Why in the world are people sharing so many nude photos in the coronavirus pandemic?

How are some people filling time during the coronavirus pandemic? By taking nude photos, apparently.

As municipalities began shutting down across the country, people took to social media to share a little about what their new normal looked like in lockdown. For a lot of people, it looked very naked.

“My whole day is now consumed with taking tasteful nudes and eating noodles,,thank you coronavirus for fixing my relationship with myself ::3” one user wrote.

“It’s only been 8 days of quarantine why is everyone sending nudes in the group chat,” wrote another on March 23.

“Question: Can my daily exercise involve taking nudes outdoors in nature providing I didn’t drive there?” wrote a third user in the United Kingdom.

While some posts may be attempts at lightening the mood during an otherwise scary time, data appear to suggest that people are, indeed, taking and sending more nudes.

Sending nude photos

Reddit’s five most popular subreddits for posting personal nude photos have each seen an increase in posts since early February, BuzzFeed News reported.

The subreddit with the most subscribers of the five, r/GoneWild, hit an all-time high for posts on March 28, according to the outlet, though the moderators told BuzzFeed they didn’t know how many were unique posters or posting for the first time.

Use of suggestive emojis and nude photo-related terms also spiked on social media, according to data from marketing company Khoros.

For instance, terms like “nudes” and “d--k pics” tweeted with “coronavirus” were up 384% since the beginning of March, Mashable reported. The peach emoji spiked 46% and Khoros expects the peach and eggplant emojis to continue to climb through April, according to the outlet.

Google searches for the term OnlyFans have nearly doubled since early March, according to Google Analytics.

OnlyFans is a social media service that enables creators to post subscription-only content and has become known as a platform for NSFW photos and video. (For those who don’t know, NSFW stands for not safe for work.)

Daily Beast reporter Blake Montgomery reported that the service saw 3.5 million new sign-ups in March, with 60,000 of them coming from new users, per an email from the company. For the first two weeks of March, it was a 75% increase, he wrote on Twitter.

Selling nude content

For some, selling photos and video on OnlyFans has become their only source of income.

Karli Helm, 26, was a cocktail server and bartender in San Francisco before losing her job due to the pandemic, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Then she began posting photos and videos of herself on OnlyFans.

“I think OnlyFans has this huge appeal because it feels very authentic,” Helm said, according to the Chronicle. “You follow me on Instagram, you see all the nonsexual content I post, you know my dog’s name and you know my band now you get to see this other side of me.”

Helm said her OnlyFans content is the only thing helping her pay the bills, according to the Chronicle.

Jessica Niles, 25, is an online sex worker who uses the OnlyFans platform to help subsidize her income after losing her side-job at a restaurant, the Chronicle reported. She made roughly $2,000 in a month-and-a-half.

“OnlyFans is the best way to make money, period, right now, unless you have a normal 9 to 5 job that you’re working from home,” Niles told the newspaper.

Celebrities

On April 21, actor Ansel Elgort, 26, shared a near-nude photo of himself in the shower to Instagram with the caption “OnlyFans LINK IN BIO.” CNN reported.

The link did not send visitors to an OnlyFans account, but to the Brooklyn for Life! GoFundMe page started by actor Jeffrey Wright in an effort to raise money to provide meals to people on the frontline of the coronavirus pandemic in Brooklyn, according to the outlet.

The picture was ultimately flagged for nudity and removed from Instagram, but the fund has raised more than $213,000 for the cause, according to GoFundMe.

Former teen heartthrob Aaron Carter has also taken to the platform, where he’s reportedly charging between $50 and $125 to see a single photo, Queerty reported.

This story was originally published April 23, 2020 at 4:20 PM with the headline "Why in the world are people sharing so many nude photos in the coronavirus pandemic?."