Show Me the Money: Cybershrews and on-line Money Masochists

Abstract

This article documents the existence of a novel form of deviant behavior, called money slavery, which utilizes the Internet. This practice involves males (called “money slaves”) making monetary payments to women (called “money mistresses”) they contact on-line in exchange for being humiliated, degraded, and even blackmailed. The data for this study were gathered over a four-year period from Web pages, newsgroups, message boards, and discussion forums. The results indicate that participants utilize various social control strategies in an attempt to prevent the ample opportunities for fraud associated with this practice. Moreover, participants sometimes offer accounts (Scott and Lyman 1968) in an apparent attempt to manage stigma. These findings are considered in the framework of postmodern culture, and social learning theory is offered as a possible explanation of this behavior. The significance of this phenomenon is also examined, and the possible real-life ramifications of these men's behavior are also considered.