Interview with Bella French (March 2020)
By: Robert Jackman
Tags: Privacy, Sex Work, Adult Industry, Webcamming, Pornography

Interview with Bella French (March 2020)

I was pleased to have a sit down with Bella French, CEO of the adult cam site ManyVids, when she was passing through London last week.

We had a long chat about the sex industry, performer welfare and emotional health, privacy and copyright, and - something I’m particularly interested in - the rise of super fans who spend tens of thousands of dollars supporting their favourite adult stars. Since it was so interesting (to me at least), I’m publishing the transcript here:

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RJ: One of the things I’ve noticed with clip sites is there’s often a lot of implied intimacy between performers and their audience — a sort of digital girlfriend experience. Is that what drives ManyFans?

BF: Yes, I think you’re right. One of the consequences of the dominance of the big ‘tube’ sites [PornHub and RedTube] over the past ten years is that porn has become very impersonal. The internet is oversaturated: you could have access to the tube sites for the rest of your life and you wouldn’t have time to watch everything that’s on there.

What clip sites/cam sites offer is exactly what you said: a virtual girlfriend who fans can connect with. The content is very different from the traditional porn websites. Most of our top models make content which is much softer than most porn. A lot of them don’t shoot content with other performers, so there’s less actual sex. It’s often just them using sex toys or masturbating.

Fans get interested in a certain performer and then, by buying her performer content, they can actually have a direct conversation with her.

But is there really any genuine connection there?

Yes, for sure. As a cam girl myself, I had really close relationships with my top fans and members. We would text on a daily basis. And when I wouldn’t hear back from them, I didn’t like it. I was like, “Hey, are you okay? Is everything okay?”. There’s definitely a relationship that happens between performers and fans, and I think that’s why ManyVids is so popular.

Keeping those relationships going must come with some psychological stress: to be communicating back and forth with your fans and maintaining that intimacy, whether it’s fake or otherwise. Don’t you find that draining?

Like everything in the adult industry, you’re very emotionally involved. I personally find it much less emotionally stressful than having sex on camera. It’s more enjoyable and not as difficult. Plus you don’t have the additional stress of having to work for a producer or whatever.

Obviously if a model gets into a situation where she doesn’t feel comfortable, she can just stop the whole thing. She doesn’t have to meet the person or anything like that. She can just be like “maybe it’s better if we stop this relationship”. Usually that’s what happens. If you’ve got someone who is being too eager or who is pushing for things you’re not comfortable with, like meeting in person, that’s when you have to push back and remind them of how it works — that it’s something you’re doing as a job and that they have to pay for.

But are new performers necessarily going to be able to negotiate those boundaries? I’ve spoken to very experienced people in the adult industry who constantly have to deal with obsessive or infatuated clients. It’s a lot to expect from someone.

That’s actually one of the reasons we created ManyVids: so that online sex workers can have that extra degree of safety.

I’ll give you an example: when I was a cam girl, I would sell my phone number to clients. They’d pay $50 for my number and we’d start texting. The idea was that it was a monthly fee and they’d pay again the next month. But because this wasn’t through a platform which automated the process, I had to negotiate that every time.

That’s when it becomes really exhausting — when you keep having to say to your clients “hey, I’m sorry to keep chasing but this is how I make a living and if you want to keep texting me, you need to keep paying me.” You’d get clients that would be like “but I thought we had something special, I thought you liked talking to me.” That’s a big emotional drain to go through. That’s why on ManyVids we try to make sure there are clearer boundaries and that as much of the process is automated as possible.

There’s another side to the emotional aspect too — for the camgirls. Sometimes as a cam girl you can be feeling really down, and then you have a member texting you or sending you a nice tip. It makes you feel better but it can also make it more difficult to uphold those boundaries: like what if you have one of your needy or demanding members reaching out to you at a time where you’re looking for emotional support yourself.

Is that something that happens a lot in the industry — performers seeking emotional validation from their work?

Oh definitely — you get hooked on the endorphins. I remembered when I stopped camming, I had like a six month detox period. It wasn’t easy — I was so used to logging on and checking my ranking against the top earners, seeing how I was doing compared to other models. It became my whole life. Camming was everything I did. And all the time you’re hearing from fans ‘“oh you’re beautiful, I adore you so much.” That kind of thing makes you feel like a superstar. And then all the sudden it’s gone. I kept saying “I have to go back. I’ll just cam a little bit.” That’s when I realised how addicted I was.

