Le minitel
I've been living in France since i was seven, so bear with me: Over here, before internet we had the Minitel which is a pretty crude attempt at a sort of phone network terminal, just a screen, a keyboard and a modem, useful for national yellow pages searches, etc.

Of course, a few minutes after it came out, it'd already been subverted to be used for sex chat services. If you've been to france in the 80's-90's you might've seen ad campaigns for these lines, usually 3615 (something) with a picture of a big breasted lady on it.

Anyhoo, during my stint at toulouse university, i answered an ad in a local paper, and ended up working for one of the companies behind the services. Basically i was paid to pretend to be a bunch of women, and had to get the sad saps who connected onto these things to talk for as long as possible.

As for the TMI part, well, i suppose any part of the conversations could fit in, but the weirdest was the fact that these services would have "hotesses" at the beginning of the listings, somebody supposed to represent the service in case of a conflict between two connectees or something... the thing is, a lot of blokes would connect on to the service only to talk to the "hotesse", and we each had our own. I was "Virginie". Erm, thats TMI already. They did so under the reasoning that "at least i know it's someone real", without imagining for one second that i might not be a foxy french lass but a slightly podgy student from bristol, who is also controlling "Emilie F25" and "SEXY GIRL 22a".

We also had a PO box so at xmas some of the clients would send chocolates and stuff.

So one of these blokes who only talked to my hotesse started asking me to come on a cruise on his yacht which was moored in st tropez, blablabla the whole nine yards... i knew he was in his fifties, and as a laugh i asked him to send me his photo.

Which he did.

One picture was sort of a shot of his top half, naked. He had a moustache and looked like some pervy uncle, which just in itself was pretty scary.

The second picture was him TOTALLY naked, and seemed to be at a party, talking to someone with a glass of whisky in his hand.

Naked. With his knob out, all casual like.

Waaaaaaay too much visual information... shame i didn't get to keep it, i could've scanned it for ya.

As for the rest of them on there, it was usually along the lines of "i'm at home, stroking my whatsit, i wanna do you on the coffee table"... i could waffle on for ages about it, an awful job, really awful, two and half years of TMI really.

One other bloke would tune in every single day for two months, and in the end got a 50000 franc phone bill (roughly 5000 pounds), and he had to sell some property to pay for it.

the only thing positive things i got out of it was fantastic sex with a married girl from Amiens, and the fact that i can type really fast with only two fingers.
(Alaning, Mon 10 Sep 2007, 12:41, Reply)