LOS ANGELES—The broadcaster known as AkGingerSnaps tells AVN her cam room on Chaturbate is a team effort.
“It’s me, but it’s also ‘we,’” she says.
The “we” includes her husband Smassh and their girlfriend, Lana Mars, both of whom go live on cam with her on a regular basis from their home base in Alaska.
“Lana is her own thing, but she also is part of us,” GingerSnaps says.
The polyamorous trio—they call themselves a “throuple”—embarked on a tour this summer, driving around the Alaskan wilderness in a motorhome and broadcasting to the world from cabins and campgrounds—or anywhere they can find good WiFi.
“We love it up here,” GingerSnaps says. “It’s absolutely beautiful. There isn’t a lot of people. It’s really nice.”
In the midst of her epic road trip Ginger found time to check herself out in Cam_Girlfriend, the breakout comedy series which reaches its season finale today with the 10th episode—titled “The Boss”—available exclusively on The Camming Life YouTube channel.
Ginger appears at the beginning of Episode 8—titled “The Competition”—describing how cam girls know the vast majority of their viewers only by their sometimes ridiculous-sounding usernames.
“And it’s something usually sexually graphic,” Ginger jokes.
Created and co-written by Ethan Cole, produced by CAMGF1 Productions and made possible by the Independent Production Fund, the digital series follows the on- and off-cam hijinks of Chloe Cables, a rising cam model played by exclusive Chaturbate broadcaster and adult star, Lily LaBeau. Each fast-moving episode tackles a realistic cam girl problem from the perspectives of Chloe and her well-meaning boyfriend Mike, who is played by veteran TV personality Dave Keystone. Chloe and Mike discover her profession often intersects with their relationship in unintended ways.
A group of accomplished TV, documentary and film pros led by director Daniel AM Rosenberg—along with producer/writer Michael Goldlist and producer Jason Kennedy—captured every episode of Cam_Girlfriend during a 12-day stretch in February 2018 in Toronto.
In today’s six-minute finale, Mike goes on a search for the truth when he suspects his boss (Neil Malone) may be one of Chloe’s biggest fans. Does Mike’s boss have a secret thing for his girlfriend? And what will Mike do if he can prove it?
AkGingerSnaps says from what she’s watched the series is “pretty spot on.”
“It’s on topic with a lot of things that could happen as a cam model,” Ginger says.
That was by design.
The cast and crew placed maximum emphasis on making Cam_Girlfriend sound and feel as real as possible—all while keeping their tongues firmly in cheek. In a nice touch that gives the series an extra layer of authenticity, each episode kicks off with a testimonial-style interview with a popular Chaturbate broadcaster who talks about situations that arise on cam. Today's episode features cam girl and adult performer, Hime Marie, while past installments have also spotlighted MyPerfectHarem, Whaaaaaaaat, Lena Spanks, Avery Black and Sleepy Chew.
AkGingerSnaps started her camming journey with Smassh in July 2016.
“We had been avid viewers of Chaturbate,” Ginger recalls. “We would watch our favorite cam girls and get horny and have sex—like people do. Then one night we were just chilling and kind of bored and decided to turn the camera on ourselves.
“We thought, ‘Why don’t we just try to do it ourselves?’”
She says Smassh, who is an IT manager, was between jobs at the time, waiting for a high-paying government position in Juno to open up during a hiring freeze.
“So we just were bored and we tried it and we made 700 dollars in our first cam session,” Ginger says.
They decided to ride out their “new” tag on Chaturbate for a week "and it just kept going well.” Then once they didn’t have the “new” beside their name anymore, they thought they’d continue giving it a go.
"And it was still going well and we were still making money and we said, ‘Why don’t we just keep doing this?” Ginger adds.
It took about two months for Ginger and Smassh to realize they were onto something—and now four years later they’ve become one of the top camming couples on Chaturbate with more than 400,000 followers.
Ginger and Smassh both are from South Florida, growing up in the same small town without ever meeting each other until one wild weekend in the Florida Keys.
“He’s from across the river. I’m from the good side of the river and he’s from the not-so-good side of the river,” Ginger says with a laugh. “He’s a few years older than I am. We went to the same high school but we never really met as kids. But our families knew each other. My dad and his mom had gone to the same high school.”
Smassh attended the University of North Carolina and served 14 years in the Army, where he worked on satellites and computers with a Military Occupational Specialty of 25C—or Radio Operator-Maintainer. He was stationed in Germany for seven years, while Ginger graduated from the University of South Florida in Tampa with a degree in gerontology—the scientific study of aging.
