A 3D Hentai Camgirl Is Taking Over Chaturbate, and Human Models Are Worried
Vice said:ProjektMelody is a virtual avatar of a woman who claims to be the world's first hentai camgirl. When she's not on YouTube, she gives regular, live shows on the camming site Chaturbate, where she dances and fondles herself for tips. She's not real, but there's a real person in there somewhere, moving her arms and speaking into a microphone to any of her 14,300 followers currently in the live chat. She only started streaming three days ago.
On Chaturbate, her location is listed as "Virtual Little Tokyo," and under smoking and drinking preferences, "literally impossible." Her birthdate is listed as July 7, 2000, but more accurately, Melody came into the world in July 2019, when ProjektMelody joined Twitter.
In the last three days since her first stream, Melody has gone from 700 Twitter followers to more than 20,000. The "more rooms like this" tab on her Chaturbate page returns an error: "Sorry, we don't have any rooms similar to projektmelody yet." That's because other cam models are human. Her sudden rise in popularity has made some who aren't working behind a full-body avatar question what place an anime avatar has on the platform.Cam model Lennox May has been doing live shows for three years, but has been in the adult industry for the last 10. She watched one of Melody's recent streams.
"From a technology standpoint I can't argue that the technology and creation of the character is definitely made by someone with talent," May told me. But she wonders if something like this belongs on its own designated platform for avatars, separate from the flesh-and-blood models.
"There's a huge gap in vulnerability, and what that means emotionally for [human] models versus Melody is also quite vast," May said. "A model has to keep up appearances when they have trolls in their room, or when put in an awkward situation with a customer who is being rude or asking for things that we do not feel comfortable doing."
Vice said:"It makes me sad that [other models] don't want me there," Melody told me. "I don't agree with the argument that because I'm safer, and less likely to have stalkers, that I shouldn't be allowed to stream...I don't think camming is defined by the risk models take in their personal lives, I think it's defined by the content that they produce, and the community they build around themselves. I think it's a dangerous precedent to tell future cam models that you are somehow less deserving of being a model, unless you're putting yourself at risk."
As someone who started following streaming on Justin TV (now Twitch) since around 2011, I tend to agree with those last sentiments. People come and go, it's a volatile market. The people who do well tend to be the ones putting in hours and work into their production. I don't agree with gatekeeping here.
Those thoughts aside, I wonder if this is a developing trend, and what that would mean.