From OnlyFans mansions to extreme co-living: Inside the boom in community experimentation

Economic crises have always triggered new social models. However, what we’re seeing today goes beyond any temporary readjustment. From OnlyFans mansions to all-female villages, we’re witnessing the greatest wave of community experimentation since the 1960s, the decade that held the hippie dream up to the mirror of late capitalism and ultimately spawned L’Arche, Twin Oaks and the much-cited Arcosanti.

Bop House is the viral bastion where content creators for OnlyFans – an online platform where users pay for exclusive (mostly sexual) material – live today. The collective that owns it claims to have earned $15 million in two months. The mansion functions as a nonstop film set.

Psychologist Cristina Marín explains: “People who seek out these types of extreme coexistence models are obviously looking for a change, as opposed to traditional models.”

The television background to these lifestyles is revealing. Rafa de Jaime Juliá and Daniela Varela, two podcasters specializing in reality shows and popular culture, emphasize that it was Kid Nation that took reality TV to the limit. The premise? On the ruins of the town of Bonanza, New Mexico, children try to create a society with minimal adult supervision. The 2007 CBS show moved 40 minors to this abandoned town. During the weeks of filming, one child suffered burns and several accidentally drank bleach, all while they worked 14-hour days. Years later, the show continues to shock audiences with its rawness.

“People who distance themselves from society have always existed,” De Jaime notes. “But creating like-minded groups is easier today, Varela adds, “because everything is just a click away.” She cites other extreme television formats: “The Real Housewives [franchise] brings together unknown women and takes them on a boozy trip. [The Spanish-language] Acapulco Shore puts twentysomethings in a house and orders them to go out every night.”

De Jaime highlights an important nuance: “In Survivor, there’s an emergency system; if someone [is suffering from] dysentery, the helicopter arrives.” Television maintains safety nets that are absent in real-world coexistence.

At that opposite extreme, far from the screens, is the village of Umoja, in Kenya, where a community of women raped by British soldiers was founded in 1990. It still shelters 40 families today. Noiva do Cordeiro in Brazil is very different. In 2014, the press spread the story of a “village of women seeking men,” a hoax debunked by National Geographic. In reality, it’s a community of 350 residents with a balanced gender distribution, female independence and the goal of trying out a different way of living.

Although Cristina Marín identifies positive aspects in these types of co-living models – “they can be more flexible” – she also sees risks: “These communities can generate social isolation, which is inevitable if you only hang out with like-minded people.” She also detects certain sectarian echoes: “It’s one thing for them to appear collaborative, but another thing for them to end up in a hierarchy where someone takes advantage [of the others].”

What new masks will extreme co-living take on in the next global recession? Perhaps micro-cities of digital nomads financed with cryptocurrencies will emerge, or climate shelters built by the tech industry. The impulse is powerful: to reinvent life, together, when reality becomes too much.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition