Welcome to the digital Sodom. Welcome to OnlyFans.
A guest editorial for the Mega-City Chronicle
Here is the heresy they will not speak in the Justice Department: The creator is not the villain. The consumer is not the villain. The system is the villain. This is not morality; it is logistics. When the Justice Department collapsed the old economy, when the automated factories fired the last human workers, what was left to sell? The clothes on your back? The moldy ration pack?
Modern Gomorrah does not need fire and brimstone. It has chargebacks. It has the “free trial.” It has the churning horror of a twenty-two-year-old realizing her DMs are full of men who have digitally archived her body next to a warrant for unpaid rent. This is the Dredd-ian truth: The law is a blunt instrument. It can stop a man from pushing Slo-Mo. It cannot stop a woman from choosing to become the Slo-Mo.
From the smog-choked canyons of the Mega-Block towers, a new economy pulses. It does not run on fission cells or recycled protein. It runs on flesh. On the sixty-third floor of the Peach Trees block, a woman named Chloe can earn a Judge’s monthly salary in forty-five minutes. She does not need a lawgiver. She needs a ring light.
Judge Dredd looks at the perverts, the pushers, the pimps of Peach Trees, and he feels nothing. That is his function. That is his curse. When I look at the landing page of OnlyFans, I see a thousand empty faces behind the avatars. I see young citizens who have convinced themselves that financial independence is the same as freedom. It is not. It is a leash with a gold clasp.