Naked and unafraid: the nexus of social media and porn

Where pornography leads, technology follows.

No one knows that better than Ariana Marie, a professional “cam girl” in Tampa.

“I turn my computer on, put up my camera, and go onto the website,” Ariana said in a phone interview. “I tweet a picture of what I’m wearing with a notice that says like ‘hey, I’m going to be on soon, please come hang out with me’.”

“I will turn on the camera in my room and start filming, and then they just start talking through chats with me.”

Florida, a hub for the professional pornography industry for decades, has become a home for successful “cam girls,” like Marie, who broadcast themselves from their bedrooms using social media platforms.

Web-camming, or camming, has become a lucrative form of adult entertainment. Cam girls make money off of subscriptions and tips from viewers.

“I try to stay on cam for about four hours and I normally average between $500-$700 a night. It is pretty consistent,” Marie said.

“[The] rooms that I have in my house are differently themed. They can get a little weird because some of the guys request fantasies like of the ‘step-daughter’ and other role-playing themes.”

Marie started camming after she was approached by a veteran webcam model at a club in Tampa. At the time, Marie was modeling part-time and serving at Buffalo Wild Wings. The cam model offered Marie guidance in the industry, setting her up with her own computer and cam room.

Since then, Marie has also starred in various adult films with professional studios. She prefers camming to professional pornography because of the convenience and benefits the newer technological platform offer.

“When you’re filming for companies, you don’t earn residual income. You only get paid once,” she said. “Camming is great because you can set your own hours, your own goals, and your own income.”

“Pornography of all genres has always embraced new technologies of distribution,” said Kevin Heffernan, a professor of media history and criticism at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “Whenever there is a major shift in media distribution, pornography is right there.”

In many ways, porn has always influenced and propelled technology.

“People have been watching people have sex since cave people drew on cave walls,” Heffernan said. “The first images we have, cave paintings, are of a couple of animals, and pictures of people having sex. Porn has often been way ahead of mainstream media in its embrace of new technology.”

According to Business Insider, pornography helped drive the demand for greater bandwidth on computers, since it dominated the flow of images and video on the Internet.

With each new advancement in media, the porn industry finds new ways to connect with the content. Even camming, which provides a personal correspondence with the viewers, is evolving to be more of a personal experience and more portable in the form of social media.

Snapchat in particular is another platform that these cam girls use. Followers must pay to gain access to accounts using SnapCash, where cam girls can post videos and pictures from their phones. They can be individualized messages and videos, or broadcast on their personal Snapchat Stories.

“I personally like Snapchat Premium more because it’s super mobile and on-the-go. I can constantly check updates. With web-camming you can’t really broadcast away from your computer. With snapchat I can snap pics all day anywhere,” said Susan Covert, a 20-year-old cam girl in Miami.

Covert has been a cam girl for three years on myfreecams.com, with an account that caters to a specific audience.

“My description is nerdy petite. ‘Petite’ is categorized as a girl that you could literally pick up and throw across the room,” Covert said. “I play into the whole comic book nerd and anime girl thing. A lot of my personal fans and subscribers are Otaku, and video game type of people, so they get off on a girl talking about Star Wars.”

Covert has found that her experiences in Florida are unique.

“Florida, specifically South Florida, is pretty kinky. The people are pretty open-minded, Latin people especially. The Hispanic viewers are typically very sexual and passionate. I think South Florida has the best opportunities as far as adult work, specifically because Miami is a hotspot for porn and adult sexuality.”

Covert said this close relationship between social media technology and pornography will continue.

“Obviously they have the VR Oculus headsets that people already use for games, but they have these new extensions that you connect to emulate having sex with someone. It just bridges physical distance with a digital connection,” she said.

 

Watch this video to learn more about her story.