The rapid technology development affects numerous industries in terms of modernizing the traditional creation method. This includes the sex-industry. The creation of the Internet has made porn more accessible to the masses than it has ever been before. This accessibility has soon led to the creation of online adult content creators, or in this context, Digital Sex-Workers.

 

For this research, the Digital Sex-Workers are categorized into two types of industry. The first one is professional adult-actors and actresses who creates videos under a publishing company such as MindGeek, or their better-known flagship website, Pornhub (Regal, 2017).

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The second industry are the independent sex-workers who does not operate under a company and use a subscription-based website such as Onlyfans. These sex-workers usually operate from their homes and creates their own set-up or rent studios (Bernstein, 2019).

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Due to the raising traction of these independent sex-workers, I wanted to know how the public viewed them and why they are gaining more traction in recent years.

From my online research which consisted of reading people’s opinion on forums, twitter, and articles, the public view was generally positive and somewhat accepting towards these sex-workers. However, some qualm included was how normalised this line of work has become. (deleted, 2020; Bernstein, 2019; Bindel, 2020).

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As for why they are popular, there are a few reasons. But it is mainly due to the personalised content, to gain the boyfriend/girlfriend experience sold, and the personal treatment they receive such as private messages and conversations (Bernstein, 2019; Glink, 2020).

While this initial research gave me a starting point, the opinions I studied are mainly views from a western userbase. And due to the cultural differences, I wanted to study how Malaysians view Digital Sex-Workers.

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All of the research findings are based on an online survey that I conducted where 63% of the respondents were people from the age of 18-21. As for their consumption %, only 37% respondents didn’t watch any form of pornography whereas the remainder 63% did. And the highest frequency rate was 3-4 times a month with 31%. In terms of their preferred content, 86.7% preferred the first industry, which is the professional adult-actors.

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As for their views, 50% answered neutral for supporting sex-workers and 53.4% are neutral if they think sex-work is an immoral line of work. I also asked a series of questions to see if they agree with people who do sex-work due to financial issues and 26.3% answered agree and slightly agree respectively. However, 31% remained neutral for people who do sex-work to feel empowered and confident. Overall, the differences in answers intrigued me as I think people are more accepting for those who do sex-work due to their unfavourable circumstances rather than the latter.