15:39, Thursday 17 Oct., 2002 Link

The camgirl phenomenon... Salon's 2001 article, Candy from strangers sets out the stand for mid-teen girls and their gift-giving followers. It's a pretty dismal picture, but Power undressing has a more positive spin. After describing the pattern of wish-lists and the more photogenic and, uh, exhibitionist girls receiving the most gifts, the article goes on:

"Men have been exploiting and objectifying women in cyberspace for years. What's new is that the Camgirls have taken control of this process and cut out the middleman. So the line between victim and perpetrator is blurred. [...] The Camgirl phenomenon presents a challenge to traditional feminist interpretations of girl culture - the assumption that young women are the innocent victims of an exploitative entertainment industry. But this kind of analysis no longer works in the postmodern world". And interestingly: "Like the rest of us, [camgirls] are living in a society where we are defined not by what we do, but by what we consume".

I'd like to know more about the camgirl community -- is it in fact a community at all? What mechanisms do they use to share knowledge? Do informal traffic-transactions take place? How does flesh-flashing fit in to the spectrum, and what other camgirl types are there: completely subscription, no nudity, IRC-only, more or less journal based? And how about sites specifically for the audience? (For bonus marks, what would these questions be applied to weblogs, and how about the answers?)