Next to Tiger King and our wonky sourdough loaves, it was the meteoric rise and falling action of OnlyFans that bookmarked 2020’s shelter-in-place era. Not only were the people sheltering, but they were camming, chatting, and creating content on a platform that promised to finally provide a new kind of home for WFH labor—erotic and otherwise—that was a creator-minded business model. And when that plan went south, consumers and creators alike were left wondering when, if ever, a company could actually deliver on that kind of promise.
Well, grab your pumpkin spice lube, because PlayHouse claims to do just that; it’s the latest adult entertainment startup promising to be a way better, way more pro-sex-worker version of OnlyFans.
The Australian startup was recently launched by William O’Halloran, an indigenous Australian citizen who has been in the adult industry for a decade. When O’Halloran founded PlayHouse, he says it was with the hopes of “creating a safe and supportive space for sex workers to have the freedom to create the content they want.”
Currently, PlayHouse offers monthly and yearly subscriptions, fast HD streaming, live chatting, camming, and the option to pay in cryptocurrency. But most importantly, it has taken a clear stance on the ways in which it will support its creators as a company by sex workers, for sex workers, by offering the first 1,000 creators that join the platform 100% of their earnings—meaning 0% commission for the platform itself—for their first three months on the site.
Only time will tell if PlayHouse plays well, but at the moment it’s a breath of fresh air to have a sex-worker-founded (and -led, as O’Halloran is also the CEO) company for a change. In his words, “Here there are no sinners; here there is no penance. Our charge is sexual indulgence.” Better words couldn’t have been spoken by Dante himself.
Source: VICE.com