How about the members/buyers — do they get addicted too?

Well I don’t have the perspective from their end, but I know when I was a camgirl I had members who seemed super into it. They would be constantly messaging me — like all day. What’s interesting is that the super active guys are very valued by the rest of the community too. They become superstars as they’re the ones who are paying for the shows that others can watch for free. I used to use a platform which did free shows but through which members would tip. Usually out of 300 members, there would be maybe three or four who are giving you the money that keeps the show going. And they become the coolest guys in the room. I mean let’s say in the real world you’re shy or you don’t go out much, and then you go onto this virtual platform and you become a superstar.

You seem very aware of the psychological stress that can come with working in even the softer end of the sex industry. Does ManyVids do anything to address that?

It’s very hard to do anything about it. We constantly tell our models to only do what they feel comfortable doing. We had an event yesterday and one of the models told me she didn’t like doing live camming [as opposed to selling filmed content] and I was like “well don’t do it then!”. You should only do what you’re comfortable doing. Respect yourself.

At the end of the day though, they’re independent entrepreneurs. And if they want to reach a goal or work for a certain number of hours, we shouldn’t be telling them what to do or what not to do. But it is difficult. In general I find our work/life balance is disappearing. People are just working more and becoming more involved in whatever it is they’re doing.

One of the other things I’ve seen with these platforms is that they can often be quite difficult for performers to really quit. Yes you can delete your account, but you can still leave behind a massive digital footprint — something you can’t control. Is that something you’re addressing?

That’s what we tell our performers: that once you start doing it, it’s probably going to be there forever. One of the best things you can do is to do as few collaborations as possible and not to work with big studios. That way you will at least keep the copyright to your content.

I actually contacted a company I worked with as a model in the past and asked if I could buy the rights to the content I made with them. I think they’d paid me like a thousand dollars for a two day shoot. This was like seven years ago. They said it would cost me $20,000 to purchase the rights. I mean that’s ridiculous. So if you’re getting started as a model the best thing is to keep your content and only work with respectful companies that will take it down for you if it comes to that. That way you can leave a much smaller footprint.

The biggest problem again are the tube sites [where content can be uploaded and viewed for free]. Having said that, they are becoming more sensitive to these issues — largely because of the pressure they’ve been getting.

If things keep improving, perhaps it will get to the point where you can start an adult career and only have a specific number of people know about it — like only your true hardcore fans. But in reality it’s very, very difficult to keep control. When I was a cam girl, I didn’t want anyone to know. Initially, I really wanted to stay underground. And within the first month of camming, someone just recorded my show. That’s all someone has to do: record it on their phone and upload it to a tube site.

Is that something ManyVids can help with? Trying to get content taken down from other sites where it doesn’t belong?

Yes. We work with a third party company that does just that. And they remove like hundreds of thousands of illegal videos every month. And we have a system which fingerprints each and everyone video that’s uploaded to our platform, so that we can find if it’s been uploaded elsewhere on the internet and try to get it taken down. We try to collaborate with tube sites, but not all of them are responsive.

We offer those services to our models for free. It’s quite expensive to do but we think it’s really important to protect our models. And of course it’s also beneficial for us as if you can’t find this content elsewhere, you’re more likely to end up buying it on ManyVids. It’s a win-win situation.

How about protecting performers privacy — and safety — when it comes to things like stalking and obsessive fans?

We’ve created a whole safeguarding document to help models protect their privacy. We tell them everything — like to be careful when taking selfies, as people can recognise the streets and work out where you are. We also tell them about how to check the settings on your phone so that your photos aren’t giving away your location hidden in the data.

Then there are other things: obviously don’t tell anyone your real name. Sometimes you have cases where obsessive fans will find someone’s name and start trying to blackmail them. There’s like a whole thing about that.

There’s a very famous model that literally got a message from someone with a picture of her apartment. She contacted us and was obviously extremely nervous. We were actually able to find that the person that sent it — I think they were in Russia or somewhere; so at least we could assure her that he wasn’t outside of her home or anything.

