I watched videos for 2 hours on OnlyFans' OFTV — but they didn't make me a fan. YouTube has nothing to worry about.
- OnlyFans' streaming platform, OFTV, offers more than 3,000 free videos that are "safe for work."
- Amrapali Gan, OnlyFans' CEO, told Fortune last month this just "the beginning" of what it can be.
Chances are you've heard of OnlyFans, the site where content creators offer explicit videos for monthly subscriptions.
What you may not know is that OnlyFans also has a less-raunchy offering called OFTV, which Keily Blair, the COO of OnlyFans, has described as a "SFW," or "safe-for-work," streaming service.
Since launching in August 2021, OFTV has accumulated more than 3,400 free-to-watch videos on its platform.
"I really feel we're just at the beginning of what OnlyFans will be," Amrapali Gan, the CEO of OnlyFans, told Fortune last month.
Insider spent two hours watching OFTV videos to see whether they're worth your time.
The first video that pops up on my timeline is a tutorial for "healthy homemade overnight oats." I feel like overnight oats has already had their "moment" on other social-media platforms, so it wasn't exactly engaging or original content.
Users can either watch OFTV videos on OnlyFans, which displays them in a timeline feed similar to other social-media platforms, or on a separate site, of.tv. Videos on the original platform are categorized using tags such as "vlogs," with 91 clips displayed using that label, or "infotainment." Other categories include food, fitness, how-to videos, OFTV originals, and wellness.
Next up is a video by a creator with the username "@thehottestbeach," who hunts for loot on beaches. It feels very niche, and she doesn't end up finding anything other than what looks like a badge off a doll.
She uses suggestive language in the video, which feels out of place, and she doesn't reveal what beach she's at, either.
Underneath each video is a banner showing a creator's profile and photo, which are mostly risqué. There's also a section showing how many likes and tips each video gets. All the videos seen by Insider showed $0 for tips, casting doubt on whether they're worth the effort.
The of.tv site displays its videos similarly to how YouTube does, but it doesn't show engagement metrics or tips.
I then saw a 10-minute video called "Cranial Nerves" by a creator called Nurse Natalia, where she shares "some interesting facts about the human body." I wasn't expecting to learn about nerves in the brain on OnlyFans. At this point, it felt like I was watching a mandatory training video for my job.
She dedicates a whole 25 seconds of the video to pointing at a model of cranial nerves with no voiceover. I was bored and wanted to scroll to the next video, but resisted the urge. After just three videos, it felt like I was flicking through TV channels in another country, never quite sure what might come next.
I spent the next hour or so watching a workout routine, a tour of a luxury home in Mexico, some stand-up comedy, and a creator pranking her boyfriend. A video of a woman unboxing a sword, where she stabs the box with another sword before ripping it open, followed.
Overall, the content feels chaotic and mediocre at best. It gave me a feeling similar to sensory overload. I was left wondering who actually watches these videos and whether they are anything more than a marketing tool to help convince viewers to subscribe to creators' paid content.
Are you an OnlyFans creator or OnlyFans employee with a story? Contact Jyoti Mann at jmann@insider.com or via direct message on Twitter.