OnlyFans

Not Unethical, Just…Ick. And Sad.

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I don’t know how to categorize this. Perhaps the issue is how popular culture and show business make attention junkies out of people, making them do what former “Baywatch” (and “E.T.” !) actress Erika Eleniak is doing: making an exhibition of herself for sickos and fetishists, exchanging any shred of dignity for money.

I confess to always haveing a warm place in my heart for Erika. I first saw her as the girl Elliot kisses like John Wayne kissed Maureen O’Hara in “The Quiet Man” because he was psychically linked to E.T. who was watching the movie on TV. Next time I saw Erika she popped out of a cake naked in “Under Siege,” and then it was on to playing Ellie May Clampett in the movie version of “The Beverley Hillbillies,” then to “Baywatch.” Next came middle age and the fast slide to Hallmark films, then reality shows. Erika had some star power, but she wasn’t exactly Meryl Streep.

Now TMZ brings the depressing report that at 56, Elliot’s true love joined OnlyFans to let foot fetishists pay to see her apparently still-comely feet. Soon she was enticed into more daring peep shows. Erika is earning $10,000 a week, with 1,100 ill people who are eager to pay to gawk at an over-the-hill actress as she debases herself.

I wrote about this phenomenon in April in one of the “Confronting My Biases” posts. But then the OnlyFans sellout was Shannon Elizabeth, whose career, if you can call it that, makes Erika seem like Katherine Hepburn by comparison.

Today Erika has arms covered with tattoos, which, as I wrote recently, is often a symptom of someone coping with deep emotional pain. I can’t find anything exactly unethical in this scenario, except to think that if there weren’t an OnlyFans, someone like Erika would have to find a more promising, nurturing, productive way to find fulfillment in her post-celebrity existance. Now she’s at a dead end, a lucrative one, perhaps, but still perilously close to a life nadir.

In “Nightmare Alley,” Tyrone Power ends up as a carnival geek, biting the heads off of live chickens. That’s worse, certainly, but then his character only starts out as carnival barker who once said of the geek, “I can’t understand how anybody could get so low.”

I wonder what Erika Eleniak, when she was young and gorgeous with what seemed like a vibrant career ahead of her, would have said about women who expose themselves to creepy men, alone, through a video camera in their bedroom.

I’m really sorry, Erika.

So is Elliot.

Unethical Website of the Month: Piper Rockelle on TikTok

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Piper Rockelle is human civilization rot. The child star turned slut-for-bucks epitomizes how the social media age has curdled childhood, taste and ethics. It’s an ugly story, and one that I was blissfully unaware of until recently.

Piper, 18, has been performing for money since she started winning kiddie beauty pageants—a dubious “ick or ethics” activity itself—from about the age of three. Her mother began uploading clips of her prancing around to YouTube when Piper was 8. The mother, a stage mother from Hell (and hopefully destined to end up there) moved her budding meal-ticket to LA when the girl was 10, “homeschooling” her (it is anyone’s guess how much of the schooling involved actual education) while selling her daughter’s images online. Next, Mom began recruiting “the Squad”, a group of other preteen children to exploit with Piper as the leader. First they were filmed doing darling little girl things until they were transitioned to tween “crush content”: scripted reality show-style drama with episodes about infatuation, coming of age, teenage angst, first kisses and dating.

Piper Rockelle became the most famous online “kidfluencer.” Her tween and teen content was popular and lucrative on YouTube, and Piper built a fan base of millions of bored low-lifes and budding pedophiles on TikTok and Instagram. Then, in 2022, eleven members of the Squad sued Rockelle’s mother Tiffany Smith, and her boyfriend and business partner, Hunter Hill, alleging abuse and exploitation. TheirYouTube channel was demonetised, costing Piper and her mom hundreds of thousands in lost dollars every month.

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Stop Making Me Defend Harvard!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Not that I find the latest controversial course offering at Harvard ennobling or likely to prompt me remove my diploma from its place of shame—front to the wall, on the floor— in the hallway to my office, but it is defensible, which is not the same as calling it “good.”

Harvard University hosted OnlyFans drool-object Ari Kytsya….

….(she’s another “influencer”) at a business class discussion on the adult entertainment industry. Kytsya spoke at Harvard about her career on the adult live porn site and the business of being an online peep show entrepreneur. During the lecture, Kytsya discussed the nuances of profiting from making “adult content” and shared anecdotes from her work. For example, once she was paid to “shit in a box for 10K.” Nice. She also emphasized how important it is to enjoy one’s work.

Harvard is being criticized for hosting the lecture, the complaint being that the school is debasing elite education by elevating sexually explicit content and adult entertainers to the status of legitimate topics for academic study.

The criticism is, I think, unfair. OnlyFans was a creative use of new technology when it was conceived; it is also a model that allows individuals to build a brand and a business. I can certainly see how there are valuable business lessons to be learned from the OnlyFans phenomenon that can be applied to other, more traditional businesses.

