Overview

John Cena OnlyFans refers to the viral marketing campaign on social media by wrestler and actor John Cena, who announced the creation of his OnlyFans account in late February 2024 as a promotional stunt for his upcoming Amazon MGM movie Ricky Stanicky (also the name of Cena's character in the film), which releases on March 7th, 2024. The combination of John Cena, an actor who many fans associate as being family-friendly outside of the set, combined with his antics over the previous years as a WWE wrestler, resulted in many reactions and memes being made about this advertisement as it spread online.

Background

On February 22nd, 2024, John Cena posted the link to an OnlyFans page on his official X^[1] account. In the post, he claims that people will be able to see him like never before, a play on his "You Can't See Me" catchphrase. The announcement also included a video of fans blowing and the words "link in bio" being shown in the middle of the screen, earning over 11.6 million views in one week (shown below).

The OnlyFans^[4] page linked by Cena is under the username "Ricky Stanicky," which is also the name of his character in the 2024 comedy-drama film of the same name. As of February 28th, 2024, the OF account has over 57,000 fans, 8,700 likes and seven videos (seen below).

Between February 22nd and 28th, Cena made five additional posts to his X / Twitter account promoting and teasing the OnlyFans account, each of them accumulating millions of views and thousands of likes in roughly a week.^[5]

Following the initial post by John Cena announcing his OnlyFans on February 22nd, 2024, various media and pop culture accounts began reposting it and spreading the news. For example, the X account @PopBase^[6] posted about it that same day and said, "John Cena has joined OnlyFans," garnering over 10.7 million views in a week.

However, the post received a Community Note from X users who pointed out that this was merely to promote a movie (seen below). The moment was also reposted to the /r/GetNoted^[7] subreddit on February 23rd, receiving over 1,400 upvotes in five days.

Online Reactions

Fans of Cena were quick to jump into the discourse surrounding the OnlyFans link and announcement. At first, many expressed shock that Cena, a wrestler with the most Make-A-Wish appearances by a celebrity, would be doing adult content.

For example, on February 26th, 2024, X user @60404^[2] posted an often-used reaction image of Cena, the Confused John Cena meme, as his response to another post by Cena advertising the OnlyFans, captioning it, "Am i reading this correctly?" and earning over 71,000 views in 14 hours (shown below).

Other fans, however, noticed that the OnlyFans page was under the name of the character Cena is playing in an upcoming movie, Ricky Stanicky, and not an actual OnlyFans page set up by the wrestler. On February 22nd, X user @elirobledo04^[3] uploaded a laughing reaction image while saying that people are overreacting and are unable to tell that Cena is simply promoting a movie through this marketing stunt (shown below).

The viral marketing stunt was also covered by various YouTubers in late February 2024, especially wrestling fans. For example, YouTuber Tyrone Magnus uploaded a video on February 22nd discussing the OnlyFans promo, receiving over 23,000 views in a week (shown below, left). Also that day, YouTuber MalcolmLikesWrestling uploaded a video titled "I bought John Cena's OnlyFans so you don't have to," receiving nearly 3,000 views in the same timeframe (shown below, right).

Cena Nude At The Oscars

On March 10th, 2024, John Cena participated in a gag in which he appeared to be naked on stage at the Oscars.

Some online felt that the stunt, like his OnlyFans, was a promotion for Ricky Stanicky. For example, movie critic David Elrich8] joked during the moment that it was part of Ricky Stanicky's Oscar campaign, gaining over 30 retweets and 680 likes in one day (shown below, left). User @MissSassbox^[9] commented that the scene at the Oscars was reminiscent of the character in the film, gaining over 100 likes in the same time frame (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References