What do you think drives that kind of behaviour?

I think sometimes men can think they’re in love with the model. They’re hoping for more than just a client relationship. And when they realise it’s not happening, they feel like they got duped or something.

And that’s when they start to become more angry — like “that’s why I gave you all the money”. It’s like “yeah, well I gave you the sexual stuff in return for that; that’s the exchange we had.” But sometimes they feel that the interaction was going to go further. And maybe during the communication, you’ve given them information about yourself. That’s when it can get dangerous.

That’s why we try to educate our models as much as possible to constantly be careful about this. These instances are extremely rare, but they do happen. I had a situation when I as a cam girl but it was partly my fault because I was such a rookie: I’d given him my real name.

I’m interested in the breakdown of fans of your website. Is your revenue evenly distributed across the members or is it largely driven by hardcore superfans?

We currently have around 3 million active fans. You know that business maxim that it’s 20 percent of your customers who make 80 percent of your sales? It’s not quite that steep in this case, but we definitely have some serious superfans. There are some guys who spend over $200,000 a year on the platform. Like often we’ll have contests as to which models can make the most money in a month and you see these super fans just tipping their favourite girl $20,000 just to make sure she wins the contest. We were super shocked when we first saw that.

Do you think these guys can afford to be giving away that kind of money? I talk to people in the gambling industry and they’ve brought in checks where platforms will ask people spending lots of money to prove they can actually afford to risk that cash. You’ve already said how emotionally involved these guys can be — do you ever worry they might be acting out of an addiction and making reckless decisions?

We don’t really get involved in that kind of stuff. From time to time, we will get involved in cases. We had one case where a mother called our office saying that her son had stolen her credit card and that now she had like $4,000 in charges on her card for adult content. We refunded that.

When I was camming I had one client who was giving me a lot of money and I said to him “are you sure you can afford to do this?” and he was like “oh it’s fine — I invested in Apple a long time ago; I don’t have a family or a wife, so this is what I like to do with my money.” He just liked to support cam girls. I mean, that’s a nice thing to do, right?

I’ve written for Vice about financial domination and these men who get off on handing over their money to women they don’t know. Have you encountered that?

Yeah, I had a fan that was really into that fetish. He would come to see me on the platform I was using and would offer to tip me like $500 if I logged on to Skype instead. Then he would request specific stuff on Skype. One time he wanted me to force him to drink alcohol live on webcam. He said the drunker he got, the more money he would give me — but I had to force him to do it. I did it twice but I was slightly uncomfortable because he was getting really drunk and I was actually a bit worried about his safety. He wanted me to be very mean to him. I think I ended up making like $3,000 in 40 minutes.

Have you come across blackmail fetishists? I’ve spoken to people in the industry who have said how difficult it is to know what’s really consensual in that kind of situation.

Oh yeah, the same guy was into blackmail too. Like he would give me phone numbers and say “if you text this number I’m going to be big trouble” — like saying his girlfriend would see it or whatever. He wanted me to start asking for more information so that I could start blackmailing him and asking him for more money. He was like “do you want to have the email of my boss?”. I was like “Yeah, sure, give me the email!”.

I know some of the guys into that fetish are very extreme. Like they actually want to have no money left. They want to live in like a shitty apartment and not have a car or anything. And every single dollar they make will be given to the domme so she can dress up and have fancy nails and clothes or whatever. It’s a very interesting fetish for sure. When I first encountered it I couldn’t believe it. I was like — this is the best thing that ever happened.

You spoke about getting compliments from your fans made you feel happier. Did doing those kind of more extreme things have any effect on your self image?

Initially I was really bad at it because I always felt guilty. When I would start humiliating someone I would be like “hey, is this okay? Is this too much?” and they’d say “actually you’re turning me off cause you’re being too nice about it”. So I learned pretty quickly I had to stop feeling bad about it.

After a while I worked out I was doing exactly what the person wanted — so I kind of felt good that I was providing someone what they liked. It didn’t affect me in a negative way. I mean, I was never primarily a fetish performer, so it wasn’t exactly the main thing I was doing. But yeah I would do it sometimes and I got better at doing it.