Webcam Girls: Will They Destroy Western Civilization?

Most people about webcam girls, so you’ll get either a blank look or a denunciation of moral decline in American society should you ask someone about them. I think you’d mostly just get blank looks from people. People certainly know about Internet pornography, of which webcam girls are a part.

In case you don’t know much about webcam girls, I can give you the basics in a couple of sentences. Webcam girls (yes, there are also webcam guys) use cameras connected to their computers to transmit images of themselves to whomever wants to see them. Often people will connect their own cameras and have a two-way ideo connection with the webcam girl. Much of what happens is of a sexual nature. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?

You can see where the controversy arises. Is it really OK for people to do sexually explicit things in front of a webcam while strangers watch. Cultural conservatives and feminists would object for different reasons. Obviously what webcam girls do is a violation of traditional norms regarding sexuality. Feminists probably object for the same reason that feminists reject pornography – webcam sex shows objectify women. So, let’s just note that these religious/moral objections exist and get on with asking some sociological questions.

I like counting things. Maybe it comes from being mildly autistic. Maybe I want the modicum of respect that comes from doing things in a mathematically rigorous fashion. If you are the same sort of person you are probably wondering how many of the webcam girls, and guys exist. You may also be wondering if most of them are in the United States and Canada. I’m also curious about the breakdown of age and education. Are most of the webcam girls college students who are earning some extra money using their webcam.

Why do webcam girls do what they do, besides the obvious potential to make money. Why do people pay money to communicate with these girls? Couldn’t they use their time and money more productively? Are the customers all college guys or fat, middle-aged losers? I’m guessing that the truth is a bit more complicated but the details will have to be worked out…somehow. Nobody is going to be eager to talk about their sexual Internet adventures in person or possibly even in a questionnaire. The customers could be surveyed using a clever and discrete technique similar to the following:

Include in your questionnaire two questions with one place to check “Yes” and one place for “No” so that there is no way of determining which question the person answered. One question pertains to something both innocuous and easily checked. The other question could be something like; “Have you ever engaged in sexuial activities while chatting online with a woman who was using a webcam?”.

The other question could ask if the person has a college education or rents their home or something that could be checked out using public records.Find out what percentage of the population rents and compare that percentage with the percentage of yes answers to the webcam visit question. If 48% of the population rents and 56% answered “Yes” then you can estimate that 8% have engaged in sexually explicit conduct with a webcam girl. OK, maybe they actually visited a webcam guy. The question might need to be written so it is gender neutral: “Have you ever engaged in sexual behavior while chatting with someone who was using a webcam to trasmit images to you?”

I know that webcam girls and visits to them are looked upon negatively by most everyone in the United States. I wonder if Europeans feel the same? Australians and New Zealanders? Canadians? Japanese?