TastyTrixie.com

Posts Tagged ‘webcam culture’

Our friends Kristy and BeerCanMan have spent time with us on our spycams when they’ve visited. They know how it works having broadcast voyeur cams themselves for a time and have access to our sites so they can check our cams to see if we’re awake before they call or just . . . check our cams for fun to see what we’re doing. A number of our meatworld friends who are also porn colleagues have access to our cams so this isn’t unusual and our friends don’t report to us every time they peek in, but BeerCanMan did tell me that sometimes he and Kris hook us up on a big screen next to their regular tv via their xbox (or PS3 maybe?).

He said it’s like we’re all in the same room together, watching tv in bed like we do when we can get together in real life. They look over at the screen and there we are in bed, laughing and watching tv too and it’s almost like we’re really there. They can look over and see us, right there next to them.

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On Friday I got into an argument with one of the guys who now has control over that best spycam site we’ve been broadcasting on since 2002, SpyOnYou. The one with audio that our friends use to be in the same room with us and the best quality feeds of any of the adult voyeur cam sites out there. But also the one that’s been the biggest pain in the ass, too. The one I used to get paid to cam on, got fucked in a variety of unpleasant ways by the owner years ago, was no longer paid to be on but still couldn’t advertise my site there and last year was forced to start PAYING to be on and give our members access to it.

To make a long story short, over the weekend this guy disabled our access to the cams. (Note: we still have 24/7 spycams broadcasting on our sites through two other plugins). I wasn’t willing to keep paying for them without having more control and information and he was not willing to provide that information or treat us and our business with any respect or consideration or communicate with us at all except to demand money while moving up the date he wanted us to pay little by little each month and tell me it’s none of my business what the actual operating costs of the site are after we’d been led to believe something different by one of the other guys (the one that I *trust*). He screamed at me on the phone about how much his expenses are and how he’s just hanging on by a thread and then in the next breath refused to show me invoices for the hosting because “that’s personal!!!” Dude, you’re going to have to decide if it’s business or if it’s personal, because if it’s personal? Don’t cry about your expenses to me and ask me to help foot the fucking bill. We have expenses of our own and are hanging by our own threads.

I am used to being treated disrespectfully by camsites, but not having to pay them for that dubious honor.

This guy is part of the reason why our cams are often disconnected in the middle of the night without any warning or explanation, part of why the broadcaster has major problems, etc. when all of the other sites we broadcast on are usually extremely stable. But still, the quality was so much better when they DID stay up and there was the audio which the other spycam sites don’t broadcast. And really? The amount we were paying wasn’t unreasonable at all. Then again, he never responded when we indicated a desire to help pay the programmer to fix the software (which this guy now says he “owns” even though the programmer was never paid by them in entirety which is why it was left buggy).

So. I don’t know if I was just being an asshole or what, but after the way he behaved on the phone and made it his mission over the weekend to take down our cams and member access (and bizarrely and rudely Jess’ and Mina’s, too) because his ego was bruised BEFORE the thirty days I already paid for was up, I am glad to wash my hands of him and want nothing to do with him. I wish him well and everything, and especially two of the other people (Steven and Bonnie) that I worked with over the years at that company but after eight years I am done with wondering “what next?”

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Okay, I lied. I will never be done wondering “what next?”

I am wondering if what’s next is to partner up with our trustworthy cam friends to build a better spycam site:

Should we make MySpyCams.com someplace awesome?

We all have the vision and experience to know what would make it special, and more importantly WORKABLE for us as camgirls and for our members. But would it actually make money? Can we really afford the time and money to make it operate the way we envision it and without demanding MORE time and money we don’t have down the road?

I’ve been a camgirl since the year 2000 and have seen SCADS of people become giddy with the prospect of building their own camsites, dump tons of money and time into them, and FAIL MISERABLY. Of course they were different camsites — pay per view — but still. Knowing you COULD do something better than others who’ve gone before you and actually executing your supposed “genius” are two totally different things. On the other hand, this isn’t a crazy complex pie-in-the-sky scheme; mostly we just want to replace what we lost. And at least improve upon it a little. And while we’re at it why not make it totally fucking awesome?!?

Recently we’ve also seen well-established sites with lots of resources (time and money) make gigantic, huge, really fucked up mistakes (I’m thinking of Niteflirt and CCBill) in overhauling systems that basically worked and fucking the people who bring in their bread and butter. Of course I think part of that is that they have a fundamental disregard for the clients (I don’t mean the “end users” who pay for phone sex and porn site memberships, but phone sex operators and site owners) perhaps BECAUSE they have enough resources and can afford to make decisions from a huge distance from the people they will impact. Months later we have lots of  apologies and patched together fixes, but things are never quite the same (in the case of Niteflirt) and no one puts their money where their mouth is to compensate the people who got screwed (in the case of CCBill who should’ve lowered our processing rates/fees if they want us to think they really MEAN that apology; you know the programmers got assloads of money to make something substandard and force us to be their beta testers and lose money but what do we get? An apology! Nice, but it doesn’t make up for months of fuckery and trust lost with our partners – in my world if you make big mistakes you offer some freebies, discounts, etc.; god knows I have when it was the right thing to do even when I couldn’t afford to).

