My OnlyFans story & why I quit in 2025

If we're going to talk about why I left, then I feel as though I should give some background on why I started in the first place. My journey in sex work started online in 2019, a few months into living with my then-boyfriend and being out of my parent's house for the first time in my life. I truly had always had an interest in working in the industry for a variety of reasons not just limited to the "insane money" that every civilian thinks we sex workers are always earning. I'll be honest though; the money was of course a big draw for me, like it is for many of us.

A good friend of mine was a cam girl, and was in fact the only person I knew who was actively in the industry and would share with me about how to get my own cam profile set up and going. At first, I was simply considering camming for some extra money, and an outlet for myself to show off since I'm an exhibitionist and enjoyed tapping into my sexual energy. I had no real idea about what I was getting into and how to actually make a cam profile popular and successful. At the time, I was still working a civilian job for 40 hours a week and thought that I'd be able to pull in a good amount just from camming for a few hours a day on the weekends. I attempted to do as much research as I could on how to be a successful camgirl, but as you can imagine, it wasn't the most widely discussed topic with easily attainable information. However, I learned as much as I was able. I purchased a few camgirl items like sex toys and outfits, created my very first profile and attempted to learn the website a decent bit and finally, I went live for the first time. 

Let me tell you, going live on a sex cam was definitely something I was wildly nervous for. I'd watched some other streams, trying to get an idea of what to do and how it worked, but sex work is one of those things that you really have to do to learn and understand. I made a few tokens from flashing the camera and doing some other basic run of the mill stuff. Then, someone paid my private show price, and we were put into our own little showroom. Now, y'all... I honestly was so unsure of how any of this worked, that I thought the customer paid for the full hour show up front when they decided to take you private. I quickly learned after making a couple of coins from the private and being tossed back into my public live stream with my literal entire asshole out, that no, the customer doesn't pay for the entire thing up front. I was mortified and shocked. I had no clue that the sessions could just end like that, and it honestly really pissed me off and upset me. I didn't understand why the guy did that and I felt like a complete idiot for not being ready for something like that to happen. 

I slammed my laptop shut and tried to regroup and figure out what I could do better next time and how to not end up with my booty exposed completely on public streaming again. I remember trying camming a few more times after that before I decided that I really wasn't comfortable with it, and that I'd just stick to civilian work for the foreseeable future. It bummed me out, because I really wanted to make it work, but it just did not feel right for me, and I dreaded the massive anxiety attacks I'd get before and during live shows. 

It was a few months before the desire to try again snuck into my head, and I attempted again. This time however, I chose to go the OnlyFans route, so I didn't have to be doing anything on live, but it was still digital media, I could do it from home and make some extra income. I'm not kidding when I tell you that I probably deleted and restarted my OnlyFans like 8 times before I committed to a profile and got over the initial anxiety of doing digital sex work. I can't even tell you how nerve wracking it was to finally start my profile and stick to it. I had myself convinced for the longest time that I'd be doxxed or outed to people in my personal life and/or unable to continue working a civilian job due to the stigma if anyone found out. Thankfully, that wasn't something I had to deal with for the entire time I was running my OF page.

At the time I'd started the OF profile that I stuck with and really worked hard on, I was still working a civilian job as an accountant for a debt collection law firm. Six months after the COVID 19 pandemic began, I was let go from my job there, and effectively had no money coming in, other than what my boyfriend was making and whatever OnlyFans was garnering for me. I quickly applied for unemployment and thankfully got approved for that for a while as I searched for a new job. I did end up getting a work from home job for a banking department but quickly came to realize that it was one hundred and ten percent the wrong job for me. I would sob as I was clocking in, cry in between phone calls, and sob after work ended, too. I hated it and it was way too stressful for me to handle for more than 3 weeks. I quit and told my boyfriend that since my OF had been doing fairly well, I was going to put all of my effort, time and focus on to that for money. By this time, it was mid-January and my boyfriend had become so sick that he was put on FMLA, and it slashed his pay to 40% of what he'd been making biweekly. As you can imagine, we were beyond stressed. The pressure was really on, and I had to make it happen or we'd have been homeless. 

