pre 2001
It all began shortly after I first got connected to the internet, back in the fall of 1997. Thinking back it feels like a very long time ago, but it is only 12 years ago now (2009). Anyway back then I had a slow and simple computer and a very low connection speed, which made even chat participation slightly difficult. So I only looked at some chat sites in Swedish for very short periods of time. I didn’t find it very interesting after the first curiosity about being online had faded but returned from time to time to just look at what was being said. Very seldom did I write anything myself. Mostly, people taking part seemed to be very young (late teens and slightly older), but at that time I wasn’t yet familiar with the Internet enough to understand that anyone could pretend to be any gender or age other than the real one. Very soon though I gradually learned this and more through reading magazines and online tutorials and via the best method: trial and error. My interest in chat sites became more and more limited as a result of this and for years I didn’t participate anywhere. I found it rather useless to invest time in talking to people I couldn’t be sure of who they were. Even for fun.
2001 – 2004
In 2001 I had an illness that forced me to stay at home and not walk around too much for several months, which renewed my interest in exploring the internet and the possibilites of online entertainment. From games and other amusements, through to learning about how to and then building my own websites, through to chat sites and something by that time all new to me: video chat sites. Some, if not most, of those were and still are, of an adult nature which means from now on this text will have a more mature theme. Anyone not comfortable with this, I recommend to stop reading here. I also would like to point out to those who continue reading, I won’t be mentioning the names of any of the sites I’ve visited, or the names – or even nicknames – of any people I’ve met or display any links or images connected to any of these sites. Furthermore the text will not contain any graphic descriptions of what I saw while on these sites or about the people I met there. With all that said, I’ll now move on to the next part of my story.
My first encounter with a video chat site – the kind were a paid model serves as a kind of hostess and displays some nudity in order to interest the visitors to move on to the more advanced and costly parts of the site – occured in late summer of 2001. With my low connection speed the video in the tiny video window was moving very slowly at best, but the idea of seeing someone on my screen while talking to them was to me very interesting. So it happened that this site became the first chat site I would actually visit on a regular basis. The chat was free and mostly the room was full of people from all parts of the world but the majority were from Europe and North America. The chat was all in English even if I soon learned the hostess was located in a studio in Prague, in the Czech Republic. At first I didn’t participate much in the chat even if I liked the possibility to practice my skills in reading and typing in English. I was also very shy, which today I laugh at, because in a room with about a hundred people ”talking” at the same time and where all that is seen of you is your words and your nickname, what is there to be shy about ? Anyway that’s how it was, but as the hours and days progressed I learned how a chatroom works and how to make myself noticed and began to notice some other people and soon had some kind of friendly conversations with a few, including a few of the hostesses. One could say I started to develop my social skills. As time moved on, and the hours spent online became days, I found I liked to chat so much, I no longer cared about anything else around me. It became like an addiction, a drug. The outside world faded away and I got into some kind of cyberworld built around words on a screen and the hostess in the video window. The cost of being connected went from low to high and as I was paying a per minute price for my connection at that time. I finally came to my senses. By then I had formed a friendship online with one hostess and one of the visitors of the site. This progressed through different channels of communication for about a year and a half and then slowly faded away. During that time I progressed from video chats of the free kind to also check out other forms of videochat. This exploration became very costly as it went on but yet another friendship was formed and maintained through a few years. These years were a lot of fun, and I continued to chat a lot even after my illness was cured and I could return to my regular job full time. It not only lead me to meet and get to know some nice people from different countries, it also gave me a lot of insight into both the human and the business side of these commercial video/webcam chat sites. However after a few years I felt it was time to not spend all of – or most of – my spare time at these places.
2004 – 2006
In this year – 2004 - I was ill again with the same problem as in 2001, which made it possible for me to start to chat a little more again. By now my connection was faster and my computer also, which made the experience of chat much more enjoyable. I now only had one person I used to chat with regularly, so that I continued doing. A part from that, though, my interest in this kind of chat was much more limited. There were other interests taking over more and more of my time. Mostly it was watching movies and building a movie collection that began to take up more and more of my spare time.
In the spring of 2005 I discovered another form of chat related to video and webcams which was at a site that also was a community where other forms of interaction was and is possible. That was a discovery that would lead me more and more away from the other types of chat sites and into the community, and the amateurish nature of it all. For me it was an all new idea to be able to be seen on webcam and watch others while being in chatrooms. The first 6 months were a total addiction much like the very first encounter with video chat sites. I got to know some members slightly and liked the site a lot. Even this blog was started due to encounters at that site, so it has had a big influence on me. I still enjoy very much to visit it, and do so regularly. Nowadays I prefer to watch and work on my profile page, but sometimes I also chat in some of the many rooms.
