Speaker 1: And that's why I never read the comments. I just
want to like, I'm not even going to look amazing tonight.
I love what you're wearing. I'll always say, oh my god,
you're all I have an angry closs. That is life.
But that's hard, like unless it's like an NBA team or.
Speaker 2: Something like.
Speaker 1: Hello, everybody, Welcome back to Holly Randall Unfiltered. Before I
introduce my guest, I want to give a shout out
to my sponsors at strip Chat, the number one adult
live streaming company in the world. If you're a creator
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scworld dot Official. Okay, so I'm very excited about my
guest today. It took me a while to track her down.
She was in med school during COVID, stressed out in
an organic chemistry lab and made a decision that a
lot of people in this industry have made. She downloaded
TikTok and started posting. What happened next was a few
years of grinding across only fans and every other platform available,
building an audience and making real money. However, she still
recognized a fundamental problem creators bear the burden of all
self promotion while the platforms profit. In April twenty twenty five,
she launched Hidden, a creator owned platform, a forty person
dev team, and plans to eventually acquire a bank, and
all of this at the age of twenty seven. Please
welcome Stella Berry to Holly Randall Unfiltered.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: You're a really interesting Thank you. It's nice to hear that,
right Sometimes, Like you forget how much you've achieved in
your life and then you sit down and someone gives
you this glowing injury. You're like, I'm pretty fucking awesome.
Speaker 2: I'm just like, WHOA, that's terrifying. That's terrifying that that's
what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: I mean, have you always been this ambitious and like
ahead of the curve? I mean the fact that you
were in med school, Like that's kind of where your
story seems to start. I feel like it's kind of.
Speaker 2: Telling I've I've always I wouldn't even describe myself as
I definitely wouldn't describe myself as ahead of the curve
or anything.
Speaker 3: But I've always hyper fixated.
Speaker 2: On things and with no understanding of if that is
you know, of the times or anything. But I have
always hyper fixated and changed things up a lot. So,
like college, I did health policy and public health, and
then right after college, I was like, well, I want
to study medicine, so I know, like the other side
of looking at health, which is from a more individual perspective.
And so then I did like two straight years, no breaks,
like no summer breaks, nothing, doing all my pre med
and then I was applying to get into medical school.
When during COVID, I was like, I don't want to
do this anymore. I think when things start to not
feel like a challenge, I like jumped to a new
hyperfixation and I started posting on TikTok and I fell
in love. I was already kind of in love with sex.
I've always been in love with sex and studying it,
and it's just been a part of my personality. And
I was already going to sex parties and I was
already meeting porn girls at those sex parties, and I
was so interested, but I never thought it was something
I could do. And then when I got into it,
I fell so in love with it that it became
my hyperfixation. And I think it's so telling that it
stuck around this long because it's so rooted in who
I am as a person, and it speaks to me
on like such a humanist level that my interest is
like it's never wavered.
Speaker 1: So what is it specifically about sex that you find
so interesting? Besides the fact that it's like built in
all of us is like the number one piological.
Speaker 2: Dry one of the big things is like I've always
been really curious about it. It's it's a way that
I personally like show love in my life, and I
really am comfortable showing love in that way and I
always have been. It's a way that I express myself
and feel the best expressing myself, Like when I do
a scene. When I did my double anal scene, I
was literally like, oh my god, I'm made for this,
Like this is my calling.
Speaker 3: Which sounds so crazy to people, but that's.
Speaker 2: How I feel when I am in sex work, like
I just love it. I've also met people in this
industry that are most like me than probably any other industry,
and like so open minded in the ways that I'm
open minded. And I also just think it's like a
super key part of being a human that is super misunderstood.
And then on top of that, industry wise, like if
you look at the business level of it in the industry,
it's I feel like it's the only massive industry that
has yet to be overly corporatized, and it's almost like
still the wild West, which doesn't exist anymore in our society,
Like everything's so overly corporatized, especially creative industries like music
and movie industries, that if you a young independent artists,
it's impossible to have any control over what direction your
career is going or what games you have to play.
But in our industry it's like still just so not
innovated that there's a lot of room for change and
there's a lot of room for us to set the
like foundation and ground rules, and so I find that
really exciting as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, especially now, you know, I've always said
that one of my favorite things about working in the
adult industry is the freedom, Yeah, and the you know,
the ability to create without all the red tape of
like corporations like.
Speaker 2: That, which I want to keep it like that, while
also providing like a lot more safeties that like wright,
you know, performers or workers in any industry that have
been built up recently like have you know. I think
we could have a lot more protections, but with that,
I want to make sure we also preserve and don't
lose a lot of the best things about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, So you spent five and a half years
posting across every single platform every day. What is it
actually like do to you as a person? Like did
you find that your attention span? Because I was talking
to all they do is like TikTok's right, they actually
produced tiktoks for other people, and they're like, my attention
span is terrible now.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had to start reading again because I love reading,
but I stopped for probably the first four years because
I was just so busy posting every day, and I
swear I got dumber, Like I really got dumber. There
were a lot of beautiful things that happened, like I
felt so free, and especially in the beginning, I felt
so I was terrified at first because I was posting
on the Internet and people could see it, and I
hope no one would find it. Then people started finding
it and it started going viral, and then I was
just intoxicated with like the high of that, and that
was so fun, and I loved pushing people's buttons and
I loved being on TikTok. When it was you could
literally say anything. I'd be like, I just got fucked
in the ass, and it was it would go viral,
which nowadays i'd be like deleted and immediately.
Speaker 3: So that was super fun.
Speaker 2: And then it starts to get to a point where you,
I think it happens to everyone. I like watch people
go through the cycle where they're really excited they're posting
really unfiltered, and then you start to get certain pushback
or you start to get deleted and censored, and you
start to change your content based around what gets more likes,
and that started to really fuck with my head. But
it also happened at a time where the sense my
content was getting censored so much that I was forced
to switch up the content I was doing constantly, which
I think was actually really helpful for me. I never
got to pigeonhole myself in a certain like niche or
certain type of content and then overthink that and then
freak out. I basically just got slowly pushed off the
platform till the only thing I could share was like
makeup routine videos, which isn't my passion. Like I like
to either talk about sex or anal or like STD
tests or bv or, and I can't do any of
that anymore. So maybe getting censored and like kicked off
was the best thing that could have happened to me.
I had the short, beautiful run causing mayhem, and then
I just moved on and put my energy into other places.
Speaker 1: You've always loved reading about sexual philosophy and taboo, which
is not a typical origin story for someone in this industry.
How do you think that that intellectual interest shaped the
kind of creator you became.
Speaker 2: I think even me starting at twenty two, I think
I was twenty two was so important because I knew myself.
I knew my value system, like I knew what I
wanted out of life in a sense, I did study
philosophy a ton in college, and so having all of that,
I think it helped me set my boundaries and also
set my goals on what I wanted. Like I didn't
go into the industry because I had a role model
or someone I wanted to be, Like, it almost just
kind of happened to me as a result of decisions
I made, like posting about anal on TikTok because I
was going crazy during COVID, and then realizing people would
buy that from me, and then being like, let me
try this out for a little bit, and then just
like taking the next decision that felt best kind of
and it led me to this place because it was
also time where there was really no one with an
OnlyFans on TikTok, Like it was such a new thing,
and so I think it just helped me not follow
a specific path or formula and kind of make it
up as I went, based on what I cared about.
Like from the beginning, I was like, I have a theory,
and I've studied patterns on the Internet forever, just because
I'm a child of the Internet and I've always looked
at it, and so I think I was I was
just always guided by like I know that if I
am authentic online, it will do the best.
Speaker 3: I know that's what people want.
Speaker 2: I know that authenticity and connection is like the cornerstone
of good sex and like good sexual connection, even if
it's through screens, and so that guided me for so
long on like, this is what my purpose is, and
this is what my purpose is to share, and I'm
going to do it raw and unfiltered, and I'm going
to share honest thoughts, even if they're really taboo or
make people really mad. And I think having a guiding
force and a philosophic goal is super important. And I
would hope more creators like do come into the industry
with that kind of interest or at least understanding like
what they're getting into and like what they want out
of it. That would be an amazing thing for our industry.
