Cam Girls Exposed: Some Aren't Girls at All

"Cam girl" is now a dirty word, on the list with derivative, bailout, and Robert Mugabe.

A cam girl, in the most general sense, is any woman who has a webcam and streams video online. More specifically, she's an on-line sample of what can be seen at any bar that features exotic dancers. Strippers.

Cam girls can be found on several web sites. Some sites are free. Others ask the user to sign up and purchase time, in the form of credits, different rates for different sites. Some, like IM Live, offer experts in a variety of subjects in addition to girls who give cam shows. Others have sexually suggestive names I can't mention here, that leave no doubt as to the nature of their content.

Another website employs independent contractors to assume, in chat rooms, the identities of pay cam girls, with the intent of getting guys to buy credits.

So those girls you meet in chat rooms might not be girls at all.

I was one of them.

I spent two months in the belly of the beast, selling cam shows for the previously alluded-to website, as any of four different female models whose personalities I assumed.

The site published a tutorial on how to create profiles on social networking sites such as Facebook, and post classified ads on Craigslist, using pictures from cam girls' profiles. It published a tutorial on how to work a Yahoo chat room. It offered on-line training sessions on the finer points of getting a guy to say yes.

I met the worst of men. Men whose opening line was their name, age, and "8 inches." (I asked if that was the depth of the water in their heads.) Men who shared pictures with cute little kids; nieces, nephews, grandchildren, in them. (Give them the respect they deserve and crop them out!) The married minister who prowled rooms in search of women, who admitted an occasional weakness of the flesh. (Had he discussed this problem with the Lord? He assured me he had.)

There was also the guy whose pic to share was one with his ex erased. Where she had been was a white space. That, I liked.

And there were sweet men; intelligent and funny, some recently divorced, others just lonely and in search of someone to talk to who wasn't a guy. Men I'd keep as friends if I could go back to the rooms under my real identity. In the hours I spent as a not-so-hot looking 50ish dude, not one PM did I get. I would have never met them had I not been on as one of my female alter-egos.

Sweet, or clueless, they're all hip to the pay cam pitch. As several put it: why pay to view when there are so many places where girls can be viewed for free? Only losers pay. You're a cam girl? See ya . . .

Some may have also fallen victim to one or more cam girl scams, or had unauthorized charges appear on their credit card statements, and been understandably wary.

As others put it: a woman's looks, or personality, aren't really important. As long as she can provide a certain pleasure, fill a certain need, any woman will do. (Only they used cruder language.) This is a guy thing. It motivates some men to a greater degree than it does others. But every man, at one time or other, feels this way.

It's hard to sell what so many others are giving away. The hours spent trying to do so make me wish I had them back to spend on more rewarding things, like writing.

So all my female personas are gone. Eva Destruction, Susan Susan, Pattie DeFoiegras. And Sarah Bellum, the brains of the bunch.

I did talk to people from cities, and countries, I'd only known as places on world maps. I'll probably never get used to chatting, here in my work room, with someone twelve thousand miles away in Indonesia. I got to practice my conversational French. And passing as a woman did allow me to find out what makes the typical modern guy tick.

Now, if those cravings for chocolate and strawberries would only go away.