Since Girlsroom
came online in 1997, we feel like pioneers in the amateur webcam scene!
Lots has changed since we first started doing this. Lots of people have
tried to explain why tuning in to personal amateur webcams is so fascinating
for so many people. It's even harder to explain why people like us like
to show off on camera in front of people we don't know and can't see.
A few years ago, Playboy.com
did an article on us. Here are some quotes from that article that give some
insight into webcam culture today:
"The once cold,
impersonal confines of the Internet are now home to thousands of beautiful
women who seem to exist solely for the purpose of easing your loneliness.
These women shower, shave and, well, do everything a woman needs to do
during an entire day, and it's all broadcast live for your enjoyment.
The webcam phenomenon is nothing new, but a recent trend has upped the
ante. Many of the girls now appearing at a URL near you are college coeds.
Yep, those sweet, unassuming girls you sit next to in class every day
are doin' the digital deed."
"For example,
if you go to the University of Florida, you might run into 20-year-old
Ally. On allycam.com, viewers can catch this honor student cavorting around
her apartment in, at most, a thong and tank top... Or if you attend the
University of Texas, you might have the pleasure of knowing Ashley and
Chris, of collegecouplecam.com fame. These young lovers share their most
intimate moments with fans as far away as Namibia. As their site says,
theirs is an unrestricted real life site that "can often contain
nudity and sex due to the high sex drives that most people have at our
age."
"Racking up fewer
hits, but no less worthy, is abbytv.com, starring the seductively alluring,
bisexual and always helpful 19-year-old from Cal State. Currently featuring
one camera each in the bedroom, living room and bathroom, the site will
soon be updated with a kitchen cam. That's right, for all you food fetishists
out there, "Naked Gourmet Cooking" will be the new Sunday night
entertainment."
"And this is
just a small sampling. The Internet is home to hundreds more erotic and
hard-core webcam sites, from voyeurdorm.com
to girlsroom.nu, starring naughty
Canadian coeds. At Girlsroom,
members have access to complete archives and photo galleries featuring
the exploits of Racheal, Ashley, Susan and Harmony. Here you'll find plenty
of girl-on-girl action. You can also select one of four frisky postcards
to email to your friends. So you can even brag to your non-webcam-enlightened
buddies about the new fun-loving females you're hanging out with."
Not everyone
is so excited about webcam culture.
Here's part of a paper
on amateur webcam culture that
a friend of mine at college wrote for a sociology class:
"The other night,
I realized how absurd amateur webcam culture really is. I mean, once one
gets over the initial novelty, it becomes apparent that not many compelling
or useful things are currently being done with them (save for a handful).
Mostly, they serve to satisfy the desire to see, to be the ultimate voyeur.
People now have the ability to sit down at personal computers, and peer
into the lives of thousands of people willing to expose themselves (whether
emotionally or physically). I know that at this point, I should expect
the technology to be exploited to sell sex, but some naïve part of
me still wishes that something more interesting (and original) could be
done with them.
What
compels people to "tune in" daily on someone's boring life?
My roommate last year used to follow this ring of "confessional websites."
(In the vein of JenniCam) These websites featured daily journals detailing
(sometimes to minute detail) the author's day, in addition to web cams
that literally show them sitting in front of the computer. (I don't think
these were pornographic in nature). So what pleasure did my roommate get
from these websites? Part of the appeal is obviously voyeurism, but I
think what my roommate really enjoyed was the desire to escape. To be
able to check in on people, and have that be a constant in his life -
it's just a satisfying way to connect with people (as Nicole mentions).
I mean, how else can we explain Real World? (I sadly watch the damn show
whenever it is on, and as much as I hate it, I love it as well.) What
I am getting at is the internet privileges that type of escapism and that
sort of connection, and pushes it to the next level. Through the visibility
of the technology (through it's failures, etc) these shows gain credibility
and authenticity, even though they may be constructed.
Hmm.. I just checked
in on Jennicam and she actually addresses some pretty interesting issues...
I'll just copy them here:
It's been
hard for me to keep writing. Being on the camera is still no big deal.
You can't really tell too much from a still image. It's a lot more subjective.
But continuing to right is getting creepier and creeipier. My mother reads
my journal. My cousin reads my journal. I found out yesterday that my
brother reads my journal. I spoke to him for the first time in years yesterday.
