“I’m Lily Phillips and today I’m getting ran through by 100 guys.”
So begins the YouTube documentary about OnlyFans star Phillips, 23, and her bid to have sex with 101 men in a single day.
Yes, eww.
She did it for the money and the weird glory — but what about the other part of the equation: the men?
While other porn performers have completed similar stunts, the Phillips story went viral because the film she made about the experience put its tearful aftermath on public display, inspiring near-universal disgust.
But setting aside the revulsion, this is a story about broken people. Phillips, certainly, most observers realize — but far fewer care to extend the same compassion toward the men.
Phillips calls herself a “porn star, escort, OnlyFans girl, I don’t really care.”
The lure 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 paywall some of their content to make it exclusive for certain subscribers — and those private interactions are the draw. They establish a feeling of connection, of intimacy, even where none exists.
Fans can pay to text-message with the models or even to talk to them. A phone call with Phillips costs 100 British pounds a minute. Pay even more, and she’ll make customized content using her benefactor’s name.
Why would any man pay so much for a few minutes of conversation with a pretty girl?
The answer: Because many men are overwhelmingly, unbearably alone.
A Pew study from 2023 found that 63% of men under age 30 say they are single, compared to just 34% of women of the same age. Thus the widely used term “incel” — a word derived 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 incels “contemplated suicide every day for the past two weeks.”
Incels appear to make up the bulk of Phillips’ clientele. At one point the documentarian asks her what type of man recognizes her in public. “More like a chubby, younger guy,” she answers.
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 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 filthy with tissues and condom wrappers that the cameraman dry-heaved upon entering. Some man, one of the 101, brought Phillips a flower as if he was courting her.
It’s rare for the internet to come to an overwhelming consensus, yet few if any voices are defending Phillips or arguing that what she did was positive. The mass recoil came because we got to see the repercussions 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, posted on X. Suddenly the old feminist cries of “My body, my choice” didn’t matter.
The men did this to her, went this strain of online discourse. The woman who planned it, set it up, participated in it willingly and profited from it bore no blame — no, those 101 men should have refused to join her.
But why the belief that women are the only ones who are damaged from soulless interactions like this? And why do only men have agency here?
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail’s Bryony Gordon cast blame on manosphere personality Andrew Tate for the sordid situation. Tate has a lot of bad opinions, including his half-witted push to dissuade men from marriage, but we can’t blame him for these men’s desperate search for connection. If anything, Tate would advise against lining up to become schnook number 84.
At the start of the documentary, Phillips is smiling, bubbly, sharing what she will wear for her big day.
By the end, she is crying 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 are thinking or feeling about their side of the experience — because the filmmaker never explores that.
We expect men to just be OK, always, despite a lot of evidence that they clearly are not.
Phillips certainly seems broken. Her tears give it away: Having blank, anonymous sex with scores of men isn’t fun or empowering.
None of it seems glamorous or cool. It’s sad and pathetic.
For her, yes, but very much for her men as well, who are desperately seeking intimacy and finding only emptiness.
Karol Markowicz is co-author of the book “Stolen Youth.”
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