Vex never says this to me directly, but I have the impression she is aware of this tension. She has come to genuinely like many of her fans – especially the regulars – some of whom she knows quite well. With one she often exchanges tips on books and new music, with another she discusses politics. She does not view her fans as cash cows. I think the reason people like Vex is not because she acts as though she genuinely cares, but because she really does. But to keep this show on the road, Vex also needs their tokens. The big, regular tippers could at any moment transfer allegiance to another model. Vex has her leaderboard of top tippers. She devises games to encourage them to transfer more tokens into her account. She treats regular spenders with particular care. Vex’s real skill is to somehow keep this all in a workable balance. Not everyone can. Occasionally, the uneasy model–viewer relationship explodes into direct confrontation. ‘You guys need to do better,’ wrote one well-known cam-model in an ‘open letter’ to the viewers of MyFreeCams. ‘The lack of tipping and support . . . That shit needs to STOP,’ she fumed. ‘At some point, a bit of the responsibility falls on you . . . Don’t throw excuses around about being unemployed, being short on cash, etc. Don’t have a job? Well, stop spending your days on MFC and look for one!’ One irate viewer responded: ‘This is a business and your job is selling your body, your personality, your services. I know it sucks sometimes. Welcome to the real world! We’re not a community of philanthropists.’
Tonight’s show finally draws to a close. As Vex climaxes she rolls over to the side of the bed, just off-camera, and gives me a thumbs-up. It was a truly phenomenal performance by all the girls, and the fans rewarded them for it. Over 5,000 people had joined Vex’s room in total, and the majority tipped, and tipped well.fn2 The girls have earnt about £300 each for close to three hours online.
With the main event successfully accomplished, Vex shouts ‘Pile-on!’ and the three of them jump on top of each other. ‘Music!’ Vex laughs, from the bottom of the pile. ‘Let’s put on some music!’ The girls have just enough time left for a dance for their satisfied fans, as Duchamp and I look on.
* * *
fn1 Cats wandering in and out of amateur pornography has become an internet meme all of its own. There is an excellent blog dedicated to ‘Indifferent Cats in Amateur Porn’. Duchamp’s sister Liesl has made an appearance there.
fn2 Every hour the room with the most viewers wins a $10 prize. Between 8 and 9 p.m., that prize goes to Vex’s room. This turns out to be one of the biggest audiences she has ever had in her room at any one time. ‘Three-girl shows are extremely rare,’ she later explained. Before the show, I asked Vex how many people she might typically have in her room. ‘If you’re just hanging out, could be two hundred people in there, depending on how naked you are. If I’m doing a cum-show, it’s usually about one thousand.’
Chapter 7
The Werther Effect
‘YAY! WE’RE SO glad you joined our community. You’re going to love it here!’ Thirteen-year-old Amelia was browsing the internet for dieting tips when this friendly message greeted her. Amelia had recently been bullied by girls at her school about her weight. She was shy, and was becoming increasingly self-conscious about her appearance. This looks nice, she thought. She clicked through.fn1
Three years later, Amelia was being driven to hospital by her concerned parents. She was dangerously underweight, and required urgent care. But Amelia didn’t think so. ‘You don’t understand!’ she told them. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me! This is normal. I don’t want to recover. I’m pro-anorexia.’ At this point, she says, she was so ill that she could barely walk.
Over three years, Amelia had become a popular and committed member of the site she’d stumbled across. It was one of a large number of online ‘peer support’ groups, websites and forums, one dedicated to the eating disorder anorexia nervosa.
When we are feeling ill or under the weather, our first port of call is more often than not the internet. With the click or two of a mouse we can match our symptoms to a range of maladies, and quickly find individuals and communities ready and willing to offer advice and support. Today there are thousands of dedicated online peer support groups covering almost every ailment and illness imaginable, created and maintained by other sufferers, for other sufferers. Eighteen per cent of US internet users report having gone online specifically to seek out people with similar symptoms to their own.
Online peer support groups have been shown to help people at difficult times in their lives. Studies consistently find that speaking to people who have first-hand knowledge and experience of your own condition helps to improve self-esteem, boost confidence and aid well-being. But the ‘pro-ana’ site Amelia had found was part of a branch of online peer support that’s less beneficial. Every day, thousands of people visit the sprawling network of forums, blogs and websites dedicated to various types of self-harm: anorexia, self-mutilation, suicide. Some are designed to illustrate the dangers of a particular condition, to help people to recover, or to advise them to seek help. Others are ambivalent – sites for people to speak openly and honestly about their illness. And a small minority of them are ‘pro’.
Arguably the first ‘pro’ self-harm site was a Usenet newsgroup called alt.suicide.holiday, or ‘a.s.h.’, created by Californian Andrew Beals in August 1991. The first two posts on a.s.h. (now referred to as its original charter) set out its aim: ‘With the holidays coming up, this newsgroup will be a good resource . . . as we all know, the suicide rate raises around the holidays and this newsgroup is the place to discuss methods and reasons.’ A.s.h. quickly became one of the most notorious groups on the net: a place where hundreds, and then thousands, of visitors would talk about suicide, ask advice on methods to use, or even look for partners with whom to make a ‘pact’. Today there are hundreds of similar suicide forums and sites – many of which still use the infamous a.s.h. welcome: ‘Sorry you’re here.’
