Altering The Alternate World

by Steven A. Angelo

There had been a series of stories of people in their struggle during this health crisis. Due to intensive quarantine restrictions, and lockdowns, people have longed for their reconnection to the real world: to communicate with others, have fun, party all night, take on scenic trips, make relationships, and gain income. Although it may seem impossible now to get in touch again with the pre-pandemic physical world, we had still been able to reconnect again even in this health crisis, well at least virtually.

But what if unconsciously, we have been turning things upside down.

What if the online world we are considering as our refuge in these trying times is now being converted to an alternate world of fantasizing people, eliciting most of our erotic senses and above all, and earning money by seduction.

Welcome to the Alternate World!

ALTER. This is has been the word coined by social media users, especially on Twitter, where people have been using alternative accounts. On Facebook, they call it ‘poser’ accounts. There are many words to describe the content of such accounts but one thing is for sure that they expose the other side of a person’s persona. In short, they are the other half of the user.

In psychology, we always look at a person with three divisions in their consciousness, the Ego, the Id, and the Superego. The Ego is the real person that always personifies our control. The superego always acts as our good side, like we always have our good side. Now, as what we always repress is the Id. Yes, the Id.

With the new way of communicating, it is like people tend to divide the persona they have, the real and the alter so that they are more expressive and more open to the internet.

We always try to remember that the more we repress or cover up something, the more it will seep out into our personality. This is the reason why alter accounts were born. The account wants to trickle out more on our Id. What composes our Id are our pleasures (sexual, physical, emotional, and others), emotional stability, gender biases, gender instability, anger, fear, and sadness, and longingness for someone or something.

With the new way of communicating, it is like people tend to divide the persona they have, the real and the alter so that they are more expressive and more open to the internet.

There had been a series of alter accounts who had been engaging in casual sex long before the pandemic. This has been magnified when there are a series of localized lockdowns in high-risk areas. From sending nude photos to co-alter accounts and having video calls that elicit sexual fantasies.

Aside from having casual sex, prolonged use of alter accounts leads more students to be more explorative. They utilize their accounts to earn money for their school fees in exchange for sex videos, nude pictures, or sex.

Students are turning to sex work to deal with unexpected costs at university, the National Student Money Survey has found. For most, it’s because support from Student Finance, parents, and universities falls short. The survey, by money-advice site Save the Student, asked 3,167 students how they cope with finances at university.

The reality, however, is that the majority aren’t coping: 78% say they’re struggling to get by. Unsurprisingly, most students (76%) rely on part-time work to bring in extra cash. Of those, 5% say they use their bodies to earn a living: that includes things like medical trials and life modeling, as well as sex, sugar dating, and webcamming. However, the figure is twice as high (11%) when students are faced with an emergency or unexpected costs.

The survey also found that students in the latter group typically have higher living costs, get less cash support from parents, and find it harder to get help from their university. Talking from a pool of university students about why and how they got into sex work – and the answers lead to the fact that social media makes getting started a lot easier.

Fees can be paid through electronic wallets, which makes owners harder to trace. Other accounts, meanwhile, sell videos for P300 to P500 ($9.87) each. One account, created in October 2016, boasts of having 1,563 videos and 304 photos that can be downloaded for P500.

If our country will set forth a more tedious type of education in which more money is needed to make projects and pay miscellaneous fees and bills, it will be our students who are at risk for they are going to use the alternate world to explore ways in making money. This is alarming and the government should act on this by flipping the table upside down again.