Chapter 2 - The Newest Camfan

The psychology and culture of camming, the Internet's latest and most controversial form of entertainment, is the backdrop for this international thriller that explores romance and personal discovery.

Richard Dalton was tall, in his late thirties, and still maintained his college weight. His dirty-blond hair had begun to pick up a small amount of gray, but it only made his hair look a little more blond. Though his infrequent girlfriends would sometimes say he was handsome, it never quite registered because he was a late-bloomer. Richard had experienced acne while in high school -- it was not until his college years that the acne eventually disappeared, and he was finally relieved of his virginity. The shyness that developed during high school never entirely left him.

 

When in college Richard initially thought he wanted to become an architect because he loved to draw, enjoyed building things, and was fascinated by the history of housing. But partway through college, during a summer internship at an architectural firm, he became disillusioned by the restraints that a large company placed on his creative process; in fact there was no creativity at all, just engineering. He didn't want to become an architect, only to end up designing efficient concrete boxes.

 

However, after returning to school that fall, a friend suggested he might like to work as a landscape architect. In that related profession there would be more opportunities for creativity and increased chances to work independently. He went on to complete classes for that new major, became certified as a landscape architect, and for a long time worked at a large firm.

 

But a little more than a year ago, Richard decided to strike out on his own and start a consulting agency. Though having a shaky start, he was now in his second year as an independent, and while not getting rich, he was able to pay the bills and save a little money. 

For over a week now Richard had hardly worked on his latest task, to finish a competitive bid and design for a possible landscape architecture contract. He had always found difficulties with self-discipline. Due to his love affair with procrastination, self-employment would now present a new challenge. Richard had always enjoyed literature, and it was easy to continue with a good book after his morning coffee, only to suddenly notice that many hours had passed. It eventually got to the point that a whole day might slip away without having completed any work. His old girlfriend had once warned that if he wasn't careful with procrastination, his life might permanently become stuck on pause.

   

And today, during this rainy Seattle afternoon, Richard's efforts at self-discipline would further decline when he learned of a new method for distraction. It was described in an email from John Sullivan, an old college friend. The email message simply held one sentence:

 

Check out WorldsGreatCams.com -- looks like a new emerging art form, kind of like the early days of silent film.

John was a bright artistic guy who had majored in sociology. If he recommended something, it was usually exceptional. Richard opened up a new Internet browser window and navigated to the home page of WorldsGreatCams.com. He recognized the general format: it looked like other webpages that hosted hundreds of girls in chatrooms who would take off their clothes and fake screaming orgasms. Why did John say this was an emerging art form? Richard's curiosity took over, and he began to explore the various chatrooms at WorldsGreatCams.

 

After a few hours had gone by, Richard had discovered a number of anomalies: he found camgirls who didn't remove their clothes, two camgirls who were pregnant, a camgirl who sang and played piano, one who juggled almost anything, a virtuoso at hula hoop dance, and a camgirl who seemed more like a standup comedian than a stripper. Not all the camgirls were beautiful, and not all the cam shows were sexual in nature. And in many of the chatrooms, there was a friendly hangout atmosphere that seemed more like a party in a college dorm room than a night at a strip club. Clearly the clichés and stereotypes about camgirls did not apply to this particular website.

  

What the hell is this, anyway?

 

Some latter-day rebirth of vaudeville and burlesque?

 

John's right -- there is a very unusual phenomenon going on here.

   

Richard also noticed that popular camgirls often had many regular devoted fans that would come to their every show and occasionally give hundreds of dollars in tips. Some of these regulars had even changed their usernames so that a portion of the camgirl's name was somehow incorporated into their own name. Richard surmised that many of these guys were probably married, and yet they eagerly became committed to these virtual girlfriends that they would never meet in person.

 

He then did a search on Wikipedia for 'camgirl' and discovered some startling facts.

 

Camming, a relatively new offshoot of the porn industry, had only started to pick up steam during the last ten years or so, but over those ten years it had exploded into a two-billion-dollar a year business. It was a grassroots phenomenon that did not receive its support from established porn companies but rather from many hundreds of self-employed women who only needed a $100 video camera and a laptop computer to create their shows. Some of these girls were earning over $100,000 a year. They were creating cam shows from their homes, and their viewers loved it. And they were even attracting a new breed of patrons who had never previously been customers of other porn genres or any other form of erotic entertainment for that matter. Industry analysts said camming had become the new driving force of the porn industry, and at a time when sales of traditional porn were plummeting.

In the days ahead Richard would continue to explore this website by visiting many more camgirls' chatrooms. The phenomenon of camming was starting to remind him of his strip club phase when near the beginning of the new millennium he discovered lap dancing. It had only taken one lap dance for Richard to realize that many of the media stereotypes concerning strippers and lap dances were utterly false. Because of the friendly and personal conversations that often took place between exotic dancer and patron, a lap dance often became a fantasy experience that occasionally resembled a romantic movie. And now, while inside these chatrooms, he was seeing that same romantic fantasy being delivered to the camfans.

 

It soon became a daily routine that every evening Richard would surf to WorldsGreatCams -- or WGC as it was known to its viewers -- just to keep track of his favorite performers. As he read the scrolling text of the chat-window, he often found himself wanting to join in on the conversations and ask questions of his favorite camgirls. But since he had not registered his email address with the website, he was not allowed to submit comments and could only read the words of other viewers.

 

Richard was reluctant to register and participate in the flow of chat because it seemed as if he was opening an earlier door -- the door that led to his short-lived and expensive fascination with buying lap dances. The same principle that partially fueled lap dancing was again occurring here: for a single guy, conversation with an attractive and charming woman could be captivating.

Was he going to get in too deep, if he actually started speaking with the camgirls instead of merely observing them?

  

To hell with it, he thought. Richard then submitted his email address to WorldsGreatCams and picked a username for himself, RichardsPause. That made him a basic member of the site, but if he now wanted to speak through the chat-window to the many camgirls, then he would have to buy some electronic tokens for tips. Consequently, Richard grabbed his credit card, and for $50 bought his first batch of tokens. He was now all in and anxious to try out the chat interface at WGC.

 

He entered the chatroom of one of his favorite camgirls, HannaNightshade. She was a stunningly beautiful young woman from Australia. Hanna's silky brown hair bonded with the brown of her exotic eyes, and when the light was just right, those eyes took on a luminous amber hue. The charm of her Australian accent was only matched by the sweetness of her smile. Hanna never had to do very much to bring guys into her chatroom -- just to view that serene and alluring face was enough to entertain them. However, HannaNightshade also possessed the skills of a talk-show host and could easily and candidly expound on any topic her viewers might submit.

It was now time for Richard to post his very first comment. Into the Send Text-box he typed a question. He then pressed the Send Button and in a few seconds saw his words render with the other user comments at the bottom of Hanna's chat-window:

RichardsPause:  Did you ever participate much in any Internet forums before you became a camgirl?

And then very magically, his computer began to talk back to him when the distant HannaNightshade read his question aloud to the entire Internet, and then answered it.

 

HannaNightshade gave a hearty laugh. "Yes Richard, did I ever. By the time I was fourteen I was spending over three hours a day on Reddit.com. Seems a little bizarre for a young teenage virgin, but all I wanted to do was talk about sex on the Internet. And I guess I still am."

However the flow of conversation in a chatroom is swift, and in another moment HannaNightshade began reading the next comment in the chat-window. She now launched into another topic while Richard's comment faded into the upward flow of scrolling text. However his first interactive conversation with a camgirl had touched him, and he found it to be magical.

  

For the rest of the day Richard had occasional daydreams of Hanna, and how they might meet someday, become friends, or even something more.