O
n Friday, December 28, 2007, Amor
Hilton went to the North-ridge
mall near Los Angeles with two
friends. Petite and spacey with
wide blue eyes, cotton-candy-pink
hair, and a silver nose ring, the
17-year-old looked half-anime, half-emo. Maybe she’d buy another
Hello Kitty purse for her collection, or some bright new nail
polish to match her latest dye job. But mainly, like most kids in the
San Fernando Valley, she was just going to the mall to hang out.
The Israel-born Hilton was used to being on her own. Growing up in the Valley, she never knew her father, and she bounced between living with her mom and her grandparents. Sometimes, she’d chum around with the other self-described “scene kids”—young punks who trolled Sunset Boulevard in tattoos, tight black pants, and piercings. Or she’d stay home, log on to her computer, flip on her webcam—and try to become a star.
Every Wednesday night, she hosted a live video show on Stickam, a burgeoning do-it-yourself social network. What distinguishes it from MySpace or Facebook is that Stickam lets its 3. 5 million subscribers broadcast video in real time as viewers chime in via instant message. It’s a place where Hilton and other like-minded extroverts could become their own reality stars, engaging in goofy, sometimes risqué confessionals. Kids talking to kids, without any pesky adults interfering—kinda like Peanuts. Or Lord of the Flies.
For Hilton, it seemed like the perfect platform when she first logged on in early 2007. As a little girl, she had dreamed of becoming an actress like her favorite, Hilary Duff, but the reality of auditions and compromises got her down. “It’s so, like, boring waiting around all the time,” she’d say in her Valley Girlese. Her mother was a part-time pinup model (“Like Bettie Page,” Hilton says. “She’s really hot!”), and Hilton craved the same kind of iconic fame. She scored a small role on Hannah Montana as a mean girl, but hated how pedestrian she appeared. “I had to sacrifice the way I wanted to look to do the job,” she recalls.
On Stickam, though, she could be herself. With her pixieish charm and the bubbly appeal of a lovable bad girl, Hilton insinuated herself into
the punky popular crowd. She’d preen on camera in American-flag short-shorts on a red shag rug or play drunken voice mails from admiring boys. She began dating and cohosting Stickam shows with an androgynous would-be model named John Hock. One time, she sat at her webcam as two guys soaked in a bubble bath behind her. “I want to get in!” she chirped, before stripping down to her black skivvies and joining them.
And people watched, making Hilton one of the most popular entertainers—or Cam Girls— on the site, racking up more than a quarter million viewers, a modest number relative to TV, but enough to make her a whale shark in this small pond. Hilton saw Stickam as her springboard, and launched her own site for other online pinups, Brutal Dolls. She began hiring other models to pose in Suicide Girl–like regalia. She even parlayed her notoriety into modeling gigs for Hot Topic.
Despite her casual air, she also knew that she was attracting no shortage of creeps. First there were the come-on e-mails. Then the hang-up callers. Once, she found broken doll parts spread out on top of her car.
“It weirded me out,” she says, “but I wasn’t bothered by it.” Hilton has a preternatural ability to compartmentalize, to separate her “real” self from the one online. Amor Hilton is not even her real name—Amor was a childhood nickname from her mom, and Hilton was what girls at school called her. They thought she was stuck-up.
When her pink Hello Kitty cellphone rang at the mall that December night around 8 P.M., she didn’t flinch at what the caller said: “If you hang up, I’ll shut off your phone.” Whatever, she thought, and hung up. It rang seconds later. “I’m serious,” he threatened. “I’m going to shut off your phone.” Hilton laughed it off, and hung up again.
As she sat down in the food court, her friend’s phone rang. It was Hock, sounding frazzled, asking for Hilton. Hock was visiting his mother in Phoenix. But just as he was about to leave for the Greyhound station to return to L.A., he got a MySpace message from Hilton telling him not to get on the bus because she was going to come pick him up. She just needed him to give her his mother’s phone number and address.
Hock thought it was a weird request. But the message was from her account, so he sent the address and phone number along. Seconds later, a private caller rang his mom’s phone. The young guy on the other end told Hock not to get on the bus—or else. Hock immediately hung up
and tried Hilton, then her friend. Hilton said she had never sent him the MySpace message. “Where are you?” Hock asked, frantically. “Are you at a computer? Your phone’s not working.” Hilton flipped open her phone.
It was dead.
social networks have grown 35 percent over the past three years—more than the proliferation of search engines, and shopping, entertainment, and porn sites.
For teens, the appeal of Stickam in particular is broader than simply keeping track of friends and colleagues; for the generation who grew up on reality TV and YouTube, Facebook and MySpace lack one of the most no-duh big ideas
Because you can’t spell “ attention-starved” without S-T-A-R
54 APRIL 2009 / SAVE LIVES WI TH SPIN.COM
From 1996 to 2003, Jennifer Ringley’s live feed was the real Truman Show, as she slept, ate, and, yep, that too on camera full time. It’s been estimated that at its peak, JenniCam attracted 100 million visitors per week.
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