Speaker 1: I think. I feel like, unfortunately, a lot of people
are coming into the industry thinking that they're going to
make a million dollars only fans.
Speaker 3: Oh, I thought I was ruining. I did not think
I was going to make money.
Speaker 2: I was like having panic attacks for the first two months,
being like, am I even just making tiktoks about Anal?
Speaker 3: I was like, am I ruining my life.
Speaker 1: Because you are? I mean, I know so many people
think that you only get into the industry because you
don't have options, right, which we know is not true.
You clearly had options. I mean, you're going to medical school,
you're well educated.
Speaker 2: All options, you know, like we really do all have options.
Speaker 1: But that must have occurred to you thinking like if
I want to do something else with my life, like
these other dreams that I've been chasing, I can know
I've shut the door on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I definitely was, like I definitely didn't get into
it as a in some ways, I look back, and
I'm like, I almost did get into it for survival,
but in my own way, like mentally, yeah, but yeah,
I don't have the classic story of just like I
got into it because I had two hours pushed into
it or I was forced into it. I just had
a calling to it, Like I really was just drawn
to it and I wanted to do it, and I
just followed that. But yeah, in that sense, I didn't
have options because I just couldn't. I wasn't interested in
anything else, Like I just did not give a fuck
at anymore. And I was at a time where I
started to realize, like I think there will be a
time where I can go back to medical school if
I want to someday when I'm forty, you know, Like
I really looked at sex as something even in college,
like they talked about sex work and porn and sex
a ton, and so I knew, at least in an
academic sphere, like it wasn't looked down upon. My mom's
a doctor, and I go to medical conferences with her
a lot, specifically sexual medicine conferences, and they talk about
porn very highly and like not all of this crazy
negative like addiction and rhetoric that you see online. And
so I always knew I'd be welcomed back into the
academic world if I could, you know, communicate it in
that kind of way. And so it almost felt like
I was gaining field experience.
Speaker 1: My god, that's so interesting. I love that. I mean,
you seem to be somebody who's really driven by like
what's in your heart and what feels right for you.
Speaker 3: It can't work that hard if you don't have that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't seem like someone who can like sell
their soul for money so they can buy a house
with the white picket fence, and like the American dream.
Speaker 3: I wish I was like sometimes, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean I feel like those people sit on their
deathbed and wish that they had done all the things
that they only dreamed about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no, I definitely don't wish I was. I
just I do.
Speaker 2: I do really applaud the people on the internet that
just go the farthest because I got to a point,
as I think every creator does, where you hit a
boundary that you're not willing to cross. And I hit
that point and I was like, fuck, now, I have
to find another thing that and do with a hard
thing right now, and I have to find something that
makes me continue to feel passionate about it.
Speaker 3: I have to.
Speaker 2: Work really hard against almost what feels like insurmountable barriers
in our industry right now. So, yeah, taking the hard
road and working really hard is beautiful day to day,
and I love it. But it would have been sick
if I could have just kept pouring my values out
for money. Would have been really cool if I just.
Speaker 3: Let it all go.
Speaker 2: But I just can't, and I don't think a lot
of people can. And that's why we have such a
cool industry.
Speaker 1: Obviously.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's some bad ones, but there's a lot of good.
Speaker 1: There's always been in every industry. Yeah, so you were
making serious money on OnlyFans. By any measure, you won
the game, right So what made you look at that
and decide that the game itself was broken? Like you
said that you lost your passion, right, But what made
you decide to redirect your passion to building a new platform.
Speaker 2: So I've always I am so passionate about sex work,
about filming porn, making porn. That's what I love to do,
and I just got burnt out on having to constantly
promote it. Like I didn't get to just talk about
anal and post my sex tapes anymore. To promote it,
I had to start being relevant on social media continually
on a monthly basis, And that is so exhausting, Like
that is just completely not doable. And it's also shouldn't
be reality, Like there are billions of people that watch
porn every day there, you know, It's the majority of
Internet traffic is spent on porn. And so why am
I having to use like two to three social media
apps that actively ban me on a daily basis? Code
you can code to find people who want to buy
my content? And why do I have to be social
media relevant? And why do I have to say like
rage bait to get ten million views to maybe convert
a thousand people to buy my content. It just doesn't
seem right, like if we invested in algorithms ourselves, that weren't.
Just the reason we use these main social media platforms
is because they're the only ones building good algorithms. So
if we just did that for ourselves, we wouldn't have
to expose like so much of ourselves or do all
these things that some people might all want to do
just to make a living. Like it just seemed like
it was getting harder and harder. Obviously, I started in
the golden age of like OnlyFans and TikTok that like
perfect time where they both syncd up and everyone was
just making so much money with such little effort and
like such little amount of fans, and so I know
it's possible, but we just have to start building that.
So I think that I just started realizing, like I
was burning out, and I'm the most passionate person I
know about this, and so I was like, if I'm
burning out, I know other people are. And then also
so many small creators I know, like they would start
to message me asking, you know, what to do to
promote themselves or to market themselves, or how things are
getting harder, and I didn't have ways to help them anymore,
like TikTok wasn't working as well, and then change yeah,
And then to give the advice of like just say
whatever you can to get views at this point and
is not a great feeling. And so I knew something
was fundamentally broken, because how do we control the majority
of traffic on the internet and social media platforms and
we drive the majority of it, and yet we have
no idea how to make money, Like it should not
be that hard for us, and we shouldn't have to
be social media relevant to make money doing adult content,
Like you can make really good money having a thousand
paying fans as a small creator for the rest of
your life. Also, old porn sells the same as new
porn statistically, as long as it's new to the person
seeing it. And so why do we not have mechanisms
to make use of like anything passive at all? Like
this job is so manual, having to spend your day
promoting on all these platforms that ban you constantly and
I've just been banned so many times that it got
really old. And then having to figure out constantly how
to manage the back end at the same time, all
by yourself. Like it's truly an impossible task, and we
don't even have time then to start thinking about how
to build it ourselves and build it better for everybody
that comes in the future too, Like for future girls
like me in ten twenty fifty years, what industry are
they going to be left with and like what tools
are they going to be given?
Speaker 3: And I would hope that we could build some for them.
Speaker 2: So it's not just like the Miami scammer demons that
turn this industry into something that immediately gets banned.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's been a huge like influx of bands on
Instagram recently.
Speaker 3: Matt the censorship.
Speaker 2: I've known this is coming for so long because I've
seen it, Like it's just I firsthand was like at
the boundary of what was getting banned constantly, and so
I've just watched it slowly like chip away at the
things I'm allowed to do, and now I'm just completely
I'm like, right now all my backup pages are banned,
my main pages, band, Hidden's pages banned, Hidden's backup pages banned,
and not even for it's not even for sexual solicitation
or anything. It says for like in authentic behavior. So
there's just no reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're just like, we'll just pick this one. I mean,
so do you even feel like you're going to build
another Instagram or at this point you're just like why
am I doing this?
Speaker 2: We have like a little Instagram I made just for
our last event we did, because we do like little
creator focused events every month, just to like get any
info out for people or like have them be able
to find a link, because I know everybody uses Instagram
to find information these days. But it does feel kind
of pointless. We built such a cool community on Instagram though,
so I think we'll get our Instagram back eventually, but
it's just a waiting game and it's not something I should.
I just got to put that energy into other platforms
and other places.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about how Hidden actually was born. I believe
a former high school friend came to you with the idea.
Is that true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So one of my high school friends, like one
of my best friends, reached out and was like, hey,
I want to start a porn platform. Didn't know anything
about it, nothing, just knew I was doing this. They
liked my career and like what I stood for, and
they know me well, they trust me. I mean, they
saw me through high school, they saw me through college,
they saw me through pre med.
Speaker 3: They saw me go into this, and so we had
that trust.
Speaker 2: And I was obviously terrified in the beginning because I
was like, yeah, we could do this, like I've been
collecting data for years on what's wrong, Like I know
what I would want.
