight rules that have real effects on sexual culture. That's why menstrual blood is rare in pornography: it risks being read as violence. Most pornography is consumed on free sites, which have hosted content without falling under these commercial rules. Paywalled sites face many more issues accessing financial services, which has to do with payment processors punishing them for breaching rules. Individuals are affected because banks prefer to cut out sex workers rather than risk losing access to payments, even if it’s legal in many jurisdictions. Sex workers have long spoken about this, but as a society, we tend not to extend empathy to them until it impacts others.

MA What concerns you most about the formalisation of surveillance that's happening with the UK's 2023 Online Safety Act?

PN We know that private companies hold so much personal data on us, and we're basically allowing new companies to create databases which are also accessible by governments. In the UK, we’re seeing the targeting of political activists. It’s clear why the government’s enhanced ability to track us and the end of anonymity online are democratic risks. Sex workers are canaries in the coal mine regarding issues of liberty and financial personhood. Once again, pornography and online sex workers are shaping policy around the world. Many people brush it off as “just porn”, but these regulations have a big impact on the online economy, culture and media.

MA What do you predict for the future of the online economy?

PN My guess is that we’re moving from an attention economy to one of monetised companionship and validation: the cam girl business model. Tipping culture seeps into all types of livestreaming from Only-Fans to Twitch. AI chatbots are designed to keep validating us, functioning similarly to sex work: we are the clients, and AI is there to fulfil the fantasy that we’re important, beautiful and desired. People pay for the illusion of intimacy. Sex workers are pioneers, and horniness is a driver when it comes to adopting new technologies. .