The Good...
There are going to be good times in any job. Being a Cam Girl has brought me some really great days. There are some days that I set a goal on my page, and reach it three times over, then sit on cam and talk with my fans for a few hours. The great thing about my job, in my opinion, is that communication with people. It's a lot of fun. They don't only ask me to do things for them.
I put everyone into one of two groups. First, there are the fans. These are the ones who message me telling me that they love me and that they love my show. They're the ones who compliment my work. Then there are who I call the followers. These are people who genuinely want to get to know me, be my friends and just be followers in my work. They come online and watch, not just because they think I'm hot and want to get off, but because they've built an internet friendship with me, and generally just developed a care for me.
The best example I have of my fantastic followers happened a few days ago. A friend of mine passed away. I found this out after having just posted to my Twitter that I was almost ready to log on to do a show. After receiving the news, I tweeted again, saying that I had just received bad news and would be late. A flood of messages came in, telling me to take care of myself, and that they hoped I was okay. When I finally did get online that day, those people came on and gave me their well wishes, and told me to take care of myself. It was a slow work day, but it showed me how much my followers care.
It never ceases to amaze me when I see the immense amount of support there is within the Cam Girl community. Again, there are examples. One girl is married to a military man who has been stationed in Germany for a year, and through the entire year, will only be able to see her husband for [italics|three weeks!] So what do the cam guys and girls do? Do shows for her, and send the money they've earned to her, so she can go see her husband. That's right. We all realize that camming isn't the easiest job in the world. There are good days and bad. So when someone is down, we help where we can!
Other examples are a little more personal to me. One girl on the site is currently nominated for an award in the Fannys. Because I've been tweeting, voting every day and encouraging others to do the same, this girl also helped me out. She tells her 31,000+ followers on Twitter about me, and encourages them to watch my shows. As long as I support her, I know that she will always do the same for me.
You know what? Sometimes, being a cam girl just lights you up. When you're having a good tip day, you have a blast. Not just because people are giving you money, but because people are interacting, talking and laughing. It's just [italics|fun.] Sometimes your viewers blow you away. I had one guy come into my room, give me 1000 in tips, equivalent to $50, and leave, after messaging me that he had been looking for a girl who could take his breath away, and he found her. He didn't ask for anything. He didn't demand. He just wanted to show his appreciation. Sometimes you just end up on a roll. One person gives a tip, and suddenly your entire chat is covered in people giving you tips! It's mind blowing. All of this, all because they happen to like you, and, in my case, some of them think it's hilarious to hear me squeal when I get a big tip out of nowhere.
The Bad...
There are bad days. A job is a job, right? Some days at work just suck. The bad days for a cam girl usually consist of slow tipping days when it seems nobody is tipping, and if they are, it's small amounts that almost feel insignificant. You've got to keep in mind that on the site I work on, a single token is worth five cents. Some guys think they're doing us a huge favor by tipping us five tokens and then demanding that we bend to their every desire. Do the math. Five tokens comes out to [italics|twenty-five cents] for us. And for some reason some guys think that their five tokens just bought us a car, and demand things that are worth a whole hell of a lot more than twenty-five cents. A standard tip on this site is twenty-five tokens, so a dollar twenty-five for us. Usually those are pretty reasonable.
Sometimes the people who come into your room just suck. They go in just to troll you. They say things like “Don't I go to school with you?”, “Do your parents know you're a whore?” and/or “Girls like you are what's wrong with you.” I had a girl message me once, railing me out, saying that me being on the internet doing what I do was the reason girls get reputations as whores. So, as kindly as I could, I told her that if she has a reputation as a whore, it's not my fault because I'm a cam girl. Maybe it's time for her to close her legs. But people do this [italics|all the time.] They want to try to make you miserable, and they try to shame you, try to get you down on yourself.
