Teddy Bryce is retiring from OnlyFans – and putting everything into Strapp Metal (EXCLUSIVE)

Teddy Bryce is retiring. After nearly two decades in porn, Colton Long is ready to leave his alter ego behind – though, as he’s quick to admit, saying goodbye to sex work for good might be another matter entirely.

His career has taken him from studio porn and escorting to fan sites and OnlyFans, which he has long considered a means to an end. Now, that end has arrived in the form of Strapp Metal, the queer fashion and fetishwear brand he founded with his partner, Lee Finnigan, blending eroticism, heavy metal aesthetics and queer art across everything from underwear and harnesses to T-shirts.

Speaking to Attitude, Long reflects on his decision to step away from OnlyFans, the realities of making a living from sex work, and the complicated boundaries between performer and fan.

He also discusses body image, his relationship with the Teddy Bryce persona, and how his love of queer art and eroticism has found a new outlet through Strapp Metal.

Attitude: You’ve decided to retire from OnlyFans. What made you realise that now was the right time to leave?

Colton Long: It’s a good question. It wasn’t so much of a realisation as much as it was a necessity. I have always looked at sex work and porn as a sort of means to an end, and in my nearly 15-to-20-year career, from studio porn to fan sites to escorting, there have been various job opportunities or various career paths that I’ve chosen, but have used porn as a way to fund either education or starting apprenticeships or, you know, using it, like I said, as a means to an end to another career.

A lot of those didn’t pan out, but fortunately with this new company that me and my partner started, Strapp Metal, it’s grown so big so fast that I do not have time to upload, to chat with people, to stay consistent. It really is just taking on a life of its own.

So I was kind of forced to quit, in a way.

What do you think people misunderstand about what it’s like to make a living as an OnlyFans creator?

I think over the years, people have been more vocal about how much of a job it is, but I think that because of the lasting stigma around doing sex work or OnlyFans, it’s so pervasive that all we do is take naked photos or, you know, play with ourselves on camera, and then make a tonne of money and we don’t pay taxes.

You know, that’s kind of the idea that most people think of, or that it’s some sort of dark thing that we’ve been forced into because of a loss of opportunity or a broken childhood or whatever. But those things are so far from the truth.

It is very much a full-time career where you are fully self-employed, which already makes things a lot harder when it comes to anything like taxes or trying to buy a home or anything like that.

But on top of that, you are your own boss, but you also have to learn and maintain and brush up on skills like video editing, like social media posting, so you’re basically a social media expert.

You have to learn how to speak to an audience. You have to learn what things work for your audience. You have to kind of become a brand manager. There’s so many different things that you have to take on to do this job effectively, especially in 2026 when content creation has been on such a wave.

There’s been so many highs and lows where there was a huge boom of people during the pandemic and afterwards, and then it kind of fell off, and then now there’s a lot more people again. And so you always have to be teaching yourself new skills.

You always have to make sure that you’re consistent, and you always have to make sure that you are giving your audience what you want. And that ends up taking up a lot of time, and a lot of that ends up being a lot of overtime. You never really turn off.

As much as I can sit here and tell you how much of a job it is, I don’t think that people will ever fully grasp that until we can start having a real conversation about how sex work is a real job.

There are obviously highs and lows to the work. How does the financial freedom and visibility weigh up against the pressures and expectations of the industry?

I definitely think that because it’s such a front-facing job, you really are exposed in a lot of ways where, in a lot of other fields, you’re not.

I think that other big social media presences would possibly understand because the more you put yourself out there, the more you open yourself up to criticism, to unwanted feedback, or to just general trolling. And I think as sex workers, we kind of bear the brunt of that.

A lot of people don’t view people who do porn or people who put themselves out on the internet in that way as real people or serious people, and that can lead to a really disrespectful way of treating us or speaking to us, which can, in some cases, have led to in-person physical situations where people are disrespectful as well.

Can you tell me more about those experiences and the boundaries that can get crossed?

When you are putting yourself out there online, and if someone is subscribing to the content that you create, there sort of becomes this unspoken contract that we are doing it for you, for you specifically, the fans.

That can make people believe that it’s appropriate to touch us when they see us or to say insane things in public to us. So there can be a lot of boundaries being crossed without any sort of consent or without any sort of asking first, because people assume that because we put ourselves out there online or we have a very strong presence online where we’re having sex or getting naked or being sexual, that that gives them the consent to then touch us or say insane things to us.

