Lydia Huerta an assistant professor of gender, race and identity at UNR says many students partake in sex work in Nevada to help pay for their tuition as escorts, on Only Fans or through Sugar Daddy type websites.
Elijah Reyes recently interviewed one student who provides live-streamed webcam performances on the Chaturbate website. He created a documentary modulating her voice and never showing her face to hide her identity.
The student says she chose Chaturbate as you can do it entirely on your own, the money isn’t taxed and goes 100% to her, without any cut for the website, which generates revenue from the audience when they purchase tokens using their credit cards.
She said after being verified she was 18, she started performing on the website last wintermester.
Here are excerpts from the documentary (above), reorganized for clarity, where she explained how she uses certain tags to get views, and how she feels overall about making money from this type of website:
“Most of the tags are just kind of descriptive of me and what I know will get the most hits. So it's mainly like glasses, petite, 19, stuff like that.
Because the younger you are, the hotter you are, I guess.
And then I just mainly play video games or paint or play piano. And then I have a menu where they can tip me to do other things. They can pay me in tokens. Each token is worth a nickel, and they can just buy it through CB with a card or whatever.
And the more you tip, the more you get to see, the more I guess, personal I'll be with you. So, like, if you're a high tipper, I'm more likely to do private shows with you where it's just you and nobody else could spy in…
Then there's also a link to my throne, which is, basically an Amazon wish list, but you can't backtrack to get my address. I like it to be honest. [Viewers are] very responsive.
You know, it's like, it's a means to an end, means to money. I thought it was going to kind of make me a little bit more self conscious.
But to be honest, it gave me more self esteem. You know? I have men on the internet tell me how beautiful I am and how certain aspects of myself they like or, like, how I don't seem fake in my streams, and I like that. Like, I'm very authentic. I don't do voices and shit.
I'm pretty proud of what I do just because, you know, I'm not ashamed of it.
If people record my streams and post them in other places, and I find them, I can get them taken down immediately, for copyright and stuff, because it's a huge safety risk to be posting them on other sites where my region blockers aren't on.
I can block states … and whole countries if I really want to. And that way, people can't see my streams if they're from those places, even with a VPN on.
Their terms of service is very lengthy, and it's a lot of, like, [what] you cannot speak about, you know, off-site payments, meetups…
If people are [pushy about] your real name, age, birthplace, stuff like that, they can get banned.
And they can't access any personal information from your profile.
I plan to work, with teenagers, I guess, in the future. And I know that a lot of people in my profession or my future profession will get fired over doing pornography in the past. But I think that's wrong because their private life is their private life.
And even if it's not private, you know, that's not something that you would show the children…
But I do worry about what, like, my parents would think, but I do my best to hide that from them.
I mean, if they find out, they find out. Positive is you become a lot more open minded. I feel like it definitely helps you kind of mature over things that, like, you know … young adults would kind of shy away from. Like, nudity, I don't care, to be honest. Like, I'm very I'm a very open sex positive person, and I think that it's very healthy for sites like Chaturbate to exist.”
In other parts of the interview, she focused on the negatives, such as extremely creepy men and even dangerous stalkers:
“ I'll have fathers who say that I look like their daughters, and it turns them on. Not even, like, stepdaughters either…
And there's also the stalkers. I've had two already.
My first stalker was actually, like, one of the first people who'd entered my streams. They were really cool at first. They gave me lots of money, but they were also very kind, and they helped me out a lot when I was first starting on how to, like, how things worked, what made more money, what didn't, you know, stuff like that.
And so I let him become my moderator, which meant that he could kick people out. He could promote my room, and he could see, like, tips and, like, what the people who tipped said…
And then he started getting really pushy, saying that I owed him things and such and such. And then he started lying to his friends, saying that I was his girlfriend, and then having his friends come into my streams and kind of, like, yell at me or, you know, degrade me for that when we weren't like that. Also, he was in high school, so that was really weird. And then he got really crazy when I told him, like, back off, please.
And he bought a plane ticket to where he thought I lived. Went, couldn't find me, went back home, and then I said that I was going to a Hozier concert, and he bought tickets and went, and so I couldn't go because he threatened to kill me. That sucked. Well, I blocked him from saying anything, as well as reported his accounts and his old accounts on CB, Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, everything. And, I haven't really heard from him since, so I think it's resolved.
It's been a couple months.
The second one found my Snapchat, like, my personal Snapchat with all my information … my name, all that, and, threatened to send it to my streams so that everybody would know.
And through that, he found my Instagram, my parents, my brother, all of that. And it was a 1 in a 1000000 chance that he could've done that, but it still happened and that really scared me. Because, like, you know, my parents and my brother aren't as careful as I am.
He got arrested. I told Chaturbate, and they have a team of lawyers specifically for models who are put in danger, and that kind of stuff.
Trafficking and stalking are really big issues in the porn industry. And so they took him and took him to court for, I think, blackmail and stalking. So that is part of the risk. For me, personally, there aren't many more risks than that just because I don't bring other people into my streams. But some of my streamer friends do.
You know, like, they'll do, like, actual porn, and bring in, like, a man or a woman. And that's way riskier because, you know, they can assault you, rape you, put cameras up, steal, burglary, all that stuff. I'm not a porn enjoyer, believe it or not. I think it's very fake. There's a loss of passion and intimacy.
You know? It's all very staged, and I get why. And I get that, like, you know, like, that's how you have to do it. It's kind of boring to me, which is why when I started streaming, I didn’t want to be that fake person.
I don't change my voice. Nothing like that. Just to kind of, you know, show people that these are real human beings, not just, like, actors on a TV show.”
Finally, she explained she has been doing less Chaturbate of late, has another job now to help pay for her studies, and that her current passions include skateboarding, painting, sculpting and writing poetry:
“I think that it's important that people know that, you know, there's other people who are going through the same things, and it's nice to read about that. And I've had a lot of very traumatic experiences that, you know, not a lot of people can even fathom. And, you know, that really, is a basis for a lot of my poetry.
Can I tell you?
Can I tell you? Spare all the ugliness that spreads across my tongue as I dress in the mirror, how heavy it all feels in my eyes. Speak of the past as if I had never lived in the present nor believe in a future.
The irony of wanting more and growing less. Contradictory of loving myself and wanting nothing to do with me any longer.
The tipping from the deep end to the high of emotions like a seesaw on the playground.
Can I tell you just how much these tiny pills help my everything, every day?
How I will miss people even before they've gone for a time?
Can I tell you that my love is different depending from being to being?
I never love anyone like I love my mom, but that doesn't mean I have no love to give anyone else.
I hold a plethora so large that I must customize and categorize it all to fit.
Say every little thought I feel like it is forcing itself out of my lips even if it's something of no importance.
Explain how I crave intimacy, but the thought of it is scarier than death to me.
Sing every song on the radio because I spend every waking hour tuning in.
Ask all the questions to quench my curiosity.”