Camming takes porn to the next level, offering real-time intimacy with an online crush via webcam.

In an upscale residential area on the outskirts of the Romanian city of Timisoara, at the border of Hungary and Serbia, sits a beautiful three-story mansion surrounded by gardens and a swimming pool. At first sight, nothing distinguishes it from the other dwellings, apart from the perpetually-closed windows and curtains, and the morning silence that permeates it. Then, at twelve o’clock, the house suddenly comes to life when a mysterious BMW SUV pulls up to the front gate, unloading a group of beautiful young girls, marking the beginning of yet another day in one of the most secretive — and possibly lucrative — industries of our time.

Once inside the house, a 25-year-old girl with a catchy smile and toned body named Krina* quickly climbs to the upper floor and goes inside a room furnished with a purple sofa, a white bed, and an internet-connected workstation. After a long makeup session, she puts on a cream-colored skirt suit and a black lingerie top, switches her PC on, adjusts her webcam, and logs in to an adult website.

It takes Krina a few minutes to fill her free video chatroom with adoring users from all over the world, imploring her to get naked. She doesn’t budge, replying instead with jokes or teasing customers by dancing in front of the camera. Suddenly, another window pops up on her monitor, a sign that a user just initiated a paying, one-on-one session. After a few minutes of casual banter, the user asks if she will undress for him. Krina complies, stripteasing slowly, whispering racy sentiments to her client.

Once naked, Krina takes out a dildo from a drawer and starts caressing it, before pleasing herself to the delight of the man. After several minutes of mutual moans and wheezes, the client congratulates her and quickly abandons the chat. Still naked, Krina lights a cigarette, then checks her profile to see how much she just made: The client spent around $110 for a 25-minute show. “I don’t know much about him, but he is a good customer,” she says, puffing away the smoke. “He is from the U.S. and comes around five times a month.”

For the past three years, Krina has been a professional camgirl at Live Cams Mansion. A former college student and bar waitress, Krina works eight hours a day, performing online erotic shows for paying customers from all over the world. Live cam shows first launched in the early 2000s, and the phenomenon has grown exponentially due to faster internet speeds and cheaper technology, revolutionizing porn and becoming the fastest growing sector of the adult entertainment industry, taking in billions of dollars annually.

Today, major adult cam sites such as MyFreeCams, Chaturbate, Flirt4Free, and Streamate feature hundreds of camgirls who are online at any given time of day. While users can see and chat with the girls for free, they have to buy credits to see them perform in private one-on-one sessions, which typically cost between $2 to $9 per minute. The bill is collected by the cam site through the client’s credit card and is then split with the girl.

Camming has become hugely popular because of its interactivity and real-time feedback between customers and girls, and has rapidly changed the face of the traditional porn landscape. Depending on the user’s and camgirl’s tastes, private shows can be anything from a simple conversation to a kinky fetish session. With camgirls, customers have the unique experience of being let into the real, intimate lives of ordinary women, spurred by the “girl-next-door” look of many models and the fact that they generally work from private bedrooms.

While typical customers are men between 40 and 60 years old, camming attracts all types, some of them very wealthy, and sometimes famous. Among Live Cams Mansion’s various clients are a famous American rapper, a Nobel Prize winner, and a Spanish national soccer player, according to Adrian Ionescu, the 36-year-old agency manager. Many are men who are unable to relate to women in real life; others who feel that cheating on their wives online is less serious; and some who are simply curious or lack time to cultivate personal relationships.

Camming is so profitable and easily accessible (all you need is an internet-connected computer and a webcam), it has attracted tens of thousands of models from every corner of the world, from students to single mothers to middle-age housewives. Camboys have entered the scene as well, catering to both gay and female audiences. But while most of the camgirls in the U.S. operate from their own homes, in Eastern Europe it has turned into a sizable industry, with professional studios providing equipped rooms, promotion tools, and web traffic in exchange for a share of the profits.

Due to the combination of good-looking girls, high-speed internet connectivity (according to the 2015 Akamai State of the Internet Report, Romania ranked 11th in the world), and a low cost of living, Romania has become the uncontested capital of this new trend. Local media and dedicated online forums estimate the country hosts around 700 studios from which 40,000 English-speaking models cater to more than 150 million users worldwide, from the Americas to India, Australia, Japan, and even Saudi Arabia.

Although it’s still taboo for parts of local society, camming has become a common job for Romanian girls in their twenties. While some of them do it to pay tuition or support families, the vast majority are attracted to the potentially lucrative earnings of a job which, apparently, doesn’t require any particular skill. Depending on her talent and the number of hours spent online, an average camgirl can make anywhere between $1,000 and $3,500 a month, in a country where the average monthly salary is around €400. “It’s an easy way to make money, and at the same time you don’t really force yourself with responsibilities,” says Krina.

It just takes Krina a few minutes to fill her free video chat with adoring users from all around the world, imploring her to get naked.

