Digging Up Y2K Era Cam Girl Blogs
In the early 2000s, there was a race to be the next Stileproject (the wikipedia article should catch you up) and every noname E/N site was adding cam portals, writing about cam girls, and hoping to strike Internet gold in the process.
A "camgirl site" wasn't really what you imagine today. It was closer to a girl with an Instagram and a Snapchat in terms of content -- the main difference being that she was generally interested in web design, was willing to teach herself to get a site up, and would then affiliate with portals for traffic and accept gifts from Amazon wishlists. She was almost always a college student studying the same kinds of subjects other people with websites were studying. Image quality was very low back then. Having full videos was the dream of a few years later. So these girls were also writers.
Let's look at some of these camgirl sites.
Here's a cam portal blog describing the phenomenon; the archive comes from June 5, 2002 on validatethis.com, and it's simultaneously hilarious and disgusting.
There's really nothing I have to say about these girls that's more interesting than what they have to say themselves.
Here was szeretlek.nu at her muse link. She has different art on almost every page. The reason I chose this one is she writes here about being a camgirl. The most interesting parts are where she is frustrated with the feedback she gets about her site -- how people doubt that she has the artistic skill to make the site layouts. The funniest part is her takes about 80's porn at the bottom.
Genufine remarks about it being weird that people from her school know about her site.
I'm not going to bother mirroring the layout for this one since it's just a plain goodbye message.
Ahhh, it's time - for my final blog. Yeah, yeah, I know you all are
thinking I'm full of it, but I'm not. I'm too old for this - and
yes, I said too old. (Webpig and DrT, you should start thinking too)
The entire reason I got into this blog stuff was because it gave me
an outlet for design, but it's not about the designs anymore, and
it's not about the blog. It's about your perception of me and my
life - and your judgements of my actions. Well, you can't judge me,
because you don't know me. You know bits and pieces of me, just like
shattered glass on the sidewalk.
Right now in my life, I have bigger things to worry about. Life, love,
the pursuit of happiness. Life, my schooling, my education, my
advancement into the real world - where faceless people who bash behind
the saftey of a moniter and keyboard don't exsist. Love, my relationship
with Steven. It's not perfect - it never will be, but we're working on it.
Maybe it will work out, maybe it won't - but I have to give it all I have,
regardless of various parties who wish to stop us. And pursuit of happiness,
I have to do what makes me happy, and it's not subjecting myself to all
the closed minded immiture ass-holes the internet has to offer.
Basically, I'm tired of it. It's not what I want, it's not what I need.
So see ya later, try tomorrow, nice to know you...
Stephanie
You can find more of these with the help of the camgirl nipple hex chart (I'm so sorry).
You might have expected me to have more negative things to say about the girls who do this today or the girls who did this back then. I don't. While at times it might be annoying that they manage to receive attention by being pretty and suggestive, it's interesting that before any of that started, they were just someone making a website.