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The "people are depressed after seeing Avatar" thread has me ruminating on internet-related psychological disorders. 4chan-style "camwhoring" is, to my mind, a lot more disturbing of a phenomenon than the Avatar thing. It's certainly more potentially damaging to one's life. What confuses me the most is why people do it. What is it about an imageboard full of faceless and often misspelled demands for nudity that gets girls (and some guys) to so readily shed their clothes, put shoes on their heads, etc, etc, etc. Could so many people want attention so badly that they would be obliging so regularly? Is this mostly about pleasing others (low self-esteem) or pleasing oneself (enjoyment of voyeurism)? Does anybody know any IRL camwhores? In conclusion, I shudder to think what the internet will be like ten years from now.

Ppl crave for attention , which exists in many many forms.
Which sometimes feels like they have power over something.

Inb4 ( OP Show us tits or gtfo! )

Power or the illusion of intimate human interaction?

Manchu wrote:Power or the illusion of intimate human interaction?

Illusion , but strictly speaking , even "real power" are still nothing but an illusion.

It's society falling apart. Now many young women will happily strip down for any that ask.

4chan however amuses me, it makes me see how really F***ed a place the world is.

And make me laugh at the same time!!!!!

Manchu wrote:Power or the illusion of intimate human interaction?

Yes,you'd be surprised by how many people think and feel that way...

Apart from the obvious reasons of making "friends" through such actions or gaining some sort of notoriety or fame from doing so, isn't a lot of it done for monetary purposes?

Manch wrote: What is it about an imageboard full of faceless and often misspelled demands for nudity that gets girls (and some guys) to so readily shed their clothes, put shoes on their heads, etc, etc, etc.

...

...

...

Yur Bewbs...

...

...

NAOW!!!



Aside THAT point, I don't know why people do it, and I don't doubt that most of them haven't a clue either. As I take it, there are many, many, lonely people on this planet. All of these people appear to have taken to the internet as a natural habitat...

Now, back the the important part...

Yur Bewbs...

LunaHound wrote:strictly speaking , even "real power" are still nothing but an illusion.

Even it ends up that we're not actually talking about the same thing (as if often the case) I agree with that statement.

I don't think camwhoring is a problem with "the kids today" or something. Adults are doing this sort of thing, too. Technology always affects culture in surprising ways. Maybe it's even hasty to assume that this kind of behavior is psychologically unhealthy instead of considering whether its just revealing a preexistent but heretofore unexpressed norm. Some people believe that all things that we once considered sexual aberrations (including homosexuality) are actually "normal" or "natural" in some sense but have been suppressed by didactic elements in our culture in order to maintain the moral authority of some system of power or another. Such people would probably also argue that the negative consequences of putting nude pictures of oneself up on the internet either because some group of people you'll never know anything about much less have further interaction with demands it OR because you are sexually stimulated by doing so are just the latent forces of that authority trying to assert itself upon being threatened by individual "liberation" or something. But is "conventional" morality really so dead or illusionary that we can buy this kind of argument? Something like "Posting Nude Picture Is Bad And If People Think It's OK Republican Will Lose Seats In Congress."

So do you think that these tendencies to sexual "deviency" or "perversion" or "expression" or "liberation" or whatever you want to call it are a result of widespread access to new technologies or have simply always been there and are only now coming to widespread notice because of that access?

Wrex, so sorry, but my avatar is BrookM-style misleading--as you might remember from the "Show Yourself!" thread. Have no bewbies.

Hmm i have trouble understanding that paragraph but i will re read it again manchu in abit.

But the way i see it , its alot more basic than that.
Its the mentality of " thats right , gawk at my magnificent <insert which ever here> drool till the day you die , but remember you'll never get any.

So camwhoring , guys driving their ferrari , countries comparing how much nukes they have , are all the same to me.

I got creepy tell's for having a anime girl in my dp.

Oh well untill then...


Sieg Heil!! I want my soother!

Is 4chan camwhoring different than regular camwhoring that has been around long before there was a 4chan? Basically the moment someone figured out how to hook a camera up to the net.

Women showing their bodies for attention is not something that's come along with the internet. It's changed the game a little as the audience for any given girl is much bigger, but that's about it.

Manchu wrote:Wrex, so sorry, but my avatar is BrookM-style misleading--as you might remember from the "Show Yourself!" thread. Have no bewbies.]Wrex, so sorry, but my avatar is BrookM-style misleading--as you might remember from the "Show Yourself!" thread. Have no bewbies.

