Lucy and Zoe are best friends. They eat together. They shop together. They do TikTok dances together. And they have sex with a strap-on while wearing Fourth of July-themed hats on the camming platform Chaturbate together. They are partial to theming shows around national holidays: In February, their room is decorated pink for Valentine’s Day, while in October, it was adorned with spiders and orange-and-black streamers.

In a vlog on her OnlyFans page, clad in a fembot-esque pink nightie and thigh-high white platform boots, Lucy, 19, takes a swipe at a piñata, which, in keeping with the zoomer baby-doll aesthetic, is Hello Kitty-themed. Later, Zoe, 23, presents her with gifts: a T-shirt that says “chickie nuggies” and a flamingo-hued Balenciaga purse, all against the backdrop of cameras chirping, because in this house, the content machine is always humming. 

The rest of the video is a montage of the girls’ activities in the house, accompanied by two other young women and set to “Daisy” by Ashnikko: filming a TikTok while wearing bunny ears and devil horns; Lucy writhing around on the floor covered in bite-size candy bars; the four women playing the video game Just Dance wearing nothing but latex gloves and fishnet socks. In the background is a wheel for Game Night, which has different sex acts written on it: “booby helicopter,” “doggy-style camel toe,” “chocolate starfish” (a butthole flash to the camera, per Zoe). “Fuck a princess, I’m a king, bow down and kiss on my ring,” Ashnikko raps. Another vlog, from a trip to Miami, shows the girls swigging champagne and twerking on a luxury yacht; they make out, flash their breasts to the camera, and leap naked into the water, holding hands and giggling. 

Such is life in the Can Be Bought House, a five-bedroom, four-bathroom modernist home in an affluent part of Texas. It is owned and run by Zoe, an OnlyFans creator with an avalanche of russet-colored curls, and her boyfriend Austin, 34. (Rolling Stone is identifying them and all of the other content creators interviewed by their industry names, as is our standard to protect the privacy of adult performers.) 

For the past two years, Zoe has been one of the highest-earning camgirls on Chaturbate, a popular XXX streaming platform, where she has more than 435,000 followers. (A spokesperson for Chaturbate confirmed this, telling Rolling Stone that Can Be Bought “certainly can be classified as one of the top earners on our platform.”) Since January 2020, Zoe and Austin’s home has also served as the CBB House, a so-called collab house where creators are invited to live and make content full-time with Zoe. 

In theory, the benefit of this model is mutual: Smaller creators get to take advantage of Zoe’s tremendous platform and live in the house rent-free, while Zoe gets to mix up her cam shows and OnlyFans content by featuring a revolving cast of characters. “We’re promoting them to our almost half a million followers on Chaturbate,” Zoe says. “And we’re helping them build their own brands as well.” (When asked if this is difficult to do in the midst of a pandemic, both Zoe and Austin shrugged it off, saying they do not test creators who come into the house to shoot. “All you’re really required to do is ask if anyone, you or anyone you’ve been with, has been in contact with Covid. And if they say no, then you’re good to go,” Zoe says. “We’re in Texas. You can tell people down here aren’t that scared about it.”)

On her OnlyFans page, Zoe posts idyllic videos of life for those in the house, including shopping sprees and boozy trips to New Orleans and Austin. “We were supposed to be, like, a crew, living this lavish lifestyle and all that,” says Violet Flowers, a cam performer who says she also worked as Austin’s paid assistant and streamed with Zoe for more than a year, from December 2019 until her departure in January 2021.

Promoting this sumptuous lifestyle was key to recruiting new members to the group, says Aspen Taylor, a Texas-based model who met Zoe and Austin while she was a waitress at the restaurant Twin Peaks last year. “[Zoe] had the new Christian Dior bag and Balenciagas, Burberrys. I could tell the way they were dressed they made really good money,” she recalls. The ultimate goal of the CBB House was to generate enough interest to create an adult brand, which would ideally evolve into a Keeping Up With the Kardashians-esque reality show. “They really wanted girls to come live with them,” says Violet. “They wanted to make it a Playboy house.”

But six former members of the house tell Rolling Stone that their experience of life in the CBB House was much darker. These cam performers (most, but not all, of whom are identified by name in this story) allege that they were recruited by Zoe and Austin on websites like Seeking Arrangements and apps like Tinder, only to be financially exploited. They say the two took 50 percent of their earnings in exchange for room, board, and exposure to Zoe’s followers, which often entailed participating in grueling streams for up to seven hours on Chaturbate. Often, they say, Austin encouraged or pressured them to use alcohol and marijuana while filming. Two of the women Rolling Stone spoke with also alleged that Austin, who served a de facto managerial role in the house, sexually assaulted them. (Austin denied both of these allegations in multiple interviews with Rolling Stone.)