The Extremes of Content Creation: A Look at Virality, Morality, and the Logistics Behind the Headlines

And in doing so, I reined in comments on other topics too, essentially keeping it to my efforts in writing.

But I think I will change things up a bit this year. Oh, I’m still going to stay away from overtly political comment, particularly party political comment—but where something in the public space catches my eye, I’m not going to refrain from offering my opinion like I have for the past few years.

And that’s because a story that “blew up” last month caught my attention, but probably not for the reason you’d expect.

The OnlyFans Content Creator Lily Phillips hit the headlines after a YouTube documentary was released that covered her attempt to have sex with one hundred men in a single day. It’s the kind of stunt that tabloid newspapers around the world love to moralise about, and that’s what most of the comment has been—people judging the young woman’s morals. I’ve even see an article in which a former “content creator” from the 1990s who pulled a similar stunt has weighed in on the criticism of Phillips.

But there’s also been a lot of criticism of the culture that’s developed on the internet that’s led to this stunt, by which I mean the OnlyFan ecosystem itself, in which the best way to win subscribers and, therefore, make money is to do more and more extreme things. Lily Phillips is the creator that had sex in a Telsa being driven on auto-pilot for her OF page and is also the woman who went viral earlier this year when she ran a contest to “fuck a fan”, and the winner brought his girlfriend along to the shoot.

And along with fellow creator Bonnie Blue, Phillips had sex with “hundreds” of freshers (first-year students) in Nottingham at the start of this academic year.

The argument is that the nature of OnlyFans makes these more and more extreme stunts necessary to win enough subscribers to make one’s account worthwhile.

In that regard, it’s similar to writing and publishing on Amazon. To make money from what I do (which I’ve said before has never really been my intention), one needs to pump out “content” regularly, read the market and “push the envelope”. The difference is that Amazon does have content restrictions, and getting too extreme will get you banned, whereas OnlyFans doesn’t seem to have those restrictions, as long as everything a creator does is legal.

There has, naturally, been a lot of criticism of the people around Phillips who facilitated this stunt, the men who took part in it, and the men who ultimately paid for it via their subscriptions to her OnlyFans. Actually, there’s been a fair amount of criticism of “men” in general, even those who didn’t take part or don’t subscribe, because it’s “men” in general and catering to them that has led to the culture we live in that requires something like OnlyFans to exist in the first place. Although, there’s been a fair amount of flak aimed at “feminism” for convincing women like Phillips that it’s not just “okay” to objectify themselves for money but is in a way “desirable” because it’s an example of them taking control of their own lives.

I say all this, though, just to give you the background in case you weren’t already aware of it. I’m not going to provide links to any of the criticism or comment. I’m not even going to criticise or comment on the morality or lack thereof of anyone involved. If you want to read the commentary—of which there is a copious amount to be found—then Google is your friend.

No, what’s actually fascinated me about this story is the logistics of it all. Of the day itself.

The headline is “I slept with 100 men in 1 day”. And it’s inaccurate. Lily didn’t “sleep” with any of the men, she fucked them. And it wasn’t one hundred, it was, apparently, one hundred and one.

And although, technically, it was “one day”, the event took about fourteen hours.

Now, just think about that. Fourteen hours. That’s eight hundred and forty minutes, and it includes time to rest, recover, eat, drink and take care of other bodily functions.

Now, by all accounts, Lily promised each man that took part “five minutes” and one of the reasons she got upset in the clip from the YouTube documentary that went viral was that the event ran behind and she wasn’t able to give one of the men the full five minutes she promised him.

Now, five minutes for one hundred and one men is a total of five hundred and five minutes or about eight and a half hours, which would have given her about five and a half hours to do all those things I mentioned above.

But, hang on, I hear you say. If she’s giving every man a full five minutes, then must have been some time to swap over from one man to the next. Surely, that will take up a good portion of the “rest” time?

And you’d be right. Just looking at the maths of it all, the most “turnaround” time the event could possibly cope with would be three minutes, taking each encounter up to eight minutes. That would be a total time of eight hundred and eight minutes, and leave about half an hour for a break.

That’s probably unrealistic. No one could work straight for fourteen hours with only a half-hour break. Particularly given that this type of activity would be quite physically demanding for Lily. It’s most likely that they would have aimed for a turnaround of two minutes, which would make a total of just under eleven and three-quarter hours “working” with two and a quarter hours for breaks.

Let’s be honest, that’s a hell of a schedule to keep—for any kind of activity, let alone a sex marathon.

Do you see what I mean about the logistics of it being fascinating?

Well, the logistics are going to be even more fascinating if Phillips goes ahead with her plans to try and break the world record and have sex with one thousand men in one day.

Yes, apparently, the one hundred was just a warm-up.

Now, when you increase the number of “encounters” in this physical marathon attempt, there is suddenly a lot less time for each encounter. If the event sticks to the fourteen-hour length (and I don’t see how it could, as the following numbers will show) then each encounter, including turnaround time, could last no longer than fifty seconds.

Fifty seconds.

That would be in, one pump, out and on to the next.

And that wouldn’t allow any time at all for breaks.

None.

If she was able to shave five minutes of each encounter—down to forty-five seconds—that would allow up to an hour and a half break.

In Fourteen hours!

An hour and a half to eat, drink, shit, piss and do a bit of cleanup in fourteen hours.

It’s just not possible.

Just think for a second about how long fourteen hours is. If the event started at eight in the morning, it would finish at ten at night. Can you, for even a second, contemplate a day doing the same activity from eight in the morning until ten at night, with only a total of an hour and a half break during that time? Even if you split your break into three half-hour breaks—splitting the event into four sessions—it’s still a hell of a day.

And remember, I’ve been euphemistically using the word “encounter”, but what would actually happen is there would be a queue of men, and each and every one of them would be given just forty-five seconds to get himself in place, pump and maybe dump (but almost certainly not) and get out of the way for the next one.

And that would be for four sessions of just over three hours straight if she gave herself three half-hour breaks. Two hundred and fifty men in three and a bit hours, forty-five seconds each, one after the other.

 For any kind of activity, let alone a sex marathon, that sounds like the most satisfying thing any of the participants could do. 

Even if the event was pushed to fifteen hours, allowing five half-hour breaks, you’d still be looking at six two-hour sessions with a hundred and sixty-six men per session.

I’m sorry, but even putting the morality of this whole idea aside, the simple logistics of it all blows my mind.