Carpe DM: How new sites are monetizing our parasocial relationships

It’s 1 a.m., and my Fanfix inbox has lit up with a notification from one of the influencers I follow. “hey babe, are you busy? do you have time for me? we can chit chat :).”



The sender, @kaylavoid —a 19-year-old Instagram and TikTok influencer who specializes in lip-sync videos and beach lifestyle (read: bikini) content, and who was suggested among the platform’s “on the rise” creators when I made my account—is clearly eager for my attention.



What’s not clear from her message, and is only laid out via a pop-up alert once I try to hit send on my reply, is that she’s set the price of chitchatting at $5 per message (plus a 78-cent processing fee).



Over at Passes , a similar platform that allows content creators to sell tiered subscriptions to exclusive photos and videos they post of themselves, it’s at least clear that engaging with the influencers I follow will cost me.



When reading a “you there rn?” missive I received from one of them—a young woman whose TikTok and Instagram content consists mostly of lip syncs, dances, and beach pics—a banner in the chat thread alerts me to the fact that I have no free messages available and can only send one with a “tip” attached (creators can set the tip minimum; it’s typically around $3).



On both Passes and Fanfix, you can see creators’ public posts for free; subscribing offers you access to exclusive photos and videos.



Fanfix and Passes are just two of about half a dozen subscription-based platforms started in the past few years that are designed to help content creators—who number around 200 million worldwide, according to content aggregator Linktree—turn their social media followings into reliable income while giving followers the opportunity to connect more intimately. Or at least have it feel that way. Others include FanBase , which incorporates voice chat and other tools, and Fourthwall , which allows creators to customize domains and integrate merch sales.



These platforms monetize the creator-fan connection on a more granular level than mainstream social media ever has, signaling an even more mercenary new era for the creator economy, which Goldman Sachs pegs as a half-trillion-dollar industry.



Passes was founded by Lucy Guo in 2022. A Miami-based entrepreneur, Guo cofounded Scale AI in 2016 and left in 2018 with a 5.99% stake in the tech company, which was valued in 2021 at $7.3 billion. (Scale made a deal last year to share its data-labeling tech with OpenAI.)



Guo sees Passes as more akin to Masterclass—where experts and celebrities share insights via video tutorials—than OnlyFans, which has safe-for-work creators but is widely associated with amateur porn. Passes doesn’t allow explicit content on the platform. Indeed, recent America’s Got Talent contestant Anna DeGuzman (a friend of Guo’s) offers her subscribers lessons in card magic, while model/rapper Blac Chyna (aka Angela White) shares workouts.



But scroll through the site’s Explore page or Instagram feed—which highlights new Passes creators—and you’ll find influencers with vague bios, most of whom fit the mold of attractive. Yet, many of these accounts, which send DMs to users that include solicitations for things like “shirtless selfie. Jawline kind of popped off” ($16 for two photos), don’t come across as terribly educational.



Despite the seeming gulf between its stated mission and its actual creator base, Passes has attracted investor interest. In February, Guo announced $40 million in Series A funding led by Bond Capital that also included CAA founder Michael Ovitz and Skims cofounders Emma and Jens Grede. Guo says that Passes has 500,000 users and nearly 1,000 creators who had collectively earned $14 million as of December 2023.



Fanfix has drawn similar attention. It was founded in 2021 by then college students Harry Gestetner and Simon Pompan and was bought by China-based brand incubator Superordinary in 2022 for a reported $65 million. Gestetner says that Fanfix currently has 15 million users and 4,000 creators and that those creators have been paid nearly $100 million since launch. Both platforms take a cut of their creators’ earnings: 20% at Fanfix and between 10% and 20% at Passes, based on the subscription tier.



Social media platforms have always made money from user attention—Meta, TikTok, and somehow even X (formerly known as Twitter) generate revenue from the ads users see. Creator economy stalwarts like Patreon and Substack have helped creators earn income from music or insights. What makes sites like Fanfix and Passes different is that interaction itself has become the product. Suddenly, fan engagement looks a lot like exploitation, taking advantage of our basic human urge to connect.







