When a young influencer launched an OnlyFans account that indulged in pornification just hours after turning 18, she broke the platform’s revenue record, earning $1 million in a single day. The story about this account sparked brief outrage, then quickly became old news, another data point in a culture that seems numb to provocation.
It’s difficult not to suspect that popular culture aspires to the condition of pornography. Or, at the very least, it’s infatuated with spectacle and smut. Turn on your phone, open a browser, scroll through your feeds: you’ll quickly be exposed to curated flesh, choreographed “authenticity”; a relentless parade of people literally and metaphorically undressing for the camera. In this attention economy, where shock pays dividends and subtlety is a liability, the stripper has become a cultural archetype, the influencer a high priest of exposure.
This is nothing new in contemporary society. Over a decade ago, I worried that the mainstream was collapsing into the margins, that what was once subversive had become default. At the time, I may have sounded prudish, but I wasn’t lamenting the presence of sex; I was mourning the absence of mystery. My concern wasn’t pleasure or liberation, but what happens when sex and sensuality become content and nothing remains sacred.
Now, we find ourselves deeper into that unraveling. Platforms like OnlyFans have normalized the monetization of intimacy, and what was once taboo is rebranded as empowerment. On TikTok, the “thirst trap” is practically a genre; YouTube trades in trauma as content, complete with ad revenue and audience metrics. The line between authenticity and performance hasn’t blurred—it’s been erased by the algorithm.
The late philosopher Byung-Chul Han warned of a society addicted to transparency, where privacy is treated as a form of deceit. In The Transparency Society (2015), he argues that when nothing is allowed to remain hidden, we lose not only modesty but also meaning. We strip ourselves bare, not out of desire, but compulsion—haunted by the fear of invisibility.
This digital exhibitionism isn’t confined to sex. Emotional pornography is thriving, too: pain packaged for consumption, confession weaponized for engagement. In this new order, the personal is no longer political; it is promotional. The self becomes a brand. Intimacy becomes content. Content is currency.
Mainstream media both reflect and reinforce this shift. HBO’s teen drama Euphoria (2019-) has been celebrated and critiqued in equal measure for its glamorized depictions of youth, sex, and trauma. Actress Lily-Rose Depp’s performance on The Idol (2023)—a show that blurs the line between satire and softcore—fueled debate not for its insight, but for its spectacle. Once dismissed as lowbrow, reality TV has become our collective mirror: a place where visibility is survival and privacy is suspect.
What does it say about us when “mommy porn” dominates bestseller lists, or when ads evoke childlike sexuality to sell fashion? When celebrity memoirs are published before their subjects have lived a life, and teenage influencers monetize every stage of the coming-of-age process? What happens when intimacy itself is outsourced to the screen?
Once, fringe artists and rebels risked the margins to test boundaries. However, where do we locate transgression when the extreme becomes the norm? When everything is permitted, what remains provocative? When all is revealed, what remains meaningful?
Yet, amid this cultural overstimulation, something quieter stirs. Shows like The Leftovers (2014-17) and Save Me (2018-22) tiptoe toward the spiritual, flirting with the ineffable. Films like Paul Schrader’s First Reformed (2017) and Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011) explore grief and grace without irony. We sense a tentative reaching for the unseen even within the most commercial spaces. Could it be that we are remembering how to long for something after decades of exposure?
“All healthy men, ancient and modern, Western and Eastern, hold that there is in sex a fury that we cannot afford to inflame; and that a certain mystery must attach to the instinct if it is to continue delicate and sane.” — G.K. Chesterton
As a poet and seeker, I find myself turning toward the mystics —those who practiced silence as a form of truth and concealment as a path to clarity. In a world obsessed with disclosure, perhaps restraint is the final form of rebellion. In an age of relentless visibility, privacy becomes sacred.
We may not need to become puritans, but perhaps we need to become pilgrims, not chasing titillation, but seeking transcendence. Not more exposure, but more reverence. Not just freedom from constraint, but freedom for mystery.
<!–
–>