Asklemmy

I dated a cam girl for a while, (insert the obligatory “it’s not dating if you’re paying her lul” joke here), and she smoked a quarter per day. It was the only way she could tolerate the work.

Given, she was damned good at her job. She made more in 4 hours of streaming than my roommate and I made in a week combined. She literally made enough to cover her rent and bills in like three or four hours of work. So she could definitely afford to smoke that much, because basically everything after that first stream was disposable income for her. But she would get done with her stream and immediately hit a bowl to try and forget the work. And she’d basically be stoned until her next stream was scheduled to start.

If she had ever graduated to harder drugs, she 100% would have OD’ed. However, it’s also a little disingenuous to compare streamers/OnlyFans models with in-person sex workers. There’s a level of compartmentalization that online sex work creates. It’s definitely still reliant on building a parasocial relationship, but you’re not actually sleeping with Johns in person. Unless you’re doxxed, there’s very little personal risk involved. But with in-person sex work, all of that is inverted. Online sex work is obviously still sex work, but it’s definitely a different type of sex work.

It’s like comparing retail work with an Amazon warehouse. Both jobs suck in their own way, and they’re both fulfilling the same basic purpose of getting products to customers. But very few people would say that they’re the same job, and the stressors associated with each are unique.