Speaker 3: But also it seems like a massive task until you
break it down, it's really not. It's just slow. It
took us years. I think. I think he reached out
to me.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty two and we only launched April twenty
twenty five. So it was building a monster and he
knew from the start because he also knows me. But
we talked about it that this is something I would
never do unless it's exactly how I want it. I
run it completely how I think it's supposed to be done,
and it's not something we just like build up and sell.
It's something I keep forever. It's like an offering to
the community, and it's that's also what's missing in our industry,
like there's just a ton of scam me sites and
there's not something that actually cares about us. And he
cared about it as well, and so it's just been
like the absolute best partnership ever. I think they say,
like most founders break up within like a couple years,
and we're going on four almost five, and we have
not had one issue like the trust thank god. I
think it was just an it was an opportunity I
couldn't pass up because I have all to say and
I get to do whatever I want, and I have
a really trustworthy backer that helps me build everything and
build my teams out and is really smart with business.
So it's been amazing, but it was definitely daunting, and
it's definitely taken a long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I've been We never got anywhere, but I've
been there.
Speaker 2: It's not like we we built our whole site in
the beginning. We didn't know anything about building platforms. We
just you know, reached out to people who did and
started to learn and started to build. And we had
to rebuild our entire platform because we did it first
with custom code, and then we were like, oh my god,
this is impossible to like bring new people on and
teaching how to do it, and so then we had
to rebuild so much and we're updating every week. At
this point, I wanted to launch with live streaming, which
even now is like probably eight months away at least,
because we built a monster. Like you're building a search engine,
you're building a store front, you're building like an algorithm,
you're building.
Speaker 3: A chat room and messaging. It's just so much. You're
building a payment processor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what made you come up with the idea of
the name?
Speaker 2: I went back and forth on a lot of names,
and then I remember none of them were good. And
then I remember one of my friends brought up how
they have a hidden folder on their phone, like on
the iPhone that they keep their nudes in, and they
weren't in sex work, and I was like, wow, everybody
has that, like especially yeah, like.
Speaker 1: I remember to like add pictures to it before I
go somewhere where someone might like look at my phone
for any reason.
Speaker 2: And that's kind of like what only fans, at least
to me, was, and like selling content on the internet was,
or at least the best form of it. It's like
you're accessing a person's hidden folder. Maybe it's the girl
down the street, maybe it's like the girl in your
college class, or just like you know, the porn star
from town that you're like obsessed with. You're getting a
view into their like most intimate hidden folder basically like
them seeing their sex tapes with their boyfriends or their
nudes or whatever. And that's always what OnlyFans was to me.
So I just stuck really well. And then it was
also a domain I was able to buy, which was
sick because to get Hidden dot Com.
Speaker 1: I was like, yes, yes, it has to be that.
Speaker 3: It just felt right.
Speaker 1: Everything fell into place. Yeah, so you have a TikTok
style discovery feed. It's a deliberate design choice. Yeah, what
problem does that solve for creators that other platforms didn't
maybe have?
Speaker 3: That was my number one thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's been multiple things I want to do
and have done with Hidden to make one promo more
passive and then sales more passive, because it's just everybody
is burning out. Absolutely, everyone is burning out. And then
when you burn out, you hire teams that absolutely destroy
most of them. Some teams are good, but most of
them absolutely destroy any semblance of like authenticity and a
fan loyalty and everything. So to combat a lot of
the burnout and like allow creators to continue to keep
some level of like connection to their job and non
alienation from their job and authenticity getting passive promo is
a huge one. So I was always like, okay, if
we had only fans, what only fans had a for
you page, Like that would be really sick because I
wouldn't be censored there, I could promote there, and I
wouldn't have to always rely on Instagram or TikTok, especially
when I'm getting banned, Like it would be nice to
build a platform somewhere that I don't have to worry
is gonna disappear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that obviously was like a number one thing.
Speaker 2: And then there were other features too that I wanted
to add even with like passive sales, there's a store.
So I took that idea even from just like there's
so many different storefronts on the Internet, like clips for
sale or many VIDs, and I know those work really well,
but they're one off sites on their own or theirre
sites that don't work super well and are super convoluted.
And so imagine if you just had a store on
your only fans page, where instead of having to send
out a menu of all the two hundred videos you have,
you have at least top selling ones or all of
them categorized in a storefront. So if a fan wants
to buy eighty videos in the middle of the night,
he can do that instead of having to wait for
you to wake up in the messages and then you
have to send all eighty of them yourself. So it's
just like trying to take the load off creators a
little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, God, I just yeah, I don't even know what
to say because all of this just gits so hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Hidden takes an eighteen percent commission and versus only fans
twenty percent, offers chargeback protection and gives each creator a
dedicated liaison. So tell us a little bit about each
of these things, because chargeback protection can be difficult to enforce,
am I right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically every feature, every part of like our terms.
I have tried to make so pro sex worker and
so pro creator, and so I just thought of that
as the bare minimum chargebacks not ever being covered on
OnlyFans and making ten k and then having it, you know,
negative ten k the next month is so crazy to me,
especially when usually those chargebacks are people have bought your video,
they say they don't like it anymore, and they get
their money back, when it's like, that's not the point.
You just bought my nudes you just saw me naked,
And so we can't with chargeback protection, we can't control
completely whether are the like the person actually gets the
charge back.
Speaker 3: But what we can do is cover.
Speaker 1: Okay charge because our credit card companies always side with
the user.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we do, Like we did build in a lot
of checks, right to make sure that we can confirm that, like,
this person did make this charge and we can fight
back on every single one, and we do. But but
then on the other side too, we also protect users
from getting scammed. So we do human verify every single
chargeback request to see how valid it is. Did the
person get scammed, did they not, and then decide from there,
and then we do. Yeah, we cover chargebacks a certain
amount every month.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Yeah, so for creators who might be trying
to scam their fans, and you know, these people always exist. Yeah,
if there's a certain like do you have, like a
certain ratio of chargebacks or complaints that like wouldn't prompt
you to kick them off the platform.
Speaker 2: I'm sure we do, but we've not even gotten to
that point. I think it's really luckily with Hidden right now,
our creator community is amazing and we're filled with just
like authentic girls who run their own accounts and really
care about what they're doing, which was my whole idea
of the hidden girl, Like, I know, there's so many
girls like me and like that, and so we haven't
had any issues with that at all, but of course,
on OnlyFans, like, one of the main issues and even
why so many of my fans have converted over to
hidden so much faster and stronger than I even thought
they would, is because only fans are so associated with
scamming now, So if you are really trying to run
like a super loyal like or a career or a
brand that has like really values your fan loyalty, OnlyFans
is not always the most trustworthy place to do that
because people so associate the messaging with scamming. Like there's
just so many people in there saying, hey, buy this
video for this, and it's not that, And I do
want users, especially users that spend a lot, to feel
protected from that as well.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm, yeah, I know that makes sense. Yeah, So
you've talked to about wanting to build your own payment infrastructure,
potentially acquiring a bank. I don't know if people out
there realize how ambitious that is. So how chievable does
that feel for you?
Speaker 3: Weirdly achievable?
Speaker 2: I might be delusional, but I do think even if
it's not me, but I'm going to do I would
love to do my own, but I think someone has
to do it, Like I think it's gonna happen regardless.
I think with the amount of money that's in our
industry right now, a lot of people in the next
ten twenty years are going to be focusing on making
payment processors for our industry because it's just an untapped need.
Like even with Hidden we take eighteen percent, because I
was like, we have to take less than twenty.
Speaker 3: It's just a stance that we have to take.
Speaker 2: But obviously our payment processing rates are so much higher
for us on our end than even only fans because
we have lower amounts of traffic, and we also have
gone in from the start as we are a horn site.
We allow kink content, we allow niche content. This is
what we're going to allow. We're going to push the
boundaries as far as you guys let us. So our
rates are obviously much higher and I'm not about to, like,
you know, kick Furries off my platform so that I
can get that down a percent, and so.
Speaker 3: It would be amazing if and this is just where
my thinking goes.
