The Psychology of OnlyFans Gangbangs
A Sex Therapist’s Analysis of Lily Phillips and the Men Who Participate
Key Takeaways
When British OnlyFans creator Lily Phillips became internationally known for highly publicized, large-scale sexual events involving many male participants, the Internet predictably divided itself into familiar camps. Some called it empowerment while others called it exploitation. Some treated it as a spectacle while others asked whether a woman who participates voluntarily in extreme sexual experiences can genuinely enjoy them.
But as a sex therapist, I was originally struck by how relatable and well-balanced Lily appeared. She was articulate and likeable and didn’t seem as emotionally disconnected like individuals in traditional pornography. For nearly two decades I have been having highly intimate conversations with people about their sex lives and sexual fantasies. I have plenty of examples of kinky, non-monogamous folks who love sex and have a lot of it and are just fine. These individuals are not really represented well in popular culture, but there are plenty of examples in popular culture about how to have unhealthy sex. As I continued to watch Lily Phillips I asked: Does Lily Phillips really love sex?
Then I started to wonder–What exactly are we watching? What psychological, sexual, relational, and economic forces make an event like this possible—and desirable? And why are we so focused on understanding the woman at the center while barely asking what motivates the large number of men who volunteer to participate?
The emerging research on OnlyFans suggests that these questions are far more complicated than either “sexual liberation” or “exploitation.”
OnlyFans: A Brief History
OnlyFans functions as a subscription-based digital landscape where the traditional boundaries between performer and viewer are dissolved through paid access and direct engagement. The emerging literature identifies this platform as a unique convergence of social media dynamics, digital patronage, and the evolving creator economy of sex work. Currently, scholarly research remains primarily qualitative and relatively narrow in scope, focusing more heavily on the lived experiences of individual creators than on comprehensive platform-wide statistical analysis.
Since its inception in 2016, OnlyFans was designed to empower creators by allowing them to monetize their content directly, effectively bypassing the gatekeepers of traditional industries. While the company markets itself as a versatile hub for diverse creators—ranging from fitness experts to chefs—the research consistently highlights that its cultural identity and primary revenue streams are inextricably linked to adult and erotic performances.
The global pandemic served as a significant catalyst, rapidly accelerating both the production and mainstream normalization of sexual content on the site. Studies indicate a dramatic 75% surge in new registrations during the early months of 2020. This growth trajectory saw the user base expand from roughly 7 million in 2019 to a staggering 190 million registered users by 2023, reflecting a profound shift in how we consume sexual spectacle.
OnlyFans Changed More Than Pornography
OnlyFans represents an important shift in how sexual content is produced and consumed. Traditional pornography generally created distance between performer and viewer. The viewer watched a sexual performance produced by an industry, while OnlyFans collapses some of that distance. Creators can communicate directly with subscribers, respond to requests, sell customized experiences, cultivate recognizable personalities, and give followers the impression that they know the person behind the sexual content. Research describes the platform as occupying an unusual intersection between social media, digital sex work, and the creator economy.
That distinction matters psychologically because sexuality is no longer the only product. Access, attention, personality, and authenticity are the products. This was a lightbulb moment for me in understanding Lily Phillips: I had bought what she was selling–her relatability and likeability. And increasingly, participation itself can become the product. Research on OnlyFans creators describes what scholars call “bounded” or “negotiated authenticity”: the experience must feel personal and real while simultaneously remaining a commercial transaction. Creators may share genuine aspects of themselves while carefully deciding which parts remain private.
That creates a fascinating psychological paradox. The more authentic the interaction feels, the more commercially valuable it may become. And the more commercially successful it becomes, the harder it may be to determine where authentic sexual desire ends and performance begins.
Does Lily Phillips Really Love Sex?
Possibly. There is no psychological test that allows someone watching a documentary, interview, or social-media clip to determine whether another person “really” enjoys sex. More importantly, this question creates a false binary. A person can genuinely enjoy sexuality and perform sexuality. She can experience arousal and think about money. She can feel empowered and experience pressure. She can choose an experience and later discover that the emotional impact was different from what she anticipated. She can enjoy attention, novelty, exhibitionism, validation, financial success, sexual stimulation, competition, or transgression—and these motivations can coexist. Human sexual motivation is rarely singular.
The research on OnlyFans creators reflects precisely this complexity. Creators describe autonomy, flexibility, financial independence, sexual expression, confidence, body acceptance, self-determination, and entrepreneurial pride as meaningful aspects of their work. Some explicitly reject the idea that their work is inherently exploitative and instead frame it as self-directed labor in which they decide what they will and will not do. We should take those experiences seriously; but taking autonomy seriously does not require us to stop asking questions about the environment in which choices occur.
Choice Is Real. So Is the Marketplace Shaping It.
One of the most important psychological distinctions in conversations about sexual empowerment is the difference between asking: “Did she choose this?”, and “What forces helped make this particular choice valuable?”. Those are not the same question.
