TMZ Presents: The War Over OnlyFans—a spectacle so self-aware it practically winks at the camera. Premiering on FOX and now streaming on Hulu, the hour-long doc is less about nudity and more about notoriety. OnlyFans, TMZ insists, is either the golden ticket to financial emancipation or the exit ramp to personal doom.
The show unfurls like courtroom drama. Amber Rose, who calls the platform empowering, safe, and profitable.Taylor Brazinsky, who insists it is a trapdoor to exploitation. Dan Benson, the Disney Channel alumnus who swapped child-friendly scripts for risqué subscription content, beams like a man who’s won the fame lottery twice. Jemma Lucy, who admits the grind left her scarred and hollow.
The grand twist—Joe Gow, a university chancellor with a PhD, a pension, and a plan, who decided to post explicit content with his wife. The man lost his job but gained an audience.
Beyond the dramatics, the numbers tell a clearer story.
In 2024, subscribers spent $7.2 billion on OnlyFans, a 9% jump from 2023.
There are now 4.6 million creators and 377.5 million subscribers, growing at a rate most tech startups would kill for.
Owner Leonid Radvinsky has pocketed over $500 million in dividends in the last few years, making him the kind of billionaire Silicon Valley likes to pretend doesn’t exist.
This is no fringe website anymore. OnlyFans is an economy, a global labor force dressed up as a digital playground. And as TMZ’s doc shows, it’s also a fame machine—one that manufactures headlines faster than TikTok can recycle dance trends.
Lil Tay proved it by making $1 million in three hours the moment she turned 18. Blac Chyna proved it by earning millions before deciding she’d had enough. Fame on OnlyFans is transactional—equal parts hustle, spectacle, and moral grenade.
If America frames OnlyFans as an identity crisis, Kenya treats it like a national emergency wrapped in a punchline.
On one side, you have creators like Alicia Kanini, proudly claiming her Kamba roots while pocketing serious cash. She is both celebrated as a digital entrepreneur and condemned as “immoral” by politicians. Ironically, every public rebuke makes her name trend higher, driving more subscribers her way.
There’s Queen Tahshaar, flaunting luxury cars and stacks of cash; Chelsy Ndiragu, barely 21, earning more than most bankers; and Huddah Monroe, who went public about withdrawing over $45,000 from the platform. They are hustlers, celebrities, and cautionary tales rolled into one.
On the other side, you have Kenya’s digital chorus: Reddit threads sneering about “freaky uncles and grandpas” funding the industry, TikTokers fueling curiosity while warning of danger, and MPs insisting it’s an existential threat to morality. It’s the same script TMZ plays with—fame versus fallout—except here, the stage is Nairobi.
Here’s the irony: Kenya is a country that romanticizes hustle. The matatu industry is a hustler’s dream, TikTok is a hustler’s classroom, and even politics is treated like a side hustle for the connected. But when OnlyFans turns women (and men) into dollar-earning machines, the same society that cheers “hustle hard” suddenly reaches for a Bible.
It’s satire in real time. Fame is no longer about achievement; it’s about audacity. From Amber Rose to Alicia Kanini, the game is the same: monetize attention before attention moves on.
The story isn’t just about performers. People like Kelvin Kariuki, a university graduate who manages 18 OnlyFans accounts from his Embu apartment, earning enough to buy a car. For him, OnlyFans isn’t a scandal; it’s an industry. A new kind of digital outsourcing has arrived, where Kenya isn’t just producing creators but also the back-office managers who keep the machine running.
Then there are the alternatives—platforms like Kiwikink and Onlycrave, localized versions with M-Pesa integration. They promise lower payout thresholds, African cultural sensitivity, and creator support. It’s the Kenyanization of a global platform, proof that even in taboo, there’s innovation
OnlyFans fame is no different from political fame or celebrity fame—it’s transactional, it’s fleeting, and it’s built on people’s willingness to pay for proximity. But unlike a stadium tour or a film release, the barrier is gone. Fame can now be bought, subscribed to, and renewed monthly. You just need an account, an audience, and the audacity to post.
In Los Angeles, it’s framed as liberation versus danger. In Nairobi, it’s scandal versus hustle. In both places, it’s fame, monetized and weaponized.