Young stars with their whole lives ahead of them have drifted off of the rails, gone missing or even died. With at least 5 of these tragedies in the past 3 months, what's going so terribly wrong within the industry to lead to this?

And how is this industry destroying society as a whole?

Well let's find out where these formerly acclaimed adult film stars are today.

You see, Emily Willis was one of the few examples of a success story in adult film and her early life reads like the dream of anyone looking to make their way into the industry.

While details about her life are shaky, it seems like lots of stars she began with nothing.

Growing up in a small village in Utah, Emily was a quiet introverted girl growing up.

She kept a low profile during high school, moving out to San Diego to try and build a life for herself.

But after some short-lived jobs and sales that didn't work out, Emily was broke.

She had no money and nothing to do, all whilst living in one of the most expensive places in

America. But then suddenly, at the age of 18, Emily was swiping through Tinder, matching with different guys, until she would meet a man called Andre Garcia, who she began to date shortly after. But this was far from any fairytale romance story, and it wasn't just a regular date, because Garcia is now known as one of the most infamous men behind girls. A sinister website which acted as just one of many tube sites online.

Garcia and his colleagues were tricking coerced women into appearing in adult videos, which they told them would only ever be sold as DVDs outside of the country.

Sometimes they would offer young girls work as models, only to later force them into doing nude videos instead.

They even hired another young woman to convince potential victims to go along with it, figuring that that would seem more trustworthy.

Emily was just one of the many girls they exploited, but her story went much further than most of the others.

Her videos proved immensely popular on the site, and soon enough, she was receiving offers from all sorts of different producers to star in their videos.

It wasn't always easy. Emily's family were distraught when they learned about her new career, and it completely destroyed their family relationship for years, as you can imagine.

But on the surface, it seemed like everything was going well.

This is how the industry tricks women into joining it in the first place, and how it tricks young men into thinking it's acceptable to watch.

Everything seems great on the surface, until you find out some very nasty, sinister consequences. The side of the industry nobody wants you to know, as Emily would soon find out.

After this, Emily would soon star in over 700 films over the course of her career, for which she won multiple awards and became one of the most popular actresses on the internet.

But more than that, Emily even began making a career outside of the industry, and branched out into other online spaces.

She even went on the Sidemen's real-life Tinder videos, which gained over 56 million views.

But behind the scenes of all these vlogs, all of these videos, all of this money and fame, was a gnawing mental health problem.

A nagging voice inside of her.

You see, Emily was dealing with terrible addiction problems.

Surrounded by young people working for fast money, it's inevitable that these people will encounter drugs at some point.

But eventually, the lifestyle of being in this industry, and being swept into this line of work, got far too much for her to bear.

And so she retired from making videos at just 23 years old.

A good move, but the damage it did, was starting to take a toll.

As unfortunately, the downward spiral that that industry sent her into couldn't be reversed.

And two years later, on February 5th of 2024, everything changed.

When Emily was tragically admitted to critical care at a California hospital, after suffering from a heart attack just a week after entering a rehab facility.

This happened because she had overdosed, which put her in a coma for two months.

And despite waking up recently, doctors don't believe she'll ever fully recover.

But hopefully she does.

And now this might seem like a very tragic, but isolated incident.

However, unfortunately, it's an increasingly common story within the industry.

You see, of course, we all know these sites, the people making these videos, and the production companies behind them, are always exploitative.

Young unstable people looking for quick money can use it as a crush to support a fast lifestyle.

Instant fame, success, and money invalidation that destroys you morally later on.

Meanwhile, there's plenty of people and companies eager to exploit their fleecing popularity, before moving on to the next victim.

But with the rise of the internet and the massive explosion of tube sites, it's all gotten so much worse.

The tube sites sell themselves as offering a kind of freedom and empowerment for the performers in the videos. But in actuality, they've only made things far more competitive and cutthroat for people looking to enter the industry.