Speaker 2: It's like, I have to figure out some type of
financial situation for us one because I've even been banned
from two banks randomly.
Speaker 3: They just figured out that.
Speaker 2: I was getting paid from OnlyFans and said I, like,
don't comply with their terms. But then on a platform level,
think about how much less our platforms could take if
we weren't taking a thirteen percent payment processing charge on
our end and then having to make money and pay
for hosting fees and moderators and developers and everything with
that tiny little you know, five percent. So if we
could get a payment processor, if we could own our
own bank and then have a payment processor that specifically
focuses on sex work sites or like not safe for
work content, this is a dream. But imagine the payment
processing rate was three five percent, our sites could be
taking five or six, like it would just think much
better for everyone.
Speaker 1: That's so key what you just said, because a lot
of people don't realize this, And like from someone who's
been in the industry a long time, ran their own website, right,
just Holly Randall dot com and then you know, worked
on building one myself. Like a lot of people don't
realize how high the payment it's fees are and so
they were like, oh, only fans takes twenty percent, and
I'm like that's not that bad. Yeah, Like you have
no idea how expensive it is to around these.
Speaker 2: It's really expensive. Hosting is extremely expensive with all that
content that's on the platform, having to have that much
cloud space.
Speaker 1: Question for you actually in regards to hosting, because you
said that you were going to do live streaming, Yeah,
are you going to allow the live streams to like
remain on the site after they It's my dream because
that is also going to add so much more content
and up your hosting fees dramatically.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So hopefully our creators get to earning a lot,
you know, so then that we can pay for we
can pay for all that hosting that's gonna be. It's
gonna be massive. But I'm there are certain things and
I think it's important to have a founder that gives
a fuck, which is why I know Hidden is so
different and has been able to stand out so fast,
because there are just certain hills that I will die on.
I'm like, well, no, we have to do live streaming
and you have to be able to sell it after.
So we're going to figure out how to make that happen.
But I do think even with payment processing rates, like
once we launch live streaming and we take eighteen percent
and live stream sites take forty to sixty percent, that
will be such a game changer for so many camgirls
that like work themselves to the bone and then to
have sixty percent of their income taken is so.
Speaker 3: Crazy to me.
Speaker 2: But it's also a massive thing to build. It is
a monstrosity to build live streaming where you can do
a live stream for you page like TikTok, then do
private rooms as well, then do video calls or like
one on one live streams, and then be able to
post them after.
Speaker 1: And be able to moderate because if it's live and
something happens, you have to catch like in the moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't even have comments on hidden right now.
We actually built them in initially and then right before
launch I was like take those off because one, if
you want to talk to the girl or you want
her to notice, you pay and message her, yeah, subscribe
to her so you can tell her tell it to
her U directly. But also the moderation of comments is
super hard. So yeah, moderation is massive.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. So Okay, you built the platform, right, and
you've got all this the tech, they get to market it,
and you're getting banned on social media right and that's
like usually the one avenue that we all use to
market the things that we're doing, because that's just how
we have to reach people. Well, yeah, so like, how
are you managing marketing?
Speaker 2: Well it was lovely until two months ago in our Instagram,
or like a month and a half ago and our
Instagram got banned. But even from the beginning, like we've
done zero paid market So from the start, I was like,
we are gonna build this exactly how I've built my career,
which is like grassroots and organic and just posting online
about it and like having creators if they fuck with it,
link to it and that will bring traffic. And so
that is the cool thing about Hidden so far is
like we don't really need an Instagram or anything. I
didn't even have a hidden Instagram or like any social
media pages in the beginning because I was like, who
wants to see a corporate Instagram?
Speaker 3: Like, no one wants that.
Speaker 2: Then of course I made it feel like my Pinterest
and I liked it a lot, and I think a
lot of people fucked with it. But I think the
number one best way to market and the best conversion
rates are exactly what we already do, which is like
we link to our pages and fans go where we
want them to go and where we tell them to go.
And luckily I really focused in the beginning on educating
creators in the space that I knew were passionate about
the industry, that were non competitive, that cared about it.
I educated them on hidden and like what I care
about and what it could do and its potential, and
they have kind of just created this amazing, super passionate
community that cares about linking to it and trying to
help build it up because it stands for us actually
taking back some control of our future and like what
this industry looks like for us even when we're eighty five,
ninety and then all the girls come after us. So
I think that that has been like my number one focus.
I'll probably have to start expanding now, especially because we
don't have Instagram anymore, that I'll probably have to do
other things, but right now I've really just focused on
building a grassroots core, foundational community.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like that's also been like one of
the driving points of interest of the site is that
it's like founded by sex workers for sex workers, because
so many platforms are run by corporations.
Speaker 2: Yes, they're actually I will say everyone I've ever met,
and I'm not going to shit on them because I'm
glad we have other platus. Like I still have my
only Fans I didn't delete it. We all have eight
different platforms. I'm not trying to like replace any of them.
I'm trying to be an auxiliary one that you can use.
But every platform owner or person running one that I've met,
I have gotten the worst advice I have.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've.
Speaker 2: Obviously learned things here and there too and like what
to do and what not to do and what works,
but overall they all are completely blind. They have no
clue what's going on. They don't understand sex work and
how fans work at all. Like one of the major platforms,
one of the owners said to me, why would someone
buy porn after they've already seen the girl naked? Like
you need to make the for you page safe for work?
And I was like, wow, you fundamentally just don't understand
anything about how this industry works at all, or like
what this new era of creators is, and that fans
are buying into a person and a personality and they're
not buying videos just I mean, there is one aspect
where they're buying video to see the girl naked for
the first time. But if you're keeping a fan for
a lifetime, which many do stay for a lifetime if
you take care of them, it is not about seeing
naked for the first time. So that I've just gotten
so much horrible advice and I'd had to feel like
a crazy person pushing back, but I've come to realize
that we really are the only platform, at least that
I am aware of, that is truly like creator centric.
So I all of the marketing, all of the features,
all the designs are so focused around what the creator
needs and what the creator wants and not around the user,
whereas most platforms are really just built to optimize for
the user, and then they do advertisements to bring more
users and they don't really build out what the creator
experience is or like how that would benefit the creator.
And I think it's so important because the creator is
the whole person driving all the traffic to the site,
like fans will use whatever the creator says to Yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, speaking of sex workers as a part of the
foundation for Hidden, brought in Lana Rhodes as a co owner, right,
and it did raise some eyebrows since there are people
in the industry who consider her anti sex work. Was
that a concern? Why did you pick her specifically? And
do you think that people just have the wrong impression.
Speaker 3: Of her, Yeah, they definitely do.
Speaker 2: I brought an Ari Kitsia also as co owner, so
it's kind of like us three together working on this,
and I think that we're actually such a great representation
of different types of creators in our industry. There definitely
are a lot of false headlines about Lana, and I
will just say like from working with her personally, she
has an experience that I definitely don't have and didn't
have in the industry. She started before me. She's had
like a myriad of different experiences, good and bad, and
she is definitely she cares about giving back to sex work,
like that was the main thing when we started meeting
up and then talking about Hidden. She cares about sex workers.
She cares about sex It's always going to be something
that is a part of her and that she'll have
like thoughts on and I think she I just think
she represents a certain type of sex worker really well.
Like not everybody got into the industry because you know,
they're super passionate about it, or because sex work is
like a part of their soul. They either got into
it for survival or to make money, or because they
were eighteen and didn't understand anything else. And they can
still like try and help other girls that are like
them too. So I just think it's a super cool
opportunity for her to basically she has a massive platform
that's built on a ton of men that have watched
her porn, right, and so for her to be able
to give back to all of the creators that will
be here after she's in the industry and all the
smaller creators to give some of that traffic one to
like a platform that cares about us, but then also
just giving that traffic to creators, and like like basically
spreading those followers that she has onto new people is
a beautiful thing that she can do for sex work.
So I just thought of it as a really cool
opportunity for her, and she saw the same thing. And
she also is like one of the craziest idea people
I've ever.
