Snake wrangler and reality TV star Rob Rausch has added another unexpected gig to his repertoire: whispering sultry stories for your listening pleasure.“This ol’ girl, her car breaks down, and, uh, he helps her out,” Rausch says in a teaser for “Snake Handler,” a reptile sanctuary-set romance on the audio platform Quinn.The viral heartthrob, who rose to fame on “Love Island USA” and “The Traitors,” is part of a growing wave of celebrities and content creators foraying into the world of audio erotica.The format, which has previously been confined to certain corners of the internet, is being embraced by many women as an alternative to traditional visual porn. Its rise coincides with the popularity of sexually explicit (or smutty) romance books, including author Rachel Reid’s steamy gay hockey romance-turned-TV show “Heated Rivalry.”The show’s stars, Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams, were even tapped to narrate a story for Quinn, in a moment that underscored a broader embrace of the space. Since its December debut, “Ember & Ice,” an enemies-to-lovers story, has been listened to more than 3.5 million times on Quinn, according to the app’s founder.“The imagination is so powerful, and often it’s the things you don’t see — the mystery, the kind of tension and slow burn of a story — that are the most appealing and erotic,” said Caroline Spiegel, who started Quinn in 2019. “So I think sometimes, actually, visual depictions of sex can detract from the overall appeal, which is counterintuitive.”Spiegel said that’s part of why the medium is so appealing to women, who make up more than three-quarters of Quinn’s users, a group that also largely skews between the ages of 18 and 44. In contrast to visual porn sites, the most popular stories on Quinn tend to focus on emotional connection, sorted into categories like “aftercare,” “apology,” “body worship” and “praise.”Rosara Torrisi, founding director of the Long Island Institute of Sex Therapy, said erotica also takes away people’s inclination to compare their own bodies to those they see in visual porn. Reading erotica used to be a common clinical recommendation in sex therapy for women, she said, but audio mixes in additional sensory experiences.“For some people who are really auditorily attuned, it gives them a lot of the things that they enjoyed most from watching porn, but none of the parts that they didn’t like of what they were seeing on the screen,” Torrisi said. “So it kind of matches the imagination that you would get with written erotica and porn together.”Part of Quinn’s recent strategy has been heavily leaning into celebrity collabs — particularly enlisting young stars who are affectionately described as “internet boyfriends” to perform stories. These include Christopher Briney from “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” Tom Blyth from “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” and Luke Newton from “Bridgerton.”But the format has also given rise to lesser known voices and authors.Quinn now hosts about 100 voice actors who create content for the platform. Aspiring audio erotica creators can audition, Spiegel said, and Quinn reaches out to those who seem like a good fit. These creators then get a share of revenue based on content performance, as well as tips from users.One erotic script writer, who goes by the pen name NeonDextrose, is also a voice actor and full-time audio engineer in the audio erotica space. She said that discovering this career path felt like finally “hitting the gas on the highway.”“Not only is it like, oh, it’s spicy content, but it’s connection, it’s relationship building, it’s chemistry, it’s tension,” she said. “It’s all of the things that I loved about all of the books growing up that I now had access to create myself.”Voice actors can request scripts from her, often centered around specific concepts or themes, NeonDextrose said. But if she doesn’t already have a client, she’ll sometimes write scripts and put them out for public use. In her six years in the field, NeonDextrose has produced work for a variety of audio erotica platforms, including Quinn. She launched The Dex Collective last month, where she and other creatives in the space are now publishing the erotic content they produce as a team.“It’s an incredible opportunity as a writer, as a voice actor, as an engineer, as a producer and basically as a director to realize that this is largely an untapped market, even for how saturated it may feel for those of us that are in it,” NeonDextrose said.For audio narrator Hel, who also spoke under her pseudonym, discovering romance books and audio erotica in the midst of her postpartum depression enabled her to prioritize her needs and “feel sexy again.” She said that such content tends to focus on women’s pleasure, which she noted “has been historically very taboo.”“Most of porn is very much centered around the male gaze: There’s a woman’s body, things are happening to her, and that is sexy. Whereas in audio erotica, there’s a lot of vulnerability, there’s a lot of care, there’s a lot of emotional intimacy,” Hel said. “It’s not just the act [of sex] itself. It’s the trust, it’s the conversation, it’s the banter, it’s everything that leads up to it, that tension. It’s all of the beautiful things in a relationship, including the sex.”Now she performs audio erotica along with her husband, who also works in the industry. Sometimes, the couple voices stories together, and they’ve also worked with other co-narrators.Voice actor Ethan Gray, who does audio erotica work under a different name, said he began exploring erotica voice acting after growing concerned that generative AI would “rail over” traditional audiobook narration.Much of the typical narration in the industry sounded “slow and methodical and kind of robotic,” he said. However, he quickly realized that AI struggles to perform audio erotica. It can’t moan well, and it often messes up the background noises these stories incorporate, he said.It’s a sentiment that NeonDextrose and others echoed. AI could never.NeonDextrose, a producer who has worked for a variety of audio erotica platforms“In terms of giving a heartfelt performance and delivering emotion in a way that is so intimate and so personal,” NeonDextrose said, “AI could never.”Gray and others in the space say they believe this type of content is becoming less taboo, which has helped it become a highly professionalized industry. In addition to writers and actors, many stories also have directors, intimacy coordinators and sound designers.“Now you see people getting into it who are, like, full-blown audio engineers producing high-quality, immersive content,” Gray said. “They’re doing stuff that audio books are so far behind on that it’s becoming almost an arms race, in a way.”He said erotica also enables a level of creativity and kinkiness that traditional publishing houses and movie studios are unlikely to ever replicate.“I’ve heard people try to make audio that I don’t know how you would even get that into a studio’s brain to do,” he said. “Like, two werewolves meet up, and they both have the same beta … and it’s two guys growling at each other, and they end up having sex with each other instead of the [female character], who just chooses to watch this as it happens.”But that type of story really is not as scandalous as some people may think, said Gray. At the end of the day, “it’s just two really goofy guys, who are nice guys, in a booth growling at each other.”