OnlyFans model’s sex stunt reveals bleak loneliness in men

“My name is Lily Phillips and today I’m being run over by 100 guys.”

So begins the YouTube documentary about OnlyFans star Phillips, 23, and her attempt to have sex with 101 men in a single day.

Yes, practice.

She did it for the money and the odd glory – but what about the other part of the equation: the men?

While other porn performers have pulled off similar stunts, Phillips’ story went viral because the film she made about the experience made its tearful aftermath public, inspiring near-universal revulsion.

But loathing aside, this is a story about broken people. Phillips, certainly, most observers realize — but far fewer care to extend the same compassion to the men.

Phillips calls herself a “pornstar, escort, OnlyFans girl, I don’t really care.”

The allure of OnlyFans is its offer of a false sense of intimacy. Instead of scrolling through porn as a means to an, ahem, end, a man who pays an OnlyFans model gets to feel like he knows the object of his desire.

The women can pay for some of their content to make it exclusive to certain subscribers — and those private interactions are the draw. They establish a sense of connection, of intimacy, even where none exists.

Fans can pay to text the models or even to talk to them. A phone call with Phillips costs 100 British pounds per minute. Pay even more and she’ll create custom content using her benefactor’s name.

Why would a man pay so much for a few minutes of conversation with a beautiful girl?

The answer: Because many men are overwhelmingly, unbearably alone.

A 2023 Pew survey found that 63% of men under 30 say they are single, compared to just 34% of women of the same age. Thus the widely used term “incel” – a word that originates from the reality that so many men are “involuntarily celibate”.

There are enough of them to require a new word to describe them.

And their pain is acute. A research group at Swansea University found that 20% of incluses “considered suicide every day in the last two weeks.”

Incels seem to make up the bulk of Phillips’ clientele. At one point, the documentary maker asks her what type of man recognizes her in public. “More like a chubby, younger guy,” she replies.

And what do they want from her? Sex, yes, but something more.

Phillips promised her 101 paramours not just sex, but five minutes of conversation – and in the film she describes how some complained that she cut their chats too short, giving them insufficient time with her.

A poignant moment shows a rose on the bed, in a room so dirty with napkins and condom wrappers that the cameraman gasped when he entered. A man, one of the 101, brought Phillips a flower as if proposing to her.

It’s rare for the internet to come to an overwhelming consensus, yet few if any defend Phillips or argue that what she did was positive. The mass backlash came because we got to see the consequences of our “Every choice is valid” culture up close.

And indeed, many critics sought – and found – a villain: the men.

“Any man involved in the torture of this woman should be locked up,” Julie Bindel, founder of the Lesbian Project, wrote on X. Suddenly, the old feminist cries of “My body, my choice” didn’t matter.

The men did this to her, went this tribe of online discourse. The woman who planned it, set it up, participated in it voluntarily and profited from it was not to blame – no, the 101 men should have refused to join her.

But why the belief that women are the only ones harmed by soulless interactions like this? And why is it only men who have agency here?

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail’s Bryony Gordon blamed manosphere personality Andrew Tate for the awkward situation. Tate has a lot of bad opinions, including his half-witted push to discourage men from marriage, but we can’t blame him for these men’s desperate search for connection. If anything, Tate would advise against in line to become schnook number 84.

At the start of the documentary, Phillips is smiling, bubbly and sharing what she’ll be wearing for her big day.

Finally, she cries as she describes how “robotic” the faceless sex made her feel, her eye twitching as she talks about “disassociating” to endure it.

But we don’t know what the men think or feel about their side of the experience – because the filmmaker never explores it.

We expect men to be just okay, always, despite plenty of evidence that they clearly aren’t.

Phillips certainly seems devastated. Her tears give it away: Having blank, anonymous sex with dozens of men isn’t fun or empowering.

None of it seems glamorous or cool. It’s sad and pathetic.

For her, yes, but also very much for her husbands, who desperately seek intimacy and find only emptiness.

Karol Markowicz is co-author of the book “Stolen Youth”.