What kind of things have people said to you?

So if I’m in a group of friends and someone will come up who I’ve never met before and start talking to me in a very sexual, like overtly sexual way in a situation that is not like at a sex festival or, you know, it can be very embarrassing.

And you’ve never met that person before. They’re a complete stranger to you. There’s this sort of weird phenomenon where people will start talking to you as if you guys have known each other for years because they know you. And I understand that there will end up being these sort of parasocial relationships where people have invested so much time into you, and I appreciate it, I really, really appreciate it.

I just think that sometimes the things that happen online don’t necessarily transfer into the real world, and you can kind of get like a warped sense of your reality when you try to apply the same conduct online as in the real world.

When your body and image are such a huge part of your work, how has that affected your relationship with yourself and your appearance?

Well, I think it can definitely be very challenging when your image and your body is what you’re selling. Because it’s a lot of maintenance, it’s a lot of putting yourself out there and hoping for the best.

And I know that a lot of people, a lot of gay men, struggle with body image issues without even putting themselves out online in that capacity, so it can be very – it can be a little scary.

As far as my relationship to my body, I know that over the nearly two decades of doing sex work, I’ve definitely had a very up-and-down relationship with my own self-confidence and my own body image issues, a lot of which I have tried to address, but a lot of which I know that I still have not and will probably take some professional help, which I completely welcome.

But I do think that it has made me confident in a way that when I look back, I’m very proud.

So I actually saw an old video of mine from maybe like 10 years ago, and I remember when I shot that video, I was like, “Oh, I’m so skinny,” and I was just ripping myself apart.

And when I look back on it, now I am a lot smaller, but I can look at it and I can say, “I looked so good then.” You know, like, I looked amazing then. And I’m starting now to understand how powerful it is to just accept yourself in whatever stage that you’re at. I know that it’s always like a growth that’s happening.

How does that tie into Strapp Metal’s new Romantics line, which embraces the feminine in a hypermasculine world?

I think with this new business what I am really starting to appreciate is how clothes can make us feel sexier, how clothes can accentuate certain parts of yourself or allow you to almost become a different persona, to allow yourself to have that sort of confidence.

And even though it’s very skimpy stuff, we have this new Romantics line that is very much embracing lingerie and femininity and sort of like playing with the masculine and feminine.

Having those sort of skimpy little clothes that you might look at and say, “I’ll never look good in that,” and then when you try them on, having that feeling of just being, you know, like almost like a costume or like a superhero uniform that allows you to just have that confidence.

And with Strapp, that’s really what we aspire to. We want everyone to feel sexy. We want everyone to fit in these clothes and to feel amazing, and to feel like the clothes were made for them.

We definitely choose a certain type of model and that’s obvious. It’s like bodybuilders and, you know, whatever. A lot of thought goes into how clothes will fit every type of body, and we do a lot of fittings on other types of bodies as well.

The thing that we’re trying to do is to show an ideal that we know will sell and allow people to hopefully feel as sexy as these glossy photos look, while still harkening back to nostalgia of the old style of porn and everything.

It is all kind of – I think that as gay men, we’re never going to be able to fully separate ourselves from the ideal masculine form, but I do think it’s fun to play with that a little bit and maybe help people achieve that sort of feeling through the clothes.

You’re now focusing your attention fully on Strapp Metal. What does building this brand allow you to express that OnlyFans possibly didn’t?

Right, that’s a really good question.

My formal training and education is in art, so I grew up drawing. Drawing has always been my passion – sketching, illustration – and I have a degree in painting and sculpture.

And through that, I thought that tattooing would be the best route, and it was for really for a while until it wasn’t, until it wasn’t quite serving me anymore.

So I’ve always kind of been in the pursuit of a career where I could basically just draw. I’ve always loved heavy metal graphics. I’ve always loved the male form. I’ve always loved old gay erotic comics.

And so I’ve always been searching for a career where I can put all those things together and make money from them.

Porn has always kind of been a means to an end, and as much fun as it was, it was never really fulfilling in an artistic way.

It was more, you know, fulfilling in feeding my – not my ego, but my drive to be a bodybuilder or to look great on camera, you know, which is something that is really fun to work towards, but it didn’t really fulfil me in a way that art does.

And so with Strapp, I get to draw these gay erotic things. I get to design for men. I get to draw like heavy metal graphics.

