As part of a climate communications project, I joined OnlyFans. It wasn’t a publicity stunt, it was an attempt to answer a question that sits at the heart of my work: if the climate crisis is one of the defining issues of our time, why do so many people still tune out?
My job is to help ordinary people understand existential risks to humanity in a way that does not make them want to switch off. Some people wonder why that job needs to exist at all. If terrible things are coming, surely humanity should respond at the level of the risk?
Sadly, humans are not rational, and fossil fuel companies have preyed on that knowledge for decades. Since the industry first learned of its own polluting powers, it has spent tens of billions of dollars trying to influence public opinion, lobby governments and spread climate doubt among ordinary people.
If that bored you, there’s a reason for that. I just shared alarming facts with no emotional experience, no solution, no way through. And you do not know me, so why should you listen?
The human brain is not built to absorb warnings about slow-moving, existential threats when they come with no clear route out, so turning away is not irrational, it is protective. What a lot of people never hear is that there is a lot we can do, both to stop the climate crisis getting worse and to adapt to what has already happened. Part of my work is finding new ways to share that information, and to cut through the confusion created by fossil fuel billionaires.
That is where Headline Newds came from. Some of the most intimate parasocial relationships that exist right now, especially among people climate communications often fail to reach, are on OnlyFans, the online subscription platform favoured by adult content creators. So what would happen if we worked with comedy and OnlyFans stars to communicate urgent climate science, political context and solutions to people who usually scroll past this stuff?
It turns out, people listen. We’ve had millions of views on our videos, and in my DMs I hear from men who are dismayed by our governments’ response to the climate crisis, scared for the future of ocean life and angry about the lies they have been fed by corporations for years. Many are lonely, or grew up in a generation where expressing emotion was punished, and most have never had climate messaging reach them in a way they connected with.
That is the impact of meeting people where they are, rather than where the climate sector wishes they were. Story and entertainment can help complex messages land because our brains lower their defences when they are immersed in rich worlds, humour and emotional character journeys. But we are also living in a different information economy, where influencers shape what people believe every day. A 30-second political aside in a gaming stream can be far more persuasive than a political ad, while right-wing political content now dominates the influencer ecosystem.
We would have reached even more people if the accounts of all our creators had not been shadowbanned by Instagram, which means the algorithm will not recommend their content to non-followers because it may be deemed “offensive”. Content moderation has an important role to play, particularly on platforms used by children, but it is striking what is deemed dangerous.
Most have never had climate messaging reach them in a way they connected with
The policing of women’s bodies has stopped us reaching wider audiences, yet there is still more stigma attached to showing human flesh, and celebrating the most natural instincts of desire and connection, than there is to destroying the earth for profit. As a white middle-class woman with a ‘real’ job that nobody understands, I am largely protected from that stigma, and I joined OnlyFans myself as a message to the climate communications industry that we have to try everything and be everywhere if we want to cut through a media ecosystem designed to suppress us.
I might not be providing the type of comfort people are used to finding on OnlyFans, but I can tell them that the apocalypse they are used to seeing is not inevitable. We know how to survive the impacts that we are too late to reverse and, more importantly, we know how to stop it getting worse. What we have to do now is dismantle the systems that politicians, fossil fuel billionaires and the media they own have built to protect the status quo and prevent meaningful climate action.
Images: Jessica Riches / Headline Newds
Editor’s note: Positive News recognises that OnlyFans has been used in exploitative ways and that online pornography can cause harm, including addiction and damaging ideas about sex, intimacy and women’s bodies. We do not endorse or promote the use of OnlyFans, pornography or any platform that enables exploitation.
This article is a first-person account by the writer, Jessica Riches, about a climate communications project that used OnlyFans to test whether climate messaging could reach audiences often missed by mainstream campaigns. The views, experiences and opinions expressed are hers alone and do not necessarily reflect those of Positive News.
To learn more about Headline Newds and watch the full series, visit: www.yellowdotstudios.com/headlinenewds
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