I had a neighbour who worked as a high end escort. Does that count?

She was an average looking woman, but good god, was she talkative. She could have an hour long conversation with a literal door knob. By far the most extroverted person I've known.

The saddest part of knowing her was that it was important for her that her neighbours knew who she was and she'd let the sane ones know what she did because it gave her a sense of safety knowing that there was a community of people who may shelter her temporarily or call the cops if needed.

I used to have a Science teacher who was a pretty attractive ginger lady, probably in her 20s/30s at the time.

Someone found a topless photo of a woman online who looked just like her, and had been spreading it around the school to the point where the photo had been shared across nearly every kid's PDA device. (For context: this was before the era of smartphones, but our school took part in a council trial scheme where they gave every pupil Pocket LOOX C550 PDAs. Yes, it was a colossal waste of money and no, they were almost never used in lessons.)

I always assumed it wasn't her and someone just found a pornstar doppelganger. Found out fifteen years later from my best friend that she was fired after an investigation found she was actually doing porn to fund her university studies and PGCE.

Barely counts but my former roommate dated a girl who was trying to break in. She danced and stripped, and had her own website. I never looked though, wasn’t the type I cared to see naked..

When I met her, she was a co-worker of my GF at the time. She was obviously very pretty, but also kind of immature. At some point, I learned she was fired and moved out west, to Vegas, I think. A little while later, my GF told me her former coworker was doing porn. Saw one of her videos not long after, and… yeah, it was porn. Wouldn’t say she was a porn_star_, but she did put out some stuff.

Why is there no 'Your mom!' answer here? What have we become?

A high school classmate. We went to a Catholic high school. She came back years later, broke into the school over a weekend with a crew to film her debut porn shoot. The school tried to keep it quiet, but c'mon, I'm sure every student and half the alumni from previous 5 years knew about it before classes started the following Monday.

I've only known people on the production side of porn. One was a 3D artist that was taking raw 3D scans of pornstar penises and cleaning/refining them for dildo production. I think he enjoyed the work, because he kept doing it.

Another was a sound engineer struggling to find stable work, who really did not approve of pornography. I'm pretty sure his wife made him apply and take the job. He was also the strangest conspiracy theorist I've ever met - noteably he believed the US air force had technology for greatly enhanced surround sound recordings to capture some kind of sounds. Instead of 5.1 or 7.3, he believed they had 28.7. This got even more confusing when he worked with mixers that could handle 128 feeds in and out, and he set up microphones for large bands with e.g. 60+ recordings going... so all he'd need to outdo top secret military technology is 60+ speakers.

This is a story from many years ago when I was younger and working in a coffee shop. Your usual mob of disaffected teens and twenty-somethings gossiping by day and drinking by night. A coworker's birthday was coming up and she wanted to go to Seattle's infamous HUMP! film festival. So if I'm going to be sitting there watching porn with my coworkers I might as well be plastered, right?

Unfortunately one of our number, K, couldn't attend at the time as she was ~18 and too young to drink (in America). And yet who should appear on the cinema screen, larger than life, taking a full load to the face? Too young to drink but old enough to perform. We stumbled into work the next day hungover and there she was, beaming with pride, "So what did you think?"

I wish I could remember more but I've been blessed to forget. Unsure how much I actually miss my 20's.

Quite a few. The first was this older lady I worked with at a health food restaurant who did a bunch in the 70s.

I've seen a few coworkers OFs.

One guy I worked with at mom & pop college diner, very early 20s, just started college and started doing amateur gay porn. He was a boyish and reasonably attractive guy. Summer break hits, he goes back home and gets a job in construction, when he comes back for school now he's ripped. So he starts working out, gets swoll, and went from being boyish to very handsome. Then he must have been seen by the right people, starts landing professional shoots. Next thing you know, he's dropped out of school and is flying all over the world being a pro performer and a well paid boy toy. He'd stop in a few times a year to say hi and was always smiling and dressed in expensive clothes.

In my younger years I ran with a pretty rough crowd, most of the girls had stripped and/or prostituted at some point. Plus we were all a bunch of freaks anyway, so I've seen a lot of my girly friends naked, either on stage or in person.

