fyfluiddynamics-blog

[fyfluiddynamics-blog]

Today, things are different

Today, things are different. After saving money and learning enough savvy to avoid continued exploitation, Anna is done with money-sucking studios, and so she works only about five days a month, from her own home. Five days of camming per month allow her to match the Romanian per capita income of roughly $US12,000 per year with a minuscule fraction of the labour. If she wants more money, she works more days.Inside the building, Studio 20 occupies the first and second floors. Forty rooms open off pristine, white corridors, their walls adorned with pictures of women in states of glamorous undress. A closed door means business. Inside that room a woman is live and direct via webcam with international clients - and as long as she is alone in the room, it is entirely legal. In this world of virtual relationships and cybersex, those in front of the camera are "models" and the men who watch are "members". Her friend, "gave [her] sex toys" and she was on her way, waking at 6am each morning in order to hit American-internet primetime. She hopped from studio to studio, at times living with her employers (and their unwanted advances), still far enough from self-sufficiency that she had to depend on them for support. One had a wife who insulted her constantly. She had to work, almost every day, on strict, long, tiring shifts, doing the same performances over and over and over again. She was an urbanite, but she was still a poor stripper in a small room. When one studio boss lost all of his money and had to move in with a friend, Anna had to go along, having lost her room, board and virtually all of her possessions.And as a cam girl, you won't know where it's coming from. You'll get your split — typically around 35-percent, but sometimes upwards of 70 — siphoned to you via an innocuous credit card processing site like CCBill, while the site takes the rest of the cut. However you earn that cut is up to you. Some sites, like Streamate, allow actual sex to the point of orgy, while others limit your act to a solo show. You can do whatever you think will earn cash in the form of dollars-per-minute private shows or instant "tips". That's the formula. You're up against tens of thousands of women (and men, to a lesser degree) offering the same product in varying versions. That's a tough stab at making a living, even with your clothes on.

Some of the girls broadcast risqué photos of themselves for free using sites like Instagram and Tumblr while others only use sites which require payment before viewing. Inside, Studio 20 feels like the Paramount Pictures of camming. You walk in and there’s hallways and hallways of rooms. One of them is decorated for a surfer girl, one of them is a girly teen-looking bedroom, one has teddy bears, one has a stripper pool, one is a fake bathroom with a tub. And they’re all just these fake sets where one side is a bedroom and the other side has a huge monitor, camera, computer, and professional lighting.A lot of their clients are really freaking mean for no reason. The downside to raking in that sweet cash is that a lot of people can be really mean for no reason. She says a lot of guys can't even sit there and watch her without saying mean things to her, and many of them don't tip either. Granted, that happens in minimum-wage jobs too, but I'm guessing what guys say to her is probably way worse than what people say to fast-food employees. This kind of money and naked fame is the rarest exception for a camgirl. The rest of the many thousands struggle to make any money at all under what appear to be demeaning, even dangerous conditions. After eight years of observation, Mila says, straight up, that camming is a criminal business on an international scale:

Geography is important too, so the models can talk about where the members are from.This comes off as somewhere between cynicism and naive denial, but the fact that she knows of any girls at all who've raped and beaten suggests that it is, at the very least, a real occupational hazard.But I have all these questions about camming. Why is camming so popular? Is camming the future of porn? Do people prefer it mostly because it’s so much more personal?Sometimes self-­regulation regarding finances is the best option for some people: I’ve been treated better and more fairly as a Cam Girl and nude model than I was in my last retail job where I, no word of a lie, got fired for ‘looking sad’. Yet despite how much control one can have over their career as a Cam Girl there are certainly discrepancies within the industry, including safety issues and issues of future employability, as well as what is considered a fair payment and no guarantee on a basic minimum wage for hours put in. It leaves a lot up to chance. CONTINUED BELOW...