Thirst Trap and other true crime objects of desire

Normally when I get to the end of the episode, if my app automatically starts playing a different series, I get so annoyed. I like to be in charge and when something automatic starts to roll, my instinct is to reject it for not asking permission to be on my screen.

So when my episode of 48 Hours on Paramount rolled right into Thirst Trap, I was annoyed but then I was witnessing something that caught my attention — this dude’s face making pouty lips, Zoolander poses, and lip syncing to Barry Manilow’s “Mandy”. And then in a far more interesting turn, it showed all the grown ass women who were drooling over him. 

It had my curiosity. 

Paramount has several original documentaries that I have watched, because watching true crime is part of my research. And I adore anything that has to do with social media fame fallout and catfishing schemes. 

As I watched Thirst Trap, I realized all these short videos were reminding me of the short videos in a different true crime documentary about objects of desire on Paramount titled Ctr+Alt+Desire about a man who becomes obsessed with an internet cam model and is also convicted for murdering his family.

There shouldn’t be so many similarities, but it was all I could see.

On it’s face Ctr+Alt+Desire is a dark story of a man taken down by his obsessions, while Thirst Trap is more about how the object of an obsession can be emotionally torn about how to set boundaries, how to manage their own addictions, and manage their feelings about being an object of others desires. 

However, both of these docs— which emphasize the parasocial relationships that fans have with their screen-trapped desires — are exclusively told from the point of view of the men in these cases.

Ctr+Alt+Desire is the story of Grant Amato, who is convicted of murdering his parents and brother, allegedly to gain the insurance payout to fuel his addiction to one particular internet cam model. He’s the subject of this doc, which means the doc focuses on telling his story through video calls between Amato and the filmmakers. There are some interview with other people in Amato’s life, but primarily the narration of the story is from Amato’s own words from those recordings.

Amato presents himself as the wrongly accused here, at first. He doesn’t really want to discuss his family, but, instead, wants to go on and on about the “love of his life” an internet cam model who works under the name of Silvie. According to him, he followed an ad which led to her channel and he started sending her money in exchange for her services. A lot of money. And then his parents’ money. And then money from a credit card he opened in his brother’s name. 

Silvie, whom despite all the filmmakers best efforts was never able to track down, is absent from this documentary except via previously recorded videos. All information about the profession of internet cam modelling comes from others in the business and Amato. When Amato pleads to the filmmakers how that Silvie was the love of his life, it feels almost believable. It almost makes the viewer think that Silvie was perhaps leading him on. It almost wants the viewer to assume that he is, in fact, a victim to a system which makes clients feel like there is a stronger relationship than really is. 

In the doc Thirst Trap, it tells of the rise and fall of internet personality Will White, and his legion of fans of women who are primarily, although not exclusively, over the age of 40. And the way that he made himself known on social media was to lip sync songs from the 70s and 80s, songs that more mature women have a youthful connection to. He’s shirtless, he smiles, he winks, and he often goes live and has conversations with the comments section of his fans. White (or Whitey as he likes to be called) spends a lot of his time in these live spaces asking the women what they’d like for him to do, and thanking them for all the money they are donating to him. 

And to be honest, that was exactly what the internet cam model was doing from the footage in Ctr+Alt+Desire. The filmmakers would show videos of Silvie from the shoulders up, possibly shirtless, excitedly thanking the people on her channel for giving her money and gifts. And this website had a leaderboard on the side showing who the top donators are. Ctr+Alt+Desire filmmakers even made the connection that the leaderboard existed so the audience would feel competitive against each other to be at the top of the board, dominating the other contributors. 

In Thirst Trap, Whitey is also thanking his many followers for their donations. There were pages where people could contribute to some of his goals, like trips or items he wanted. The women would either make individual donations or they would pool their money to provide for him an allowance. They even showed him during a live stream about how he needed to buy fingernail clippers while he was on his trip because he wanted to look nice at his event later. Moments latter, he received a knock on the door to find hotel staff standing there with a brand new pair of nail clippers sent to him from a fan. There are some who find this creepy. As one commentator said, it’s a strange mix of desire and nurturing, where they want him and also want to raise him. To me, it just made me think of him as a little prince being heralded by his kingdom.

His kingdom was in the form of these superfan groups called the Gutter Girls who spoke to each other through a group chat and eventually started hosting meet ups. They would gather near where they thought he would be in hopes that they might see him. 

The smartest thing Silvie did was never disclosing her true location. Whitey on the other hand, loved sharing his location, and because of that, his fans would constantly track him down. At an event, the Gutter Girls got together for a weekend and tracked him down at his hotel. Not only was he not creeped out, but he hooked up with one of his fans. After that, the group members were no longer a happy little gathering of girlfriends.

