Escorts...Raising the Bar

I've been feeling a little naughty the last couple of nights, so I've spent some time visiting a couple of notorious red light districts. I was shocked at how much the escort business has changed in the six months or so since I last had any real association with it.

- A lot of escorts are using voice. And, at least for the ones I heard, it should be an asset...they were cute, sexy, sultry. But it was also annoying as hell for someone who's used to text communication. Plus I wanted to fit at least one girl with a ball gag...she was chattering nonstop, obviously in love with her own words.

- A lot of escorts are giving out RL pictures as part of the service. I'm concerned for them, worried they may be making themselves vulnerable to a RL stalker or damage to their RL reputation if someone they know from family or work encounters them in SL.

- A minority, but a growing one, is offering live webcam.

None of that's new, it's been on the pornweb for years. But it's new to SL. I think the "traditional" SL escort may soon become a thing of the past, and in my view that's a shame. SL, and SL sex, has a unique quality. We can argue about whether it's better or worse, but that's not my point...my point is that it is *different*. If SL becomes merely another way to access traditional internet porn, that unique quality will vanish.

That's not my biggest concern, though. What really worries me is the prices...they are going down. Way down. A good escort could charge L$2,000 an hour six months ago. The prices I saw were more like L$1,000 to L$1,500. And this was WITH voice, pictures, and webcam. What this means is that SL escorts who are offering these services to SL clients are getting paid maybe 100 times less than girls offering the same services on the regular web.

All in all, it's a lot harder to be an SL escort these days. More upfront investment, more risk, much more personal disclosure, and all for lower pay. I suppose I should be happy...knowing that fewer girls will be led into a life of sin and all. Instead, I feel saddened. It's another sign that SL is growing up. Growing up nearly always means losing a lot of cherished things from childhood; we miss them most when they're gone forever.

Did you just say, "gloryhole"?

if they are this stupid to disclose so much for joke pay... i think that says enough....

I noticed the prices going down, the RL pictures, webcams and the like 3 months ago when I was wandering around. I did not notice voice though.

Sadly that wouldn't have worked, since the ball gag only would have been a pixel on her face

One of my friends recently told me about an experience he had with an escort using voice. It was his first time and he said it was mind-boggling. But, it was over so quickly, because the adding the voice into the mix amped it so so intensely that she was able to increase the whole experience into a much shorter time period than expected.

So, I wonder if this plays into the lowering of prices? If an escort can manage to get the client to achieve the "end" before the time is up, she can get out of there quicker, thereby potentially making more money over the course of her day. It takes a lot longer to type your business, than say it. Think about it. What guy is going to want to stick around for another 45 minutes, once he's finished just to talk to her? Most likely, not many. Surely she'd be practiced in conversation which ensures he flees ASAP, and gives her the freedom to move onto the next client. Business is business, after all.

Prices are probably going down and requirements up because of the wide availability and the nature of competition - it doesn't take long for people to learn that that is the fastest way to make decent money relative to other SL careers. Why should you pay for a text based escort that could very well be a guy? Voice acts as a means of verification here. It doesn't really cost you anything to use it.

The webcam and rl pics, though, are a little more disturbing to me.

Some novels written by women for women have incredibly erotic behavior by male characters. I don't doubt that the inverse is true. I've never paid for an escort in SL, but I'm guessing that the answer you'd hear from people who do is, "because in text, it doesn't matter".

Actually, this is fairly sad. You'd think that prices would go up with additional services. Bummer.

If true, that should result in an INCREASE in the prices I saw...since they were quoted by the hour.

However, I did see a lot more of the girls advertising shorter time periods, which may reflect your observaton. Used to be, you couldn't buy less than a half hour, and most were a full hour minimum. The notecards I saw on the call boards had periods as short as 10 minutes.

Ooo, I remember another disturbing sight (an isolated instance, so I don't think it's a trend, thank god.) A "No Limits Escort" Service. The girl puts up a bond with the club, and promises to do ANYTHING the client wants. Water sports, coprophilia, bestiality, dolcett, snuff...anything at all. If the girl balks, she forfeits her bond. Ewww.

Not sure I'd call any of this "raising" the bar, nor am I particularily saddened to find the 3-dollar hooker move into the buck-fifty range. People just happen to prefer shopping at Walmart.

And I certainly wouldn't equate any of this to a cherished piece of lost childhood. They're getting some poor schlepp's rocks off in whatever expedient manner they can. There doesn't seem to be a lot of escorting going on in this Escort business.
What's with the nostalgia?

Escorts will charge the prices the market will bear,

and provide the level of services they are comfortable with.

Is it pathetic they are offering basically phone sex for a couple dollars an hour? Yeah, it is.

Is it surprizing considering the number of women doing that sort of work in SL? Not really.


Supply and Demand, etc.