By the late nineties the first pro-ana sites (and ‘pro-mia’ sites, for bulimia) began to appear. On these sites, anorexia and bulimia were presented not as dangerous illnesses, but as lifestyle choices. The sites sought to mutually strengthen sufferers’ commitment to weight loss, and provide a space to share advice and tips. According to Dr Emma Bond, who conducted a large review into the English-speaking pro-ana community in 2012, there are between 400 and 500 main pro-ana websites and blogs on the surface web today, along with thousands of smaller blogs. ‘Pro-cutting’ sites are also prevalent on the web, with approximately 500 dedicated sites or forums online by 2006, often linked to pro-ana sites. The number has steadily increased ever since.
The sad truth is that Amelia’s case is not unique. Hundreds of people join self-harm sites each week, learning techniques and tricks, and meeting legions of like-minded individuals. A 2007 study examining the popularity of pro-ana sites found that they were visited by around half a million people. A 2011 EU study revealed that approximately one in ten eleven to sixteen year olds had seen a pro-ana site. In the UK visitors are overwhelmingly women aged between thirteen and twenty-five. A.s.h. (and a related newsgroup called alt.suicide.methods) still runs to this day, and contains thousands of threads, posts and comments, read by an unknown number of people.
I couldn’t understand how such obviously dangerous and destructive sites – sites where starving, cutting and even killing yourself are encouraged – could be so popular, and so appealing. I went online to find out.
Yay! Welcome!
Self-harm sites are extremely easy to find. A simple Google search reveals a number of websites, blogs, social network accounts and image-sharing platforms all dedicated to self-harm, and all easily accessible. There is no need for special browsers or passwords.
The first pro-ana site I discover is a vast and varied multimedia experience, comprising image galleries, chat rooms, discussion forums, even an online shop for pro-ana products. Its forums include dedicated rooms for diets, relationships, physical conditions such as self-injury, and help and
advice. At the time of writing, the forums alone had 86,000 members – of which 630 were online when I was visiting the site. Users create detailed profiles of themselves, including their age, location, interests. And like many other social networks, you can like and rank other people’s comments, content and profiles. Browsing through the pages, I noticed that almost every user was female, and aged between fourteen and eighteen. Alongside basic biographical information, most also featured lists of weights: a current weight, a series of weight targets, and an ‘ultimate’ goal weight.
There is always something happening. In total, over two million comments have been made on the tens of thousands of conversation threads that have been started by users. Every two or three seconds, there is a new comment or thread being added by one of the hundreds of people online: a question for ‘three-to-six-a-day purgers’; a favourite diet; what do you see in the mirror?; how do you know when you’re ana?; how do you hide cuts when you’re at the gym? No matter what question you ask someone is there to answer: ‘For some reason, as soon as it reaches the evening time, it’s like this switch goes off in my brain, and I want to attack myself,’ writes one user, which is swiftly followed by an outpouring of helpful suggestions. ‘Oh my gosh, thank you so much everyone,’ she replies.
There are also forum threads for things beyond anorexia: upsetting things that people say, songs, bad days, how to reduce skin puffiness, favourite German words, Coronation Street, Game of Thrones, dating advice, dreams, pets’ names, homework, dragons and jean shorts. Rather than solely dieting tips and advice, the site provides a space for users to discuss what they like, but also, perhaps most importantly, issues only other anorexia sufferers understand. One recently created thread is titled ‘funny/disgusting’:
Allbones: This thread’s for all of the yucky/funny things about your eating habits that you wouldn’t discuss with anyone else . . . Let’s see. The other day, I binged on spoonfuls of peanut butter and after, I was sitting in bed and burped up this terrible acid/peanut butter liquid and it was all up my throat and in my mouth . . . and I re-swallowed it with pride.
Shard: One word. Laxatives. I was at a concert once. Right at the front and I had taken loads of lax the day before, I did a huge silent fart and somebody behind me heaved. Ooops.
Will-be-thin: This one literally just made me lol. This is so embarrassing when you’re in a public bathroom too with people in there because it’s just like plop. plop. plop. plop. At least fifteen times .
This was far from unusual. The threads are all busy, and the vast majority of comments I read are positive and encouraging.
The site is a jumping-off point. Many users add links to their own sites and platforms. The pro-ana community has always been remarkably quick to pick up and utilise the latest platforms and portals. Although it started with static websites, online journals and Yahoo! groups in the late nineties, it quickly moved to blogs and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. I found hundreds of Tumblr blogs, Instagram and Twitter accounts for pro-ana and self-harming, where users post pictures, messages, images and videos for others to view and share.
One year after finding the pro-ana sites, Amelia joined Twitter. She noticed that a friend from the website had joined too, and was tweeting about her eating disorder. Through her, Amelia discovered a flourishing network of Twitter accounts just like her friend’s. Amelia set up a new account purely for pro-ana activity. She began to tweet, and quickly became an influential member of a large network of Twitter users posting daily updates about their weight-loss efforts, and offering advice and encouragement to others, and to each other.