The story of this flamboyant girl with an undisguised passion for the gym and TV is similar to those of many other camgirls. Born in a small village in southeast Romania to a poor family of farmers, Krina had her first contact with camming at 19, when she joined a studio in the city of Constanta for a few months. “I still remember my first private show, I was very frightened and nervous,” she laughs. “A client asked me to strip [down] and please myself. While I was doing it, the only thing I could think about were the vegetables I had to buy to prepare soup for dinner.” Krina decided to become a full-time camgirl three years later when a family loss prompted her to abandon college and her €250-a-month waitressing job and move to Timisoara to do “video chat,” as it’s known in Romania. “I arrived here not having friends, not having anything,” she says. “But I needed to change something in my life.”

These days, Krina is the queen of Live Cams Mansion, which hosts a total of nine camgirls, all in their twenties, and managed by the portly Ionescu. The house has a distinct homey atmosphere, cut off from the outside world, where time passes in an endless circle of shows, cigarette breaks, and idle chitchat by the pool. The girls spend much of their spare time there and clearly enjoy each other’s company. Since most of them come from outside Timisoara, the mansion helped them settle into their new lives and has been instrumental in forging strong friendships. The girls’ personal stories of how their real and virtual worlds function together form a fascinating mosaic.

There is Lynette Smith, the youngest of the group, who is trying to manage camming with her studies and hopes her family and friends never find out what she does for a living; Bonnie Blue, a girl of Slovak origin, nicknamed “Super Girl” after a client asked her to put on a Superman-like costume, save him from a burning building, and then seduce him; Domina Monserrat, the mistress who caters to all types of fetish clients and who’s thinking about moving to Italy to find a real slave to live with; and Kendra Blu, a former gymnast and the hope of Romania for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, whose sporting career was cut short by a back injury.

Most of them started this job because of the money, Ionescu says. “I have been in this business for more than ten years, and I still have yet to find a girl who does this because she likes it,” he explains. But being a camgirl is much harder than many expect. Only around ten percent of the users who visit their chatrooms are willing to pay (the rest are commonly identified as “beggars”), so competition is fierce, and the girls must sometimes wait hours for a show.

“At times it is very boring, but you can’t just sit on the bed and read a book,” explains 20-year-old Lynette. “You have to be ready and make customers feel you are there.” On the other hand, when their chatrooms fill with dozens and sometimes hundreds of users, models can have a hard time coping with different requests, questions, comments, and sometimes insults, all of them coming at the same time. According to Amalia, the HR manager in charge of interviews at the mansion, only two girls of out ten make it past the first month. “This job is nerve-wracking” she explains. “Girls need nerves of steel to do it.”
Managing the times when clients are few and the pressure to earn intensifies can also be difficult. “Even if you had a bad day, or you are desperate because you haven’t earned anything for a while, you cannot show it,” explains Natali Rose, a 25-year-old camgirl from Timisoara who started working at Live Cams Mansion last October. “You need a lot of self-control, because every emotion that you have is visible on camera.”

One of the most difficult parts of the job is having to cope with the social stigma associated with camming. While camgirls are among the most successful professionals in Romania, the shame sometimes connected with it prevents many from feeling proud of their achievements. A brief tour of the University of Timisoara provides a glimpse of how locals perceive camming. One young female student describes camgirls as “whores,” and adds she recently cut ties with a friend who started doing it. A group of older girls doesn’t know much about it, but fears it might be the first step toward more dangerous activities like prostitution.

Camgirls are quick to point out that there’s no physical contact with clients, no human trafficking connected with camming, and that they are free to refuse to perform anything they don’t feel comfortable doing. “I am not ashamed of what I do,” says Natali calmly. “Many girls are doing this. Generations are changing, and young people don’t have such a bad conception about it anymore.”

Natali lives in her mother’s house, but her mother now works in Italy as a restaurant cook. Although she has been aware of the industry for a long time, Natali summoned the courage for a job interview at Live Cams Mansion after talking with a female friend who was a camgirl herself. So far, Natali is extremely happy with her choice. “I used to be shy, now I feel more self-confident about myself and my body,” she explains. “I socialize much more easily, both online and in real life.” Natali hasn’t told her family about what she does, but she plans to the next time she talks to her mother face-to-face. “I expect her to get angry at first,” she says, her fingers playing with her red braids. “But I am sure she will understand after seeing how many things I can afford now.”

Camgirls typically have modest backgrounds, often coming from villages where work opportunities are few. Those who decide to tell their families are usually scorned at first, but the fact that they often earn much more than their parents or elder siblings is a powerful, convincing force. Like Natali, whose parents are estranged, many camgirls also come from families whose parents have died, are divorced, or work abroad, conditions that facilitate camming because of reduced familial control. The girls generally don’t have a high level of education, nor a clear plan for their future, apart from very general goals like finding a partner and building a family. Almost all of them would like to set up a business, but, by their own admission, lack the skills to manage their finances properly.

