I've been trying to find a cg for a long time. I'm not sure if this post violates rule 4 or not, but I don't think it does cause this is a genuine question.

Everytime I start talking to a CG on reddit, discord, fetlife, etc. It always comes to the point of them wanting me to pay them. The tribute itself isn't even the part that upsets me, it's the fact that they always want it digitally ahead of time (normally almost always the same day you talk to them for the first time).

It makes it wayyyy too hard to tell what's a scam and what's not. I'm willing to pay the tribute itself to show I'm serious if it's a reasonable price and not recurring, but I don't wanna send someone I just met that day money just so that they can block me... and then everytime they get offended even when I try to say that I'm not calling them a scammer specifically, but just that it's an easy way to scam someone so ofc I'm gonna be skeptical...

Idk AITAH? I really just wanna find my person, and it makes me upset everytime. I don't really have the money to take the risk, but Idk what else to do. Almost every single one I've seen has asked for a tribute of some kind, and the ones that don't normally will ghost out of nowhere even when the conversation seems to be going well.

Is this normal, and is it worth just taking the risk on one of them to hopefully not get scammed? Am I just looking in the wrong places? Idk does anyone have some good advice for this? I know this basically just turned into a vent, but I'm just frustrated rn.