Speaker 3: Met, like she.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you followed her career very much,
but she has gone through so many different phases, Like
she is not scared to reinvent herself at all. She's
not scared to like switch things up and try something new.
And every time she does that, whether it was her
poorn era, then her like Instagram era, or her YouTube era,
she maxes it out and then moves on to the
next thing. So I always knew she was really powerful
if she's like passionate about something. And it's been so
cool to see her be passionate about hidden and I
think it's like a necessary part of her legacy to
give back. So we watched her grow up basically through
the Internet and through really hard things that she went through.
Speaker 3: So I just like, I can't be I have no
desire to be hard on her at all.
Speaker 2: She's like a ba in an icon for so many
of us, Like she she experienced a lot of things
before a lot of us did so, at least for
me personally, and like girls in my generation, So I
think we need to be accepting of like her going
through every every era, and then Ari on the other
hand too, is like a brand new type of creator,
Like they've existed in completely different generations of online sex
work or sex work in general. So I think having
both their perspectives has been the coolest thing ever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say, they are very different
creators coming from very different backgrounds. And I know Ari's
been doing a lot of like speaking at universities, which
is made people very angry, I know.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, you guys don't realize, like if you
went to college, we talk about porn and sex and
sexuality all the time, like it is. That's why what
I was saying is like I felt so accepted in academia,
and I knew that my philosophy professors would be proud
of me when I went into sex work, which people
be like, that's so crazy, But if you've ever been
in a philosophy class in college that's not taught by
like someone that's really right wing, and you would understand.
Speaker 1: I mean essentially, like colleges are like the birthplace of resolution.
Speaker 3: Right, yes, and people are very open minded.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. I got an opportunity to speak at UCSB
a few weeks ago, and you know, it was really
amazing to like, you know, talk to all the students
about the adult industry, about my experience. And there was
one guy who was actually in the class, and it
was a film class focusing specifically on pornography, and he
wanted to be a director, and he came from a
very conservative family, like in the Middle East, and you know,
he talked about how his first experience with porn was
not good, right, because he grew up like it was banned, right,
he could never watch it, and then he watched it
and got kind of like addicted to it, and it
became you know, unhealthy for him, so then he stopped.
But then he thought, maybe this is an industry that
I need to look at from like a different angle, right,
and to understand so that I can see women as
you know, creators, right, not just like objects of these
these videos the male gaze that I'm seeing. And so
he took this class specifically for that, and it like
shifted his perspective on everything, and it was actually so cool.
It was really cool. And it was actually really funny
because I brought my mom to watch the interview, and
you know, she's like been in the industry forever and
they like really bonded afterwards, and he like loved my
mom and it was just like it was this eighty
year old like pornographer and this like young guy like
you know, who grew up in this shardly conservative family.
Speaker 2: And that is the point of educational institutions that I
think people forget. It's like to hit on truth, this
in humanity, and so any good school is going to
be leading things that get you closer to like empathy
and understanding of like basic human truths, and it's not
about shying away from all of those. So yeah, it's
completely understandable that she is speaking at.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love that too, Like I love like
the more exposure people get to like actual sex workers
and like who they are as human beings, I think
is like so incredibly important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm always just like talking. There is no harm
in talking about your experience. Even when I was sharing
my insane, horny thoughts on the internet, It's like, if
I'm having these thoughts, other people are having these thoughts,
and it's so much better to combat like shame and
holding things in to just talk about them, because it
a lot of us have a lot in common. I
would assume ninety nine percent of the thoughts we have
everybody else has had or it's having to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what I really admired. This is sort
of little off topic, but not really a bit of
a tangent. Did you watch a Charlie Sheen documentary? Yes, Okay,
So when he talked at the end about all the
crazy shit that he did when he was on drugs,
when he talked about like having sex with other men
and all this kind of stuff, and this was something
that I feel like we as a society were holding
over him for so long, like you're crazy drug addict,
How could you do these shameful things? You must be
so ashamed? And he just came right out and was like,
I did this crazy shit. I'm not ashamed of it,
and I've like moved on in my life. And then
like it was at that moment that I realized when
you finally like face your demons and you come clean
about that kind of stuff, it loses its power over.
Speaker 3: It, exactly.
Speaker 1: And everybody who sees that also like, oh, I can't
shame you with that anymore, because like you you've come
out and you've it's the secrets that keep us prisoners.
Speaker 2: Rightly keep we imprison ourselves. And I'll always say, like
I felt so free and I wasn't even It's not
that I was even repressing anything, but when I just
started openly sharing, there's some level of freedom that comes
with that, where it's like I have accepted who I
am and what I do and what other people think
about that does not matter at all. I think that's
an experience every human should have, Like it is so
beautiful to remember why you're here on the planet, like
what you want to do with your life, who you are,
and that shame is really just something meant to control people,
and it destroys people. It fully destroys people. And the
coolest people are the ones that have basically I know
earlier we were talking about like when you hit those
crisis points and they say like, out of crisis comes change.
People that have hit crisis points, whether it was unintentional
through drugs and hitting rock bottom that way, or just
you know, being unhappy with your life and wanting to
change something or trying something new, or me feeling like
I'm burning down everything I built just to start doing
porn or to even like, you know, stop doing my
only fans when it was making the most money and
try to move to a platform that no one ever
heard of before and build it up from zero going
through those experiences, and like that kind of change makes
really cool people, Like that is where character is built,
That is where you find who you are.
Speaker 3: Those are just the coolest people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you launched hidden at Yeah, there's a time,
at a moment when the regulatory environment around adult content
is genuinely hostile age verification laws, platform restrictions, payment processes
or problems. Does that fill you with like an intense
sense of fear or like determination to push through it?
I is?
Speaker 2: It has solved my feeling of fear that I had
that our industry is just going down the wrong path.
Like I just saw us getting banned in ten years,
probably completely. I saw like agencies that are run by
people who have no connection or love of this industry
just running it into the ground, creators getting like burnt
out and alienated from why this industry even matters. And
that filled me with dread and fear. That was horrible.
I was like, what the fuck am I gonna do
in my life if this is gone? Like this is
what I care about? This is what I think is
beautiful in the world. And so even though I don't
know why I decided to have a hard life and
not just cash out while I could, having hope is
a super important thing.
Speaker 3: People need to have hope.
Speaker 2: I need to have hope, and so I think that
hope keeps me going because everything is solvable, like everything.
I probably not everything, but I'm going to live with
that delusion and at least spend my life and my
energy focused on things that give me hope and make
things better for me and the people I care about,
because I really don't know any alternative to that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have to say. You know, like I've
been in the industry for over twenty seven years, and
I grew up around it. You know, my parents, you know,
we're started working in porn in the seventies. And I've
seen all the cycles of the government coming down and
trying to cress you know, the Mease Commission and all
of these things, and it takes people with your kind
of thinking and your kind of drive to get us
through those hard moments, because like people have been trying
to shut down porn forever forever, and if they're weren't
people out there that maybe weren't like hopeful to almost
what feels like the point of delution exactly, Like we
wouldn't get there right, like we would have just let
the government like overrun us. We would have just let
like the industry collapse and be or worse, be pushed
underground where it's an unregulated, totally unsafe you know, like
when sex trafficking actually becomes like a real thing.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 1: So I think that, you know, it's really important that
there are people out there like you that are like,
and I'm like, we will fix this. I don't know
I have, but we're gonna fucking drive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like we're gonna try.
Speaker 2: And I also think we're at such a new point
in time, and I'm the the child of that, the
product of that basically where we are I gott in
this industry when it's like girls are getting really freaking wealthy,
and right now it's a ton of independently wealthy women
getting wealthier and more independent every year, and so we
have this like once in a lifetime opportunity where we're
making all this money and we have all this individual power.
And at the same time, like I was saying, the
industry isn't overly corporatized yet, and so we have an
opportunity to come together, build community and then build actual
foundational building blocks own a lot of our own industry. Like,
we have so much opportunity, and it would suck to
pass that up, and it would suck to have missed
this opportunity and just let shitty scammy people that don't
understand our industry hop in. I think people who care
about the industry and who are actually capable are rarer
than people think, like, it's not I haven't met any
other ones yet other than the people working for me
that are actually like down to work on a platform
and work all day every day on it.
