Zara Darz has nearly 60,000 Instagram followers. (Image: @zara.darz/Instagram)
YouTuber Zara Dar has made headlines by abandoning her PhD aspirations to pursue a career as a full-time OnlyFans creator. Once an advocate for women in science and technology, the former computer science researcher shared her journey in a candid YouTube video titled “PhD Dropout to OnlyFans Model.”
“Moving on to doing OnlyFans and content creation full-time—it’s not just a career choice; it feels kind of like a gamble on the direction of my entire life,” said Dar, whose channel boasts over 1 lakh subscribers and previously featured tutorials on machine learning and neural networks.
Dar’s decision stemmed from a disillusionment with the academic and corporate worlds. While considering a future as a professor mentoring students, she grew critical of the systemic limitations that stifled personal growth and financial freedom.
“People whose lifestyles I thought I envied are tied to someone else’s vision. They’ll spend their lives working for a company and doing things they don’t necessarily enjoy,” she remarked. “Their work might win someone else’s wealth and fame while they stay in the background, expendable, constantly worrying about getting laid off.”
Dar, who earned a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Texas, expressed frustration with the grind of academia, where she felt constrained by the demands of funding agencies and the bureaucracy of institutional expectations.
During her PhD program, Dar began experimenting with OnlyFans as a side project. Her content creation quickly became a lucrative venture, netting her $1 million—enough to pay off her family’s mortgage, purchase a car, and build an investment portfolio.
“Thankfully, I avoided taking out any student loans. Now, I have an investment portfolio and am planning to buy my own house,” she revealed. These financial accomplishments, she said, underscored the tangible rewards of forging her own path.
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Dar contrasted her earnings with the average income of US professors, which she noted was around $100,000 annually. Many professors, she highlighted, spend more time drafting grant proposals than engaging in meaningful research.
The YouTuber emphasised that her decision was not made lightly but reflected her desire for a life free from conventional constraints. “I wanted a life unbound by the expectations of an academic institution or the constraints of a corporate office,” she explained.
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