One of the effects of COVID-19 on the sex industry seems to be that more sex workers are turning to cam sites and similar internet outlets to make ends meet. Sure there have always been sex workers who moonlight. There is even a webcam site dedicated to Asian bargirls that has been around for years. But I am talking about a newer and more noticeable trend here.
On the one hand there is a general trend towards women making money with their bodies over the internet all around the world. The rise of massive sites like FanCentro and OnlyFans started long before COVID-19 was even discovered. But there can be little doubt that the global shutdown occasioned by the novel coronavirus helped push things along. In May 2020, the CEO of OnlyFans said the site was adding 7000-8000 new models and 200,000 new end users per day. That represented an increase of 50 percent from April. This kind of thing is now so common and widespread that pop singers mention it in their lyrics. To top it off the former child star Bella Thorne recently announced that she has made $2 million USD in her first week on OnlyFans. We’ve come a long way.
OnlyFans and ManyVids and FanCentro, Oh My!
This sort of thing isn’t limited to OnlyFans of course. ManyVids is another gigantic website where models upload their pictures and videos to waiting customers with cash. ManyVids is run by former cam model and stripper Bella French.
Long time readers of this website may recall that I interviewed Bella French in early 2013, before ManyVids was launched or perhaps even imagined. Years later I was paid back for my efforts when a claim was made against this site for use of a publicly available picture of the interviewee. For all I know it may have been an automated thing but in any event it was quickly rectified by removing all offending images. Of course you can still find them all with a simple Google image search if you are truly interested.
I am no stranger to this sort of thing. Just a year ago I noticed that a go go bar dancer in Bangkok had turned to making porn videos and selling them online. I contacted the person in question and asked to do an interview. She agreed and I sent along the interview questions. They then appeared fully answered in fluent English on another website. I mention this only to point out that several “real world” sex workers have been moving into the cyber realm in recent times.
Last year I published an interview with Macy Nihongo. She told the story of how she went from an office employee to adult content creator. She said she was driven by the simple economics of the situation. She also said it seemed like a better route than escorting to her.
A permanent move towards online entertainment
There can be no doubt that women are still escorting all over the world. Other sorts of adult entertainment also continues on from hostess bars in Phnom Penh to go go bars in Thailand and even the famous red light districts of the Netherlands.
Still various businesses and providers are obviously feeling the pain of a severely hindered world economy. I have heard of countless sex workers who have moved on temporarily or permanently. Some have seemingly retired. Some have gone into other mainstream businesses. And some have tried their hand at broadcasting their bodies over the internet for money.
Even a few of the bigger adult businesses seem to be getting into the game. Soon after Heaven Above in Pattaya went out of business the launch of a Heaven Above cam site was announced. They are not alone. Daisy Dream Massage in Bangkok has announced that it is working with famed cam site Live Jasmin as well.
None of this surprises me in the least. A trend towards online entertainment was starting to become visible to industry observers even prior to this pandemic. The fact that travel sometimes even within countries remains difficult or impossible only helps fuel the movement of sex workers from “in real life” to online adult entertainment. With no end in sight this trend can only grow. Even if the novel coronavirus is somehow overcome I expect that a significant number of sex workers will continue to rely on the internet to make their daily bread. That ship has already sailed.
Yep. And what truly terrible news it is for those who enjoy actual REAL paid sex. I know plenty of guys who think this is something to be excited about and it absolutely baffles me. Sure it’s great news for the girls but its a total DISASTER for mongers. It can only have a deleterious effect on the prostitution industry from the point of view of customers as the move from escort to online model will be an ever increasing drain on talent. Yes there will always be escorts – but the real quality will (and are) moving online where they can make far more money for doing effectively a tiny fraction of the work. So for guys who like to have actual sex the result will ultimately be significant falls in quality and rising prices in the long run.
In addition Onlyfans and Manyvids are such a step down from the old model of a membership website, where in the past for a flat monthly fee I could get every piece of content that a girl produced. In OF I pay a lower flat fee but get a fraction of that content – basically i get teasers in the form of pics and snippets of videos lasting a few seconds, and if i want to see the full length version i need to stump up more cash for each individual movie which ends up being WAY more expensive and far less value for money than the old model. I have seen many guys trumpeting about how great OF is because it allows you to interact directly with the model – but I could do that before on every single site that I have joined. The same with the other boast that it allows you to order custom vids or pics. So what? I got those too from several websites that i was a member of before too, so there is nothing new in that either. I just don’t understand it.
Also I have never got the whole cam show craze. It never fails to amaze me at how guys think its such a fantastic idea to drop hundreds of dollars on what is basically a live video stream of a girl pleasuring herself with a dildo or vibrator. It is totally vanilla and boring compared to the sheer variety of porn where you can find any conceivable sexual activity easily on the internet for free or at worst a fraction of the cost. Major sites like MFC can charge 6 to 8 dollars per MINUTE to watch the girl of your choice vibe her clit or put a dildo in her ass (sure there are cheaper options available like group or voyeur, but then you are not even in charge of the show anymore which is basically the whole point of a cam show – being able to direct the girl to do what you want).That means you are effectively paying anywhere from 360 to nearly 500 dollars an hour to jerk yourself off in front of a computer screen. Utter madness, especially when that same amount of money could actually buy you REAL sex with a hot escort, in many cases for 1, 2 or even 3 hours at a time.