The term “parasocial interaction” was coined in the 1950s, when sociologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl used it to describe the interplay between consumers of mass media and media figures. As celebrity culture has grown niche and media platforms have proliferated, the number of “media figures” with whom consumers can parasocially interact has ballooned.



Traditional social media “allows influencers to foster [an] illusion of reciprocity because they can sometimes respond individually to a user,” says Rebecca Tukachinsky Forster, an associate professor at Chapman University who studies the psychology of media influence. With these new subscription fan sites, the reciprocal interaction is all but guaranteed. “That makes [users] feel very heard and seen.”



Parasocial relationships can help fill important social gaps and are often sought out by people who also socialize IRL. They were a lifeline for many during the height of COVID-19 isolation and can help individuals like LGBTQ youth in rural areas find community since fellow fans of certain celebrities or influencers often bond with each other. “It could be that parasocial relationships are very good at making you feel less lonely,” Tukachinsky Forster says.



Yet she acknowledges the validity of a common counterargument, which is that these interactions “are like snacking as opposed to having a healthy meal,” she says. “You crave the actual connection but are settling for parasocial relationships, and they kind of fill you but not really—you stay hungry long term.”



It’s a condition that even the surgeon general issued a warning about last year, reporting that only 39% of U.S. adults said they felt very connected to others in 2022, and that the amount of social exposure of people ages 15 to 24 declined by 70% between 2003 and 2020. During the same period of time, social isolation increased by 24 hours per month across age groups.



When you’re starved for social interaction, a snack might be particularly enticing—even if it comes with a price tag. “We see from research that media users understand the business model of how influencers work,” Tukachinsky Forster says. “They say, ‘I want to reward my favorite influencers and give back by clicking on whatever they’re providing me.’ ”



Rosie Nguyen, aka jasmine­ricegirl , cofounded the content-subscription site Fanhouse in 2020 with the goal of helping people like her monetize their followings on sites such as Twitch, Instagram, and TikTok. Fanhouse drew a healthy number of creators —from cosplayers to ASMR video makers who, Nguyen says, collectively earned $20 million from their accounts—and in 2022, it secured a $20 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz. Last summer, Passes acquired Fanhouse, and Nguyen left the company . She had grown disillusioned by the compromises that can come with taking outside funding and having to scale.



“Something we really tried to be intentional about with Fanhouse was prioritizing features that didn’t make us money” but helped to develop creator-user relationships, she says, including the default use of anti-screenshot features to prevent users from leaking content onto platforms like Reddit or X (a feature available to some creators on Passes).



She found that the pressure to grow began to create perverse incentives. “You start feeling like, ‘Now we have to get more money from each subscriber. Now we have to get more money from each creator to get there,’ ” Nguyen says. “But that will lead you down a rabbit hole where you need to start exploiting some of the behaviors that might not be the most healthy.”



Guo, the Passes founder, notes that creators on these newer social platforms aren’t required to charge for direct messaging or even respond to any message they don’t want to. “The creator can choose how they want to use the platform,” she says.



Even so, amid pressure for growth, Nguyen worries that a practice common on OnlyFans could trickle onto safe-for-work platforms: third-party account management, in which someone besides the creator handles their correspondence with fans in an effort to grow engagement and earnings.



It’s an arrangement that could easily undermine the entire proposition of the creator-fan relationship, which Nguyen says exists because “there’s actually a level of care there.” In many ways, the respect and need each party has for the other tempers the potential for unhealthy parasocial engagement. But third-party management exists to capitalize on that. According to Nguyen, account managers “say things the creator wouldn’t even say—‘You haven’t messaged me in two days’—because they’re trying to extract as much money as they can.”



There’s also the specter of bots, which are proliferating on OnlyFans and X. Both Nguyen and Gestetner say that they haven’t seen such activity and that the potential for third parties to set up accounts for nonexistent creators is remote. But if the practice takes root, it could make these sites indistinguishable from the growing stable of platforms featuring AI chatbots, like Replika and Paradot. Users would sense the difference. Would they care? That’s between them and their creator.