, your like the only person who I would probably recognize besides tblock from these boards.

Now show us your bewbs... .

Ahtman wrote:Is 4chan camwhoring different than regular camwhoring that has been around long before there was a 4chan? Basically the moment someone figured out how to hook a camera up to the net.

I don't know the difference either. Could you clear up what it is you mean Manchu?

Wrexasaur wrote:I don't know the difference either. Could you clear up what it is you mean Manchu?

The difference?

LunaHound wrote:Hmm i have trouble understanding that paragraph but i will re read it again manchu in abit.

Oh sorry. Jist is: Some people say morality is just an instrument of power so that the statement "x = wrong" is just a way of exerting control. They claim that there is nothing intrinsically wrong about x. (This is different from people who say there is no such thing as an intrinsic wrong at all.) A lot of those people have argued (convincingly IMO) that statements about what is "psychologically healthy" or not are also attempts to exert power over people. So throughout the last century, gay people were not only considered to be morally depraved but also crazy. Mainstream culture is currently outgrowing both of those ideas, largely thanks to the arguments I've just (very briefly) outlined.

But can the same be said for something like "camwhoring"? Let's put the situation into a face-to-face context. A girl is in a room with a bunch of guys. The guys are shouting at her over and over again to take her clothes off. She does so. Then the guys angrily demand that she do other things (we've all been to 4chan, no need for descriptions here) and she complies. Now, if you are in that room--maybe even if you were the ones shouting--do you feel that what's going on is perfectly okay and socially acceptable or do you have a nagging feeling that this is somehow very wrong? And who's power does that nagging feeling reinforce?

Zooming back out to the internet phenomenon, I really do wonder whether this is happening because so many people in post-Industrial countries have access to computers, the internet, and digital cameras OR if it's more of a "hurr durr I drive a Ferrari" thing, as Luna said. I'm not really convinced by the latter option. After all, "camwhores" don't seem to offer much looks-wise when you consider that they compete against pornstars. Hence my comment about the illusion of intimacy.


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LunaHound wrote:The difference?

That's definitely part of it. But so is (I knew specific examples would come up at some point or another) "sharpie in pooper," "pee in bag," etc. Sebster has a point about women trading sexuality for attention going back to Adam and Eve. But I would argue there is something very significantly different between that and this, having to do with that audience expansion he also mentioned. A girl trying to get attention from one or several guys IRL might be doing so for tangible reasons--like (to be really sexist) getting present, a better job, or even some kind of popularity. But is there anything more ephemeral than internet popularity? How long does the average 4chan camwhore have? It puts a very literal spin on Andy Warhol's fifteen minutes quip. That's the part I don't get, I guess.

Hmm , or its both.

For example , it can start by what i described.
However that "position power" is soon reversed when the mob forces for "more" which quickly it turns into peer pressure.

Then under the peer pressure how we are supposed to act? then we have things like OC , sex n the city , gossip girl , where the media show promiscuity and easy = whats cool , then everything is just ?

Manchu wrote:But can the same be said for something like "camwhoring"? Let's put the situation into a face-to-face context. A girl is in a room with a bunch of guys. The guys are shouting at her over and over again to take her clothes off. She does so. Then the guys angrily demand that she do other things (we've all been to 4chan, no need for descriptions here) and she complies. Now, if you are in that room--maybe even if you were the ones shouting--do you feel that what's going on is perfectly okay and socially acceptable or do you have a nagging feeling that this is somehow very wrong? And who's power does that nagging feeling reinforce?

4-chans format annoys the living crap out of me, so I never get very far. There are places on 4-chan where this takes place? I am still not sure I completely understand. If you are talking about random people on the internet doing random things in front of a camera, for absolutely no 'reason', then I think I understand you.

I am not sure that there is anything new about this in any way at all. People do stupid stuff all the time, whether they are in front of cameras or not. Maybe the cameras make it more addicting? Inflating whatever satisfaction they get, I suppose.

Wrexasaur wrote:4-chans format annoys the living crap out of me, so I never get very far. There are places on 4-chan where this takes place?

I dont want to insinuate anything but.... that sounds sort of like...... you are trying to.....

Luna... this is the freaking internet, no backroom porn fiasco is going to be any less accessible than the sea of porn inhabiting these series of tubes...

I saw what you did there though... .

I just wanted Manchu to clear up whatever he means specifically. Is a '4-chan Cam-ho' something specific? Does it imply this definition, or something else?

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/camwhore

A shamelessly exhibitionistic webcam user.