“I could run a nursing home,” she says. “I can do nursing home administration.”
She also is a trained phlebotomist who can draw blood.
They met in a shallow swimming pool.
“We had mutual friends in our hometown who were going down to the Keys to rent a house for Memorial Day weekend,” she recalls.
“There was a little pool in the back where you can wade in that’s only 4 feet deep and the guys were talking about jumping off the balcony into the pool. Nobody had done it yet and then Smassh got there.”
Friends urged Smassh to do it.
“So he stripped down to nakedness and jumped off the roof and swam up to me and looked at me and said, ‘You’re hot, let’s go upstairs.’
“I was sitting next to the pool. I said, ‘Sure, let’s do it.’ I was 21, I was just having a good time! … We were talking about getting married within four months of that weekend.”
They tied the knot in August 2007.
Ever since Smassh joined the military when he was 18 he had wanted to move to Alaska, Ginger says. They lived in North Carolina for about seven years, moving to The Last Frontier in 2014.
“He had been trying to convince me for a while. I was like, ‘I don’t know, it’s kind of far away and it’s cold and I don’t know what’s up there,’” says Ginger, noting they’re based in the Anchorage area in the south central part of the state.
They met their girlfriend and now fiancee, native Alaskan Lana Mars, at AkCamGirls, the cam studio they launched that became the largest of its kind in Alaska. The couple also helped Mars launch her porn career and now she is represented by leading talent agency Motley Models for professional bookings and has more than two dozen porn credits since 2018, including scenes for Brazzers, BangBros, Mofos, FTV Girls, Team Skeet and Reality Kings.
“She came to join our studio and wanted to get into porn,” Ginger says. “And we all cammed together and vibed really well, and we’ve just all been together from that point on.”
Ginger and Smassh don’t run their brick-and-mortar studio anymore, but they continue to offer services that assist cam models with key aspects of their businesses such as payouts and processing, social media marketing and general guidance about how to get started and be successful.
“One of the biggest things is we provide employment verification for cam models,” Ginger says. “If a model wants to go get an apartment we provide an employment verification through our mainstream company.”
Smassh also runs FetFan.com, which started as a social networking platform and evolved into a digital and print magazine that is up to its 18th issue.
While they’ve been traveling this summer Ginger and Lana try to broadcast two or three times a week and Smassh joins when he’s not on “daddy duty” for their three kids.
“He’ll come into on our cam shows and hang out with us or we’ll make people tip to get him to come in so he can play, so he can do his daddy stuff,” Ginger says. “We’ve always been polyamorous. Lana has been with us for three years and she has been our longest and most successful poly relationship.”
Sometimes they’ll do shows in their 14-foot trailer they use to haul their Argo, an eight-wheel, amphibious, all-terrain vehicle.
“We can pull our Argo out and set up a cute space to cam out of,” Ginger says. “We also rent a cabin if we’re in a campground and cam from it. I have three kids, so I can’t cam from my RV. Everybody is with us. Summer is ending and we’ll be home schooling soon.”
They’ve visited Homer, a small city on Kachemak Bay on the Kenai Peninsula.
“It’s a really beautiful place, a pretty famous Alaskan place,” Ginger says. “We spent a week or two down there and a week in Valdez. We’ve gone up and spent a week in Talkeetna—and Willow also—and the Tolsona area.
Ginger says they are big cannabis advocates—she is sponsored by Cannabaska, a dispensary in Anchorage
“It’s legal up here in Alaska to grow and consume in your own home. It’s also recreationally legal now,” she says, adding she would be receptive to other weed sponsors, too.
Ginger takes pride in the life and career she's created with Smassh.
“I’m really proud of us for doing what we do,” Ginger says. “We’re like a normal family. Smassh and I aren’t the most gorgeous people. We’re pretty average I feel like. We’re just like an average family and we’ve been able to have success in this industry. I’m 34. I’m not 22, and we have over 400,000 followers on Chaturbate.
“I’m just really proud of how far we’ve come in this industry and how we’ve been able to make a name for ourselves—a good name. People want to come to Alaska and want to make content with us.
“We invite other porn stars to come up and cam with us. Usually they’ll stay for a long weekend—fly in on a Thursday and go home on a Sunday. In between cam shows we’ll go see Alaska. We’ll go on a hike or we’ll look around Anchorage. We try to get out and show them things as much as possible.”
To watch Episode 10 of Cam_Girlfriend, click here.
