How TikTok is changing the aesthetics of porn

It was Tom Ford, during his time as creative regency at Gucci, who cemented with his advertising campaigns the universal marketing lesson: "Sex Sells". A notion that goes far beyond the 90s and advertising, but starts from the Venus of Willendorf, crosses centuries of art, penetrates marketing and finally lands on social media today. Apparently the latest application of this motto concerns one of the most prosperous social networks of the last year: TikTok. As well as on Instagram, there are some very popular members on TikTok, whose celebrity has recently went mainstream in areas outside the app thanks to Hedi Slimane, who has made 18-year-old Noen Eubanks the new face of Celine. Just as it happens on Instagram, many TikTok users have founded their success on the performance of their body and of these are many who have taken the (short) next step: to turn the performance into profit. That's how porn landed on TikTok.

From a technical point of view, TikTok prohibits the sharing of pornographic content. But the algorithm that monitors the correctness of users' posts, here as well as on Instagram, is a net with very wide meshes – wide enough to let partial nudity pass. In short, a group of TikTok pornstars was formed, who publish more or less provocative videos that are not pornographic in themselves, to promote other content, which is actually pornographic, outside the app, on platforms such as OnlyFans and Patreon, which are basically erotic versions of Snapchat for which you have to pay. This type of content has a kind of amateur aesthetic, due to being filmed and shared on smartphones and being set in "real" bathrooms and bedrooms, which makes the performers inside seem more authentic, closer and, in a sense, closer and, in a sense , more accessible to their consumers. In essence, porn is no longer a film shot on a set with a video camera, but a video shot with the phone, which accentuates its character of real experience. And apparently the suspension of incredulousness is an important element for the success of such content: according to PornHub's report, the most searched category of 2019 was Amateur.

Alex Hawkins, vice president of xHamster, was interviewed about it by Mel Magazine:

“We see the shift from studios to performer-producers dramatically changing the industry. We suspect part of this is due to the rise of ‘real’ productions, such as independent amateur performers, paid social, performer-produced custom clips and fan-based subscription sites, […].  This next wave of production moves sex out of the studio and into the home, college dorm or hiking trail.”.

And the trend should even grow with the upcoming releases of smartphones from increasingly sophisticated cameras. All pornographic content derived from TikTok, which includes pornographic photos stolen from paid sites, recovered from the app itself before being deleted or freely granted, then end up re-flowing on the Internet, especially on Reddit, where they survive in the bottom of the most hidden forums but also where some "professionals" do not hesitate to advertise themselves, selling to fans, so to speak, premium content to pay. There is a forum in particular, r/TikTokNSFW, which conveys all the most pushed content and already contains 50,000 users. A pornstar from TikTok in particular, Bree Louise, has a 7500-follower OnlyFans who each pay 15 euros per month (for a monthly total of 112,500 euros, to which the 20% withheld from the platform should be deducted, to get to a personal gain of 90,000 euros per month) to be able to observe its contents – which then end up pouring into this sub-Reddit. 

OnlyFans is in short a real business that allows many perfomer, who rely on TikTok to promote themselves, to put dinner on the table and pay the bills within a video production industry that, instead, languishes. One of these performers, for example, Kaylen Ward, sold each of her unveiled photos for 10 dollars to raise charitable funds for the fire-affected Australian territories. She raised just under a million dollars in a week. But there is also a potentially dangerous drift within this culture, and it is that of users manipulating and spreading TikTok's "innocent" content, interspersed with real pornography. This could create future privacy concerns for simple users who do not perform performer activities on secondary platforms. The only sure thing is that this phenomenon has brought back into the hands of women the power to drive the trends of the industry, an industry typically controlled by men, and has given way to more authentic, intimate and honest representations of the sexuality and the human body, to which the new generation of internet users is much more interested.