Like most accounts that fall within the jurisdiction of Horny Twitter, @BrattyBoysXXX is a shrine to specialized X-rated content. Its genre of choice is all things twink. Jack-off videos, nude photos, clips of orgy sessions, and tweets asking “Daddy, can I rub my little #twink ass all over your face?” are typical fare for the page. But with Election Day inching closer, @BrattyBoysXXX felt the need to widen its scope considerably. This summer, it transformed into an anti-Trump platform dedicated to “selling smut & dunking on donald.”
The choice to mix porn and politics may seem strange, if not completely inappropriate to some of the account’s 32,000 followers, but to Jayden, the 35-year-old Las Vegas sex worker who runs @BrattyBoysXXX, it’s personal. His sister is battling cancer, and he fears that President Trump winning a second term would only make matters worse.
“What type of cruel person tries to prevent everyday people from keeping their health care? If Donald gets his way, people like my sister won’t be covered in the future, because she’ll have had a preexisting condition,” says Jayden, who asked that he be identified by only his first name. “This type of deep, dark, supremacist evil needs to be countered through each and every channel we have available to us. That includes our social media.”
Over the past few months, the @BrattyBoysXXX Twitter feed has reflected that, retweeting Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, sharing clips from the Lincoln Project’s constant skewering of Trump’s campaign, and posting links to IWillVote.com right alongside rimming videos and a Twitter poll asking if “Twinks in Panties/Stockings” are hot or not.
Despite Jayden not getting politically active until 2018—picking up shifts at the phone bank for his local representative and helping out on the midterm campaign for Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada—he says the change happening on many pages similar to his is a natural result of the evolving online economy for sex workers. In the past two years, the landscape grew exponentially, democratized by the popularity of creator-friendly cam sites and the adult subscription platform OnlyFans.
“Everyday people have replaced your typical Barbie and Ken tropes. Now that there are no more gatekeepers, we’ve learned that folks no longer have to fit a mainstream idea of whatever social beauty standards are pushed onto sex workers,” Jayden says. “Compound that with the massive gap in income equality, and you’ll see why there are more people in our industry willing to speak out. We’re your neighbors. We’re ordinary people who, like you, have a lot to lose.”
All across the internet, sex workers are wielding their influence not just to cash out but to galvanize voters and create political change. In September, a group of strippers in Georgia went viral for their inventive video ad, which urged undecided voters to visit a website named Get Your Booty to the Poll. There was also YouTuber Tana Mongeau’s #BootyForBiden initiative where she promised nudes in exchange for proof of voting. (Though after the move landed her in hot water, she claimed it was “sarcastic,” telling Business Insider, “No one needs an explicit photo of me to go vote and make a change in our country. As much as I love Biden, I am not telling anyone who to vote for.”) In the past, get-out-the-vote campaigns famously relied on the sheen of celebrity to make the election process appear cool to young people (think: Diddy’s 2004 “Vote or Die” effort or the nonprofit Rock the Vote partnering with MTV), but in 2020, when fandoms exist for stars far removed from Hollywood and concert arenas, they’re coupling with the horny internet to target voters’ more private impulses.
