Legrand Wolf, the co-founder and co-creator of Carnal Media and recently launched streaming service Carnal Plus, is on the phone with XBIZ to discuss the launch of new fan site Fitcher and he’s eager to provide a progress report.
Wolf and his team were just settling back into their office routines after traveling to Los Angeles to attend XBIZ 2022 and, in particular, the inaugural creators-first X3 Expo, where Fitcher made its public debut.
We should celebrate diversity, but I think people get confused by what that means. It means that there are people who are different from you.
He’s pleased by the overall positive response to the project from creators and fans, despite the current proliferation of platforms that seems to produce a new contender on a weekly basis. But although Carnal Media is gay-owned, and its central focus is on gay male and trans male content, Fitcher is meant for everyone.
Wolf outlined an offer, which runs through June, meant to reward early adopters.
“We’re offering 100% payouts to creators for the first six months after we’ve gone live and then 90% for life,” he explained. “When you’re launching a new product into the marketplace, you have to draw distinctions between yourself and others. And we want to do that.”
Wolf is proud of an additional feature that he feels elevates the platform above the current scrum. “We have a little more than three decades of industry experience between the groups that are involved here,” he said. “And that's really important. We are performers. We are in the adult industry. We’re not going anywhere.”
“This is our world,” he added.
JC ADAMS: I imagine that kind of combined industry experience on your team would be reassuring to potential creators.
WOLF: In adult we’re up to about, I don't know, 30 or 40 announced fan site platforms that actually are functional and that people are sort of talking about; our industry experience matters because we are performers and industry veterans and we understand how to play in this space.
JC ADAMS: When we were setting up this interview, you teased an aspect of Fitcher that you said makes the platform unique. You’ve described Fitcher as a combined social media platform and fan site.
WOLF: Yes. In other words, you don’t have to go to Twitter to advertise your stuff and your platform profile. You can actually find and grow your followers without them having to subscribe first. With Jack Dorsey stepping down from Twitter, adult performers should be on alert. Every day, more and more adult performers are losing their Twitter accounts. So if that’s the only way you can find and communicate with your fans and tell them where to subscribe, then you may get screwed, right? We will allow creators to put up clips, pictures, all kinds of things, and allow fans to log on and enjoy it without paying any money. Then, of course, there will be subscription levels that fans can join. We are a social media platform with all of the fan site functionality behind it, which is one of the reasons it’s taken us over a year to develop.
JC ADAMS: So essentially fans will log in to Fitcher and see a feed of recent content, like Twitter.
WOLF: Exactly. They can add creators to their feed and it’s constantly being updated and they can go and find specific niches, they can find communities. It’s a lot of fan engagement without having to pay in first. If I like 30 different guys [on other fan platforms] I have to pay money in order to see what's behind their paywall. I have no idea if I'm going to like it. Fans may not have the money to subscribe to 30 different people at $5, $10, $15 a month. The average person doesn't have those resources, right?
JC ADAMS: So you’re offering more consumer choice.
WOLF: If I’m interested in somebody and subscribe to them, and then later decide to cancel, I still might want to have access to the types of things they’re posting, so that I can buy something as a one-off if I feel like it. Or I might not be subscribed to someone, but maybe I still want to tip them. Fans can do that with the type of constantly updating feed that is part of our social media platform. Once you sign up, which doesn’t cost anything, you gain access to a feed and you start curating that feed, which still doesn’t cost anything. There’s plenty of content for you to enjoy and you can choose to follow any creator.
JC ADAMS: How do you handle billing?
WOLF: I mentioned before we have 30 years of combined experience. That gives us billing stability that someone who doesn't have those kinds of long-established relationships with many different banks can access. We have had continuity with banking relationships for so long that we’ve built trust. And, of course, we’re not putting all of our eggs in one basket. We’re looking at crypto and we’re pretty excited about it.
JC ADAMS: I’ve heard you say a few times that “rebilling is the name of the game.”
WOLF: If you lose your rebills, you lose what, 70% of your income? Maybe more. We offer stability.
JC ADAMS: I’m interested in this “Model Matchup” feature you mentioned before we started our chat.
WOLF: Essentially, the community gets to vote on who they want to see together. They all vote on it and commit money to the idea. And if you and the other person like the idea, and you film it and post it, you end up making more money for that collaboration.
JC ADAMS: You’re asking fans to prepay for a collaboration and gauging their interest.
WOLF: Exactly, kind of like a Kickstarter. They're on the hook to pay the amount that they agreed to pay only if you do the collab. It’s one of about 10 features that we feel are unique to our platform. And look, I want to be really clear. Not everything is going to work perfectly right out of the gate. Hopefully, on Day 365, everything will be working great. That's the whole reason why we want to give creators 100% of their payouts for as long as possible because we want them to stick around and check in with us and work with us to get the platform running like gangbusters. And our early adopters have nothing to lose. We’re not telling people to quit any other platforms.
JC ADAMS: Looking at the site right now, you have some arresting imagery. You have a muscular guy, of course, but there is also imagery that I’d describe as nonbinary, or certainly not easily identifiable as one gender or another.
WOLF: Yeah, I hope that people understand that you can be aroused and excited by any number of different things and it's all great. That way you can show your body and find people who think you’re sexy. There's no shame in it. You know, I was raised as a Mormon and I was taught only one thing: that I needed to be attracted to a woman and that I had to be this straight person and in the afterlife, everyone is straight and has multiple wives. When actually, we all exist on a spectrum and why not just be who you really are? Straight, gay, bi, trans, nonbinary — whatever it is. We should celebrate diversity but I think people get confused by what that means. People are different and can find different fantasies fascinating and great. They can find certain things attractive to them and they can be aroused by it and it might not be for you and that can also be celebrated. That’s our goal with Fitcher. We’re saying, right upfront, we are not just one thing. There is an array of things and it’s all great.
Visit Fitcher.com and follow the platform on Twitter.
