Kevin McGahern's America

With the US presidential race in full swing, Kevin McGahern dives into trigger-happy America to meet the paranoid patriots who want smaller government and bigger guns. In a gun store in North Carolina, Kevin hears how recent mass shootings have triggered bumper firearm sales, with an AR-15 flying off the rack every 8 minutes following the Dallas attacks—“what’s bad for the country is good for business”. In Florida, Kevin gets schooled by a group of survivalists eager to teach him how to disarm a would-be attacker. These dedicated preppers are ready to defend themselves and their families against any threat from hurricanes to kidnapping and, of course, zombie apocalypse. Kevin also joins a group of activists in Detroit as they stage an “open carry walk”, patrolling the neighbourhood with large semi-automatic weapons on full display as a reminder to passersby of what it means to be a free citizen of the United States.

Kevin McGahern has never met a cam model—in real life, at least. Around America, he delves into the odd lives of internet sex workers who sell video intimacy from the comfort of their own homes. In Portland, Oregon, Kevin meets Ceara Lynch, a 28 year old humiliatrix who insults men online for a living. Besides occasionally selling her panties, public hair and even her faeces, Ceara also runs a lucrative ‘ignore line’—a phone number that clients call, only to be put on hold. Kevin also visits Ela Darling, a former librarian turned cam model in her home in Los Angeles, from which she runs a Virtual Reality porn company, VR Tube. Ela treats Kevin to a live VR camming session before joining him in the real world to discuss the future of love, lust and loneliness.

Kevin McGahern travels around America meeting people who are redefining what it means to be family, in surprising ways. In South Carolina, Kevin rides with an anti-fascist motorcycle club called The Bastards. Their motto: “Who needs a father when you’ve got a brother?”. In San Francisco, Kevin meets Jeremy, the 23 year old ‘Jewish House Mom’ of Crypto Castle, a house of Bitcoin tech entrepreneurs who work hard and play hard in an arrangement that blurs the lines between family, friends and colleagues. Kevin travels to Ohio to attend The Gathering of the Juggalos—the weirdest festival in the world—as he meets the Juggalos, fans of the genre known as ‘clowncore,’ pioneered by the band Insane Clown Posse, known for their dedication to ‘family’, their clown makeup, and the cartoonish violence that dominates their events. Later, in Florida, Kevin visits ‘The Sausage Castle’, where a travelling band of misfits has found family in a house full of guns and glory holes.