A purchase from IKEA is rarely ever an investment. More often than not, furniture from the affordable Swedish giant doesn’t even survive a move from one apartment to the next, and instead winds up discarded on the side of the road, a rotting pile of plywood that served its purpose but must now become one with the earth. But for some adult content creators, a $95 IKEA chair has paid for itself several times over.
The TOBIAS, as it’s called, is a clear chair affixed to a chrome base. “A transparent chair that mirrors its surroundings, it picks up the colors of the room and appears to be floating,” its IKEA description reads. “And because there’s flexibility in the seat, you may feel like you’re floating too.”
As DIY porn-makers have wisely noticed, this “floating” effect makes the chair the perfect tool for shooting POV videos, twerk clips, suction-cup dildo rides or even just showing off what their bits look like when smooshed into a chair. Search “transparent chair” or “clear chair” on Twitter or Pornhub, and you’ll see dozens of creative uses for such seating, with the TOBIAS among the most commonly used models. Top performers like Anya Braddock, Sexy Librarian and Callie Murphy have posted content with it as well.
“This chair from IKEA has got to be my best investment of 2021,” says OnlyFans creator Allie Luna in a TikTok with over five million views. In it, she shows off the chair and then, while her body is totally covered, appears to twerk over it in a reverse-straddle stance.
After the video went viral, she made a series of follow-ups where she called the chair a “tax writeoff” and subtly suggested that there was a far more NSFW video of her in the chair, the link for which one might find on Twitter. (TikTok is often very strict about linking or mentioning OnlyFans, so many performers strategically lead their viewers to other platforms with more liberal policies.)
Apparently, this technique has been quite successful for Luna. “That TikTok has brought me in quite a bit of money in a short amount of time — well over 3,000 subscribers,” she tells me. To put that into perspective, Luna usually charges $15 a month on her OnlyFans, with a 50-percent discount for the first month. If 3,000 of those new subscribers paid $7.50 each, that means she netted around $22,500 before OnlyFans’ cut. For reference, that’s 236 TOBIAS chairs.
As promised, Luna does sit on the TOBIAS in a number of her photos and videos, as well as a different clear chair from an unknown brand, mirrors, cakes, dildos and people with penises. As a little gift to all the new subscribers who came to her OnlyFans from her viral TOBIAS TikTok, she also shared a one-minute-long, free NSFW version — revealing that she is actually twerking on a dildo suctioned to the chair. I can’t say it makes good on IKEA’s promise of a “floating” chair, but who cares? There’s a hot woman on it! Twerking!
Plus, it’s functional. “As a creator, it’s really hard to find items to stick your toys to,” says Luna. “I see lots of people use windows, floors and bathtubs, but the chair worked so well. It was a bit of a ‘game-changing’ moment as a content creator and female who masturbates. I even had another creator/friend text me to ask if the suction was good because her suction toys were being neglected.”
As Luna stated in her TikTok, the TOBIAS has been a worthwhile investment. Now that it’s also contributed to her going viral and gaining thousands of new subscribers, that must be exponentially more true. Maybe adult creators will find ways to utilize other IKEA classics, too — anyone know if a MALM dresser is safe to twerk on?
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
