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Dear reader, if you're still pretending you watch sex workers for the sex, you're lying to yourself; politely, but relentlessly. Because in 2025, sex work is no longer just about erotic performance. It's about the performance of being visible, desirable, defiant, conflicted, and yes... sometimes hated.
Welcome to the era of rage-bait, where political blogs, X, and adult creators all operate on the same fuel. It’s not followers. It’s not porn. It’s provocation. And few people have made that clearer (or more uncomfortable) than Sophia Burns.
In October 2023, adult performer Sophia Burns posted a now-infamous tweet:
The result?
Immediate backlash from others in the industry and a storm of public outrage on social media. Her agency, ATMLA, dropped her, but if Burns was rattled, she didn’t show it.
In an interview with PornCrush, she made her intent clear: this was a fantasy, not a confession. She said she viewed the tweet as good for business… part kink, part art, part algorithmic bait.
Her words were blunt:
I expressed a fantasy. The big problem with that… is that lots of people don’t understand how to properly differentiate between reality and fantasy.
And most importantly?
The engagement from it was outstanding.
Translation? Drama drives traffic even if it burns a few bridges.
I get to have sex with a real pony tomorrow :)
— Sophia Burns (@sophiaburnsx) November 4, 2025
According to the BBC, this strategy isn’t unique to the adult world. It’s a platform-wide reality, crowned with dollars and repost metrics.
Their breakdown of influencer Winta Zesu, a non-porn creator who earned $150,000 in a year by posting content that intentionally angered people, reveals the model at work. Zesu received floods of hate comments accusing her of arrogance, vanity, and delusion. And because rage equals engagement, she profited from every insult.
Every single video of mine that has gained millions of views is because of hate comments,
She told the BBC.
Sophia’s tweet did something similar: it bypassed safety, skipped nuance, and punched a very messy button on purpose. And the reaction was bigger than anything she could’ve scripted. But that hasn’t been her only controversial tweet.
By tweeting something repulsive to some and electrifying to others (and doing it without apology), she tapped into the same twisted alchemy that turns quote tweets into cash.
This is where things get complicated. Sophia didn’t frame the tweet as a marketing line. She framed it as an unfiltered expression of a fantasy. One she acknowledges is not shared by everyone. But she also made no secret of the fact that she’s a business owner who knows what draws eyes:
My job as a business owner is to grow, and we grow by being put in front of many eyes that we weren’t in front of already.
She didn’t delete the post. She didn’t issue a PR-filtered apology. She stood in the fire and watched her metrics climb even as she lost her rep. That’s not clout-chasing. That’s something trickier: fantasy meets fallout meets fearless provocation in a world that monetizes your every word.
Where does the line live between trolling and trauma? Between kink and scandal? Between "cancelable offense" and "art you weren’t ready for"? The reality? That line moves depending on who’s talking. Female porn performers, especially ones with sharp minds and sharper tongues, tend to be punished hardest for rage-baiting, even when male creators thrive doing the same (or worse).
As Sophia told PornCrush:
I tweet primarily to engage with other people that share the same fantasies, while promoting my company, my product, and myself.
Whether you find that strategy empowering or exploitative often says more about you than it does about her.
Here’s what makes rage-baiting dangerously seductive: it works. Increased reach. More fans. Bigger buzz. New subscribers. And all without having to film a scene, make a trailer, or smile for the algorithm. All you need is a tweet with enough heat.
As marketing experts told the BBC, algorithms reward anger. Hate comments are “high quality engagement.” Moral outrage is friction, and friction gets you served to more people.
Sophia Burns didn’t invent rage-baiting. She didn’t even use it the same way influencers like Winta Zesu do. What she did was say something that made people physically uncomfortable and then refused to flinch. She didn’t beg for forgiveness or claim she was misunderstood. She just reminded the internet that sex work has always lived between what turns you on and what freaks you out.
And if you’re offended? Good. You’re still paying attention.
Because where rage used to be a reputation risk, it’s now just another cam light, drawing in moths who mistake indignation for justice, and outrage for moral superiority. In the end, everyone clicks. That may not make rage-bait ethical. But it sure made it profitable.
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