This is where I speak out for the cam girl population in general. The vast majority of us aren't attention hungry, insatiable whores. We are regular people. We want the same things in life as you do. Some girls do it in secret. Some girls have told their family and/or friends. We all have our own reasons to be what and who we are. Sometimes girls do this job out of desperation, and sometimes they do it because it's the best option. Anyone who says the sex industry isn't booming has been living under a rock. For a lot of girls like me, camming is our nine to five job. A lot of us don't want to go into porn. Some do. Regardless of this, we are all working towards the same things: paying rent, providing for ourselves, and providing for families. Two of the three main girls I watch and communicate with are single mothers with a young child. But they are working their tails off to provide for their child. Personally, I see nothing shameful in that.
...And The Ugly.
Being a cam girl, you learn to separate your regular life from your cam life. You start upping security on every account you have, double and triple checking that there isn't any personal information available, and keeping an eye on your followers for signs of possibly the most dangerous thing about our jobs: stalkers. Worrying about people you know finding out about what you do is one thing. Sure, that can be stressful. But someone breaching your privacy and harassing you? That's a nightmare on it's own. It's a danger that comes with the job, so precautions need to be taken.
My own experience with this was brief, thankfully. This girl referred me to a guy to help me gain more followers, and earn more tokens. At first all seemed well, although a tiny red flag was going up in the back of my mind. Reluctantly, I allowed her to give him my Skype. Next thing I know, the two of them are ordering me around, and scaring off people who were regular tippers, because “their tippers are better.” I made less in tokens with them than I ever did on my own. But that wasn't even the worst of it.
Within days of the orders coming around, suddenly I had a “manager,” who was blocked from the site I was working on, for reasons unknown to me. He began messaging me, telling me to accept a small token payment of 100 tokens in order to give my Skype to random guys he knew, so they could pay me on PayPal for Skype sessions. On the site, to buy my Skype, it is 450 tokens. But I was now being told to not bother. He was basically trying to pimp me out to people.
Eventually, he was on my Skype, my Twitter, and my room messaging me and telling me what to do, and treating me like a helpless child. At one point, he caught wind of my name, because of a site glitch. He then took that information, and decided to search it on Facebook. He told me it was just to see if I would come up, if I was able to be found. I would have been [italics|fine] if he had just left it at that. He then began stalking my page, digging through my posts, pictures and friend posts. He invaded my privacy even more by questioning about my family, and trying to act like he hadn't crossed a line.
To some people, this may seem normal, not something that's a big deal. But here's the thing. We cam girls work [italics|hard] to keep our personal lives separate from the cam world. When we begin working with someone, especially if we don't give them our personal info, it is supposed to be understood that my life is [italics|none of your damn business.] There is one person that I've met online that I have willingly told my real name and location to. Honestly, if they happen to figure out my first name, I don't care that much. But that's it. This guy crossed into forbidden territory by actively seeking info about my non-cam life, and delving into my privacy. I know nothing about this guy beyond his first name and his inability to write in proper sentences. And yet he had the nerve to talk to me about my father and other personal topics.
Since the incident, security on absolutely [italics|everything] has been bolstered. I double and triple check all info on my pages on the off chance there's another glitch and my information is available. The tiniest amount of trust is questioned. It's unfortunate, but this is the underbelly of the job.
Why Keep Going?
There are horror stories out there about girls being royally screwed. But why do I keep going? People don't always suck. There are people I've met through camming that I feel so grateful for meeting. And you know what? [italics|The job is a lot of fun.] I can be goofy and foolish. I can indulge in my own curiosities and fetishes. I can learn about other people, and sometimes I'm lucky enough to hear their stories. Sometimes I have experiences like the guy who was looking for a girl who could blow him away. Those experiences feel pretty good.
This job isn't simply a paycheck and a self-esteem boost to me. I'm not an attention whore. I actually love and enjoy my job. It's a liberating experience, knowing that while you enjoy yourself and have fun, hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people are adoring you and maybe even getting off to you too. Call me an exhibitionist if you'd like. I fit well in the category. It's a thrill, and it's good ol' fashioned fun. It doesn't hurt that it helps pay the rent.