Millions of archived videos and pictures of cam models, streamers, content creators and influencers are available on Archivebate. The platform aggregates content from popular webcam platforms such as Chaturbate, Camsoda, and Stripchat. It also offers free full-length rips of cam shows without the need for account creation or payment.
Until recently, it was common for camgirls to change their names frequently (see this example of VikyLewis with over 20 different names and inconsistent jumping between sites) and jump between websites when they were hacked or banned by one site. This created a lot of confusion amongst their audience, especially if they were fans of multiple cam girls. This is not the case anymore, however, as most cam girls have their accounts at multiple sites. As such, it is now much easier to keep up with the work of your favorite cam girl.
In the early days of livecasting, the term ‘camgirl’ described tech-savvy livecasting pioneers who used their audiovisual digital media to communicate with an online audience. Today, the word camgirl is used to describe female performers who perform sexually provocative acts for an online audience in real time. They do so either as part of a collective show or in private shows that are sold in virtual tokens. The article traces the historical development of the term camgirl and discusses its contemporary successors and how it relates to a present online culture of ubiquitous self-exposure.
A camgirl is a female performer who broadcasts intimate sexual acts to a webcam-based audience in exchange for financial compensation. In the US, the majority of camgirls are white women between the ages of 18 and 24. Many of them are college students who use their webcams to monetize their sexuality. The camgirl industry is regulated by state and federal agencies, as well as private companies that operate camming studios and provide insurance for the women who work in them.
Camgirls are often compared to other forms of social media influencers and celebrity, but they are also unique in their ability to engage in a form of digital labor that provides economic freedom, empowerment, intimacy and self-expression for its practitioners. As such, their work challenges assumptions about the limits of digital labor and the nature of the new public sphere.
This chapter explores the ways that camgirls resist a prescriptive definition of public space through performance. It argues that by creating networks through strange familiarity, camgirls establish a counter-public sphere where democracy is critiqued and strengthened. It demonstrates how this resistance is made possible through the appropriative aesthetic of grabbing, an online practice that blurs the boundaries between camgirls’ own embodied experiences and the supposed spaces for democracy that they claim to create in their performance.