Amelia made several good friends online – people who sympathised with her, who always listened, and who always responded to her questions or thoughts. She began to feel like she was part of a community, and her Twitter network became increasingly important to her. ‘I never really talked about my ED [eating disorder] to my friends, although they knew about it, and I always hated talking to my parents,’ she explains. ‘Although they were supportive, they just didn’t understand. Somehow I needed to vent my feelings to those who did. On Twitter I didn’t have to hide or hold back, like I did in real life. There were times I didn’t go on for a week or so because I felt so down, but then I missed speaking to other accounts. I felt like the Twitter account was a part of me. If I deleted the account or just stopped using it: then I would have just disappeared without trace.’
As well as providing a space for users to discuss those aspects of a particular condition they may not wish to, or cannot, share with others, many of these sites also offer a space for users to simply talk through their problems. Following the temporary closure and reappearance of one of the largest self-injury websites in December 2013, its message board was flooded with posts from concerned users: ‘Rather ironically I cut more with the closure of this site! Did anyone else find this?’ asked one. ‘I found I cut more as well haha. Really glad it’s back I was checking daily aha,’ wrote another. ‘I cut LOADS more without the support I get from you wonderful people,’ added a third.
Gerard – a thirty-year-old American – credits a suicide forum with saving his life. Suffering from depression, he first tried to overdose at the age of eighteen, and was hospitalised. When Gerard discovered a.s.h. in 2003, he found it an enormous source of comfort. ‘I felt I had finally found a place I could be honest and open about my suicidal thoughts,’ he recalls. ‘To be heard and understood helped me much more than psychiatry. Putting up a front of “being OK” for friends and family is exhausting, and makes you feel really alone. When I’m really low I check the forum a lot throughout the day. I often write long posts late at night when I feel trapped and in despair. It’s always nice the next morning to read the kind and insightful replies.’
Al, a moderator of a popular suicide forum, thinks that Gerard’s experience is typical. His website is neither pro- nor anti-suicide. Al won’t encourage anyone to take their own life: but nor will he try to talk anyone out of it. (Unlike a.s.h., he will intervene if the conversation touches on methods or making pacts, both of which are banned.) Al is sixty-seven, and tells me that he has been suicidal since his teens. The site, he says, has helped enormously. ‘I’ve found that just being able to talk about life with others who understand and aren’t judgemental has made it much easier to not jump on the suicide train every time things go south.’
Support, explains Al, comes in varied forms, and is not always what outsiders might expect. ‘Sometimes the best support we can give is to suggest that certain members be very cautious of their endeavours, because of what could go wrong. For others, just to write “I do understand what you’re saying!” can be enough to take the immediate pressure off. I think that since we acknowledge the right of our members to feel however they feel – and that includes feeling suicidal – and say what they like in a non-judgemental environment, it relieves, rather than encourages, suicidal tendencies.’ What people don’t realise, Al explains, is that there is often nowhere else for these people to go.
‘Running this group is not always easy,’ he says. ‘When it becomes obvious that someone has the desire to live then it pleases me. When I have to accept that there are reasons for someone to commit suicide and I’ve done the best I can to provide comfort during the time they are with us, that also pleases me. I’m saddened by their death, but I can acknowledge that they’re no longer in the pain that brought them here.’
He must occasionally want to identify people, I suggest, to find them professional help or alert the authorities? ‘No. If I try to identify people then I’ve lost the major advantage I have. Of course, I want everyone I come into contact with to have a long, happy, loving life. But sometimes that just doesn’t happen. I do feel responsible for helping every person who is active on the forum. But I’m not in the business of saving people. I’m in the business of trying to help them make the decisions that are best for them.’
Encouragement
The stated function of almost ev
ery pro-ana site is to help visitors achieve their weight-loss goal. The busiest and most popular pages on the sites I viewed were dedicated to ‘thinspiration’: material explicity posted to encourage others to lose weight. ‘This is a great place to share your own thinspo or link to great thinspirations you see on the web. Thinspire others!’ suggests one forum dedicated to thinspiration, linking to almost 30,000 photos. According to Dr Emma Bond, thinspiration is the most common material posted on pro-ana sites and forums. Typically ‘thinspo’ comprises photos of very slim celebrities such as Keira Knightley, Victoria Beckham and Kate Moss, or of contributors who upload photos of themselves – albums that are created by users and then uploaded for others to view and comment on. Sometimes these are accompanied by motivational captions: ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day, don’t give up!’, ‘Waking up thinner is worth going to bed hungry’ or ‘That isn’t your stomach rumbling – it’s applauding!’
Most thinspo pictures are accompanied by praising comments from contributors, who often express their desperation to reach these impossible levels of skinniness and glamour. Under a picture of one exceptionally skinny girl I found the following:
Amazing <33
Beautiful
Love those legs. Really clear and beautiful!
Those legs are to die for.
I would give anything to look like this!
Thigh gap <33
I WANT
I’d do anything to have those legs
Wish i had your body. sigh. I have a long way to go.
The Dark Net Page 17