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It is happening again: People are mad at Sydney Sweeney.

This time, however, it isn’t because of her good genes or speculations about her “right-wing” beliefs. No, Sydney Sweeney is under fire for her role in the latest season of HBO’s drama series “Euphoria,” where her character Cassie begins a career making OnlyFans content.

Surprisingly, the loudest critics are not the usual suspects on the Left. Instead, it is OnlyFans creators themselves who feel the show is misrepresenting them and their profession.

For the uninitiated, Euphoria is a series centered on high schoolers navigating a world of sex, drugs, cheating, and friendships. And Cassie, one of the show’s primary protagonists, is conventionally attractive and popular, yet suffers deeply from abandonment issues and insecurity.

Season 3 takes place five years after the previous season, when Cassie is engaged to another character, Nate. The two argue about the cost of flowers for their wedding, and Cassie decides she will make OnlyFans content to afford it. The photos she takes are much of what you’d expect.

But the two scenes that hit viewers hardest included Cassie dressed as an adult baby and dressed in a dog costume, drinking from a dog bowl on the ground. During one scene, Cassie gleefully tells her friend how “adult baby” content is very popular, and men ask her to wear diapers and chew pacifiers.

These depictions clearly struck a nerve with actual OnlyFans performers.

Sophie Rain, known for bragging about her massive yearly earnings in the tens of millions, quickly spoke out.

She acknowledged that while it is “cool” to see the platform gaining mainstream visibility, the show’s execution of OnlyFans content is unrealistic. She worried that young girls who watch the show might get the wrong idea about what OnlyFans is all about.

Other big OnlyFans creators told US Weekly that Euphoria presented the platform as an easy way to make money and glossed over how much business expertise it actually takes to succeed.

Interestingly, almost all the criticism revolved around how Cassie’s behavior was not realistic and not conventional. There’s an irony in this, believe me.

There are plenty of elements in season 3 of “Euphoria” that invite critique, yet Cassie’s arc stands out from the rest. For many longtime viewers, this season feels a little alien compared to the first two. While the show has always had sexual, gritty overtones, many characters in this newest season have evolved in a way that feels jarring. But maybe that’s the point.

While some perceived Sydney Sweeney’s depiction in the latest season as a personal “humiliation ritual” and punishment for her recent controversies, the more charitable interpretation is that the show’s writers are deliberately holding up a mirror up to today’s culture, especially the sexualized nature of online content.

This season, so far, has successfully made online prostitution and adult content look embarrassing and revolting from multiple angles — and not only Cassie’s scenes, but other characters’ too.

OnlyFans has become ubiquitous online. The platform has covert advertisements on legitimate news websites. Its own “models” brag about their enormous earnings on podcasts and on social media, subtly encouraging other women to sign up. Their antics are everywhere.

And yet, when the reality of online prostitution is displayed as fetish content and humiliating photo sessions in a television show, suddenly it is all too much.

People forget that this isn’t the first time “Euphoria” has dived headfirst into a gritty, sexualized plot line.

In season 1, Kat Hernandez, a friend of Cassie’s, began to do underage camgirling after a sex tape of her leaked. This, while it did highlight the horrifying reality of this profession, also demonstrated how teenagers are extremely hyper-sexualized in modern entertainment.

Ultimately, regardless of whatever drove “Euphoria” to put OnlyFans front and center, it is both humorous and sad to watch OnlyFans creators acting as if depicting extreme content is a bridge too far. It is well-established that many creators already go to extremes for views and marketing.

Don’t forget publicity stunts in 2025 such as competing to sleep with as many men as possible in 24 hours. Some women went viral for editing their faces to look like children. Content farms were discovered editing Down syndrome faces onto sexualized videos. Dressing as a dog, or a baby, unfortunately, barely scratches the surface of real depravity on the platform.

As “Euphoria’s” writers have seemingly discovered, these platforms encourage creators to escalate their antics and behavior.

The more extreme they become, the more dehumanizing all of this gets. And the more dehumanizing it gets, the more normalized it becomes. This is the tragic reality of online prostitution, and one that these creators know all too well, yet choose to defend anyway.

“Euphoria,” whatever its motivations, has hit a raw social nerve. We can hope that more women see the portrayal not as glamorous, but as embarrassing and dehumanizing — and choose a different path.

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Sydney Watson (@SydneyLWatson) is a YouTuber and political commentator.

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