Their company, Studio 20 Double D, was ticking along nicely, but then COVID-19 struck and Manole was flooded with job applications and new clients.

“Applications increased by 100 per cent and the number of users doubled,” Manole told BIRN.

“Ours is a business that works in a situation like this.”

Romania is a global leader in adult live camming.

With much of the world under orders to stay at home to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, traffic to adult sites is growing. And the US, which accounts for the biggest share of the audience, is only now starting to lock down fully.

“The whole industry, including our company, expects the consumption and number of users to increase,” said Romanian IT entrepreneur Alex Bluck, tech director of SkyPrivate, a platform that connects subscribed adult live cam models with clients and handles the per-minute payments.

Traffic to porn sites up in March

Social media users have shared memes and jokes since the onset of the crisis alluding to the likely rise in traffic to porn sites.

They proved prophetic when PornHub, the world’s largest adult website, reported in mid-March an average daily increase in traffic of 5.7 per cent.

PornHub scrapped the cost of its premium videos for users in countries most affected by the spread of COVID-19. In Italy, the European epicentre of the European pandemic, average daily traffic was up more than 13 per cent.

But other parts of the adult entertainment industry have benefited too, live camming included.

Stressing that they do not deal in porn, both Manole and Bluck say live camming offers an interactive experience in which ‘models’ rely on skills of communication and empathy. Much of the time users pay for is spent in conversation, they say.

“As humans, we need to speak with someone, to be heard and open up to others without being judged,” Manole said. “We often open more easily to those we don’t know, because we don’t fear as much that we will be judged.”

Bluck described the service on offer as a “virtual girlfriend experience”.

“Their first instinct is to see a naked girl who gives attention only to him, but the relationship often transforms into something else and they talk about their lives and feelings,” he told BIRN.