I learned the other day on one of the mainstream media sites (CNN) of a former ICU nurse, a young woman named Allie Rae, who quit her nursing job because she discovered she could make much, much more money by becoming a ‘content creator.’  This is the term she and the media site use to describe what she does to make all that money.  Content creator.

I admit that I am solidly on the benighted side when it comes to social media-related terminology, so I wondered what that curiously vague term meant.  Perhaps she gives instruction in some craft?  Exercise, musical or artistic production?  Comedy sketches?  Short cartoons or movies?  Surely it must be something noteworthy to merit attention from CNN.  What marvelous and wonderful creative content was she bestowing on the eager public, what productive gifts was she making available to all of us to make our lives better?

It turns out that in Allie Rae’s case, “content creator” means someone who makes money by videotaping themselves without clothing, posing erotically, and then selling subscriptions to those who wish to view the images on OnlyFans.

Oh, and apparently the productive activity of this content creator also includes pornographic videos of sexual acts with her husband.  Somehow, CNN omitted that detail in its story. 

What a convenient euphemism, no?  Sounds so much more culturally elevated to say “I create content” than to say “I sell people permission to watch my husband and I engage in acts of sexual intercourse.”

The reason this content creator was featured on CNN was that her platform of choice for her creation of pornographic video had made a decision -- since rescinded -- to remove such content from their site.  You see, Allie Rae, and presumably other content creators like her, were upset, very upset indeed, that their rights and freedoms as content creators were being infringed upon by such moralizing decision-making.  How, in 2021, can any mainstream social media platform justify any adherence to any moral framework for determining what goes on their site?!  So archaic and puritanical! 

(And let’s pass quickly over the endless woke moral rules applied to the limitation of political expression on such media, shall we?  Sex acts on camera?  Content creation!  More, more, more!  But expressing political ideas outside the ever-narrowing woke spectrum, especially on race, gender, and sexuality?  Acts of hate and violence!  Shut it down immediately!)

The story will of course seem unremarkable to any reader deeply immersed in the perversity of our contemporary media culture, and that’s the real point here.  What could be more normal in 2021 than two content creators -- parents of children, by the way, who will one day certainly learn if they do not know already that many, many people around the globe have watched and perhaps even downloaded and saved videos of their parents “creating content,” and they will have to deal with that knowledge -- creating content and making a lucrative living from their creative content making?  Why, it’s the American Dream, isn’t it? 

And the corporations that abstain from any adherence to sexual morality and, in the words of the OnlyFans front office, “continue to provide a home for all creators,” and the ‘news’ media that can always be counted on to report on such things in the language of straightforward moral approval?  Also normative in 2021. 

And a culture that takes it for granted that the content creators’ children should make sense of the actions of their parents by remembering that the big houses they lived in and the nice cars in which they were driven around were paid for by their parents’ careers as content creators?  This is now mainstream American culture.  What a moral lesson for parents to pass along to their offspring.  One can all but hear Allie Rae’s children now:  “Mom used to be an ICU nurse, you know, helping people and whatever, but then she and Dad discovered they could make a lot more money -- which is really the whole point of life, right? -- by selling their sex videos to anonymous people online, and we have a huge pool and a few extra cars and a rec room loaded with cool stuff now!  I can’t wait until I can start creating content of my very own and strike it rich just like Mom and Dad!” 

Those of the generation of the parents of Allie Rae and her husband might struggle with all this.  But in today’s America, they will just have to get used to the idea that their children have the freedom to pursue just such a life and just such a way of…creating content.

Research suggests some depressing theories about what we might expect from Allie Rae’s marriage, the outcomes for her children, and her own mental health going forward.  Any guesses as to what we will hear from CNN if and when those theories are borne out in this case?

Image: Only Fans

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