Most of the designs, like the graphic designs on the T-shirts, I will have drawn. We do commission out because I will see other artists that I really admire, other queer artists I really admire, and we want to be able to support them as well.

Most of these people, to be honest, don’t need it because they’re extremely talented and extremely well known in their own spheres, but I think it’s more for us that we’re like, ‘It’s so cool that this person would want to work with us,’ you know, that this person would say yes to this project.

And we’ve really gotten to know like a really awesome group of illustrators and artists over the years.

So, yeah, I think just being able to fulfil that really creative piece was the thing that was missing out of the content creation.

Do you think you’ll ever go back to OnlyFans or adult content generally?

We had a retirement party and it was more of, not a joke, but It wasn’t anything sort of serious and it was also like a way for us to test out throwing events through Strapp, which went really well, and we’re really happy that we did it.

We learned a lot from our first event, so it was a really great way to test the waters.

But I’ve kind of – I don’t believe any sex worker that says that they’re never doing it again because I think that it’s kind of just a part of who we are to be either exhibitionists or to want to share that part of ourselves with the world.

And I know that some people can get really, really overwhelmed, I think, because there’s just so much that goes into it and there’s so much socially that can be very challenging.

So if I ever see someone, like a performer online, that’s like, ‘I’m never doing this again,’ I kind of just think like, ‘I know what they’re going through. I know that they’re having a moment,’ and I always kind of just reserve any sort of judgement for anyone that does that, especially because I know a lot of times that it’s more of a reaction than anything else.

And if they do quit porn completely, like good for them. Like, I love that for them.

But I do like to think that, like, most people who are in sex work, it’s going to be a part of their lives forever, in some sort of capacity.

So I’ll probably be showing my butthole online in some capacity until, you know, till I’m in the grave.

What about the character Teddy Bryce? Is he going to continue to live through Strapp Metal, or is it fully Colton now?

I would say that I’ve kind of outgrown him in a way.

I really appreciate what that character has been, and in a lot of ways I think that me and Teddy have been at odds throughout the years, but Teddy has helped me through so many things. And I’m really appreciative.

But I do think at this time in my life, it’s not necessarily like something that I need anymore.

And to be honest, a lot of it is just logistics and being easy, because at this point in my life, I would like to just be able to introduce myself as who I am, you know, and I really like my real name.

I think Colton Long is a really cool name. It sounds like more of a porn name than Teddy does, to be honest.

So I would like to just kind of test out just being myself for a bit.

And that’s not to say that if anyone calls me Teddy, I’m gonna be like, ‘What are you doing?’ You know, I still very much appreciate it and I will still very much answer to that, and I think it would be crazy to think that no one’s gonna address me as that anymore.

But when I introduce myself moving forward, I’ll probably introduce myself as Colton.

What do you envision for the future of the brand?

Oh God, there’s so many plans that we have, and next year is gonna be such a huge year for us.

2026 was definitely a big learning curve for us. We definitely made a lot of mistakes. We took on a lot of challenges that we didn’t realise that we were taking on.

We learned a lot about new manufacturers in China. We learned a lot about new shipping processes. We learned a lot about what our customers want and do not want logistically.

And more than anything, we want our customers to be happy. And I know that there have been a couple moments during this year where we have not fulfilled that promise with them, and moving forward my main focus is to make sure that we are the most customer-friendly as we can be.

Because that’s the hard stuff for me and Lee, my partner. That’s the challenge for us. The challenge for us isn’t being creative because we have a million ideas and we know how to grow the business.

The challenge for us is to make sure that everything is working behind the scenes exactly the way that it should be working and that people are getting the best customer service that they possibly can.

But I think you probably want to know more about the fun stuff.

Next year we have, without giving too much away in case something doesn’t pan out, we have a lot of really, really fun things planned for next year: new events, new products, new means of showing the events, new wholesale opportunities for people who can’t get to us, or people who the shipping is really difficult for them.

So we’re really just trying to expand as much as possible so that everyone has the opportunity to get into Strapp gear.

But I definitely see us as becoming more of a lifestyle brand, more of like a brand where you can go on, you can be like, “OK, well, I want this little thong. I want like a T-shirt that I can wear day to day. I want a pair of jeans.”

Be able to buy everything in one place and it all be fantastic quality, great design, and with like a Strapp edge to it.