After 20 years and with about a week’s worth of warning, the online forum, Stripperweb.com, shut down on February 1.
Stripperweb was created for strippers and later expanded to cam performers. It was a space where newbies, or ‘babies’ as we often call ourselves when first starting out in sex work, could exchange safety tips, give general advice and find community.
In an earlier, just barely digital era, you could find out what, if any, license you needed, what the vibe was for a particular club, what do to do about that clingy client of yours, ask advice about where to stay, and order an outfit made by a fellow stripper all in a matter of a few minutes. Most of the forum’s moderators were strippers or cam performers themselves, and so the forum was mostly free of voyeurs. A safe space before such wording even existed.
You might think that it’s not a big deal, that, now, social media can help strippers and cam models accomplish all the above items on their to-do list. And you’d be somewhat correct; social media platforms have, for the most part, replaced forums.
But that doesn’t mean mainstream social media is a perfect alternative.
Mainstream social media muzzles sex workers
It’s possible that I’m being sentimental, but it was neat being in a bubblegum pink corner of the internet. The forum didn’t change its layout since the early years, it was pink and sparkly and as outdated as our real life changing rooms. But we didn’t have to evade censorship the way that we have to on TikTok or Instagram.
For example, on TikTok, you can’t use the words “sex” or “stripper” — those are replaced by “seggs” or “skrippa.”
Also in contrast to social media, forums are text heavy. There is no algorithm that sorts users by popularity, there is no push for video or image content. In short, sex workers can use these spaces in ways that still protect our privacy.
And that’s the real problem. While sex workers can and do conduct business and create communities online via social media, it’s becoming increasingly harder and the goal posts are always moving. In recent years, sex workers have been under attack from many directions: the passing of FOSTA/SESTA in 2018 has led to closures of sites such as Backpage.com. Tumblr and Patreon banned adult content. There was, and continues to be, an effort to shut down Pornhub.
When Elon Musk took over Twitter a while back, many users were unsure how the transition would go, so they posted their contact on other platforms like Mastodon. Around the same time, there was a meme floating around in the sex work corner of Twitter – something along the lines of “screw this, I’m going back to Stripperweb.”
It’s especially important that marginalized people have their own online spaces, which aren’t at the whim of major tech corporations, advertisers, or legislators.
Which brings us back to Stripperweb.
What happens now?
It’s still unclear why the owner(s?) chose to close the site. The site seems to have been founded by a man named Pryce, who was a college student and web developer back in the early 2000’s. It seems like he started the site because he was friends with some strippers at the time, and they expressed interest in having a forum. At some point, it seems like Pryce found a co-owner or two, but little is known about any of the owners, really, and I suppose everyone is entitled to their privacy.
What’s even stranger, when offered a cash buy-out by Taja Ethereal, one of the longtime moderators, they didn’t reply to any messages, purchase offers or press inquiries. I’m confused as to why not take the offer and mysteriously ride into the sunset with a pile of cash? Why give the community only a weeks’ worth of notice to try to figure out how to archive twenty years worth of information? Or stranger still, why were the mysterious, hands-off owners against the moderators’ idea of updating the site slightly so that dancers could rate the clubs based on safety?
Something smells fishy here. It smells like when Starbucks closes locations when the workers unionize, but it’s hard to point the proverbial finger at a mystery set of persons. The sudden closing of Stripperweb feels like men shutting women out of the conversation. It feels like workers being left in the dust, their collective archive of twenty years, being left at the mercy of a few uninterested parties. It feels like someone changed the lock on our collective diary.
Like always, sex workers made some quick moves – much of Stripperweb is now archived at Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. And Taja Ethereal now owns Cammodelweb, a new forum for sex workers. I’m very excited to see how the new site develops! I look forward to a community forum that’s by- and for- sex workers, and am especially looking forward to learning more about how my fellow strippers stay safe at work at clubs around the world.
But also, I want to learn about late-night –after the club closes– food options, because immediately after dancing your butt off in a new club in a new town, that’s always the question: where does a hungry girl find all-day breakfast?
Sex workers have always been, and continue to be, early adapters of new technology. It’s now cheaper and easier to create websites and forums than it was twenty years ago. You don’t really need a degree to do the above or learn to code.
It’s high time that our stories should be in our hands. As Stripperweb, our original online diary closed, we started a fresh one.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
