Adult entertainment star Bonnie Blue risks alienating her followers with endless publicity stunts, a PR expert has warned – and her house of cards could come crashing down
Bonnie Blue’s endless publicity stunts are doing her career no favours, a PR guru has warned.
Celebrity management expert Mayah Riaz points out that the OnlyFans star’s latest attempt to mislead her followers will only erode trust from her fans – and could well derail her entire career.
It comes after 26-year-old Bonnie – real name Tia Billinger – posted a clip of herself apparently being arrested to her social media pages, with her ‘sister’ claiming the porn star was being held by police.
But several signs pointed to the scene being staged for clicks, including the ‘Americanised’ arrest style of having Bonnie place her hands on the bonnet of the police car; the officers not wearing plastic gloves to give her a pat-down, and the cop car itself bearing the same licence plate as one used by a prop company that hires out police vehicles to TV and film crews.
“As someone who works in celebrity PR, I’ve seen more publicity stunts than hot dinners,” Mayah tells the Mirror.
“Staging drama for attention is practically a currency in this industry, and Bonnie Blue is clearly cashing in. What Bonnie needs to realise is that while they can catapult someone into the spotlight, they also come with a shelf life – especially as her audience starts catching on.
“It’s clear Bonnie Blue is playing the long game when it comes to fame as she’s not just chasing clicks, she’s trying to shift perception. This isn’t just about shock factor. It’s about control. By staging viral moments, Bonnie puts herself at the centre of a narrative she wants to write. She is well rehearsed in knowing that on social media outrage travels faster than facts. And she is using that momentum to shape her public image, which screams ‘flawed’, ‘chaotic’, but it seems she doesn’t mind because it is always headline-worthy.”
Mayah continues: “From a PR perspective, what Bonnie’s doing is classic ‘mainstreaming through visibility’. She’s actively trying to blur the lines between sex work and celebrity culture by showing up publicly in non-explicit ways. The fake arrest, like her fake pregnancy claim before it, places her in everyday news cycles, not just adult platforms. It’s a calculated move to soften the stigma around her OnlyFans career and get people talking about her, even if they don’t engage with her content. She is wise to be thinking of the long game but is absolutely going the wrong way about it.
“She’s also tapping into a powerful formula, which is do something shocking; it goes viral, then the ‘redemption arc’ with a charitable or emotional twist. If this follows the same plot lines as her pregnancy stunt, expect a follow-up story where she reveals it was to raise awareness or funds for something ‘good’. That way, she turns critics into clickers and maybe even supporters.”
But, Mayah warns, it’s not as straightforward as Bonnie may be hoping. “There is the flip side because audiences are getting wise. Overusing stunts can lead to what I call ‘PR burnout’,” she says.
“If followers feel they are being manipulated too often, they tune out or worse, unfollow. The very tools she’s using to boost her visibility could start chipping away at her credibility and I would say that has already started.
“This ‘arrest’ stunt, along with her others, may see a spike in her follower count but this is temporarily. If there’s no meaningful engagement or content shift, mark my words: those numbers will drop just as quickly. The trick isn’t just going viral, it’s being unforgettable for the right reasons.”
Bonnie launched her OnlyFans career in 2023 after growing disillusioned with her 9-to-5 job. Starting out as a webcam model, Bonnie then opened an OnlyFans page and moved on to more graphic sex work, making a name for herself by bragging about sleeping with “barely legal” 18-year-old men and their fathers.
She claims to be making £1.5million a month from her OnlyFans account, and previously said she was driven to putting more graphic content on the platform to rake in more cash. “When I started, I was posting generic content and I was earning good money, but it’s never going to go amazing,” she added. “You can’t expect to earn good money if you’re doing basic content.”
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