Nor are dubious courses anything new at Harvard. When I was at the college, there was an infamous “gut”—Harvardese for a shamelessly easy course—nicknamed “Ships.” The semester course, taught by an amiable and ancient professor, covered the history of sea vessels, and if you couldn’t get an A in that course, you were probably dead. There was nothing useful in “Ships” unless one was considering landing on Plymouth Rock. The OnlyFans discussion, in contrast, could have practical applications.

Ethics Alarms recently relayed the news that has-been B list actress Shannon Elizabeth, well past her wet T-shirt pull date, was displaying her wares on the site. It was reported last month that the 52-year-old earned $1 million in her first week. Now, business courses are not the only academic settings where the porn site is worthy of study; sociology, American culture and psychology students, as well as technology scholars, should heed the phenomenon. Back in 2021, law professor Catherine McKinnon called out OnlyFans as a toxic influence on the culture, contributing to societal approval of pornography and sex work, and described the platform as a cyber-pimp.

She may be right. But that would make the case that OnlyFans is a valid topic for academic inquiry stronger.

Confronting My Biases #28: Shannon Elizabeth

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

I know this particular bias is probably indefensible. I know how I’m supposed to feel. I just don’t. A little help here?

Remember Shannon Elizabeth? I’d place her in the same category as Andrea Dromm, Michelle Johnson and Pam Austin, three earlier sexy, attractive starlets who had brief moments of B-level film success before they were pushed into obscurity by younger Hollywood “It” girls. It’s a cruel business, and especially cruel for young women whose main assets are their assets and not the potential to play Medea.

Shannon Elizabeth gained 10 minutes of stardom playing the sex kitten in the raunchy hit “American Pie”: that was her peak. “America Pie II” is where that photo above comes from, and professionally it was all downhill after that…a few forgettable flops, a TV series that was cancelled in its first season, nothing since 2006. Her Wikipedia page describes her as an “activist,” a professional poker player, and an actress. Her major recent accomplishment seems to be being named “one of the leading celebrity poker players”20 years ago.

I find all this ineffably sad, but that’s not the topic today. It is this: at the age of 52, Shannon just filed for divorce and announced that she was opening an Only Fans account, where horny middle-aged men can pay to see her ta-tas, and presumably other things.

“I’ve spent my entire career working in Hollywood, where other people controlled the narrative and the outcome of my career. This new chapter is about changing that, showing off a more sexy side no one has seen, and being closer to my fans,” Elizabeth told PEOPLE . “I’m choosing OnlyFans because it allows me to connect directly with my audience, create on my own terms, and just be free. I really do think this is the future.”

Fans can subscribe to her page starting today. Let me translate what her statement says to me.

“I have never developed any special skills and have the intellectual life of a salmon. My career was based entirely on my looks, my marriage went to hell, and I couldn’t write a book or host a podcast on a bet. Yeah, I’ve got some money saved up, but I’m addicted to being looked at. I’ve slid all the way down the usual greased poll of fading B-level celebrity: reality shows, Dancing with the Stars, so now it’s come to this. I know forty and fifty year-old men will pay to see me naked because they liked ‘American Pie.’ At least that’s something.”

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Brava Brianna Coppage, The Sort-Of Ethical Naked Teacher

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

That’s Brianna in all three photos.

As stated right above in the Ethics Alarms Glossary, The Naked Teacher Principle: states that “a secondary school teacher or administrator (or other role model for children) who allows pictures of himself or herself to be widely publicized, as on the web, showing the teacher naked or engaging in sexually provocative poses, cannot complain when he or she is dismissed by the school as a result.” The NTP, as we call it for short, has been a staple of Ethics Alarms from the beginning…well, a little after the beginning, since the first installment of the series goes back to the old Ethics Scoreboard, which is still up for your edification and entertainment, here. The first Naked Teacher was Tamara Hoover, whom I discussed in 2005. On Ethics Alarms, the NTP, in addition to its classic versions, has many sundry variations, all of which can be found here. An unexpected variation just surfaced last month, with the “The Naked Porn-Performing Political Candidate Principle.”

But Brianna Coppage, the soon to be ex-English at St. Clair High School in St. Clair, Mo., is in one respect the perfect Naked Teacher by Ethics Alarms standards. After all, she understands how the NTP works and why.

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The Return Of The Naked Teacher Principle!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Has it really been so long? Ethics Alarms hasn’t had a Naked Teacher Principle outbreak in more than three years! Oh, we’ve had related ethics tales of a naked Congresswoman (Katie Hill), a Santa in a MAGA hat, a naked ex-Miss Kentucky teacher who’s an idiot. a too-sexy firefighter scandal, the unfairly fired naked nurse, and this year’s ridiculous Cross-Dressing Future Congressman Principle  involving ex-GOP House member Madison Cawthorne. No authentic Naked Teacher Principle (NTP), however, which states that a secondary school teacher or administrator (or other role model for children) who allows pictures of himself or herself to be widely publicized, as on the web, showing the teacher naked or engaging in sexually provocative poses, cannot complain when he or she is dismissed by the school as a result.

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