Speaker 1: I think also people get into the adult industry because
I think it's easy, yeah, and then if they find
out it's not easy, they're.
Speaker 2: Like and even down to the fact, like we just
with how many people are in our industry right now.
And then also like mainstream has kind of had its
own community because they've had to be in physical places together,
Like we're in this era where we are all over
the world and we work out of our bedrooms. Most
of us are hermits or like don't talk to anyone
and we spread information through these small little niches or
like these little cliques basically that are our friend groups,
but we don't have a large scale place to connect
as a community and like rally behind things we care
about and educate each other and then also provide support
to each other. Like the amount of girls that I
met in crisis through this job that I'm like, you're
such a beautiful, amazing human, Like here's here's like, oh
you're Instagram got deleted, your TikTok got deleted. Let me
teach you how to use Reddit. Like there's so much
information that we spread to our friend groups, but we
don't spread to so many other creators and people in need.
And it's kind of time and we have the resources
to build that right now. So I guess I am
a product of like this almost delusional part of the industry. Also,
like I've only existed in it. I'm like, guys, we're
making so much money, why don't we buy our own bank?
Speaker 1: Like what the heck?
Speaker 3: So, so I'm gonna try to keep holding on to that.
Speaker 2: And I also I do think it's true though, like
I know there is so much room for innovation in
our industry. We are like operating so in the past,
so I'm really excited to see me but also like
every other creator possible get inspired to start putting their
money and investing into building building blocks of our industry, Like,
it'll be so cool if we take advantage of this opera.
Speaker 1: Danny Searches for ethical porn are apparently surging now, and
Hidden markets itself partly on that positioning. So what does
ethical actually mean in practice on your platform.
Speaker 2: It's funny because I was just talking about how, like
the first time I watched porn, I searched ethical porn
ago I watched like a couple having loving sex in
their home, and I still remember it to this day.
Speaker 3: It's how I learned how to give a blowjob.
Speaker 2: But it's funny because that was so long ago and
it's still popular, which I always that it was only
going to get more popular because to me, like, I
don't use ethical porn as a way to market hidden
at all, Like it's not even part of the terminology.
It's just a fact that when creators are selling their
own content with the least amount of of opportunities to
get exploited in between that content creation and posting the
content and selling it it's going to be the most ethical, right,
Like you're paying directly to the creator, the creators making
what she or he wants to make. And I just
think that's like the direction that all porn is going.
It's like what people want to see, and that's what
good platforms host.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I feel like a lot of people mistake the
idea that ethical porn is like just really vanilla scenes
between people and like you know, just lots of kissing
and stuff.
Speaker 3: But like they're like they're calling it just like feminine
like porn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but like that, but there's so many people that
like different kinds of content. And there's a lot of
women who like to produce crazy shit.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, they don't work crazy.
Speaker 1: You do like a fucking like romantic love scene, yeah,
and they should have the opportunity to produce the kind
of content, yeah, in the way that they want to
do it, the same as somebody who wants to just
do it romantic.
Speaker 3: Love scene exactly.
Speaker 2: It's just self expression at the end of the day.
So when people ask me, like how do I find
ethical porn on the internet, Like, how would you recommend them?
Just like buy it from a creator, Like if you're
buying directly from a creator, you're buying the most ethical
content that you can find. Also, on Hidden, I feel
like the more we build in tools, which is a
huge goal for me, building tools where small creators can
run their pages themselves with more passive promo, more passive sales,
and then also just having certain tools to even you know,
all those like there's so many back end tools that
agencies use, for instance, to run pages that aren't really
they're not doing much manually. If creators had those tools
for free themselves to even just sort in boxes or
find highest tippers like all those kind of things, then
a lot of creators wouldn't have to pay sixty percent
of their income to agencies, especially smaller creators, and they
could run everything themselves. And that's just another form of
exploitation that's taken out of the equation.
Speaker 3: So yeah, on these on some the sex.
Speaker 2: Worker owned platform, sex worker owned and run and a
creator focused platform, you're going to find the most ethical
content and it's gonna be also be to me, the craziest,
Like we have girls everybody asking to do crazy content
that we can't even allow because it's just hard lines
for payment processors.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we like crazy shit.
Speaker 2: People always used to tell me that anal is violenced
against women, and I'm promoting violence against women.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I just have a stretchy butthole and I
enjoy it. Okay, it's so crazy, I know.
Speaker 1: I you know, I have worked with the women who
prefer anal to vaginal.
Speaker 3: Yah. I wouldn't say I prefer it, but it's high up.
Speaker 1: But like the I mean to all, like Phoenix Marine
and like kat Zoomi not kat Zoomie cat Zunie. She
was actually a French Asian porn star from like the
early two thousands. It was amazing and and they would
if they had a choice, they would take it up.
They would for anal anal. They just like it felt better.
I think for way more and Katsuni it was. I
think it was actually like I think she had a
shallow of vagina, so I think like she could take
big dicks better in.
Speaker 3: Oh, A lot of people say that they can.
Speaker 2: Like a lot of people are like I can take
dread in my ass and I cannot take dread in
my pussy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Definitely for size, it stretches, it can stretch a lot bigger. Yeah,
and it's just more intense. It's more intimate to me,
like it's special, it's fun taboo.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, So uh, let's I want to pivot into
some more personal questions relationships inside the industry. You meant it,
you mentioned wanting to talk about this. What's your experience
been and what do you think that people get wrong
about dating.
Speaker 3: In this world? I, well, there's so much.
Speaker 2: The main one is I see so many girls get
into this industry for money or survival or whatever and
then have a point where they don't they convince themselves
they're not lovable. And so the number one thing I've
had with every friend I've had in this industry is like,
you are so lovable, and there will be a person
out there for you if that's what you want, that
understands the choices you've made, that thinks they're sick that
if they were you, they would have done the same thing.
Speaker 3: That's completely possible.
Speaker 2: It's crazy to even say that, but that's like a
number one issue for the majority of girls in this
industry that I know is believing that they're lovable, Which
to me, I'm like, if you're thinking this and you're
doing this, there's gonna be other people out there that
think and view the world the same way you do
and have the same value system that you do. Yeah,
and to hold out for those people and not fall
for all the other people that you know, maybe start
dating you and then say you're sinning and try and
change you, try to get you to quit that whole thing.
It's so frustrating epidemic in the industry.
Speaker 1: It's so frustrating to me, Like the guys who see
a woman's value in their body count, you know, and
you're only like valuable high value as a woman is
if you've saved yourself for like this one person. But
it's like the guys don't have to do that.
Speaker 2: I'm just like those guys then should just date the
girls that do that? Yeah, once they start trying to
come into the industry or trying to like seduce a
girl that's in the industry and then try and get
her out of it and then.
Speaker 3: Shame her for it. Yeah, it's just like mate with
your people, oh, mate with her people.
Speaker 2: But yeah, there's just there's relationships I think are it's
just an absolute epidemic, the amount of unhealthy relationships I've
seen in our industry. There's some healthy ones that are
like begons for me, and I think for a lot
of girls of like, oh, I'm lovable, and I can
find a partner that either works in the industry or doesn't,
but supports me, understands that the sex I have for
work isn't the same as the sex I have in
my personal life. And there's just the bad relationships and
the toxic relationships in our industry are gonna destroy, Like
on top of the burnout, the second thing I see
destroying the girls in our industry is toxic bad relationships.
They are getting used for money, they're getting abused, they're
getting their boyfriends quit their jobs and start managing their
page for them, and then once they want to leave
the relationship, they can't because they have control of all
of their money and everything they've done. And then they
convince them that they'd be nowhere without them. And it's
just like, I want to start telling people like you, guys,
this is a fucking epidemic.
Speaker 3: We're lovable.
Speaker 2: Also, I went through a long period of supporting a
partner as a young creator that didn't know what she
was doing. And I know there's situations where it works.
I would say the majority it doesn't if you're supporting
your male partner, especially when you're twenty two and they're
thirty five.