OnlyFans operates within the creator economy. Creators are not simply sexual performers; they are entrepreneurs competing for subscribers, attention, engagement, publicity, and relevance. Research describes digital sex work as involving self-promotion, branding, marketing, content production, customer interaction, and emotional labor. The literature also emphasizes that creators may experience considerable autonomy while simultaneously depending on platforms, algorithms, audiences, and unstable income streams.
This creates what I would call an attention economy of sexuality. If thousands of people are producing sexual content, simply being attractive or sexually explicit may no longer distinguish one creator from another. The marketplace rewards differentiation. Something has to make people click, talk, and something has to become news. And eventually the question may shift from: “What sexual experience do I want?” to: “What sexual experience has not been done—or marketed—this way before?”.
When Sexuality Becomes Competitive
Sexuality has always contained elements of novelty, fantasy, experimentation, and transgression. There is nothing inherently pathological about any of those things. The psychological concern emerges when novelty becomes a marketplace requirement. In a competitive attention economy, sexual behavior can become subject to the same escalation dynamics we see elsewhere online. Content creators such as Lily Phillips strive for more: extreme, public, increased participants, more shocking and clickable. The next event must somehow exceed the previous one.
This does not mean creators are passive victims of algorithms. They may be sophisticated entrepreneurs making deliberate business decisions. But agency and environmental influence can coexist. A professional athlete freely chooses to compete while still being influenced by the incentives of professional sports. An influencer chooses what to post while still responding to engagement metrics. An OnlyFans creator can freely choose sexual content while simultaneously learning which performances generate money, followers, media attention, and cultural relevance.
Eventually, the reinforcement loop may become powerful: sexual spectacle → attention → subscribers → money → media coverage → greater expectations → larger spectacle.
At that point, we should ask a psychologically important question: Who—or what—is actually determining the next sexual boundary: The creator? The audience? The marketplace? Or some combination of all three?
The Complicated Meaning of “Empowerment”
One of the most common arguments surrounding OnlyFans is that it allows women to reclaim control over sexual representation, which has some truth. Research documents creators describing financial autonomy, self-confidence, body acceptance, creative freedom, sexual experimentation, and self-determination. But empowerment is not necessarily a permanent psychological state and can be contextual. A behavior can feel empowering in one dimension and costly in another. A woman might feel financially empowered while emotionally exhausted; sexually liberated while socially stigmatized; in control of content while dependent on audience demand; proud of her body while increasingly monitoring its commercial value; independent from a traditional employer while highly dependent on a digital platform.
The research captures this tension. Creators report the benefits of flexibility, safety, and remuneration, while also describing unstable income, lack of platform protections, constant promotional labor, harassment, boundary violations, and uncertainty about their futures. This is why the question “Is OnlyFans empowering or exploitative?” is probably too simplistic. It can contain elements of both.
Sexual Empowerment Versus Sexual Performance
Another useful distinction is between sexual agency and sexual performance.
Sexual agency asks questions such as: What do I want? What feels pleasurable? What feels meaningful? What boundaries do I have? What kind of sexual experience feels congruent with who I am?
Sexual performance asks a different set of questions: Howdo I look? Am I desirable? Are people impressed? Will people watch? Will this generate attention? What do I need to do next to remain interesting?
These motivations can overlap. But they are not identical. Research on what has been termed “raunch culture” raises precisely this tension: contemporary sexual culture may frame increasingly sexualized self-presentation as liberation while simultaneously intensifying self-objectification and social comparison. The research does not establish that sexualized behavior itself causes psychological harm, but it does suggest relationships among raunch-culture endorsement, social-media intensity, social comparison, and depressive symptoms that deserve further investigation.
The clinical question, therefore, is not whether a behavior looks sexually liberated from the outside. It is about whose desire is organizing the experience.
But What About the Men?
When one woman participates in a sexual event involving a very large number of men, nearly all psychological curiosity tends to focus on the woman. This is where much of the public discussion becomes strangely incomplete. One thing that struck me as really unusual was the majority of online gangbang videos show dozens or even hundreds of men lined up with ski masks covering their faces. I wondered if these ‘heterosexual’ men were all masturbating together while lined up to have five minutes with Lily or how being in a group of other men who were sexually aroused was arousing? And–what's with the ski masks? What needs to be hidden about these men, yet they are willing to have group sex filmed?
The research on OnlyFans users gives us some starting points, although it does not specifically study men participating in highly publicized group-sex events. One study of 718 U.S. adults found OnlyFans users were disproportionately male among certain user groups and that users and nonusers did not show dramatic differences across several broad measures of sexual attitudes. In other words, we should be careful not to assume that OnlyFans consumers constitute some psychologically bizarre or easily pathologized population. That makes the question more interesting, not less. The same study did find that the demographics of OnlyFans consumers lean heavily toward married, white men who identify as either heterosexual, bisexual, or pansexual. This makes you wonder–do the partners of these married men know about their OnlyFans use, and if not, how are they paying for it? Is this a form of infidelity? Based on my clinical experience, I have an increasing number of couples presenting for infidelity recovery due to OnlyFans usage, but to my knowledge there is no scientific literature on this topic.
