Fame has always been a fickle beast, but in modern days it’s even more of an uncontrollable monster. The internet age allows someone to go from an unknown to having millions of fans literally overnight, then potentially be forgotten about again in six months time. And with immediate dissemination of media and ease of contact, everyone has the chance to be noticed. Our definition of fame has changed over the past 5-10-20 years as technology has exploded and created countless new paths to fame for people to follow. Fame comes in many varieties and holds different shelf lives. And with this new definition of fame, so has changed our definition of success. The two are often linked based only on the merit of one another - if someone is famous, they must be successful. It doesn’t matter the route or the outcome. If people know your name, even if only for a while, you’ve made it. And those who have grown up and existed solely within the information age have an interpretation of fame and success uniquely tuned to this ideology.

Some iteration of “we’re going to be famous” is shouted by each of the profiled girls towards the start of Hot Girls Wanted (2015). The girls, who come from average American families, are drawn to the incentive of personal freedom, big paydays and the instant fame that amateur pornography offers. They see selling their souls to a big business for a few bucks an hour and becoming their parents as failure. The alternative is being filmed doing something they’d do anyway, making $800-900 for a couple hours work, and spending the rest of their time relaxing and becoming internet famous as a win. Especially because, at least for a brief time, they all do establish decent fan bases through their work.

“We’re free now. The world is in our hands,” one girl (Rachel) says.

It would be nice to have seen the documentary touch on this theme harder, but of all the potential avenues of investigation the film grazes but doesn’t analyze; it dedicates the most attention to the girls’ overblown sense of upcoming fame.

Hot Girls Wanted isn’t unaware of how promiscuity and sexuality can lead to fame. “Sex sells” is one of the oldest adages in marketing. The doc kicks off with clips of celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Miley Cyrus boosting their public presence with over-sexualized photos and outwardly sexual behavior. It notes celebrities like Kardashian and Paris Hilton who jumped into the public landscape via sex tapes - homemade porn videos to which they can essentially credit as the source of all their exposure. And it spends a lot of time discussing Miriam Weeks, better known as Belle Knox, the Duke student and subject of a media juggernaut for her efforts to pay for college by doing porn. Clearly not the first person to have ever taken that path, the message is obvious: people have made it big by exploiting themselves. Though people like Kardashian and Hilton came from wealthy families, they were public nobodies before their sexual exploits went public. Now they’re recording artists, fashion designers, models, actresses, and cross-platform millionaires. Though the girls of Hot Girls Wanted don’t seem to think about the thousands of people who didn’t make it big in porn, but that’s not the mindset of a teenager. We live in a porn-ified culture, and each one thinks they will be the next breakout success.

And really, in today’s world, who can blame them? Though still improbable, it’s not impossible. That’s the nature of fame in 2015. Couple it with humanity’s natural and unstoppable love of sex, and it’s easy to see why these girls think this is their shot at the good life.