Webcamming

Webcamming involves the livestreaming of (usually sexual) acts to audience members in exchange for payment. Unlike other types of adult media, webcamming relies on real-time interactivity. Webcam platforms have been capitalizing on the appeal of such interactions since the early 1990s. Performers generate income through the tips or per-minute payments that audience members make to engage with them, and the platforms that host this work take a share of this income. The mediation of webcamming labor by platforms, its reliance on connections between audience members and performers, and its sexual nature mean that webcamming shares many similarities with gig labor, influencer labor, and sex work. This chapter looks into how webcamming has been discussed and classified. The starting point for this discussion is the history of live cams and their scholarship. In the 1990s and early 2000s popular live cams were primarily used and studied as forms of art and self-expression. Then the characteristics of contemporary webcamming are discussed, by focusing on workers, bosses, platforms, and third parties. The chapter then returns to the discussion of scholarship on webcamming and labor, thus exploring the type of work that adult livestreaming can be seen as. Ultimately, this chapter presents a specific and inclusive classification of webcamming as many kinds of work. It shows how webcamming can be sex work, gig work, and creator work all the same time, or any constellation of these and, potentially, other types of labor, depending on specific contexts.