A look at the “hustle economy”, where unemployed teachers, cooks, and dancers are turning to Patreon, Twitch, and OnlyFans to monetize their digital offerings
Unemployed teachers, cooks, dancers are turning to Patreon, Twitch, and OnlyFans — e have nothing to sell besides physical touch. Tweets: @wmmna , @ubi_works , @ibogost , @ozm , @30_helens , @bijanstephen , @gretchenamcc , @steverousseau , @alexlaughs , @techwontsaveus , @caitlindewey , @mvzelenks , and @rileygryc Tweets: Regine Debatty / @wmmna : Tech investors call it the “passion economy” but because the term risks both exaggerating the payoffs of this work & obscuring its ties to the gig economy, the last great labor “disruption,” we might better call it the “hustle economy” https://onezero.medium.com/... via @hubertguillaud UBI Works / @ubi_works : The Great Recession cemented the gig economy. The coronavirus economic collapse is heralding an even more precarious employment model. Welcome to the Hustle Economy. We desperately need #BasicIncome https://onezero.medium.com/... Ian Bogost / @ibogost : Really interesting @caitlindewey piece. Like any platform economy, the Patreon/Substack/OnlyFans/etc. providers will mostly win, while the individuals mostly struggle or lose. This is hairsplitting, but I'm not sure if “hustle” is the word, although I'm sure it has legs. https://twitter.com/... OneZero / @ozm : The hustle economy promises a sense of agency the gig economy lacked: an online labor market where workers create and monetize their own digital products on platforms like Patreon and OnlyFans. But like the gig economy, it rarely lives up to its promise. https://read.medium.com/RO78HWk ThirtyHelens / @30_helens : The “hustle” economy has the exact same issue: venture capital holding all the cards and changing the rules on a fucking whim. It has the exact same disregard for creatives and workers https://twitter.com/... @bijanstephen : this is an excellent overview of the new next phase of the gig economy https://twitter.com/... Gretchen McCulloch / @gretchenamcc : This is an interesting follow up to the series I wrote about Weird Internet Careers at the end of last year, which now looks strangely prescient https://allthingslinguistic.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Steve Rousseau / @steverousseau : it was inevitable that the tech industry would find a way to commodify peoples' passions and hobbies. it's cool that they think people desperately posting stretching routines to giant, unaccountable platforms to make rent is somehow “liberating” workers https://onezero.medium.com/... Alex Sujong Laughlin / @alexlaughs : “If Patreon and its ilk once promised flexibility or the chance to ‘do what you love,’ they now also promise workers like Amit Levit a paycheck the next crisis can't interrupt.” https://onezero.medium.com/... @techwontsaveus : In the hustle economy, “there is no ... minimum wage. There are no benefits. Should the platform choose to change anything—from a payment processing fee to a recommendation algorithm—workers have no real power to influence those decisions.” — @caitlindewey https://onezero.medium.com/... Caitlin Dewey Rainwater / @caitlindewey : Interviewed many, many workers and “creators” all over the world for this @ozm piece on the ~hustle economy~ ... the place you go when a pandemic reveals the emptiness and instability of modern work https://onezero.medium.com/... Michael Zelenko / @mvzelenks : when you labor becomes unmarketable the only thing you have left to sell are your hobbies https://twitter.com/... Rev. Kilderkin / @rileygryc : Boy gee golly gosh, wonder what new & snazzy name they're going to call the incoming great depression economy! https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Two months into pandemic unemployment, the monetization playbook that Substack and Cameo built for prominent media figures is being picked up by people with no audience at all: laid-off teachers, cooks, and dancers selling lessons, streams, and digital content on Patreon, Twitch, and OnlyFans. The article coins "hustle economy" as a corrective to investor framing — the same work investors brand the "passion economy" carries the gig economy's signature: no minimum wage, no benefits, and no power over the platforms that set the rules.
The related coverage shows where this leads. Analysis of the creator economy's platform dynamics finds the gains concentrating with Patreon, Twitch, and OnlyFans while individual workers struggle, and the profile of Twitch streamer Tyler Steinkamp documents the human cost at scale — loneliness and rage from streaming 50 hours a week. What started as a prominent-figure niche in May 2020 is, by July, a default fallback labor market.
First-order effects
- Unemployed teachers, cooks, and dancers immediately become solo micro-businesses on Patreon, Twitch, and OnlyFans, trading wage employment for income that has no floor, no benefits, and no guaranteed demand.
- Patreon, Twitch, and OnlyFans gain a surge of new creator supply from workers with few alternatives, strengthening the take-rate position the platforms already hold.
Second-order effects
- Because workers have no leverage over platform rules, any change to payout terms, discoverability, or content policies lands directly on household income — the platforms function as de facto employers without employer obligations.
- As more laid-off workers crowd the same monetization channels, competition for small audiences intensifies, pushing creators toward the personal-brand self-promotion that later coverage shows artists experience as corrosive and sellout-adjacent.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the hustle economy becomes a standing shock absorber for labor-market disruption — a reserve workforce that monetizes the self during downturns while platforms capture most of the gains, echoing the on-demand economy's earlier shift toward self-isolated, individually served work.
- The absence of a wage floor or benefits at scale strengthens the policy case for decoupling income from platform work — the BasicIncome entity in this story's orbit (@ubi_works among the cited voices) points to universal basic income as the remedy being discussed alongside the trend.
The trend: Monetizing the self is becoming the default fallback labor market for displaced workers, with platform intermediaries capturing the gains that wage employment once distributed.