During 2005 and more obviously during 2006 my longtime online friend and I drifted apart due to me not having as much time to spend for chat and not having the same interest in it as before. My work, my membership at the community site, and my movie collecting became more and more time consuming. Yet I did strike up one new brief acquaintance at one other video chat site but that ended after a few weeks. Another friendship of sorts formed also during these years but even though it has been going a bit off and on for a few years, it has never gotten to be much more than an acquaintance and is as of today not even that much.
2006 – 2008
From the later half of 2006 until very recently I spent very little time at chat sites of any kind. I didn’t feel any interest or need to interact with anyone in that fashion. I was fed up with some aspects of it all, and disappointed in myself and some of my experiences. Also I was unemployed and all my focus has been on job hunting. Of course my ever growing interest in movies also took time away from chat sites at this time. The most important was the economic aspects. I needed to save money, so I could at times not even afford to be a member at the community site. Only now and then I did have a brief chat with my longtime online friend, but I didn’t feel it was the same or could ever be the same again, which made me do it less and less as time went on. Then a few months ago I found I missed the good times I had had in chatrooms and started to chat more with my friend and slowly it became fun again and reminded me of all good times in the past.
While at the chat site one day I decided to chat to some other people there just for fun and for passing some time on a slightly boring evening. Much to my surprise I then happened to get acquainted with yet another nice person and suddenly going to chatrooms became what it hadn’t been like for years for me. A new friendship has begun . And that is where it is at now. What will happen in the future I don’t know. What I do know is that being online in different chatrooms has taught me alot about people and about myself that I would not want to be without knowing. Even if it has in many ways been a costly way of learning.
2008 – 2009
The later half of 2008 saw me working a lot and my chat activity was at another low point after a very exciting spring. The latest friend I made drifted away from the chat scene, and so did I. After a while I started to become more involved at the community site again and found some people to chat to from time to tíme. Then when I became unemployed again I started to go to the community site even more and also work on this blog. The rest of the time was divided between job hunting and movie collecting. Eating and sleeping became less frequent. Or so my selective memory tells me. During the last months of 2008 I found the community more and more interesting and fun, and I also found another community structured in a similar way where I immediately signed up when I noticed some members there I knew a little from the past. It was a happy coincidence. This time also saw me finding my way back -again - to my by now oldest online friend. Not that she is the oldest of my online friends but the one I’ve known the longest of those I consider as friends. I was and am happy about that. Then right at the start of the new year I happened to meet someone at yet another site which seems to be a person worth getting to know better. However this turned out to be short-lived and not worth wasting much time over. Later in the year, however, I happened to be directed to yet another new site and while there discover some new people to chat with. So the story will go on.
The recent news is I find the new place very interesting. In all kinds of ways. I happened to hear someone discuss the earnings from a few days as a chat/cam model and it was rather a large sum, even by the standards of my country. This new site features people from all parts of the world but I have yet to come across anyone on cam being from my country. Maybe at this place I might, because there are more Western European and American models there than at any other site I ever visited. Most seem to be broadcasting from home which makes the whole experience more of a jungle in terms of what might happen on cam and in chat and who one might encounter. (Almost) No rules seems to be the one rule or rather the law of the jungle. Everyone makes their own rules or terms. This can be good but mostly I feel it is bad in the long run. Easier for people to feel like they are being cheated in one way or another if there are few general rules. However from experience , the business side of these chat sites is kind of built on a portion of cheating, or rather i’d call it illusion. The illusion of shared intimacy and the illusion of actually getting to know people you only see on a cam and/or read what they type on a screen. So why do I still enjoy these places you might ask ? After all I am a fairly educated and intelligent guy, can’t I just go out and meet ‘real’ people instead. I can, I do, but I still like chatrooms, especially ones with video and audio. Besides, I think I stated it early on in this history of my chat life: sometimes the rewards are so great that they outweigh the mistakes, misunderstandings, failures, frauds, cheats, and disappointments that can and will occur in the online world as well as in the offline world. The internet is no different than any other part of society and human interaction where those things also happen from time to time. I have made one really good and lasting friend from these chatsites and got to know some other nice people more or less well over the years, and they have made it all worth the time (and sometimes money) spent.
Recently I’ve begun making friends with another interesting and nice person and hope that this is going to be a lasting friendship.