Speaker 3: Don't do that. No, it's never going to end well.
It's not going to end well.
Speaker 2: You need to be with somebody that's as ambitious as you,
that's working as hard as you. And some people do
really well binding their work. But the best couples and
creators I've seen in this industry, even if they still
work in it or don't, they also have abilities to
make money themselves. So it's like, you know, the guy
has an only fance as well, and the guy's a
performer as well, and he's successful in his own right.
That's going to be the best way because this job
is just so intimate that it's different than just starting
a protein bar company with your boyfriend, like it's and
even that is risky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean my Yeah, my husband and I we
were both married before and like our partners sort of
like lived off of us. So for us, before we
even met, we were like, we really want someone who's independent,
like yeah, absolutely, and that was like so important to
me and to him. And he works in a completely different,
so good industry, like not even close and I mean,
I love him to death, but if I worked with him,
I'd fucking murder. I know, I'd throw him out the window.
Like there's no way we could work together. It would
be absolutely top.
Speaker 2: I think that's something you learn with age and going
through it. And I think our industry being filled with
so many new younger girls that are making so much money,
there's just I'm just watching so much abuse and exploitation
down to relationship levels, and I'm like, you, guys, this
is not gonna work out. Well.
Speaker 1: I think it's also too because there's so much burden.
I mean, you know, just go back to the basics
of like all the marketing that you have to do
to try to like get your page out there and
get a tent. It feels so insurmountable to do it
on your own, and so the idea to have somebody
in your corner that will help you, that you trust.
Oh it was.
Speaker 3: It was probably like a game changer for me. It
was so helpful for me, But I was also plotting
my own demise.
Speaker 2: Like it was. I was left five years in with
no I had contracts but no way to uphold them.
I like, it was just so gnarly and then the
amount of creators that once they do break up with
that partner. I mean, we're all public figures at some point,
and the way that they go after you. I mean,
of course it happened to me. A lot of people
know and have seen it, but it happens to everyone.
Like we've been doing hidden therapy nights where we have
a therapist and we do group therapy with creators and
the amount of creators that share about their breakups and
like how their ex is going online right now, is
trying to slander them, saying all these horrible things, and
we don't even see any of that, Like I didn't
know any of that was happening to all of those creators,
but it is a lot of them are getting sued
by their exes. Like it's just an epidemic right now.
Yeah that I don't think we realize that we're all
going through it.
Speaker 3: And it's gnarly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean your ex went on a smear campaign
after you. If you guys put up, like how did
you manage that?
Speaker 2: I don't know if I've ever came back from it,
Like I was so free and happy, go lucky sharing
on the internet, and I the person closest to me,
the person that like saw me. I mean we dated
for a year before I even started doing online content.
That like level of betrayal was so terrifying for me.
And also I'd never really shared like so much. I
shared personal stuff when it comes to sexual stories or whatever,
but I didn't share like personal things like my relationship
or stuff like that, and so it was just so
gnarly and I got such PTSD from it. And then
my only way really out of it was realizing and
talking to so many girls in the industry that it
happened to as well, and I realized, oh my god,
this is like something we're all going through, Like we
all at a point. It's so crazy. How many creators
I've talked to where they got a boyfriend. The boyfriend
started filming with them and working with them, maybe running
parts of their page. They were paying a ton of
money to him. They decided one he wasn't nice to them,
he was like he was crazy. Whatever happens in a
relationship where you're like, we need to break up, which
I don't know why. In our industry we get a
little bit it seems like a little more deadbeat of
men than normal but.
Speaker 1: I mean I think like your dating pool is limited, yeah,
because there's a lot of guys that won't date.
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of users, I guess, And so
just seeing how many people that's happened to, like, once
they do try and break up with their partner that's
ingrained in their business in any way, they feel super
entitled to the money and to what you built. And
I just like, I've cautioned so many girls against it.
I've cautioned so many where I've like sent them contracts
that I used, and I was like, if you're going
to film with your partner, you need to set up
a payment schedule and a like notarized contract, because even
if it's like a prenup, actually it's almost like I'm
telling them, get a freaking prenup because your relationship will end.
Speaker 3: Most of the time, not always, because some people do
have great relationships.
Speaker 2: But if you are going to go into it, go
into it really smart, because this is content that you
could sell until you're ninety five years old. This is
you putting your body on the internet no one else,
and so it's just protect yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I went through something similar with my
ex husband. He did some filming for me, like you know,
some behind the scenes and some of the shoots that
I did. He didn't do that much work for me.
And then when we split up, and you know, I've,
like I said, I've been in the industry a long time,
but I started my business, my own independent business, like
a year before we met, but like I built my
brandom a name kind of before that. And he, yeah,
I tried to claim half of my business and I
was like, and my lawyer was like, you should have
had him sign an independent contractors agreement and you should
have paid him, Like yes, you should have paid him exactly,
you know what I mean. And then he has no
claim to it. But I didn't.
Speaker 3: That is what it's like.
Speaker 1: It was like every labor and it ended up.
Speaker 2: Like and there my boyfriends are like no, or they're
just like, oh, pay I mean I got into it.
I got like trapped into just They're like, I don't
want money. I just want like just pay for everything,
you know, just like I'll just work for you now.
Just pay for everything, and it's so much better. It
might be annoying and not romantic, but like pay them
so that you are protected. It's crazy even you have
a story, Like everybody I talked to has a story.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, no, it's awful.
Speaker 3: So we need to start protecting ourselves against that.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm going to ask you about one of
your your crazy A couple of crazy stories here, Okay,
so your dad's best man the night of his wedding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that one. That one went global. That one went
so crazy, And it was just a TikTok I made.
I was like at my mom's house making coffee in
the morning, and I was like, oh, this is a
story that I was going to go to my grave
with and then I think I'll just share on TikTok.
Which is the weird thing about the Internet. It's something
you'd never tell to anyone you've ever known, because.
Speaker 1: It almost feel like you're speaking into the ether because
there's not like a physical person there. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. It's the weirdest thing.
Speaker 2: Like I've definitely trained myself out of that, But at
the time, it was so easy to just be so
honest to the Internet and so much harder to do
it in person with someone, which is also a beautiful freedom.
But yeah, after I don't even know, I was like
twenty one probably and I mean, the basis of the
story is my dad's best man was really hot and
he took an interest in me. I guess, like he
was making moves on me all night and then I
ended up sleeping with him and it was just an
insane It was good.
Speaker 3: It wasn't bad.
Speaker 2: I mean, looking back now, I'm like, it's a little
weird that like a sixty year old dude was going
after his like his best friend who's getting married his
daughter and like wanting to sleep with her. Also, my
best friend was like in the bed next to us asleep,
Like we had just even like let's go hang out
with my Airbnb and then we went back there and
we were all hanging out and then she fell asleep
and then I was like falling asleep and then we
both started fucking like him and I, which also the
internet hated that.
Speaker 1: Did she wake up?
Speaker 2: No, But I told her about it after and they
were like, oh my god, that's horrible that she was
in the bed. But it's like we were best friends
since childhood and trust me, in high school that happened
a lot, yeah to both of us, so and there's
times we even shared guys together. So it's like that
wasn't the craziest part, but that had the Internet up
in arms. Me fucking my dad's best man definitely had
the Internet up in arms. We had to fly home
on the same plane the next day too, which was
crazy yappened, I must I mean, I haven't talked to
him about it.
Speaker 3: We like talked very sparingly, but I can't be happy
about it.
Speaker 2: But it's also like, if you're gonna hang out with
those type of kind of kind of dudes, which he
knows he's hanging out with, like my dad, my parents divorced.
My dad's a much younger woman, Like my dad knows
what time it is.
Speaker 1: So this friend, what about this anal on a first
date with a homeless guy in his car.
Speaker 2: That was actually my first TikTok ever. Is I was
like going crazy during COVID and TikTok was just starting
up and you could kind of say whatever you wanted
to know. No one was talking about sex, and I
was just I was so isolated. I was going insane.
