For those unfamiliar, Bonnie Blue (real name Tia Billinger) gained fame as one of the most popular and highest-earning creators on the adult platform OnlyFans. To reach her ambitious goal of making £5 million a month, she needed a unique selling point. She found it by focusing on “barely legal” content—a highly searched category in adult entertainment—with a twist. Instead of catering to men watching other men with young women, Billinger offered herself to young men.
She had sex with them for free on the condition that she could upload the footage to her OnlyFans, where subscribers pay to view it. “She’s a marketing genius,” says one of her team members, who helps manage her growing business. In essence, she reinvented the adult industry’s business model. Had she applied this level of innovation to another field—like her former job as an NHS finance recruiter—she might have been celebrated as a groundbreaking entrepreneur.
Billinger also specializes in gang bangs, recruiting volunteers through social media posts like, “I’m in London, on my back, and I’d like your load.” Unsurprisingly, she never lacks willing participants. 1000 Men and Me: The Bonnie Blue Story is a documentary by Victoria Silver, who discovered Billinger after seeing her content appear in her 15-year-old daughter’s social media feed. The film follows Billinger as she prepares for (and executes) her most notorious stunt: having sex with 1,057 men in 12 hours. The event proved too extreme for OnlyFans—or at least for Visa, which processes its payments—forcing her to move her content elsewhere.
The media has had a field day with her story, labeling her everything from a predator to a victim (she rejects both, insisting she has no “daddy issues” or past trauma). Critics have called her a “traitor to feminism” and worse (“disgusting, deplorable slapper” being one online insult).
Though Silver’s six months with Billinger don’t provide deep insight, they do reveal her relentless work ethic and calculated approach. To attract attention, she often mocks the wives and girlfriends of her viewers: “I love knowing I’m doing something their wives should have done.” She even suggests men bring their partners’ underwear, joking, “I’ll make them smell MUCH nicer.” And as she confides to the camera, “If a girl says she’s on her period, there’s nothing wrong with her throat.”
Silver’s documentary remains largely unchallenging, unable to match Billinger’s unshakable confidence. Billinger argues her career embodies what feminism has fought for “for years and years.” If young girls see her content and feel pressured to emulate her? Well, that’s for parents to address. The idea of social responsibility holds no weight—for her, it’s purely about individual and financial gain. Silver rarely pushes back.Even when Billinger recruits visibly nervous, deliberately youthful-looking female content creators for a “sex education lesson” video—where performers roleplay as students—she never questions the potential harm to them or the risks of fueling male fantasies about underage girls. Her cold, unblinking gaze seems to hold her in its grip.
For me, there are only two moments that come close to revealing anything about Billinger—and even these just hint at how deeply ingrained her already visible traits might be. The first is her remark: “Everyone says my brain works differently. I’m just not emotional… If I don’t want to get upset, I won’t.” It brings to mind statistics showing that a high percentage of CEOs—and what is Billinger if not the CEO of herself—technically qualify as sociopaths. The second is her response to the risk of being insulted in public: “At least they’re getting off the sofa.”
This 26-year-old woman, who dismissed university as unnecessary, was driving a Mercedes C-Class by 19 and bought a house soon after. To her, hard work is a virtue, laziness the only sin.
Do I admire her work ethic and business savvy? Yes. Do I wish young women with such talents had better options than online porn? Absolutely. Do I see where this leads? Yes, I do. And Billinger will be just fine. But for everyone else? Not so much.
1000 Men and Me: The Bonnie Blue Story is available on Channel 4.
