Confessions of a Teenage Cam Girl

Undressing the fastest growing field of the digital sex industry with Natasha Grey In 1998, David Letterman had Jennifer Ridley, who created a 24/7 livecast of her daily life, as…

Undressing the fastest growing field of the digital sex industry with Natasha Grey

In 1998, David Letterman had Jennifer Ridley, who created a 24/7 livecast of her daily life, as a guest on his show. In that interview, he made a bold statement about Ridley’s site JenniCam—saying ‘I don’t care about the internet, but this is the perfect idea for [it].’ Although this wasn’t a profound statement at the time, twenty years later it highlights the unexpected explosion of the the digital sex industry. Although JenniCam is a primitive example of what camming is today, Ridley paved the way for cam girls world wide. Internet users could never have predicted the rise of cam girls, not to mention the way the business has evolved to suit new technologies, cultural expectations, and generational kinks.

Camming, which generates an estimated $2 billion annually, is one of the fastest growing facets of sex work with more women working from their bedrooms than on a porn set or in a strip club. Today, almost everyone in the western world has encountered a cam girl in their daily life, but most would never know it. And there’s actually a reason for this. Not all, but many cam girls strive to create personal, intimate, and unique content that you can’t get from watching porn. By interacting with an online audience in the comforts of their own home, they establish an authenticity that is refreshing for many consumers. Sure, it can be as dirty as any other medium of adult entertainment, but the most successful cam girls offer an extension of themselves in addition to a strip tease.

In order to make it in 2018 as a cam model, women in this industry need to spend as much time building their social media as they do in the chat room. People entering camming today no longer have the luxury of being a niche on the internet, like it was back in 1998 or even 2008. They need to find a way to build their brand off cam in order to keep the customers coming, which is where platforms like Twitter, Snapchat, Patreon, and even Instagram come into play. If you have an innate understanding of the way each platform distributes your content as well as the importance of connecting with other individuals and brands—almost anyone can make it as a cam girl. The number of gorgeous girls doing virtually the same thing in this industry is endless, therefore it takes both hard work and a mind for business to succeed.

Lucky for 19-year-old cam girl Natasha Grey, she possesses each of these attributes. While she would still consider herself a rookie, Grey is a rising star in the cam girl and will undoubtedly explode over the next several years. She sat down with INKED to share how she started in this industry, what her family thinks of her career, and how she navigates hookup culture as a cam girl.