A new search engine is being hyped for helping people find OnlyFans creators who look like their crush, as covered by Wired. As a result, today’s Binary Response is about how we got to the point where we’re building tools to chase digital look-alikes instead of working on real-life love. Please sign up to get our Binary Response articles directly in your inbox!
The premise behind a search engine for OnlyFans look-alikes is simple. You upload an image of your crush, your favorite celebrity, or the person stuck in your head, and let the machine send you to someone who looks close enough, for a price. It’s just the latest reminder that what were supposed to be dating apps and platforms have slowly turned into elaborate funnels toward subscription-based sexual content, turning every swipe and DM into a soft sales pitch.
Today’s dating world has become nearly impossible to navigate for anyone who actually wants a relationship instead of a receipt becuase the line between I’m here to meet someone and I’m here to monetize your loneliness has gotten really blurry. That’s not a revolution in technology; it’s a UI upgrade for an industry that’s already built on the oldest business model in the book. The tech is new, but the goal is the same: turn sexual attention into quick cash as efficiently as possible.
And that’s the thing about OnlyFans in general. For all the branding about creators and direct-to-fan relationships, the core product is still sexual performance sold by the minute, by the image set, by the exclusive DM. It’s strip clubs transformed into subscription feeds and paywalled messages. People are trying to make quick money streaming sexual shows, and there’s a massive audience ready to fund it as long as the fantasy feels customized just for them. The platform has just put a ring light and a payment processor on something humanity already understood perfectly well.
So do we really need a specialized search engine to locate people willing to take their clothes off for money when strip clubs already exist? If someone is determined to pay for that experience, the in-person options are everywhere: clubs where you can drool over strippers while enjoying beverages and if you want private in-home viewing you can hire an escort to host or even let them host you. What this new tool adds isn’t some sacred missing link for human connection; it adds convenience and plausible deniability. You’re not just looking at porn, you’re searching for someone who looks like your crush. You’re not paying a stranger; you’re paying a curated echo of the person you can’t have.
Strip clubs, for all their issues, at least make the transaction obvious. You walk in, you know what’s on the menu, you hand over cash, you leave. No one pretends it’s a matchmaking service. No one thinks a lap dance means the dancer is your soul mate. In a weird way, that honesty is healthier than the digital gray zone where creators call you babe, remember your dog’s name, and send mass DMs dressed up as personal notes, all while the meter’s running. At a club, the bouncer isn’t trying to sell you the lie that this could turn into something real.
The search engine idea just layers a creepy kind of personalization on top of that already blurry dynamic. It tells you, You can’t date your coworker, your neighbor, or your ex, but you can rent a near-copy of them. That’s not solving loneliness; it’s monetizing it with more specificity. It encourages people to see their crush not as a human being with a life of their own, but as an aesthetic template that can be cloned on demand. Once your feelings for someone are reduced to a facial search parameter, it’s hard to argue that what you’re chasing is love.
That brings up the second big problem. For a lot of people, a crush isn’t just some random thirst-trap they scrolled past. Their crush is the person they quietly see as a potential soul mate. It’s the person they imagine raising kids with, or finally feeling safe with, or building an actual life alongside. That feeling is messy, irrational, and often inconvenient — but it’s also tied to things that can’t be streamed such as shared history, inside jokes, mutual sacrifices, the way they look at you when you’re having the worst day you’ve had in years.
Try putting that into a search bar.
You can match bone structure. You can approximate hair color, body type, and style. What you can’t duplicate is the moment someone shows up at 2 a.m. when your car breaks down, or remembers your big presentation and texts you good luck without being prompted. There is no algorithm for, This person has seen my worst sides and still chooses me. Until someone finds their actual soul mate — or at least a partner who genuinely wants to be in the trenches with them — no parade of paid look-alikes is ever going to satisfy what they’re really looking for.
That’s where modern dating apps and OnlyFans-style platforms bleed into each other in the worst possible way. Every profile, every match, every like comes off as a potential sales funnel instead of a potential life partner. Users are told to treat themselves like brands and optimize their photos. Then they’re funneled toward creators whose full-time job is to be more responsive, more flattering, and more available than any normal person with a 9-to-5 and a real life ever could be. Real people can’t compete with someone who is literally paid to make you feel like the center of the universe.
This is also why, for some people, the dating market feels completely unwinnable. They’re being asked to run the treasure trove of apps where half the users aren’t really there for relationships, and the other half are drowning in the same paradox of choice. On top of that, there’s now a whole parallel universe where you can pay to bypass the discomfort of vulnerability and skip straight to a polished, erotic simulation of intimacy. If you’re the kind of person holding out for an actual soul mate, this environment doesn’t just feel confusing; it feels rigged against you.
Here’s the thing, folks: A search engine that finds OnlyFans creators who look like your crush is a perfect symbol of this distorted landscape. It takes a feeling that’s supposed to be personal and sacred — the ache for one particular person — and turns it into just another vector for targeted commerce. It whispers, Why wrestle with rejection or growth or compromise when you can just pay someone who looks like the person you want? But until people are willing to step away from the infinite-scroll fantasy and actually risk real-world vulnerability, they’re never going to get what they’re truly searching for.
With that… You need to remember that you can’t subscribe to soul mates. You can’t tip your way into mutual love. And you definitely can’t outsource the hard, human work of building a relationship to a search engine that promises to show you someone close enough to the person you actually care about.
If you don’t like the advent of a technology, then you should not bother using it in the first place!