So I made a There was a trend that was
like if I had one nick if I don't even
know what it was. It was like if I had
if well, I don't know what it was. It's something
like if this happened, I've had I'd have one nickel
and it's crazy that happened. Like I don't know what
the thing was, but anyway, that was the that was
the audio, and then over it I posted like having
anal on a first date with a homeless guy in
the back of his car, and it went so viral,
like at least at that time, it was probably like
one hundred and twenty kvs or something.
Speaker 3: I don't even know.
Speaker 2: I just remember it like watching it client and I
was like, oh fuck, That's why I got the bug
to even start posting on TikTok after that, because like
that first video I ever made did so well because
we were like, what the fuck is this? And it
was true and that was the first time I ever
had anal and how I don't even know, Like it
truly feels like another life. I was working at a
homeless shelter, but when I was in pre med, I
was like the front desk girl. He was at the
homeless shelter, yeah, and he was just I mean he
was I worked at a homeless shelter for veterans. He
was a marine vet and I didn't know if bipolar
was at the time at all. But he was the
most alive, excited, happy, amazing person ever and he was
like constantly trying to woo me and writing me poems.
And I'd never been like pursued in that way before.
Speaker 3: It was just mania. But how was I supposed to
know that? I didn't know.
Speaker 2: And so after like six months of all of that,
I eventually went to his car one night after work
and I was on my period, so he went in
my butt. I didn't know that that was going to happen.
I ended up liking it. Looking back, there's a billion
ways that I've now come to terms with. Maybe I
didn't consent to doing that, and then everything that was
created after was a coping mechanism to take power back.
Speaker 3: Yet that I don't know if that's true or the opposite,
where I just like it didn't hurt. I did enjoy it.
Speaker 2: I've never been wetter during that experience. And then I
used that experience and made a whole new business for myself.
Speaker 1: Out of it. So so that's when you knew you
loved Danel?
Speaker 2: Yeah? With homewk Yeah, I mean well, and then we
ended up dating and that that was my boyfriend that
I took care of for four years and we had
anal every day, if not twice a day. Yeah, because
he was really into anal, which I think is I
made lemonade out of lemons and I did really enjoy it,
and it was an amazing time in my life until
I had to get that person.
Speaker 3: Out of my life.
Speaker 1: And then he was just a pain in the ass.
Speaker 2: He just like mental illness is. Some of the most
genius people I've ever met are mentally ill, yep. But
they also will completely destroy themselves and you. And it
got to just a horrible point that I had to
get out of if I wasn't gonna die or Yeah,
it was just so as it does it just like
I would caution against that, but I didn't know. I
was young, and like it felt so alive, and maybe
it emboldened me to make a lot of the decisions
that I made. Who knows where I'd be if I
hadn't made all those decisions. No regrets, no regrets at all,
But I definitely know I've gone through an experience that
a lot of people go through. And it's like when
I see my younger friends getting into certain relationships right now.
I'm like, I'm not telling you this because I just
don't understand you know, your connection. I'm like, no, I'm
telling you this because I had that same exact thing,
and it feels fucking amazing until you realize that you're
being used and manipulated and love bombed and abused and
you're in a toxic cycle. And I just want to
caution people against that. But I obviously wouldn't have listened
to any advice at the time either. I would have
lost my own family overkeeping him. So it's just what
I guess women going through toxic relationships go through.
Speaker 1: I feel like we all need we all go through one.
We better understand ourselves and then know what we deserve, right, And.
Speaker 2: You can only really survive one or two of them. Yeah,
Like that's the thing where I'm like, once I started
seeing girls going to patterns with it, I'm like, oh God,
because I don't.
Speaker 3: I couldn't have survived more than one.
Speaker 2: Like it is, it gets to a point where you're like, like,
I'm gonna either be killed or lose my fucking mind
or kill meself.
Speaker 3: So it's really fucking deep.
Speaker 1: But you now are in a place where you know
what a healthy relationship is.
Speaker 2: Yes, once you get out of it, it is the
best feeling in the entire world. It's like you mess
with the bowl, you get the horns. Like if you're
going to go into a relationship like that that feels
that fucking crazy and is with a crazy person with
all the perks. It comes with a very You have
to go to hell through hell to get out of it,
and so it's just like what it comes with. So
I guess I just had a human experience, which we
all have, and yeah, I came out of it so
much better and stronger, probably lost small pieces of myself,
but got wiser.
Speaker 1: We'll sell of Those are all my questions for today.
Thank you so fun so much. Can you just obviously
you know we're here to promote Hidden your platform, So
for someone who's watching this is going to be a
new creator and is in trying the site, I mean, obviously,
what's the actual ur L is in this? Because I've
seen it spelled with with an E with a three,
which I think is your way of turning it around. Yeah, Instagram.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we also couldn't get at Hidden on Instagram. It's
just like completely impossible and so we did it H
one D D three N because also, like my one,
I like the number thirteen, and then my instagram is
anal princess, but with the L as a one and
the E as a three, and so I just played
on that. But yeah, the the r L is just
a simple Hidden dot com H I, D, D, E
N dot com and anyone can sign up. We just
do like age verification, the same sign up process basically
as only fans or any of the sites you use.
We don't have like selective that we only allow certain
creators in or of certain sizes. As long as we
can age and identify age and identity verify you, then
you can join.
Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing. And then when they get in there, do
you guys have like liaisons that kind of help them
set up their profile and everything. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So my favorite thing about Hidden, beyond all the other
features we talked about, is our customer support and creator support.
Like we that was so important to me because on
OnlyFans like and every other site I've used, if you're
having an issue, it is impossible to get uphold of anybody,
whether it's like you know, wrongful violations or whatever. It
might be. Just needing support or like assistance in general.
So actually to bolster that this week, starting on Thursday,
we're doing an event called Crash Course and it's for
new and old creators. But we're doing like daily guide
videos posted every day. They're email to you. We're doing
office hours with all of our creator liaisons, so you
can meet them every single day. It's like any time
between eleven am to four pm you can just join.
We're like emailing every creator link so they can join
and ask questions, meet the creator liaisons have like personal help,
just office hours. And then we're also doing webinars daily too,
so like I'll hop on and we'll do live zoom
calls and go through certain parts of the site and
how to use them, and then like special tips and tricks.
So yeah, so then everybody, if someone hasn't met a
career Lison yet or like wants somebody to reach out to,
they'll meet them there.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, And then can you tell everybody where else
they can find you online?
Speaker 3: Do you have any Yeah, I'm band everywhere.
Speaker 2: I will be back on I will be back on Instagram.
Anal Princess. The L is a one and the E
is a three. That account.
Speaker 3: I'll never let it die.
Speaker 2: I'll keep paying to get it back till the end
of time Hidden's account will get back. It is uh
H one D D three N on Instagram right now.
We have I live online on Instagram, which is I
dot live dot online, which is the name of our
last event, and I kind of just like that username.
Speaker 3: So we have that, and then.
Speaker 2: My Twitter account I've been focusing on more, and that's
Barry Baby b A R E y Baby, and then
our hidden Twitter. I've been focusing on a lot too,
because at least we won't get banned there unless I
put a bikini photo in the cover cover or yeah,
cover photo, and then we'll get banned. That was how
I got banned last time. Oh wow, Yeah, so it's possible.
But but yeah, our our Twitter or our ex account
I guess it is now is H one D D
three N xoxo. Yeah, wait, you'll find it's just honestly,
the best thing to do is just go to Hidden
dot com. Like it's kind of cool that we don't
have any social media anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're like you're that underground.
Speaker 3: Yeah we're so underground. Yeah, we're so punk. We're punk
we're the last punk people in the industry.
Speaker 1: And then you guys can find me for now on
Instagram at Holly Randall, on X at Holly Randall as well.
Thank you guys so much for watching. Thank you so
much strip Chat for sponsoring the podcast. And then of
course we're going to do an extra bonus Q and
A with Sella with the questions that you sent me.
Patreon members, so Patreon dot com slash Holly Randall Unfiltered
if you want to be able to watch these streams
live and submit your own questions for future guests. Thank
you guys so much for watching, and I will see
you next week.