Best thing I guess would be to tell the voice sex and cam sex girls where to apply for actual non-SL phone/cam sex jobs so they can make better money doing it.

Well .. couple possibilities.

The customers are cheap bastards who don't want their wives finding out what they are doing (high CC bills)

There are far too many escorts around driving the prices way down.

I am just guessing, since it's not my thing either, that a straight guy looking to buy SL sex from an escort wants it to be from a rl woman with a sexy av. With voice being available now, every straight guy who wants sex is going to want it from a rl woman. Gay guys won't be going to the ladies for SL sex so that's a nonstarter. I'd like to think that lesbians/bisexual women that go to female escorts would prefer the person behind it being female. I don't think many people can really separate themselves that much to not care, unless they are just cheap (and I'm sure many are).

Colette and Brann are both right; it's all supply and demand. I guess I was just sad to think of the typed sex scene going the way of the dodo... takes maybe a LITTLE more imagination to text, rather than voiced. I dunno. Supply and demand, like you guys said.

Whew... I thought it was only me

Seems the window to try that sort of thing is closing, or closed for those of us who cant voice on a computer in the living room, in a house where someone is almost always home.

<random guess>
Everything has a limited shelf-life before it becomes mundane and "yawn, done it all before". My guess would be that especially with an escort there is limited room to keep it fresh and new since the personal connection/contact is as best very limited.

So every escort would only have a limited few session with each individual "customer" on average before they get bored and go looking for a new, different thill (or a different escort).

Maybe most importantly, most are determined to make their "trade" pay their SL way and are settled in their life so when you exhaust the existing userbase and only very few new residents trinkle in who are prepared to spend any US$ to buy L$ you're left with either quitting (and buying your own L$ which they don't want to do) or fight over the leftovers by undercutting the rest.
</random guess>

Maybe LL should niche-market SL as a way of obtaining cheap phone/cam sex services. It would lead to an influx of "people" eager to buy and spend L$ as opposed to the all the cheapskates we get now .

Text-based eroticism requires intelligence and creativity. I consider it an artform. When I was a freelance escort, I typically spent 3-4 hours a session and sometimes stayed up all night. The emphasis for me was on creating an unforgettable experience that he or she would want to come back for. The same small number of clients had me more or less on call. I sometimes used skype just to say hi, if the guy was worried about identity, but never used it for intimacy itself. When voice came out, I discovered I felt silly saying how I felt or what I was doing, and the pace was too fast for me to take any pleasure in it. Scheduling was also a lot harder, because I had to find times when my roommates would not be around. I never really did it for the money to begin with (though the money was very good--I made more in a week than my store has made in six months, and I wish I were kidding), so I stopped altogether.

I think voice opened "escorting" up to a different and wider set of people, which also forced the prices down. I wouldn't necessarily say the experience is of higher quality, although clearly a lot of guys really do only just want a quick thing. I am selfish enough to want the experience to be pleasurable for me also, and the rapid pace of voice means he's finished when I'm just getting warm.

You'd think that SL phone sex would be more expensive - more valuable since now you can voice and webcam to the animation. Double the visuals.

I believe the SL market is just glutted with escorts and that's what's causing the lower pricing.

It's a shame that some of these girls are working for a couple of bucks an hour. A good phone sex artist can make $75,000USD annually in RL. Of course, on a computer, so much more can be hidden from the spouse...

The pitfalls of outsourcing. I bet all the Voice Escorts are in Bangalore.......

Just a continuation of using voice even outside of the escort business as a way to help "ensure" gender.

Which happens fairly frequently, even though it was denied on all those voice threads.

In my experience I have seen it - I even see accusations (hinted or blanket) made by some forums posters against those who support the "non-voice" side of any voice thread.

I wonder how anyone thinks that if some people are willing to accuse others of gender bending over just having an OPINION ON A FORUM, that other people won't be concerned about gender among those they are having sexual themed encounters with.

Why the nostalgia? Sweet Primrose and Oryx said it better than I could.

You don't HAVE to do it for money, you know...
The text thing (and, yes, the artform of using text creatively, intelligently and effectively) is still widely in use among friends who care enough to do it right.
Lots of time to warm up, Sweet Primrose.

Just another case of SL becoming less a Virtual World and more an extension of the internet. It was inevitable as soon as they added integrated voice.

I'm sure it applies even more so outside of the escort business,

And of course after you get done voice sexing someone for the 20th time, who you have been dating for weeks, how much more likely are they going to ask for your phone number? And how much more difficult is it to not give it?

Just another step in making SL like Eharmony.

While the voice cam stuff is just another step to making SL like Cam Sites or Phone sex services.

Honestly, voice is no big deal. It was something you could have done with Skype, or Yahoo, etc. The fact that it's now integrated means just one less visible application running, but it's still running.