Point is, if these big companies with lots of dough can fail so miserably and hire programmers and project managers who TOTALLY DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY’RE DOING and send everyone’s shit sliding off the rails, how much easier would it be for US to fail miserably and not have the money to hire someone else to fix it? Do I really want to be part of investing time and money and friendships and friends’ time and money into ignorantly (because I know nothing about programming) searching for the right hosting and coders and programmers? That’s hard enough, just putting something like this together even if you DO have money, but when we’re all already putting everything we have already into the sites we already do have (and in our friends’ cases their other full time jobs)? And then what if we hire THE WRONG PEOPLE? Even if those people are well-intentioned and do their best and aren’t deliberately fucking you (and I truly do not believe anyone intended to fuck anybody at Niteflirt or CCBill, that’s just how it wound up; the rectum-ripping dick just wound up sliding right into people’s asses through bad planning, not malevolent intent), the end result could still find us wading in a morass of shit. I do not want to spend weeks, months or years unprofitably wading through shit.

But maybe I’m being fearful for nothing. This isn’t something I will be doing alone and everything could just as easily work out great as it could not work out at all. Still, there are potential headaches and risks even if we have an awesome site with perfect tools that practically runs itself. Some of those headaches and risks are called CAMGIRLS. If you are good at this shit at all, you’ve got a strong personality. Strong personalities working with strong personalities can be volatile, dramatic and time consuming, even if you avoid the former by doing a lot of the latter (consuming time) making sure you only work with people who have their shit together. But jesus fuck I know that’s not even fair or realistic considering *I* do not always have my own shit together and have been known to be a royal pain in the ass.

And how about liabilities? Porn is under enough legal scrutiny and persecution that even static content is risky; add in LIVE 24/7 camfeeds and you have the potential to get into trouble for all kinds of things, even on accident. I don’t even want to provide examples for fear of getting into trouble, but I will mention a couple of areas of concern: music broadcasting and accidental children sightings (not necessarily at the same time). Here’s a situation: maybe your sister comes over with her kids while you’re in the shower and before you had a chance to turn off ALL of your spycams and she brings her baby in the bedroom to knock on the bathroom door to let you know that she’s arrived safely at your house and you don’t even know the baby is in there until you jump out of the shower and open the door naked and then there you are NAKED on a PORN site with a BABY! And ohmygod the whole world is going to crumble because you have done the unthinkable!!!!! And your business will be ruined as soon as someone takes a screencap and sends it to the feds and your payment processor and visa and FOX news and the locals who didn’t even know you were making porn in their neighborhood and there was a BABY involved?!? That’s just a hypothetical situation though. That never happened to me last week at all I’m just describing how easily your life could be destroyed by participating in this industry and having a family. ONE FALSE MOVE AND THEY’LL GIVE YOU THE CHAIR!! Okay, you won’t get the chair but you could wind up in a business-destroying legal battle. Even a little snafu can ruin you. Normally I don’t worry overly much about these things, but that’s partly because I’m only risking mine and Delia’s asses as opposed to the asses of friends. I do not want to be a liability to people who trust me.

So the next question (which should’ve been the FIRST question) is whether or not this has the potential to make money. While I actually have a lot more faith than I seem to have that we could build an awesome site that virtually runs itself (we aren’t trying to do anything nearly as complicated as other camsites; it doesn’t need to be fancy) I have serious doubts whether or not this would actually pay for itself (development and monthly hosting) let alone make extra money as a stand-alone site or even just as a promotional tool for the exhibitors, especially if we don’t have the time or budget to promote it heavily out of the gate. So would it be worth it if it just pays for itself and is a reliable, high-quality plugin for our members? The truth is that all of us are really struggling with the sites we already have and I don’t even know if that many of our members care that much about having the higher quality cams with audio and a chatroom we control (rather than a chatroom where we can’t link to anything offsite, can’t “promote” ourselves, and have to follow their rules, which is understandable but very limiting when you can’t even link to a news article when you’re talking about shit that’s going on in the world). There are so many places you can get explicit and entertaining cam feeds for free now that it seems foolish to think we can compete with a for-pay model where the cams don’t even promise anything exciting; most of the time we’re just washing dishes or blogging or crying over the most recent dip in sales.

