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#10 The French Connection

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Gimlet

Society & Culture, Documentary, Technology

4.729.4K Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2015

⏱️ 21 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the early 80's, way before the world wide web existed, the French government shipped a $200 terminal to every home with a phone line, and created a service that for decades ran alongside the internet. It was called The Minitel. Producer Carla Green speaks to reporter Jean-Marc Manach, who, in the early 90's, made a living posing as a woman in sex chat rooms on Minitel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

So PJ, you are not much younger than me, but younger enough that you come from like

0:19.6

a different internet generation than I do.

0:21.8

Yeah.

0:22.8

When I started using the internet, it was like 91.92 and it was sort of before the world

0:26.0

web. So I would dial in to a local bulletin board. There was a four phone lines and I would

0:31.5

just get hours and hours of busy signals while everybody desperately jokied for one of

0:36.4

those four phone lines and then I would connect and then my dad would get call waiting

0:39.8

and 15 minutes later I would get bumped off which was unbelievably frustrating.

0:43.9

And also when you started going on the internet, wasn't it like you could log onto a bulletin

0:48.2

board, only you could be on it and you'd like leave a message into someone else would

0:51.6

go on it?

0:52.6

Or so four people could be on it at the same time, it was creating fancy.

0:57.5

I used AOL like every normal person which meant that I could talk to Americans for

1:02.5

anywhere in the world who had gotten a disc in the magazine.

1:06.0

Wow, that's pretty cool. You were pretty futuristic.

1:09.1

I have a memory of going to like a chat room and talking to some adult woman who was like,

1:15.2

I guess she was flirting with me, but I didn't understand flirting and she was like,

1:18.9

hey do you want to talk in a private chat room? And I was like, yeah. And she said age

1:23.0

sex location and I was like 12 years old male, have referred. And she was like, I got

1:30.2

bigger fish to fry and then she logged off.

1:32.2

Those were her exact words.

1:34.0

I got bigger fish to fry.

...

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