In my previous life as a fact-checker, I was once instructed to watch an execution video to determine how the man had been killed. The Assad regime had fallen. The question was simple: was he shot against a tree or a tree stump? (Stump, as it happened.)
Watching pornographic film actress Tia Billinger – known professionally as Bonnie Blue – get her “insides rearranged” in slow, repetitive motion in Channel 4’s 1,000 Men and Me: The Bonnie Blue Story filled my body with essentially the same emotions I’d felt watching the execution video: disgust, fear and dismay at the state humankind has found itself in.
This latest documentary from Channel 4 is a passive, docile attempt at investigative journalism. The director Victoria Silver, spurred by the realisation that her 15-year-old daughter had come across Blue on social media, decided to follow the 26-year-old over the course of six months. During that time, Blue rose to meteoric fame, becoming the face of a new era of porn maximalism. Silver watches on, horrified, as Blue pushes her body to extremes, attempting to break “world records” by sleeping with 1,057 men in 12 hours.
Silver’s questions don’t prod; in fact, they barely brush past Blue. It’s Liberal Feminism 101 – asking the kinds of questions about porn that have permeated discussions forever. “In terms of feminism,” Silver ponders, “are you not, maybe, sending us backward? Kind of conveying that women are there for male pleasure?”
Blue can answer questions like this in her sleep: “This is what I enjoy. I always say this is what I want. This is not for everybody. A lot of the hate I get is from women who are not working – which is absolutely fine; you get the choice if you want to work or not – but are they not just taking it back in time?”
This is rinsed and repeated throughout. Silver, seemingly worried about offending Blue, propounds limply: “Couldn’t you just make a normal porno?” “So, you don’t mind offending women?” “What’s pegging?” Blue, dead behind the eyes like a junior minister on Question Time, toes the party line: “They have to be 18.”
The documentary feels like an advertisement for Blue’s content. Her “record-breaking” 1,057-man feat is played out in slow, graphic video shots. Every inch of Blue is shown – nothing is blurred out. If this is Channel 4’s attempt at showing rather than telling viewers how extreme her content is, there’s a fundamental flaw in the journalism. Viewers already know how absurd she is: one quick scroll through X or Instagram will lead to a video of Blue spouting misogynistic bile, such as when she blames women for their partners’ infidelity. What was needed here was a more hard-line approach.
Instead, Silver wonders how her teenage daughter might feel, and whether she might “think this is what she has to offer guys”. The same argument could be made about all pornography. Yes, it can distort young people’s perceptions of what normal sex is – but even they, for the most part, can see that this is not normal sex.
Moreover, the teenage daughter of a Channel 4 documentarian is unlikely to be the kind of girl who will suffer from Blue’s content. Those that do appear in her sexual education porn video, for which she hired a number of young male and female sexual content creators who, for the first time, have sex, as a group, on camera – for Blue to monetise in what she calls a “business opportunity”. All have been chosen because they are just over 18, and are willing to participate for free in the hope of gaining exposure through being tagged in Blue’s social media posts.
The documentary never sees the vast empire of exploitation that Bonnie Blue is a part of. Partly because 1,000 Men and Me exists within it, and possibly this article does too. The programme is a chance for rubberneckers to peer into her world, for Channel 4 to get some easy attention, and for Blue to expand her ever-growing following. While it is legal for Bonnie Blue-inspired 18-year-olds to join OnlyFans, participate in a gang bang, and buy a Dior suitcase with the profits, it does not take away from the fact that they are being sold a fantasy. Blue reiterates that “my brain works differently, I’m just not emotional”, and that this line of work is not for everyone. In the same breath, however, she lures viewers and participants in with the idea that this could be you in these videos: “My subscribers can watch that and go, ‘My dick looks like that, my body looks like that. I last nine seconds like them as well.’”
The problem with Blue is that she is not just coerced by this culture, she also uses it for her own gain. Everyone on her OnlyFans set is a cog in Blue’s capitalistic, money-making machine. Seasoned OnlyFans creator Andy Lee – the only other participant in Blue’s sex-ed video who has previously had sex with strangers on camera – admits that this video is outside his comfort zone. He seems marginally more concerned than Blue about the well-being of the participants, reminding them that they shouldn’t “just say yes” if they don’t actually want to have sex on camera.
“Yeah, um, I don’t mind,” the female actors reply – an answer that reflects their juvenility – but they then slowly admit they would prefer to just watch rather than participate. (What would have happened had they not been asked twice?)
Leah, new to pornography, grins widely but concedes that she is “definitely nervous”. Codie isn’t sure about it either – she’s done “nothing too adventurous” before but hopes her participation will lead to “followers and subs”. “I always think people who do OnlyFans must be really confident,” says Silver, as Madison, 21, trembles on screen. “No,” Madison replies, shaking her head and biting her lip. “Definitely no.”
“The fact that they’re so nervous actually works in my favour because their reactions are more realistic,” shrugs Blue. “If they feel intimidated, obviously I want them to say, but sometimes sex is intimidating.”
The video goes ahead, unchallenged by anyone on Silver’s team, and viewers are treated to a long montage of baby-faced 18-year-olds moaning alongside Blue.
Herein lies the issue with Bonnie Blue. If you choose to have sex with 1,057 men in your mid-twenties, no one can stop you. But if young people, who are likely earning much less than you (Blue claims to earn more than £1m a month), are encouraged to believe that creating this kind of content will have little impact on their lives, then their youth and naivety are being exploited.
There seems to be endless speculation and intellectualising about the impact of her videos on young women and what it says about culture. This is why free-choice markets become coercive without intervention. But the philosophers can ask what comes after this, what it means for liberalism and so on. Blue knows exactly what’s next: “a disabled gang bang”.
[See more: We must fight the deepfake future]
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