Ionescu, who acts as a father figure for many of them, constantly tries to advise them, showing a sincere concern for their fate. “I am worried because most of them don’t have goals in life and just think about today,” he says in frustration. “They come to work only when they need money, and when they gain some, they spend it all.” Managing those earnings is vital, as camming doesn’t last forever. The industry has a very high turnover and girls burn out quickly. Spending so much time in a closed room, isolated from the outside world, takes a huge mental toll on the models, and many of them are forced to drop their studies, friendships, and relationships to concentrate on work. Those who don’t disclose what they do have a particularly hard time justifying their activities to family and boyfriends, especially during night shifts.

Among Live Cams Mansion’s various clients are a famous American rapper, a Nobel Prize winner, and a Spanish national soccer player.

“It is very tiring, these long hours online prevent me from doing anything else. I don’t have friends outside of here because I can’t manage my time,” says 27-year-old Baby Vanessa, the eldest camgirl here and the only one who seems to like the job for what it is. Originally from Transylvania, Vanessa has always dreamed of appearing in Coca-Cola ads and on Playboy covers. Raised in a middle-class family by parents who worked as teachers, she earned a master’s degree in business management and describes herself as a “very smart” girl. “I had the chance of being anything I wanted, but I got stuck into this business. It’s like an addiction,” she explains with a hint of regret in her voice. “I love to see users simply worshipping me. I have clients logging in from work just to say hello.” Still heartbroken from a relationship that ended three years ago, Vanessa wants a family but is unable to picture herself leaving a job that satisfies the exhibitionist side of her personality. “I like to show myself, to dance, to be sexy and crazy, but at the same time I feel I disappointed my family,” she says. “They had huge expectations for me, and I could be much more than what I am now.”

Because camming is not a particularly gratifying job, Ionescu tries to motivate the girls with success stories like that of InnocentKat, a beautiful, classy 25-year-old Romanian who cammed for six years, earning up to $25,000 per month. “I started to have more clients when I paid more attention to the setting of my room, my clothes, the quality of my webcam,” she explains, attributing her success to a mix of attention to small details and psychology. “I was constantly mixing things up. One day I was fully covered in an abaya, the other day I could be wearing only lingerie.” With time, InnocentKat started to understand the different mind-sets of the clients and to take control of the conversations. “You have to show them you have a strong personality. I wouldn’t undress or do anything in private if the clients were not asking me politely,” she says. “Moreover, I never lied. If I had a boyfriend, I would tell them. Some clients were going crazy, speaking about committing suicide because they were in love with me.”

To attract customers and gain their loyalty, modern camgirls need to have attitude, be engaging, communicative, good listeners, and mindful of their clients’ needs — something that’s easier said than done. The more honed these qualities are, the more a camgirl will be able to run her own show, without focusing so much on the sexual part. “Nowadays there are a lot of private shows that are about conversations and online friendships, rather than sex,” says Jamie Rodriguez, brand manager at Flirt4Free. “Being a pretty, smiling girl in front of a camera was probably enough 15 years ago when the industry was so new, but it is not sufficient now.”

It’s common for camgirls to rely on the customers who fall in love, as they are often the best clients who build relationships that go beyond erotic shows. “You can be more open with them, especially if you don’t feel like performing,” explains Natali. “One of my clients lost his wife a few years ago and never recovered from the shock. He would buy a private show only to cook for the two of us as if I were her.” Vanessa had a Portuguese client who offered to wire her €10,000, and another one from Texas who recently hinted at marrying her. Many of them fantasize about meeting the girls in real life one day, a very unlikely scenario, since camgirls never reveal personal details, for obvious security reasons. “There are all kinds of weird people out there, and you don’t want to find a stalker or a psycho in front of your house,” says Krina.

Twenty-six-year-old Arianna Smith, another camgirl working at the agency, once received a tip of $6,000 from a Spanish customer. “I remember staring at the monitor in disbelief. He was on the other side of the screen, and I couldn’t stop crying [from] joy,” she explains. Thanks to that money, Arianna was able to pay for breast implants, which she says will help her earn even more. Although she is already making around $3,000 a month, she is convinced she can earn up to $10,000. “I don’t consider myself particularly smart, but I am a very strong woman. You need to fight every day for what you want,” she says, her black eyes showing her determination. “I want to buy my own house and car. Camming will help me achieve my goals.”

As for her Spanish admirer, Arianna feels deep affection for him, but nothing that will ever match the man’s feelings toward her. This disparity is part of the job, and models are very aware of it, being their clients’ psychologists, friends, and love consultants. The fact that camgirls will always remain a virtual dream is something customers must know deep in their hearts, but fantasizing about this forbidden, impossible love is perhaps something they need in order to cope with their real lives.

“This is part of the job, we are selling illusions,” says Ionescu. “If they want to buy them, it’s not our fault.”