The Desire to Move From Viewer to Participant
Traditional pornography creates a clear division in that there is the performer and a viewer. Platforms such as OnlyFans weaken that boundary. Subscribers can message creators, request content, receive personalized responses, develop familiarity, follow everyday life and experience something resembling relational access.
Research describes this as a form of subscription intimacy in which sexual content becomes intertwined with companionship, conversation, attention, and emotional connection. Some creators report that long-term subscribers want someone to talk to, someone who knows them, and an experience resembling a girlfriend-like relationship alongside sexual content.
Now imagine the psychological leap when the subscriber is offered something even more powerful–you don't have to watch anymore, you can participate. The distance between fantasy and reality suddenly collapses. For some men, that opportunity may be enormously compelling.
There is almost certainly no single psychological profile to what motivates these men. Some may be motivated by sexual novelty, exhibitionism, status, bragging rights, experience a fantasy becoming reality, others by curiosity or may simply be sexually adventurous adults making a consensual choice. But there may also be something psychologically unique about participating in a sexual event involving a famous or highly visible creator. The experience may offer something ordinary pornography cannot, which is the proximity to the person previously consumed as an image.
The participant crosses the screen and moves from audience member to actor, and from fantasy to perceived access. That transition may itself be the primary reward.
The Parasocial Dimension
OnlyFans intensifies what psychologists call parasocial relationships—one-sided relationships in which a viewer develops feelings of familiarity or intimacy with a public figure. OnlyFans complicates this because the relationship is not entirely one-sided. The creator may respond, she may know the subscriber's name or remember previous conversations. She may customize content and can express affection or interest. The relationship can therefore feel remarkably personal while remaining fundamentally commercial.
Research on fan-model interactions describes exactly this ambiguity: creators attempt to establish boundaries while fans sometimes struggle to distinguish fantasy from relational reality, occasionally resulting in boundary violations and problematic interactions. Participation in a real-world sexual event can collapse that ambiguity even further. The fantasy becomes embodied, but embodiment does not necessarily create intimacy and that distinction may matter enormously.
The Psychology of the Crowd
There is another factor rarely discussed: group psychology. A man participating alone in a sexual encounter makes decisions primarily as an individual. A man participating as one of many may experience something different. Large groups can produce: social proof, deindividuation, competition, performance pressure, and diffusion of responsibility. The internal question can shift from: “Do I actually want to do this?” to: “Everyone else is doing it.” Or: “I don't want to be the guy who backs out.” Or: “This is my chance to be part of something people will talk about.” Sexual behavior does not occur outside social psychology.
Men also perform sexuality for other men. Masculinity frequently contains competitive sexual scripts: number of partners, sexual access, stamina, conquest, adventurousness, and willingness to participate in experiences other men cannot. A large-scale sexual event may therefore involve not only male desire toward a woman but also male status signaling toward other men. This is an untapped area of research.
Is This About Intimacy—or Its Opposite?
One of the great paradoxes of modern sexual culture is that we have more access to sexual imagery than any generation in history. Yet many people report loneliness, relational disconnection, dating fatigue, and difficulty developing intimate relationships. OnlyFans sits directly inside this paradox. It offers something that looks like intimacy but it packages those experiences within a commercial exchange. This does not make the connection fake.
Research on negotiated authenticity specifically challenges the simplistic binary between “real” and “fake.” Creators and subscribers can experience genuine enjoyment, affection, familiarity, and connection even while both understand that money structures the relationship.
But commercial intimacy is still psychologically different from mutual intimacy. In mutual intimacy, both people risk rejection, both people's needs matter, both negotiate boundaries, and both must tolerate vulnerability. Neither can simply purchase continued access to the other. That difference may be particularly important for men.
If sexual and relational experiences increasingly become available through consumption, some men may become very skilled at accessing sexuality while remaining inexperienced in the harder psychological work of intimacy.
The Question We Should Be Asking
I don't think Lily Phillips—or any other creator—can be meaningfully understood through a simple label. No single label captures the complexity of human sexual motivation. The research on OnlyFans repeatedly reveals contradictions.
Creators describe autonomy while navigating audience demands. They report authenticity while performing a marketable version of themselves, connection while selling access, empowerment while managing stigma, independence while depending on platforms and sexual expression while operating inside an attention economy. And consumers may experience sexual gratification alongside loneliness, curiosity, parasocial attachment, fantasy, learning, novelty, validation, or a desire for connection.
So perhaps the most interesting question isn't: Does Lily Phillips really love sex? It is: What happens when sexuality, intimacy, identity, social media, celebrity, money, and algorithms all become intertwined—and none of us can easily tell where desire ends and performance begins?
And there is one final question I think we should be asking much more often. When hundreds of men are willing to line up to participate in the sexual spectacle of one woman, why is our culture endlessly fascinated with explaining her psychology while treating theirs as self-explanatory? Perhaps the psychology of OnlyFans gangbangs tells us at least as much about contemporary masculinity, loneliness, intimacy, pornography, and male sexual identity as it does about the women at the center of them.
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