I think it's a great thing to appreciate more about camming as a job than just the money. I too have always enjoyed the friendship elements of MFC and have kept things pretty real. I've enjoyed hearing from regulars that things I've said/done have genuinely improved their lives. However, if I were to offer any advice, it's to be really careful of boundaries. Friendship means something different to everyone, but the majority of the time, members/regulars are not your friends. They are there because you are offering a service, whether that's entertainment, company, something to ease boredom/loneliness, sexuality, you're offering them something. You will meet some who will become genuine friends, but they will be few and far between and forming those friendships often takes a fair amount of time and energy, and you may well burn out from giving that energy to the wrong people. Most members even if they enjoy your chat are there for sexual services, don't delude yourself. And many will happily replace you with others when you no longer interest them or they get bored of you, so be careful about your own emotional attachments.
I'll give an example, I used to spend a LOT of time chatting offline to regulars, largely because I was lonely myself when I cammed. These members would tip me offline or online so they weren't using me for company and respected my job, however for the time I spent I definitely would have made more from live streaming. I left camming full time many years ago, I would say that only a few of these members I'd count as genuine friends still. We do keep in contact and some of them have been very generous with me without any expectation from me, and a couple I've met up with as our paths were crossing. Some members I am friendly with, if I come back to cam they tip and we have a good time, sometimes we enjoy a private show together, I like these members very much, but I am not sure I could consider them as friends. I mostly don't regret how friendly I was with members because in ways it does mean that when I return to camming I end up with an active group of people welcoming me back and I usually make a fair amount of money. However, I also had huge stresses in my time camming. I had fall outs with members, I had members who used me for emotional labour, ones who were manipulative etc. I've even had a case where a member I considered my best friend was convicted of a sexual offence and I never knew about it until I recognised his name in a paper. You do not know what the people who you speak to online are going through, not really. All you know is what they choose to tell you. In the end, as much as I had some wonderful regulars around, the negative experiences led to me burning out and having to leave the cam world, while models with better boundaries are persevering.
So word of warning, be careful on sneering at models calling those who visit them "members". That is what they are. They are strangers. You may become friends with some, but that'll take years, and you'll never really know until either you or they leave MFC. Having some boundaries with your regulars is a good thing, and keeping the term "friends" only for those who genuinely are isn't impersonal, it's genuine.
Just think if you were working in a pub and all of these regulars were random dudes coming in and chatting to you, would you be calling them "friends"? Probably not, because that would be really strange and inappropriate. Don't fall into the trap of thinking because you're a sex worker that you have to drop boundaries and prove you're not stealing people's money. These members knew exactly what they were getting involved in when they chose to join a camsite and buy tokens.