Another nail in the coffin of the mongering industry. I dread to think of what the scene will look like for customers in 10 years time.
Hi James. Thanks for your comment. Much of what you write may very well be true. Though I would say you can watch people have sex totally free on sites like Chaturbate. Overall I report on the commercial sex industry as it actually exists and independent of what I would personally like it to be. So for example when I write about a red light district closing in Korea it doesn’t mean I am happy about the fact. Thanks again for the contribution. Cheers.
These younger guys are mostly pussies who can’t make a living or talk to a woman. So what do you expect? When 52% of American men live with their parents you’re going to get a lot of basement dwellers sending their allowance to woman who laugh in their faces. The women are too dumb and shallow to do anything about it so they blow it all on Gucci sandals made for pennies in sweatshops. It’s a fucking joke.
Thanks for the comment. Cheers.
Oh yeah absolutely Rockit. I hope my little diatribe didn’t give the impression that it was aimed at you or your report. It was just a frustrated rant from an increasingly grumpy monger who is stuck at home watching this calamity unfold and decimating our collective hobby.
My original comment was triggered not so much by your article which, as you say, just objectively reports the reality. Rather it was just me needing to vent about the current state of affairs and what I perceive (rightly or wrongly) as the short term myopia afflicting a few of my fellow mongers who seem to welcome the current trend of working girls moving into online entertainment. For example recently I have had some fairly impassioned debates with friends and acquaintances who believe that this migration online is one of the blessings of the virus. One friend of mine was particularly delighted that his favourite bar girl has opened an Only Fans account while another is on a cam site (no doubt an OF account will follow), so it means he can still get his fix. That kind of thinking just boggles my mind. What he doesn’t seem to understand is that as a result many of these girls will probably never come back to the bar as they have the potential to build an equivalent or potentially much larger income stream and without the bother of hustling for customers or having to spread her legs again. So instead of being able to sample her delights in the flesh, he may be stuck jerking off to her pictures and vids forever more. Surely a pyrrhyic victory, at least to my way of thinking.
Being in my early 40s I am not exactly young but I certainly don’t consider myself old and I had planned on many more years of happy mongering ahead of me. But I am increasingly fearful that we may have crossed a Rubicon of sorts with this pandemic and that the industry globally may never recover. Maybe I am just being a pessimist and overreacting. After all the worlds oldest profession is also it’s most resilient and perhaps the scene in the likes of Thailand and Germany etc. will go back to something resembling what it was before this sh*tstorm descended on us. I certainly hope so. But no matter how events pan out one thing is for sure. When attempting to navigate the post-covid adult entertainment landscape, this site will become even more important than before in keeping its finger on the pulse and helping to shine a light on whatever worthwhile options are left after the dust settles. So don’t even think about packing it in and riding off into the sunset Rockit. Your services are needed now more than ever lol.
Hi James.I definitely understand where you are coming from. You’re probably right in a lot of what you say. I am quite sure the allure of online income will keep many women from transitioning back into “the real world” in the future. Whenever such a thing is even possible. I think there will be a lot of lasting changes. I wrote about that in my post on the permanent effects of the pandemic on prostitution. I do plan to continue reporting on the scene no matter what happens. Thank you for reading. Cheers!
Seems like more of a US/EU thing. Most Thai chicks don’t even want their faces online on a massage website. They aren’t gonna do porn. They’d rather keep it between them and their 900 monthly punters.
Thanks for the comment. I would note that there are currently hundreds or even thousands of Thai women on adult webcams, porn sites and Only Fans. I have interviewed some of the more prominent performers among them on this website. Cheers!
I beg to differ, although my one example may be an outlier. I know a Thai escort who makes her coin with in person service. I’ve never sampled her wares, but we’ve struck up an odd sort of friendship where she sends me Line massages with screen grabs of her chats with clients, clips of her banging guys that she’s looking for approval on, minced in with pictures of her latest interior decoration project like her kitchen remodeling or whether I like a particular style of lamp she’s thinking about buying.
She recently discovered one of the Tube sites and after posting clips for free, one of her guys convinced her to monetize. Yesterday she sent me screen captures of two different digital deposits of 1,000 baht she received for 10 minute cam sessions.
She turned the Covid mask wearing situation into a benefit, just by adding a sexy eye mask to her already covered mouth and nose so that her doggy style clips are pretty anonymous.
Smart girl!
She is definitely an interesting case. Cheers!
Rockit, I’ve tried to convince her to virtually sit for an interview with her. I posted a fictional recount of a session with her on an international guide site, and a few of her clients recognized the pics (she had shared them with me) and called me out as a fake client.
I checked in with her, shared screen captures of my post proving that I hadn’t revealed her face or identity, and she was totally cool with it. She’s a smart albeit risky working girl, and understood that there is rarely bad publicity if it sends a few new clients to her MR post.
OnlyFans (RIP) is an option for the online enthusiast, but in person carnal pleasure is unlikely to ever go away, whether in Thailand, Mexico or North America.