I haven't seen him since my freshman year of college, and only sporadically
for several years before that. I'm still digesting the conversation, but
he at least sounds happier. Big brother, I wish you only peace and happiness.
Take care of yourself, okay?
But that, and friends
reading the journal, and possibly even a co-worker which I really don't
like to think about, makes it basically impossible to speak.
What do I want to
tell you, after five years of this crazy thing? Just that life is a
funny, sad, bizarre, inspiring thing. Things, experiences, people come
to us in the strangest ways, the stupidest ways, the most precious ways.
If you get anything out of JenniCam, I hope it's that we're all a lot
more alike than we admit. To me, that's a comforting thing. We all feel
like outsiders sometimes. We all get that not-so-fresh feeling. We all
like spending time at home in our pajamas.
So here I am, still
keeping this crazy thing going because part of me has this little dream
that won't fizzle out, that we can all learn from each other - our mistakes
and successes and dreams - and that we can all learn from ourselves,
if we keep searching to find which of those little voices is our own.
If we all keep listening
Hmm... so in a way,
maybe webcams are a humanizing force on the net (when not used for porn)?
To make it a warmer place, to enable connecting and identifying with one
another? Maybe I was a little harsh on webcam culture - or maybe I'm just
buying into the sentimentalism... ? I'll have to revisit this later.
As far as what another
student brought up regarding thoughts on selecting from "pre-defined
choices," I'm a little stuck. There has been much written about these
issues in recent years, and I still don't know where I stand. I think
it's too idealistic to expect new media artists to be able to code new
software to create these "new expectations" that he writes about.
Amateur Webcam Rant
Here's part of a funny
rant about webcams that I read recently:
I don't know if watching
an hour of The Screen Savers on TechTV
at my buddy Binky's house helped get me into the right/wrong frame of
mind, or if the twenty minutes I spent tracking down and nuking the originators
of yet another herbal Viagra spam after checking my e-mail got the juices
in my spleen simmering a bit, but when I finally set out for my daily
dose of Web, I must've been ready to Get Exercised About Something. I
found that proverbial Last Straw while browsing the Cam Portals
at the Stile Project.
To me, webcams are
like horrible car wrecks or daytime talk shows. I am by turns horrified,
repulsed, and bored, but I can't seem to look away. I think that one major
factor in this behavioral foible of mine is that, for most reasonable
intents and purposes, the people who run these webcams are actual other
people, other internet users who just happen to have webcams and broadcast
images of themselves on-line for the rest of us voyeurs to digest between
"objective" gaming news and Britney Spears fake nudes. I can't
really get into these people or their lives too much because, for the
most part, they are all attention whores, and there's really no reason
for me to be even bothering with them were it not for the various things
they do when whoring for attention. Staring. Or blank, vacuous staring.
Or blank, vacuous, staring poses. And then there's the nudity, or the
promises of nudity, or the just plain teasing. Whatever it takes to get
attention or hits. I could go into a great deal of detail about the average
webcam personality, but right now I really don't feel up to it, especially
when my good buddy Daign,
whom I've never met and never corresponded with and only mention by name
so that people doing searches for him might hit my site instead, has already
gone to the trouble. His webcam reviews and commentary on the whole webcam
culture make for interesting reading. Anybody who's ever viewed or used
a webcam ought to check him out. Anyway,
so how come these people get any attention anyway? Well, looks have a
lot to do with it, of course. I don't think I could convince anybody to
buy me a new webcam "just because", but some webcam kids have
done just that. One of the biggest reasons why such a thing is possible
is that, despite all of the ego, all of the headgames, and all of the
all-stick-and-no-carrot teasing, these people seem far more approachable
and attainable than the average pornstar wank-fodder. You can e-mail them
and they might respond, or they might have a forum on their website or
a Yahoo fan club where you may fawn and grovel. Some make it a point to
spend time on IRC where they'll let you play the yes-boy or -girl and
unflinchingly agree that they're the greatest, bestest ever and every
platitude and drivel that streams from their keyboard is Gospel. The more
I study the webcam culture, the more I find common threads which allow
me to more easily pigeon-hole individual members into more specific categories.
I make no judgement about whether this is intellectually honest, but it
does save time.
Judge for yourself! Come see us at Girlsroom.nu
Jessica,
Taylor, and Susan
