In brief: On 2 Goons (Sept. 14), Lil Baby MJ said a manager kept most of her earnings when she started at 19, held her to what she called a “lifetime” contract, and threatened her when she tried to leave.
Contains adult themes: the embedded podcast video discusses adult-industry work.
This one isn’t really a funny one, and Lil Baby MJ didn’t tell it that way.
The creator, tagged @mjpovxo in the episode description, sat down with Che Durena and JJ Liberman for “She Got Scammed Into Sex Work & Blackmailed for Years – Lil Baby MJ on 2 Goons” (Sept. 14). She said she grew up in a strict religious household in the Montreal area. Her family’s rules about men and women not sharing a room were strict enough that the hosts started using the word “cult.”
‘I thought I got hacked’
She said she started posting bikini photos and grew from about 2,000 followers to half a million in three or four months. On the first day of paid content, “I thought I got hacked. … I thought it was a joke.” The money never reached her, though. Her manager, “the one who connected me, got the money,” she said, and told her that payouts take time.
“Uh I was 19,” she said of when the paid work began, adding that he had been in contact with her for years before that. On one platform, she said:
And the way he created the account, he took 80% and I took 20 on that one.
“And then he owned the PayPal,” she added. A host estimated she got about 10% overall in four and a half months, and she agreed. All she wanted, she said, was enough to pay off tuition: “I just needed 20k.” She thought he held money back for exactly that reason.
The contract
When she tried to leave, she said, he told her she had signed a contract. “And then the contract was lifetime, too,” she said. “I learned many years later, that’s not legal.” After months of crying FaceTime calls, threats and blackmail, she changed her password. He got into the account anyway and deleted it, she said, but she had kept backups. She said he then ran pages to harass her and told meme accounts to report her.
Afterward, she said, she was “scared of leaving my house.” She took “a whole year off” and lived on savings “cuz I was terrified of him finding me.” It took a friend, she said, to name what had happened: “you’re like basically pimped.”
Now
Today she works on her own terms. She has strict blocking rules and calls her page “my safe space to like explore.” She works with one partner only because “I want to get married one day.” She says she has “never hit those numbers again” since the account was deleted, but makes good money. She also said her sister, who supports her, is heading to med school.
The episode description, written by the show, describes the same thing: a man who “scammed her into sex work and used it to blackmail her for years.” It also says her mother was taking money from her, which she discussed on air and which we have left out. She did not name the manager on air, and neither do we. The pay splits, the contract, the threats and the deleted account are her own account; we found no court record or outside reporting. Pineapple Support, a nonprofit that helps adult workers with mental health care, offers free and low-cost therapy.
Her rules now: one partner, one chance before blocking, and the PayPal in her own name. That last one shouldn’t have to be a rule.