Unfortunately, during this time, I was still a rather hard partier in a sense. I did a lot of acid, and I did it much too frequently. Couple that with trying to run an OF page, and you get a complete psychosis style meltdown about being convinced people in your family would find out about your porn career. I was doing really well, I had regulars, I was in the groove and putting myself out there into many different niches and fetish content categories, but I threw it all away one day when I had a particularly severe episode due to the incessant drug use. I freaked out, deleted my profile and vowed to never go back. When I deleted my first, and largest OnlyFans page, I had made it into the top 2% of creators worldwide. I went back to civilian life, and as you can imagine, that ended up being a bad idea. I restarted my OF page for extra income since it was basically all I knew to do and cut out the acid. I continued working both a civ job and my OF for several months after that. 

Due to the fact that from there on out (summer 2021-winter 2024) I would have a civ job and an Onlyfans profile, I was never again able to give the OF the attention it needed to grow as quickly as it did before. I never saw profits like my 2020-early 2021 days and the responsibility of running the profile and working 60 hours a week at my last civ job was just way too much for me to handle. By the time I really set my OnlyFans down, I was working so much at my healthcare job that I didn't really need to do OF anymore. I didn't delete the profile, but I definitely didn't work on it the way I had before. It was nice to take a break from it, honestly. As you know if you've read my first blog post about the beginning of my journey into stripping, you'll know that at this healthcare job, my overtime hours were revoked, and I was making half of the pay that I'd been making for several months. I decided instead of going back to OF and working on growing that page again, I'd finally give stripping a try since I'd always wanted to anyway, and I was honestly getting pretty burnt out on digital sex work. 

I won't bore you with all of the little details, but let me tell you, dealing with men online was one of the hardest and most emotionally taxing things I have ever done in my life. From the crazy demands to hate messages and very disturbing and predatory requests, I felt completely drained and fried out on the entire thing. This feeling only grew until it became so bad that I dreaded making content and would only respond to the custom requests that I could handle. By this time, the OF market had completely been flooded as well, and creators were charging $3 for the most wild and outrageous content, which caused a severe decline in my sales because I wouldn't lower my prices to less than I felt I deserved for the content I was making. This was all very frustrating, and unfortunately it only got worse and worse. 

By 2024, I was hardly touching the profile, and I primarily danced to pay the bills and make ends meet. It was nice for an extra couple hundred bucks here and there every month, but I didn't put any effort in. I rarely made new content and when I did it was once every several months and only with other creators as collaborations. I was sick of showing my entire body and constantly having to be sexual just to make scraps of what I had before, and to deal with the people who subscribed to my page. They were so rude, demanding, hateful and downright disgusting most of the time, that it made me feel like a worthless husk of who I am every time I logged on. The work no longer brought me any sense of joy, accomplishment or autonomy. Instead, the work I had once loved so much, the work that saved me in one of the most stressful times in my life - it now felt like a soul sucking nightmare that I couldn't wake up from. 

In early 2025, I decided that enough was enough. I was angry every time I'd log into my page and see all the demands from people who weren't willing to pay my custom video prices as they begged me to lower my price or cuss me out and call me things like "anorexic". It was exhausting and I hated it so much that finally, I said, "I'm done this time, for real" and clicked that "delete profile" button. I had several pages on various sites and that night, I went through and scrubbed them all. Effectively ending my digital sex work career. 

I want everyone to know, I have no issues with anyone who does create digital media for adult entertainment purposes. I don't look down on or judge anyone who loves this line of work or simply does it to get by like I once did. For me, this work used to be so fun, and I really enjoyed it! However, when the time came that it was no longer resonating with my purpose, goals and happiness I decided that for my own mental wellbeing, I needed to cut myself off from it completely. Do I wish things could have been different? Absolutely. I would love to still enjoy creating adult content and using it to help build my empire... but that's not what's right for me, and I know that now. 

Something everyone needs to realize with sex work of any kind, is that it's okay to change your mind. It's okay for your boundaries to change and become more restrictive or more relaxed. You get to choose what you do with your body, nobody else. People often say "you did it once and got big, why not just do it again? It's not like you haven't already been seen by thousands of people!" they don't seem to understand that just because I did, does not mean I want to do so anymore. Just because I did, does not mean that makes it easier for me to stomach it now. I am not the same woman I was in 2020 and the joy in adult content creation is completely gone for me... and it's not something I think I'll ever find again. And you know what? That's okay.

Please remember that you are allowed to change your mind and change your path. You aren't wrong for quitting something that doesn't feel right. You are brave, strong, intuitive and extraordinarily wise for choosing to be true to yourself when you make decisions that feed your heart and mind's wellbeing. You're living for you, and nobody else, so walk your own path. Call your own shots. Do what makes you feel happy, fulfilled, successful, purposeful and radiant. 

Much love everyone,

Xo - Barbie Riot