Both documentaries emphasizes how the parasocial relationship is not an imaginary relationship. All the feelings are real, especially in the sense that Whitey actually met, and physically touched, some of his biggest contributors. Some of them actually had relationships. 

With Silvie, she was supposedly in Romania and never sent a message that she didn’t get paid for. In Ctr+Alt+Desire, the filmmakers showed footage of Amato asking–pleading really–for Silvie to send him a message without him paying for it. One of the sex workers interviewed said that many clients are looking for the “girlfriend” experience, so there are packages that clients can purchase to get text messages, videos, and photos of the internet cam models in their street clothes, their sweats, pulling their hair into top knots. Some of the images were of her coming home with groceries or sipping green smoothies. This increases the intimacy, but according to the doc, she never sent images without compensation. This is a boundary she had set for herself that she was resolute about.

With good reason. When women present themselves for the entertainment of others, they are putting themselves at risk. Jodie Foster, Rebecca Schaeffer, and multiple Playboy playmates have found themselves in situations where fans would project a relationship between them that does not exist, not only putting themselves in danger but also leading to their deaths.

But more than anything, what I found most interesting about Ctr+Alt+Desire and Thirst Trap is how the men are both the subjects and presented as the victims of internet sex work.

Much like Silvie, Whitey is standing in front of a camera, shirtless, making excited and pouty faces and thanking people for giving him money. While the leaderboard might be missing, the comments section is fully live, and when someone makes a request, he often obliged them. In fact, the doc shows him Magic Mike-ing the bed at the request of a fan. He was as much utilizing simulating sex for cash as Silvie was. 

And I think that whenever a doc tries to explain social media, internet relationship, sex work, and the backfire that often happens in these extreme cases, there is a tendency to try to present the people giving money to the sex workers as a little … I’m going to say sad. 

With Whitey, all the women who are interviewed as part of the Gutter Girls are in their sexiest outfits, or they are being filmed from angles that reduce them to ideas of teenage girls and obsessions. Storm, a Whitey fan and Only Fans internet model, is over and over shown climbing onto a pink canopy bed to lie on her stomach and scroll through her phone. She’s in jeans and heels, and the camera keeps focusing on her butt. The breaks between the women’s talking heads are heart emojis and kiss prints. It feels like these women are being mocked because they are older women who are sexually attracted to a young man.

But mostly it feels like both documentaries are pointing at the women as the problem. Silvie was the problem because she wanted so much money for her affection. The Gutter Girls were a problem because they wanted something in return for the money they sent. And when he selected one of them as the “favorite” as the one (or two, I think it was) that he would actually have sex with, it seemed like they were not getting their money’s worth.

Where this documentary kind of shines is it recognizes, although with wonder, that these are women who are in command of their money. None of these women were claiming to get in trouble with a spouse or bank over what they spent on Whitey. The doc does not report excessive credit card use or women going into debt. They chose to leave out other parts, so perhaps they chose to leave that out as well. But when one woman was asked if she gave $1,000 during one live session, she rolled her eyes and said, “I meant to give $100 but my keyboard got stuck, and the next morning I saw I’d actually given $1,000.” Believe her or not, she was not fussed over how much money she spent. To her, what’s another $1,000? She is a woman who earned her money and would do with it what she wants.

Amato was unemployed and was opening credit cards in his parents and brother's names in order to pay for Silvie's services. Ctr+Alt+Desire even suggests that the satisfaction from giving Silvie money was not actually from any virtual intimacy, but a stronger desire to be at the top of the leaderboard. It had nothing to do with Silvie, but with beating the other men in this race to the top.

And while many of the woman in Thirst Trap openly admit to getting swept up in this wave of adoration, but they have no regrets. Since then many have developed strong friendships with other women from the group. They admit it got toxic and they learned a strong lesson. Even the fan who – like Whitey – had her nudes leaked by someone in the group, had no ill will toward the others. All these women agreed that their sole motivation was that they really wanted to take care of this young guy. And by joining Gutter Girls, they decided to do it like a team.

In the final episode, it explained how Whitey is both on and off social media, openly discussing his addictions and struggles. He’s still a young person. He’s making mistakes and learning from them. Unlike Amato who is in prison and wavering back and forth between proclaiming his innocence and admitting it was him all along.

And in the end, not matter how much it seems these docs try to make the women seem sad and pathetic, they’re the ones who are fine. Amato is in jail. Whitey is struggling to know who he is. It’s really the men who are most troubled and lost.

Be sure to check out some of my other takes on true crime documentaries.

But also, check out where some of this "research" is going. Head over to the brandibradley.com shop for my selections of essays, short stories, and novels like Pretty Girls Get Away With Murder, my latest release about a murder, a small town, and a whole lot of secrets.

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