Web cams each bring into being a community of friends and regular visitors. These communities are at once unique and deeply intertwined. The hosts invariably began as fans of the cams preceding theirs, and most of their own fans participate in other cam-centered communities. GayCams exists to serve the common needs of these communities, individually and as a single broader community.

WHO

GC is the nom de plume of the owner of GayCams. I like to use it even though, by now, a lot of people know my real name. I practically never use my own web cam; however, I do participate in the message boards and sometimes appear in Chat or on Radio GayCams.

I have met many web cammers in person - the complete list appears below - and I love them all dearly, so be nice to them. GayCams is my personal web site and I take it very personally when someone uses my site and its features to harrass web cammers in any way. Visitors unwilling to behave themselves are invited to go away and get lost.

Guy Jeremy is a designer/programmer in Toronto, Canada. He helped me to improve the look and feel of GayCams. He offered assistance just because he likes web cams and he likes GayCams. Guy's personal web cam was listed here in late 1998 until he closed it in 2001. He helped for about a year.

I've had help from lots of other people, too. reX did the Poll for a while. Mikey of Funk Cam helps me with all sorts of design work, especially the Splash pages. FlyGuy gave me the original message board, which Tyson helped me to install. Then an anonymous message board user paid the $200 registration renewal fee so that I could update it. A friend of Bryan of ChaosinAustin - known as ErikFL on the message boards - gave me immense help with the Chat feature. I really could go on and on. I get a lot of help!

WHAT

GayCams is a personal web site. Owing to the help of many others, it has grown far beyond anything I could have imagined but I always intend it to remain personal in character. (Have you noticed how frequently I use the word "I" here?)

Every web cam site is listed at the request of - and with the continuing permission of - its individual owner. Without their support, the site could not exist at all.

GayCams' existance in any form would be likewise problematical but for the support of Badpuppy, to whom special thanks is owed, and gladly given. Especially to Bill Rivers, the president, and to his executive assistant, Lisa. Also to Stephen, Ben, Ferrell and Brad. They really are the nicest group of people, and they provide me free web-site hosting and other support. I don't know exactly how much of their bandwidth this site has consumed but it's cetainly well past a Terrabyte - 1000 Gigabytes, or 1 million Megabytes - which ordinarily would cost a fortune.

Please help them to justify their investment here of money and effort by purchasing even an inexpensive 7-day trial subscription. If you find that Badpuppy does not exactly suit your tastes, so be it. More likely, you will be amazed at what a good value it is.

WHEN

GayCams was launched August 8, 1998 soon after I discovered live web cams. Within a few weeks, Badpuppy invited me to move it to their server.

The next big step was the introduction of a private mailing list exclusively for web cam operators, in December, 1998. It was immediately very popular and has contributed to the building of a greater sense of community among the web cam operators.

The site was just a series of normal, static html pages until June, 1999 when database programming enabled the site to actually *do* things for the first time. That was GayCams, Version II.

There was going to be a Version III but, well... that's a long story. Maybe I'll be able to get that together one of these days. Call this Version II and a half.

WHERE

GC is presently living in Las Vegas, Nevada. I came here with Mikey of Funk Cam for the annual porn convention and, somehow, I just never left. Mikey stayed for 7 months before returning to Toronto to finish his degree.

Previously, I lived in Ottawa, Canada. I was living in Boise, Idaho, USA when I began GayCams.

The site is hosted by Badpuppy from their location very near the Space Center in Florida.

WHY

I was immediately fascinated with web cams upon discovering them in 1998 - which fascination was matched in equal measure by my annoyance at the inadequacy of the lists then available for finding them.

You had to pass through acres of disgusting porno ads to use lists that were barely useful at all, and yet, there was no other way to find web cams. Worst of all, to my way of thinking, there was no distinction made between beautiful, expressive, personal free cam sites and appalling hardcore or commercial cam sites.

I thought, "So many of these cams clearly are deserving of much greater respect. It's time somebody did the job right." So, that is what I set out to do.

GayCams is intended for a gay audience - but is expressly not intended for the entire gay audience. If you are looking only for a quick wank, you can find about a million other web sites probably much more to your liking - and where, doubtless, you may expect a better reception.

As it happens, however, sex-obsessed visitors are highly unlikely ever to see the bottom of this obscure page so I feel very confident in welcoming you here. Thank you for visiting and thank you for your interest in learning what GayCams is all about.