The Industry of Loneliness: A Theological Reflection on OnlyFans

A strange statistic, a real discomfort
A figure has recently been circulating: “One in ten women under 25 in the United States is on OnlyFans.” The number is questionable. More serious estimates point rather to around 5% (Simplebeen.com), but the point lies elsewhere. Behind these numbers, there is a deeper trend: millions of people, mostly young, are investing in these platforms. Not only to see bodies or sell sex, but to seek a connection, a gaze, a form of address.

Many people pay to be spoken to. To hear someone say their name. To feel touched by the illusion of intimacy. The industry is profitable because the lack is deep.

A saturated and empty society
What this economy reveals is not a moral collapse. It reveals a society of loneliness—a society that produces connection without presence, communication without relationship, where everyone becomes a micro-product. People sell themselves, subscribe, get rated. And what is sought in this economy is rarely raw sex. It is a reflection. It is a “you” that reacts.

The logic is clear: I pay, therefore I am seen. I give, therefore I receive. I control, therefore I am safe. And yet, one comes out of it lonelier than before.

Desire, thirst, longing
The Bible often speaks of thirst. “My soul thirsts for you like a dry and weary land” (Psalm 63). This thirst is human, not pathological. It does not seek a product, but a meeting. Not content, but presence. What many people gropingly seek in these digital spaces might be something very simple: for someone to see them, without turning away.

And this longing is not only about those who “consume” such platforms. It concerns anyone who, at one point, no longer knows whom to talk to.

The Church, a fragile but necessary place
It is tempting to say: “The Church should be the answer.” But the Church is not a flawless place. It is not a perfect place. And that needs to be said quickly. Otherwise, one risks suggesting that the Church is a risk-free refuge, a warm, reassuring, welcoming space—until one actually enters it and discovers its folds, its power dynamics, its sometimes silent violence.

The Church is not the Kingdom. And that’s okay. It doesn’t need to pretend. It is a place of passage, of shared life, of constant readjustment. A place where relationship is possible, but never guaranteed. It sells nothing. It does not promise to fix people. It doesn’t operate like customer service. It is a living body, and therefore always in tension.

Neither the illusion of welcome, nor spiritual consumption
We must therefore be quickly disillusioned by the Church. Not in order to leave it, but to stop confusing it with a promise. To understand that it is made of human beings, with their limits, their wounds, their blind spots. And that committing to it is not about consuming spiritual care, but about consenting to live with others, over time, despite everything.

It is not about one great moment of transformation. It is a constant displacement. An entire life shaped by encounters, surprises, returns, silences. It wears us down. It changes us. It gives life.

A conclusion?
Faced with the industry of loneliness, the Church does not offer a competing product. It is neither warmer nor more seductive. But it can—if it does not lie about itself—become a space for the real. Not an ideal, but a place where one does not pay to be seen, where one does not sell one’s intimacy to be recognized.

A fragile place, crisscrossed with relationships. A place where love is not earned, where one can come back, where one can stay without having to perform. And perhaps it is there, in this assumed poverty, that a real response begins.