The sheer amount of choice in videos on these platforms, mean women rarely get a chance to make a name for themselves.

The majority start on just two or three videos before giving it up.

For the little pay they do receive, they've traded their privacy and their dignity.

The videos they are in rarely get removed from the internet and stick around forever, as they get uploaded over and over again.

Showing one of the most intimate acts to the entire world, repeatedly for an audience of millions.

However, for the majority of performers that don't make it through the industry, there are a few people who have a different story.

One of them is the infamous Mia Khalifa.

Fleeing her home country of Lebanon as a child and moving to the United States,

Khalifa's life was relatively ordinary at first.

After graduating high school, she went to college to study art, whilst working as a waitress and a model on the side.

But when she was 21, she was approached to star in adult films, which almost overnight brought her huge fame and success, if you want to put it that way.

I am just loving the success and loving everything that I've gotten because of it.

And I say that because the way she gained fame and success, was probably done in one of the worst ways possible.

You see, in one of her first videos, Khalifa and her co-star were wearing hijabs, and that became its whole own news story.

Death threats and anger came flooding in from across the Middle East, while news outlets like CNN and the Washington Post caught on and almost instantly made her a household name.

And overnight, she became the most searched for name on the most popular websites.

Miz's time in the industry was short and she clearly got the paycheck she was looking for.

Despite saying that she was only paid $12,000 over the course of her career, the companies who made her videos have said that it was at least 10 times that much.

But even in this best case scenario of becoming the most popular star around in just a few short videos, Miz still says she has a bunch of regrets.

She's described how difficult it has been to shake this reputation, to find a regular job or to ever be taken seriously.

I would say that if I had never met that person, I never would have done the things that people know me for doing.

And I could have just been living life normally making $18 an hour, hopefully.

But you can't feel too sorry for her.

I mean, it's hard to distance yourself from the industry that brought you your fame, especially when you're still using the same false name that most people know you by.

Her criticism of the industry rings hollow when she still runs an OnlyFans and profits off of the fame she made from it.

Simply working as an actor in any way in the industry has permanent consequences.

Even with all of the fame and money that Mia got from her short-lived career, it'll never buy back her privacy or remove all of the content that still continues to haunt her today.

For most actresses and actors though, they get far less money and fame and still have to deal with all of the same consequences.

They can't live off a few months work for the rest of their lives by appearing on podcasts.

They have to get real jobs, something that a career in the industry makes a lot harder if it ever gets out.

There are other problems that such a career can make for you, even though society is still squeamish about discussing it.

Studies have shown time and time again that for many people out there, having a large number of partners before marriage can sometimes make it more likely that you will actually get divorced.

Of course, this is an ironclad rule, and it doesn't mean that your past determines your future, but it is still a social pattern.

Even taking in Mia Khalifa's string of divorces into account seems to prove the point, especially if you have this content out there on the internet.

I mean, commodifying your past relationships and selling intimacy as a product is always going to be worse for your future happiness, and especially terrible if you ever get married and the guy finds out.

Even though this is a harsh truth for serial dating that society expects and celebrates today, it doesn't make it any less true.

It's less clear whether simply watching adult films has the same effect though.

We at least know that it can have a negative effect for people already in serious relationships.

Whether it makes a difference beforehand is still kind of up in the air, but you can imagine it probably would.

But as we'll soon find out, this may be the least concerning problems that people in the industry face.

It can be easy to focus solely on women in the industry.

It's inevitably what most of the actual films are focused on.

They're the big names that draw the biggest audiences, but tons of the same problems that women face are equally challenging for men as well.

Bill Bailey was just one of those male stars.

To begin with, making it as a man in the industry is more harder than you'd think.

The pressures to perform under harsh lighting for hours at a time isn't something that most people could ever deal with.

The use of performance enhancers like Viagra is so widespread it's almost expected.

But those who can deal with the pressure and make a name for themselves can often have far longer careers than women.

Starring in lots of videos,

Bill Bailey was one of these men, appearing in over 2000 videos across his career.

