Before July of this year I'd never looked at a cam site, and then I saw Chaturbate. To date it is the only cam site I've ever seen, and in all sorts of ways it totally confounded my expectations about what a cam site would be. I found it to be explosively exciting, and in this post I want to look at some of the ways it has surprised me, and how and why it has confounded my expectations so much.
The first thing that surprised me about Chaturbate is this: it's free. It's properly free.
Now, that makes me sound cheap, but I don't mean it in a cheap way. I spend money on Chaturbate and I tip, and I am very happy to do so. I mean something else entirely, so I need to explain.
The preconceived idea I had about cam sites was this: that a woman would chat on camera, and that nothing sexual would happen until I paid a premium-rate-per-minute for her to perform some sort of sexual act for a specific amount of time.
I imagined a one-to-one private show scenario, basically a pay-per-minute masturbation show.
Now, that will appeal to a lot of people, and a lot of women on Chaturbate offer one-to-one private shows and make a lot of money from them. It's all good. But I can only speak for myself and what appeals to me, and that type of thing doesn't appeal to me at all. And it's not about the money, it's about the dynamic of it. The idea of a paid-for sexual performance that's specifically for me just doesn't interest me.
I can imagine having cam-sex with a girlfriend, with a woman whom I'm in an intimate relationship with, but I can't really imagine that one-to-one experience with a woman I don't know. I'd just feel weird about it.
Chaturbate offers a different experience to this in a number of ways. Firstly, it's a communal experience, not a one-to-one experience. This alone changes everything for me, and makes it something really exciting. And secondly, it's about the issue of it being free to watch, to participate, to get involved in the chat.
This matters to me, not because I think, "Oh, I don't have to pay." It matters simply because it shifts the dynamic of what it means to tip. Tipping becomes about showing appreciation and gratitude, rather than about 'buying' a sexual performance.
And, yes, it's often the case that the broadcaster will set a goal and people will collectively tip in order to help her reach the goal - and I'm fine with that. I enjoy being a part of it, and it can be fun (assuming that there are enough people who participate in the tipping).
But even then, even when I'm tipping towards a goal, I'm still really tipping out of gratitude and appreciation. And if and when the goal is reached then it's been a collective endeavour, and the result is for everyone. It's not specifically for me.
This distinction I'm making between tipping to 'buy' something and tipping to show appreciation might seem like a pedantic or insignificant one to some people. But to me it is everything, to me there is a world of difference between the two things. And it isn't that I think there is anything wrong with tipping to 'buy' something, because there clearly isn't - without it, many women and couples who cam professionally would no longer be able to earn a living. I'm just speaking personally about what does and doesn't appeal to me, and what I'm comfortable with.
What definitely does appeal to me is the communal nature of much of what I've experienced on Chaturbate. Although I have written elsewhere about some of the terrible behaviour I've seen in the chat, it is also true - it is primarily true - that that there are one hell of a lot of fantastic people I've seen in the chat, people who are positive and warm and friendly, and damn funny at times. I love this sense of community, and the positive atmosphere it can generate, and I love how this positivity and warmth is directed towards the woman - or couple - on camera.
When I imagined what a cam site would be like, I imagined a fake sexual performance. But what I have seen on Chaturbate has felt anything but fake. It has felt extremely authentic. And I don't just mean in terms of a woman having a real orgasm - I mean something bigger and broader than that; the sexuality on screen feeling real, something that's natural and true, rather than it being a performance to please a male (or female, I suppose) viewer. And I love this about it - that it does feel natural, that it doesn't feel fake; and this ties in with what I've said about tipping not to 'buy' something, but out of appreciation. Something about the act of 'buying' a sexual performance somehow makes it inherently 'fake' to me, artificial, or maybe even something more subtle and elusive than that which I can't quite express; something about it takes away the very thing that would make it exciting, which is authenticity. And, speaking generally, what I have seen on Chaturbate has felt very real - sexually raw and authentic and true and at times explosively exciting. It is a million, million miles away from the artificial paid-for sexual performance that I thought cam sites had to offer, and which is why I'd never looked at one.
I am interested in the masks we wear as human beings, the personas we adopt, the face that we show to the world. I'm interested in peeling them away and getting to know the real person. I am drawn to people who are in touch with themselves and can be genuine. I'm not really interested in people who have little self-awareness, and my direct, probing conversation will probably feel a bit weird and intrusive to them. I am chronically bad at small talk, to the point of being socially incompetent.
There is something about what I have seen on Chaturbate that is part of peeling away the social mask - in a sexual sense - that I find compelling. People's sexuality is allowed room to breath, and a group of viewers shower warmth and praise - and money - upon them. I can find it electrifying, intensely exciting, super hot, and at times something quite beautiful to behold. Not seedy or dirty or shameful - or any of the other nonsense we can internalise about sex - but simply beautiful.
So these are just some of the ways that Chaturbate confounded my expectations about cam sites - the communal nature of it, the way tipping works, the raw sexual power of much of what I've seen, plus the extraordinary breadth and diversity of the women and couples who broadcast on it. For me it has been a veritable explosion of sexual energy, freedom and expression.
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