The cam universe is "basically like high school blown up exponentially," says Marissa, 24 (old, by the standards of this world). "It's a huge popularity contest. Popularity rules." Some of the better-known cam girls have fan clubs with hundreds of members who swap photos and exchange e-mail with their idols. Earlier this year, the cam world even had its own version of the reality TV show "Survivor" -- called Survivorcam -- where 16 cam kids competed for $300 by completing various silly, bawdy and outrageous immunity challenges in front of their cams, some claiming to be as young as 14. The Survivorcam motto: "Outpose. Outshine. Outwhore." Marissa won the contest, but was accused by other contestants of showing too much skin to do it.
Like everything else in the insular webcam community, the meaning and morality of the wish lists is hotly debated by the cam kids themselves. Are you a "cam whore" if you put up a wish list? If you don't show your tits, does that mean you're not "whoring for hits"? What if you put up a wish list, but don't show skin?
Katneko's site Linuxkitty self-consciously mocks some of the seductive come-ons of the cam world. Her cam and diary entries have won her 500 members in her fan club, along with those copies of "Catcher in the Rye" and other teen classics, but, she says, "The Internet community views me as untouchable because I won't get naked on my cam." She recently mused on her site: "Some people show tits, and some people don't. I wonder what it is I'm whoring to get presents exactly, since I'm not the showy-fleshy type of girl."
Other girls don't see wish lists that way. "To me, it's the newest form of prostitution," says Camilla, 19, from Trondheim, Norway, who has had her own site -- now at Wallflower.nu -- since she was 15. She doesn't have a wish list on her site because she sees such blatant solicitation as a quid pro quo transaction, where fans who give gifts expect something, like a topless or suggestive photo via e-mail, in return. None of the cam girls interviewed for this story copped to any such payoff.
Charisma says: "I never promise to do anything in return for the gifts other than to say thank you or send a thank you card. I'm not tricking people into sending me things. I think strangers on the Internet like to send things to other people because they're lonely, and they try to find their happiness in our surprise and thankfulness of their gifts. Sure, you could possibly argue that we're 'taking advantage' of these depressed people, but, if they aren't sending us gifts, they'd probably be doing something just as useless with their money."
Marissa, who in her offline life is a junior lobbyist in Washington, mocks the wish list phenomenon on her site. Her wish list parody begins: "If you love me, you'll buy me things." She says, "I'm boldly mocking the people who are buying people stuff, just totally mocking the prostitution angle of wish lists." Needless to say, no one has bought her anything.
Other cam kids abhor the begging and commercialism. "I don't have [a wish list] because I don't want strangers buying me stuff. My site isn't out there to make money for me, it's just for my pleasure only," says Ashley, 17, a self-described vegetarian Virgo with three pets -- "two dogs and a 13-year-old brother." Ashley gets so many e-mails from drooling fans begging for naked pictures of her that she offers this chilly FAQ on her site to fend them off. "I get annoyed by people asking about my appearance, and the same 20 questions repeatedly," she explains. This is from the same girl who has her fans show her the love by sending her digital images of themselves with the words "fuck frosty" in the picture, which she posts on her site. Go figure.
Actually, racier versions of such photos are the transgressive currency of the webcam world; fans take photos of their naked body parts, often with the name of the site written on their cleavage or naked butt, which the cam kids then proudly display on their sites. Galleries of such devotion can be found on sites like Infinity Decay, State of Confusion and Xeres.com.
All this butt-flashing and begging for goodies from strangers may seem tawdry or crass, but Lynn Ponton, M.D., author of "The Sex Lives of Teenagers," cautions against jumping to conclusions. Psychologists have found that offline diaries of teenage girls are filled with lists of things that they'd like friends and parents to buy for them; the online wish lists just represent the next step -- showing their desires to the world. "There's always a thought that someone like Santa Claus is going to come along and take care of you and not expect anything," Ponton says. "Kids still believe that they're going to get all these free gifts in life." For Ponton, the cam sites represent the kind of risk-taking kids engage in to form their identity -- and which can go too far.
Next page: "My mom loves the site"