The funny part, though, is in my heart of hearts I vehemently believe our camsite would be special and offer something a lot of people (camgirls/boys/couples AND customers) would appreciate and recognize as valuable. After writing all of these fears and doubts and well-reasoned concerns I am too attached to these spycams to let them go. Even though we still have assloads of spycams broadcasting right now! It’s just not the same on those plugins without audio. I am extremely ATTACHED to the idea of a camsite owned and operated by the people ON them who feel the same way I do about them and promotes THEM as much as the camsite itself. Even more than that I am extremely attached to the idea of making something GOOD, and since we would be working with other people that seems a lot more attainable than Delia and I trying to make something good alone.

I am also very attached to the part of my identity that’s been a “camgirl” all of these years. A lot of the experiences I’ve cherished most as a webwhore over the years are exchanges we’ve had via our spycams. There is a raw authenticity on the spycams with audio that’s incredibly intimate BECAUSE it is often so mundane (and when it’s not mundane is all the more intense because of the contrast). There is a dailiness and reliability and easy sharing that I think is a tremendous and comforting gift. While part of me craves more anonymity and less-ready accessibility, a large(r?) part of me is massively attached to providing this spycam experience and I don’t want it to just be mediocre.

I’ve been relieved the past couple of days not to have the audio on our spycams, but also have felt painfully aware that people are missing out on being close to us and knowing what is going on, even if that is nothing very “entertaining”. How will they know we’re laughing at Star Trek? How will they survive without hearing our Captain Janeway impressions?

I started talking REALLY LOUDLY. I don’t know if it was just because I *could* without sounding weird or if it was because I thought maybe people could hear without audio being broadcast if I JUST ENUNCIATED REALLY CLEARLY. Without even thinking about it, I’ve begun exaggerating my facial expressions to try to communicate without sound. Part of my life is knowing you are out there, watching and listening, for better and for worse. It’s like one of my limbs has been amputated and I’m trying on different prosthetics.

Anyway, I don’t know if all of these attachments are good. Maybe I should break away from something that is turning me into a bizarre version of a silent film star wannabe. I can’t seem to decide if this is a business decision or a personal decision. As a business decision it will depend on how much it costs to build. I think my struggle is more personal, though. I’m torn between “these cams are my identity and I love them” and “I really need more time away from work and more time focusing on CREATIVE static work; building another site and business entity with tech that if it goes down would need IMMEDIATE attention so as not to fuck customers and exhibitors doesn’t sound like a good way to get less stress and more private, in-my-head creative time AT ALL.”

So you know how I said I don’t want to spend weeks, months or years unprofitably wading through shit? I’m not even sure I would want to wade through shit for extended periods of time PROFITABLY. As much as I want this lovely spycam site to work out, the truth is there are many other things I want even more. I’m getting to an age where a couple of priorities/desires to create are rising to the top  and realizing that I will have to give up some (a lot of?) things if I ever want to immerse myself in what I want MOST. But I guess I’m still having a hard time letting go of the delusion that I can accomplish way more than I’m probably capable of. I suspect I’ll be happier when I fully accept my limitations and give myself over to one or two things that I want with gigantic private bigness, but apparently I’m too attached right now to these other things. But I could DEtach myself from them right now if I chose to. And this does seem like a perfect opportunity to do so that wouldn’t be a big deal to anybody but myself. So what if our voyeurcams aren’t the best and don’t have audio? SO WHAT? WHO CARES?? My life just got easier!! Why not embrace that??

I just realized, though, that I *can* quit/pull out of this at any point if it doesn’t work out. And right now it’s working out FINE to go forward. Or maybe it’s not. A month before taxes are due I should be making as much money as I possibly can, not spending time and energy on something that won’t be ready to make money for months, if ever. I’ve already dumped more time and energy into this lately than anything else. Hell, in the time it took me to write this tormented blog entry I could have been doing something USEFUL like promoting Delia’s site (which is really ALL we should focus on selling if we really want to make money fast) or at least working on my own site. But spycams are PART of both of our sites, right? Right!!

*****

Thanks for letting me muddle through that. While I sound uncertain, the truth is my mind is already made up that I want MySpyCams.com to work and I feel like I’ve already committed to it.

PLEASE NOTE: I am *not* looking for advice by posting this, I’m just SHARING the process in case you’re interested in reading it. Blogging about it helps, but even with all of these words there are a world of details I’m leaving out so it doesn’t put anybody in a very good position to “advise” me. But that doesn’t mean I won’t solicit feedback and help later! AND you’re WELCOME to share your own stories of similar dilemmas or relevant anecdotes/observations – I would love that! And if you have any recommendations for hosting, programmers, etc. THAT would also be awesome, or if you want to volunteer (or advertise as for sale) your own talents, that TOO would be fantastic! We’ll have a form up later for people who want to actually broadcast on it and more details about how that would work, requirements, etc. All in good time . . .