Luna: Good point. So between first "sup /b/?" post and OP "delivering", power is in camwhore's hands. But then when s/he "delivers", power switches to mob's hands. But what is the "mob" in this case? It can't even agree on what it wants OP to do. Ultimately, camwhore still has the power because s/he picks which post to deliver on, right? (Phrases like "tits or gtfo" exist to convince *channers that they are some kind of collective power base when in reality they are just a myriad of individuals further diluted by anonymity.) This is why I suspect the camwhore her/himself is the one pursuing whatever satisfaction comes from posting pics rather than being in any sense forced or even pressured to do so by the "mob" or "peer pressure." This is what makes me suspect that this is a pre-existent paraphilia merely enabled by technology/culture rather than caused by it.

Wrex: I think addiction might be a very useful word in this discussion. I'm not on /b/ often enough to know if many camwhores get on reguarly so a real /b/tard will have to speak to that. Also, that definition reveals its own moral bias by using the word "shameless."

So... wrex and manchu lurks /b/ for porn -_-?

Sorry i was just trying to be mean >:'D

It is in the mobs hands after the CW leaves if anything becuase once you put something online it is there to stay. While online the CW can shoose to continue or not at their discretion. It is after the female (or occasionally male) finished their display that the wheels come off. Lord help the CW that plans on having a life after free of disturbance. The pictures will resurface, and probably at the most inopportune time.

LunaHound wrote:So... wrex and manchu lurks /b/ for porn -_-?

I hope not. >_>

LunaHound wrote:So... wrex and manchu lurks /b/ for porn -_-?

Jus to clarify, we both seem to be saying that camwhores are pretty poor competition for actual porn. Plus, why lurk /b/ when you can lurk /tg/?


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Ahtman wrote:It is in the mobs hands after the CW leaves if anything becuase once you put something online it is there to stay. While online the CW can shoose to continue or not at their discretion. It is after the female (or occasionally male) finished their display that the wheels come off. Lord help the CW that plans on having a life after free of disturbance. The pictures will resurface, and probably at the most inopportune time.

Yeah, which is why I have trouble saying that calling CWing "wrong" is the result of me being a narrow-minded prude, even if I might actually be one, because it does create actual negative consquences.

That /tg/ thread died manchu , go write a poem or something to bring it back to live!
a poem on emperor camwhoring

It would not be hard to imagine that the instant access creates an extremely negative environment to one prone to addiction, which is a word that... well it should not be used lightly.

In terms of the actual number of people addicted to this form of voyeurism, the viewer will inevitably be the major player in that statistic. There are undoubtedly people that feed their addiction through the internet, just think about the access, and all the ways that a person could become fixated.

I have few doubts that for 99.9% of the population, instant access to various forms of content, is not a negative thing in the least. I read part of an article a while back about how people are 'dumberer' because of the nature of content online. Reading a book supposedly exercises your mind in a much more focused way.

I think the fact that I can even 'talk' to any of you, is a pretty awesome trump card to me getting 'dumberer'. With the development of smart phones and the like, increasing internet access through those phones, and other advances; the net will develop in some astounding ways. Content distribution is one thing, instant access is another, now... 'a freaking pair of computer glasses'?

Knock it out of the park technology, amaze the crap out of me.

Manchu wrote:
So do you think that these tendencies to sexual "deviency" or "perversion" or "expression" or "liberation" or whatever you want to call it are a result of widespread access to new technologies or have simply always been there and are only now coming to widespread notice because of that access?

My tendency is to believe that its a bit of both. On the one hand it seems irrational to believe that the presence of computers suddenly injected sexual deviance into the human condition. On the other, it seems obvious that the impersonal nature of social media makes it easier to cross old lines of decency; assuming that decency can be considered in the same light when the means of communication lack a tactile component. Regardless of the side on which emphasis should be placed, technology has clearly produced new forums through which people can explore their desires without the danger of serious repercussions in the rest of their lives. When those consequences are removed, and alternative communities can be established, it becomes much easier for people to give into their taboo desires.

Now, I don't think this process has necessarily increased the rate of deviance in society (though experimentation has likely increased), but has certainly made the suppression of that sort of behavior less of an imperative.

I wonder what happens to these issues when virtual reality is introduced (like the Matrix )

Why do I have a feeling this thread is heading down the road to a Furry argument?

LunaHound wrote:That /tg/ thread died manchu , go write a poem or something to bring it back to live!
a poem on emperor camwhoring

Done. I can't take credit for that one on Russ. Wish I could because it was pretty good.