When I was still in high school, one of the seniors I didn't know too well did some hardcore bdsm stuff under a pseudonym and it got out to the student population. Can't confirm but I think she was 18. I saw it and while it wasn't my thing, it was absolutely surreal seeing her get whipped and brutally fucked. Even had an after-care section, which was a good sign. Looked like she enjoyed the experience. Unfortunately, this destroyed her school life, and her younger sister's as well so they ended up moving. She was in drama, so it was expected for her to go into acting, just surprising what type. Hope they're both doing good these days.

I had heard two people from my highschool class (several years after highschool obviously) had started Onlyfans accounts.

One was a guy, one was a girl.

I was mostly just curious so I definitely subbed to both for a month. No regrets.

Always support a friend's small business I say.

Me.

My cousin Joseph. In the 80s. Very dramatic, very gay, very attractive. Successful in his field. Especially VHS.

He got AIDS. Set all the records for living the longest with it. Died around 2002 from liver failure due to the meds.

Came from a traditional Italian family. His grandmother would frame his (edited) magazine covers. His father didn't take it as well.

A lady I connected with online (not a dating site or similar) asked if I was willing to help with a web site. I said ok and we met up at a nearby late night restaurant. It turned out it was a porn site and she was a porn actress, wanting to have her own site instead of the exploitive one that she was then on. We had a nice conversation about all kinds of things including web development.

The restaurant was not fancy but she spent a while picking out the cheapest things on the menu. I was the one who suggested the meeting place and I inferred that she was having cash flow problems while I was working as a programmer, so I figured I should pick up the tab when it came. It was just the considerate thing to do. When I picked it up, she freaked out as if I expected something from her because of it. She left the restaurant in a big hurry and I didn't hear from her after that, oh well.

She was an interesting person, and attractive, and I didn't anticipate that reaction at all. I like to think we could have gotten to know each other better if I'd let her pay her own tab. Shrug, whatever.

Went to high school with someone who went into porn a few years after graduating. Just checked her profile on pornhub and it has >500M views, surreal to think about

Yes, was 19 and frequented a bar underage. Waitress that worked at the bar was late 20's, and had been flirting for a while. One night convinced her to go out with me and some friends. Night progressed started making out, then she asked how old I was. Told her, and she bailed. Few months later she moved to LA and never saw her again. A few years later I heard she was doing porn. Looked her up, and was not good. Really poor quality hardcore anal porn. Must not have worked out for her because only had like 2 scenes. Both were pretty disturbing, and kinda made me rethink porn in general for a bit. Same girl just kinda dead behind the eyes.

Just a reminder for everyone reading the comments here. You're probably imagining everyone way more attractive than they actually were.

Not in porn, but I saw a girl from my friend circle in high school as a stripper.

I used to work on the road and as a result our crews spent a lot of time in hotels and bars across the country. One place we were at had a strip club, so after work we had stopped in for a few beer. While we were sitting there, the next show was about to start, a girl rushed by our table and towards the back part of the stage. Something about her seemed familiar but I wasn't sure why until she started her bit and then it clicked. A few minutes later she recognized me and waved at me from the stage.

After the show she came over and we talked for awhile and got caught up. She was talking about how a lot of guys used to make fun of how she looked but "look at me now! They wish they could get a piece of me with my new boobs!"

It was nice to see she was happy. Personally I didn't think she looked any better with a boob job but that's just me. The foreman on one of the other crews was in love with her though and collected all of her posters, plastering them all over the work van, so I had to see those bolt ons every time I went to the other mill for the rest of the summer.

One of my long time friends of 20+ years did a lot of sex work including films and images. I photographed her a million times, sometimes for her site and publicity. Sometimes just her feet. The sex industry is weird but interesting.

Yeah an ex mentor at my youth group - it helped confirm my suspicious about her anatomy but also it was kinda weird 😭

I popped into a Mexican restaurant for a beer and recognised our waitress from one of those casting sites. She seemed normal. I guess it was a one-off thing and she lived with the assumption that the geo-block for that site would keep locals from seeing it.

A girl I dated got ai psychosis last year, doxxed herself, and started posting nudes. Does that count?

I went in a date with a relatively popular OF model. I didn't know until she shared it during the date. She was cute but there wasn't chemistry and chatted as friends for a bit but then she tried to sell me on her OF, at which point I said no thanks.

A handful of my regular friends do OF on the side.