We’re very comfortable watching people make questionable career decisions on TV. That much is clear. Euphoria gave us Cassie Howard (played by Sydney Sweeney), spiralling through identity, validation and an internet-fuelled version of self-worth that feels uncomfortably close to reality. Margo’s Got Money Troubles takes it a step further. Elle Fanning’s character isn’t just messy: she’s broke, cornered and making decisions that a growing number of people recognize: when traditional systems don’t work, you find another way to make money.
These aren’t fringe, late-night, “don’t tell your boss you watched this” shows. They’re glossy, mainstream and heavily discussed. We don’t just watch them, we analyze them, empathize with them and quietly accept that, yes, this is part of modern life now.
We’ve normalized the storyline. We just haven’t normalized the worker.
The uncomfortable truth sitting underneath all of this is that platforms like OnlyFans, the kind that sit just off-screen in these shows, aren’t a narrative device. They’re a business model. And a pretty effective one.
Take away the cultural baggage for a second and look at it like you would any other work platform. It’s direct-to-consumer. It’s global. It’s scalable. It rewards consistency, audience-building, marketing and risk tolerance. The top end earns more than most executives. The middle does better than a lot of “stable” jobs. Even the lower end offers something plenty of roles don’t: control.
If this were a SaaS startup story, we’d be calling it disruptive. Instead, we’re pretending it doesn’t count. So here’s a question that tends to make people shift slightly in their seats.
Two candidates. Same experience. Same skills. Same interview performance. One difference: one of them previously made a significant income on OnlyFans. Nothing illegal. Nothing relevant to the role. Just… there. Do you hire them?
Not the theoretical, policy-approved answer. The real one, behind the curtain, where things get interesting. Companies love to say they hire based on merit. Skills-first. Bias-free. Best person for the job. All true, in theory.
In practice, there’s still a filter — it just doesn’t show up in the job description. Call it “professionalism,” “brand alignment,” call it “gut feel.” Whatever label you stick on it, it often comes down to one thing: does this make us comfortable?
And that’s not a hiring framework. That’s a vibe check. We’ve seen this movie before, just with lower stakes. Tattoos used to be a problem; so did coloured hair. So did career gaps, but over time, those things stopped mattering. Not because companies suddenly became brave, but because culture dragged them there.
This feels like the next version of that debate. Just… a lot more awkward. This isn’t about aesthetics, it’s about how someone has made money and the identity that comes with it. It’s about people building entire income streams outside traditional employment and not asking for permission as they do.
And here’s where the workplace starts to look slightly out of step with reality. The creator economy has blown up the idea that your job is your only job. People are employees, freelancers, anonymous accounts, micro-brands: all at once, often deliberately separate. LinkedIn tells one story. The rest of the internet tells another.
The assumption that a person has one clean, linear “professional identity” is starting to feel… optimistic. At the same time, the internet has made everything permanent. You don’t get to quietly move on from a chapter of your working life anymore. It follows you, gets screenshotted and rediscovered five years later by someone in HR who wasn’t even at the company when you applied.
So now we’ve created a situation where people can build real, sometimes significant income in entirely new ways and still be judged for it indefinitely.
That’s a strange kind of progress. And it leads to an even stranger power dynamic. Ironically, the candidates we’re quietly unsure about are often the ones who’ve already proven they don’t need the job in the first place. They’ve figured out how to earn without a manager, without a salary band, without a performance review cycle. They’ve built audiences, tested pricing, handled churn, marketed themselves and dealt with risk in a way most corporate roles never require.
We don’t usually call that “unprofessional.” We call it entrepreneurial. Unless, of course, it makes us uncomfortable. That’s the bit we don’t say out loud.
In a world where someone can make more money from a platform than from a promotion, employers are no longer the only gatekeepers of what “successful work” looks like. They’re one option. Sometimes not even the most attractive one.
Which makes this whole conversation less theoretical than it sounds. This isn’t about whether you personally approve of OnlyFans. It’s about whether workplaces are willing to admit that their definition of “acceptable work history” hasn’t caught up with how people are actually earning a living.
We’re already watching these stories play out on screen. We’re already accepting them as part of modern life. The gap is what happens when those same stories show up in a CV instead of a script.
That’s when the tone changes. That’s when the questions get quieter; the judgments get faster. And that’s when the “skills-first” narrative gets tested for real. Because eventually, this stops being a cultural conversation and becomes a hiring decision. And when it does, most companies won’t be asked what they believe. They’ll be judged on what they do.
