I know no matter what I say here I'm going to get another round of abuse, but I'm posting this conclusion in order to satisfy people's curiosity and that I feel I've indeed learned some red-pill wisdom.
(Note that during this period I was going on a series of first dates so I was not fixated on her. Those dates didn't pan out, but they were also good learning experiences.)
Just to get this out of the way, no I did not earn a flag, nor did I lose my house or wreck my daughter's life or any of those other Nabokov scenarios that I was warned about.
I continued to cultivate the penpal relationship for a while and at one point she seemed receptive to meet me in her town if I were to have visited this summer. Once I found out about the visa-free travel between Ukraine and the rest of Europe I decided to risk it all and suggest that if we got along that she come with me to sightsee through western europe. I just did not want to take an expensive vacation and be holed up in her town, especially if she wound up not putting out, and it seemed like a waste to travel around europe alone and only visit her at the tail end of the trip. She immediately went silent after that, so I must have freaked her out. It was a calculated risk and it just seemed like the right thing to do rather than to keep drawing this out.
I'm a curious person who is interested in knowledge for its own sake. I guess beyond seeing her diddle herself nude I wanted to be an emotional voyeur--to know what her life was really like rather than just the act she put on. I feel like I came as close to figuring her out as anyone would.
I don't want to go into too many details but she wound up sending me pictures and stories about her family, lots of sob stories about the conflict she was having with the madame-like figure who ran the studio. There was a lot there that I have no doubt was truthful. She even told me about her urinary tract infection, which is not something I would expect a woman to do if she were cultivating a "long game".
OK, so that's what happened, but what did I learn?
My takeaway is that there's a toxic codependence between camgirls and the lonely guys who go into the room. There's a combination of silent contempt and mutual identification going on. The contempt from guys is that these women are whores. The contempt from women are that these guys are losers who can't get laid and just want to pay to objectify them. But these things get pushed to the sidelines and sugar-coated as the guys lavish empty validation on the women and the women keep saying thank-you and try to be sort of charming and Geisha like with their smalltalk.
The problem for camgirls as a lifestyle, especially with the timezone difference, is it becomes a social prison. This woman was working a graveyard shift and sleeping all day. This creates an acute form of social isolation to the point of Stockholm syndrome. In other words, since she had little or no opportunity for social interaction in the meatspace, to some extent she became dependent on the guys in the room for a social life. This is what blurs the line between a paying customer and a friend.
At one point I created a new account and went into one of her rooms and said some nice things about her and she said she "liked me" and offered to hook me up on WhatsApp. It was like dejavu. It's not that she was just looking just for money, although that was probably a factor, but that she really does want to develop some friendly closeness, because she can't get it any other way. But she spreads herself across a lot of guys who come and go rather than ever having a close confidant for a long period of time. She's used to the fickleness of guys being infatuated with her for a while and then disappearing, and so she has a weird way of managing her boundaries, which is why she could share such private things with me one moment, then go silent the next. There's always someone else like me who will come around and offer her a shoulder to cry on. The guys probably all just blur together in her head.
In the end I can casually step away from the keyboard. Tipping camgirls is a luxury. She needs to log X number of hours to pay her rent on the apartment. So she's on a treadmill even though she's finishing up what she sees as a worthless degree in mechanical engineering (because of the lack of available jobs).
I tried to come up with scenarios that could improve her lot, things like trying to work out of her apartment and not pay the studio, to leaving Ukraine entirely. She won't leave Ukraine because she wants to be close to her mom. And she just has a generally fatalistic attitude.
It's that fatalism that caused me to start to lose interest in her. If she was just going to allow herself to languish in that situation indefinitely, then, well, it makes me stop thinking of her as an innocent victim and that she's just a little too lazy, too cowardly, too lacking in vision and ambition. I'm not sure how much one can expect from a 22 year old hottie in the first place, but I guess I just wanted to use the age difference to maybe give her food for thought because her mom had completely failed in doing that. Ultimately...not...my...problem.
So anyway, my feeling shifted too much from empathy to pity.
The appeal of going into those rooms is it's a fantasy. You make up whatever back-story you want about these women in order to successfully get off. But having looked behind the curtain, the reality doesn't match the fantasy. At a superficial level, sure, I'd still bang her if I had the chance, but I don't think I could fall in love with her because I can't respect that kind of fatalistic attitude.
