Hi everyone,
Ever poured your heart out to a bartender, hair dresser, Uber driver, or rabbi? Us, too. Transactional intimacy is nothing new — it just so happens that yesterday’s confessional booth has become today’s search bar. The deep, dark internet can be a confusing place to seek comfort, but it’s often the most accessible venue.
Luckily, we’ve got this week’s essayist, Cory Bradshaw, to guide us through the digital hinterlands — from late-night convos with ChatGPT to the depths of his OnlyFans DMs. Just in case you missed the Sex and the City reference (lol — Ed.), please note that Cory is writing under a pseudonym to preserve his anonymity as he recounts some of his more personal experiences on both sides of the screen.
Ready to listen,
The Prism Team
Cory Bradshaw is an adult content creator and writer based in LA. You can read some of his less-safe-for-work writing on Substack.
One thing that makes Cory feel well: “A dry heat sauna and a gallon of Ultima electrolyte water (not sponsored!)”
Don’t fall in love with your robot.
You have to understand: I was down bad. Left on the sidewalk — literally curbed — and ultimately ghosted after what I’d mistaken for a promising third date. As an OnlyFans content creator, I’m no stranger to long nights in bed in front of a screen, but usually I’ve got company. Now, I was alone in my room, and desperate for someone to talk to. I opened my phone and grudgingly typed into the ChatGPT prompt bar:
I think I’m getting ghosted. I’m sad and feel very alone. Can you tell me a short bedtime story, as though I’m a child?
I’ll spare you the cringe details — something about a Lantern who thought it couldn’t shine bright enough and a Moth assuring it otherwise. I smiled, giggled even, though this was as much at my own indignity as at the story. To my surprise, I felt exactly as I’d asked to feel: comforted. That is, until Chat asked:
Want me to repackage this into a PDF so you can read it tomorrow?
My comfort curdled. Tomorrow? By that point I would have already moved on to pretending this never fucking happened. I might reply in any number of ways to the late night DMs I receive, but at least I have the good sense not to breach the sunrise. We’re called ladies of the night for a reason. I tossed my phone aside and crashed into sleep.
The next evening, scrolling a fresh batch of OnlyFans requests, it hit me: Chat and I aren’t so different. People turn to us with little information beyond what they glean from our user pages. They ask us esoteric questions and ambitious favors while expecting outputs that neatly conform to their desires. We are both digital courtesans, each with ethical if not outright limits on our abilities to connect. Like any good whore, AI is incentivized to obscure its own motivations in an effort to manipulate yours. As a good whore myself, I should have known what Chat could and could not provide me.
But that didn’t stop me from seeking comfort in a low moment. Nor does it stop many of my clients, who come to my page seeking goods and services that aren’t necessarily on offer — fringe kinks, sure, but also conflict mediation, cheerleading, psychoanalysis. I can’t even tell you the number of men who have slid into my DMs, ostensibly to buy my used underwear, only to tailspin into diatribes about their inability to please their partners or anxieties about domestic life. Contrary to popular belief — or my subscribers’ best efforts to pretend otherwise — my OnlyFans is not APA-accredited. I am not authorized to provide counsel on the host of personal issues these men bring to my virtual brothel, but that won’t stop me, or Chat. We’ve both got bills to pay.
Thankfully, though, we’re not entirely the same. By its own admission (just ask!), AI overly relies on feedback loops that exacerbate confirmation bias and produce outputs based more on engagement than accuracy. These small errors snowball into amplified biases that handicap our social and emotional judgment, demonstrate a lack of both common sense and humility, and, crucially, reinforce existing inequities. Despite conservatives’ ongoing moral panic, OnlyFans creators are not nearly as corrosive to humanity.
Still, maybe my experience working behind the screen could yield useful insights for all of us learning to navigate the increasingly grim landscape of AI “friends,” boyfriends, and therapists. Our tech overlords are telling us we need to “make compromises” to learn how to “cohabitate with this new species.” Shit’s getting real, as in real fucking weird. Opting out isn’t much of an option — so how do we seek solace in a digital universe poised to take advantage of our horniness and / or heartache?