From friend to victim?

So far I have played with some e-girls, it was great and quite some fun but I felt a genuine curiosity to what it was like for them. Were they genuine? Were they just trying to please and was it all fake? I had no clue, sure, there are some telltale signs but it wasn’t all that.

In order to dive deeper I figured it was time , maybe I think I know what it is like to be an e-girl or boy, but only a fool can know. The point is to understand, as Albert Einstein once said.

This is where the journey began, in order to understand I signed my friend up to become an e-girl, of course with her consent.

I made a her a profile with me posing as her whiteknight and a bit of a weird audio recording (Where I described that I was her whiteknight and that she will love me one day if I keep defending her). Yes I’m not proud of it, but it turned out to work.

The profile was created, now it was a matter of time to see what would happen next. I had low expectations, but you never know.

Two Days later: The first booking.

It’s a quiet afternoon and I’m doing some COVID-19 work from home when suddenly an unusual e-mail pops up: ”You have been booked, reply within a few hours to confirm your booking or it will expire.”

At first I was very excited, my friend got a booking and I wanted to tell her straight away. So I sent her a message and logged in on the website to confirm the booking.

Upon logging in I was welcomed by this message:

A bit weird.. huh.

• Is one of my friends messing with me?
• Did someone just book me instead of HER?
• What kind of creep is this going to be (Remember the cringy voice recording)?!

These thoughts quickly shifted to me realizing that even though I signed my friend up. I had to serve the customer now; for science!

I accepted the booking and found myself really nervous. Instantly asking myself: What if I’m not what they expect? What if I disappoint them? What if they refund?

I imagine this is a daily thing for many of the girls who do this frequently. It probably becomes less as time goes on but every experience is different, making it harder to deal with expectations.

Serving the first client

I replied that I’d be available anytime for the client. He replied in an indifferent way and said he’ll add me on League of Legends and play with me soon. Even though I wanted to play with my friends, I wanted to raise our e-girl rank and get a positive review, so I waited. While already on League him finish and queue up to play another game and I found myself really annoyed that he just kept me waiting.

Since I’ve been quoting Boomers, let’s do another one:

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

Carl Gustav Jung

This made me realize that even though people book to play a single game (Which is usually 20 – 30 minutes), it costs you a lot more time. Of course theres a bit of small talk up front, queue up and after the game you don’t instantly leave. Therefore a single booking for League of Legends can easily take up to 1 hour, something I didn’t factor in and realize earlier.

This means that many e-girls are playing games for a 1$ hourly rate, not what you’d call a minimum wage for many of them.

The game itself

We played a normal game of League of Legends and I played with a Norwegian dude and his British friend, they were actually much like me and pretty nice. We joked around, focused mostly on our game and won pretty hard. Nothing special happened in the game and it was actually much like meeting new friends.

The best thing I can compare the experience to is a stranger buying you a beer in a bar and you returning the favor by chatting with them for a while.

After we won, I played another one with them and we chatted a bit after the game. We said goodbye and that was that!

Key takeaways from being an e-girl:

In this part I’d like to explain a bit further what the experience was like and write up some advice for you if you’d like to try it out! Keep in mind that I am not very experience though. In further articles we’ll write a full guide that will be worth the read, but for now I’d like to stick to a few basics.

1 ) Don’t do this if you have social anxiety

Meeting new people can be a bit overwhelming from time to time and it’s not always going to be a great experience. If you have social anxiety this is going to stress you out like crazy. Prepare yourself!

2) You need to be a patient person

Sometimes people are going to keep you waiting for a while, whether it’s for another friend who is coming online soon or any generic thing, you will have to wait a lot. If this annoys you it will frustrate you and affect your mood during the game(s). If you happen to have a crappy game too it will take a lot of the fun away, remember that this should be about the fun!

3) Never do it for the money

In my opinion this is the most important one. Do not become an e-girl for the money! With the social pressure already coming your way it’s not good to also put monetary pressure on this. It’s going to potentially cause some of the following things:

• Impatience: Wanting to rush or games to forfeited to be able to play more.
• Fake social behavior: Pretending to really like people or return customers or adhering to a stereotype which is simply not you, just for the money that comes with it.
• Taking out the fun: Playing will feel like a job and when you feel forced to play it’ll easily take out the fun.

There’s probably far more to recommend, but these were the most important things I could highlight from my limited experience.

I’m sure many readers will have something to add on, so please leave a comment with your experience or tips!