Viagra isn't the only drug that gets abused in the industry.

The use of other stimulants like amphetamines are very common, as well as heavy alcohol use to deal with this lifestyle.

And it was this fight that would lead to Bill's tragic death.

You see, whilst attending an industry expo in early March of 2019, people reported seeing Bill drinking heavily throughout the day.

Later that night, while staying in a fourth floor apartment with his girlfriend,

Bill fell over the handrail of his balcony and plummeted four stories to the ground.

And local reports claim that he was involved in some kind of argument before the incident.

But authorities ruled that there was no foul play involved.

Obviously though, male stars working within the industry are a very small group compared to all of the men that are affected by it.

However tragic the performers' stories might be, the real changes to society come from mass consumption by the audience and the effects it has on them.

We've known for about 20 years now that addiction and addictive behaviours cause fundamental negative changes to the brain.

Studies on addictive drugs show damage to the frontal lobes from sustained use.

It isn't just the effects of the substances themselves.

Even in people with an addiction to food, we see the same degradation and loss of brain matter.

These changes are clear through people's behaviour, as well as through an MRI machine.

Addicts are more likely to show broad judgement towards their own actions and the consequences that come with them.

They lose their willpower and their ability to resist these addictions.

They become more impulsive and emotionally unstable.

We now understand that addictions seem to replace that reward system in our brains used to regulate normal life.

They get hijacked, redirecting your own ambition for success and happiness towards the focus of the addiction.

These addictions and the negative effects they have are exactly the same for sexual activity and the consumption of adult material.

The content offers an alternative to a fulfilling healthy life and connections with other people.

A great social group, deep meaningful relationships, connection with the society around you.

Instead, adult content is a replacement that's far easier to get, but which alienates you from what's truly valuable in life.

And companies like MindGeek, the owner of most of the major tube sites, have turned this addictive component into a multi-billion dollar money machine, using the same techniques and algorithms as sites like TikTok and YouTube.

They've put the best minds, the most intelligent programmers, psychologists, billions in research and development, endless tests and trials,

A-B testing to figure out the best way to hack into men's brains and exploit their inner systems, making a generation of wankers.

This is one of the largest changes to society we've seen in the 21st century and we're only now learning what the real consequences are.

A shocking 87% of college-aged men in America watch adult content, 50% weekly and 20% every single day.

And these numbers are only going up.

I mean, is there any surprise that nearly a third of young men are now going without intimate contact for years at a time?

They're both having their willpower taken away while being offered an easy alternative at the same time.

That ambition to do great things and accomplish something in your life is being squashed and redirected.

All to line the pockets of some shady people at a shady company that nobody's even heard of.

Coincidentally, MindGeek recently changed their name to ALO a few months after a documentary was released on Netflix shining a light on their shady practices.

And at the bottom of this pyramid are all the countless stars and performers that produce the content that fuels this money machine.

Making school girls, normal people, broke people, anyone and everyone to become their own stars and make their own OnlyFans.

Whilst addicting almost every single man to becoming more disconnected from society.

Most of the people who make their way through the industry pipeline come out the other end with a few dollars and a bunch of regrets.

Recruiters look for people with troubled backgrounds who have enough of a negative self-image to consider the work in the first place.

But the work never solves their problems and generally makes them worse.

Even the famous and popular performers can easily hit rock bottom once the work dries up.

Just like the subject of our next story, Jenny Lee.

Like most of the people we've talked about today

Jenny came from humble beginnings.

Born in the early 80s, she grew up in Clarksville a small city in Tennessee before beginning her career as a model then as an adult film star.

Her looks and her personality quickly caught on in the industry getting her work in over 100 films to date.

From 2003 to 2009, Jenny made a name for herself rising up the ranks and becoming incredibly popular with fans.

Even today over a decade after she retired her name is still on the list of top performers on tube sites.

And yet despite her work, Jenny got married at just 22 years old.