(Note that during this period I was going on a series of first dates so I was not fixated on her. Those dates didn't pan out, but they were also good learning experiences.)
Just to get this out of the way, no I did not earn a flag, nor did I lose my house or wreck my daughter's life or any of those other Nabokov scenarios that I was warned about.
I continued to cultivate the penpal relationship for a while and at one point she seemed receptive to meet me in her town if I were to have visited this summer. Once I found out about the visa-free travel between Ukraine and the rest of Europe I decided to risk it all and suggest that if we got along that she come with me to sightsee through western europe. I just did not want to take an expensive vacation and be holed up in her town, especially if she wound up not putting out, and it seemed like a waste to travel around europe alone and only visit her at the tail end of the trip. She immediately went silent after that, so I must have freaked her out. It was a calculated risk and it just seemed like the right thing to do rather than to keep drawing this out.
I'm a curious person who is interested in knowledge for its own sake. I guess beyond seeing her diddle herself nude I wanted to be an emotional voyeur--to know what her life was really like rather than just the act she put on. I feel like I came as close to figuring her out as anyone would.
I don't want to go into too many details but she wound up sending me pictures and stories about her family, lots of sob stories about the conflict she was having with the madame-like figure who ran the studio. There was a lot there that I have no doubt was truthful. She even told me about her urinary tract infection, which is not something I would expect a woman to do if she were cultivating a "long game".
OK, so that's what happened, but what did I learn?
My takeaway is that there's a toxic codependence between camgirls and the lonely guys who go into the room. There's a combination of silent contempt and mutual identification going on. The contempt from guys is that these women are whores. The contempt from women are that these guys are losers who can't get laid and just want to pay to objectify them. But these things get pushed to the sidelines and sugar-coated as the guys lavish empty validation on the women and the women keep saying thank-you and try to be sort of charming and Geisha like with their smalltalk.
The problem for camgirls as a lifestyle, especially with the timezone difference, is it becomes a social prison. This woman was working a graveyard shift and sleeping all day. This creates an acute form of social isolation to the point of Stockholm syndrome. In other words, since she had little or no opportunity for social interaction in the meatspace, to some extent she became dependent on the guys in the room for a social life. This is what blurs the line between a paying customer and a friend.
At one point I created a new account and went into one of her rooms and said some nice things about her and she said she "liked me" and offered to hook me up on WhatsApp. It was like dejavu. It's not that she was just looking just for money, although that was probably a factor, but that she really does want to develop some friendly closeness, because she can't get it any other way. But she spreads herself across a lot of guys who come and go rather than ever having a close confidant for a long period of time. She's used to the fickleness of guys being infatuated with her for a while and then disappearing, and so she has a weird way of managing her boundaries, which is why she could share such private things with me one moment, then go silent the next. There's always someone else like me who will come around and offer her a shoulder to cry on. The guys probably all just blur together in her head.
In the end I can casually step away from the keyboard. Tipping camgirls is a luxury. She needs to log X number of hours to pay her rent on the apartment. So she's on a treadmill even though she's finishing up what she sees as a worthless degree in mechanical engineering (because of the lack of available jobs).
I tried to come up with scenarios that could improve her lot, things like trying to work out of her apartment and not pay the studio, to leaving Ukraine entirely. She won't leave Ukraine because she wants to be close to her mom. And she just has a generally fatalistic attitude.
It's that fatalism that caused me to start to lose interest in her. If she was just going to allow herself to languish in that situation indefinitely, then, well, it makes me stop thinking of her as an innocent victim and that she's just a little too lazy, too cowardly, too lacking in vision and ambition. I'm not sure how much one can expect from a 22 year old hottie in the first place, but I guess I just wanted to use the age difference to maybe give her food for thought because her mom had completely failed in doing that. Ultimately...not...my...problem.
So anyway, my feeling shifted too much from empathy to pity.
The appeal of going into those rooms is it's a fantasy. You make up whatever back-story you want about these women in order to successfully get off. But having looked behind the curtain, the reality doesn't match the fantasy. At a superficial level, sure, I'd still bang her if I had the chance, but I don't think I could fall in love with her because I can't respect that kind of fatalistic attitude.