This reminiscing is all very well Dick, says one reader, but can you tell us what’s happening now, in real time? Where exactly are you? What are Arthur and Simon doing?
Fair enough. I know it gets confusing. I’m confused myself. So if you’re still with me here’s a brief recap Arthur and Simon are two old school-friends. They hitch-hiked to India together back in the Sixties. Since then Simon has become a successful TV personality. Arthur lives in Northern Thailand where he runs a half-arsed bookstore. I’m on a boat in the British Virgin Islands with a laptop and some rum bottles and not much else. I’m supposed to be narrating but my mind wanders. I mostly wear Speedos.
I believe I was telling you about my mate Oscar. After my problems with the law suit he offered to put me up in his house on Malibu Beach. Course there was a catch. There always is with Oscar. He will be appearing again in the narrative so I might as well say right now he is one of the most horrible people I’ve ever met. No scruples. And he doesn’t care. He wanted me around so he could bounce ideas off me. Nasty ideas.
This was '77-'78. People were starting to talk about personal computers. “Mark my words Dick,” said Oscar, “the internet will be the next big thing. And I mean big. Come and have a look at this.” He’s got this Macintosh thing set up and he shows me how it works. “These are floppy discs. You’ve got your keyboard here….and this is what we call a mouse. Here have a go.”
I sit down and he shows me how to move the cursor around. “Now click on that.” He says.
“Click?”
“Press the top of the mouse.”
Bloody hell. Up pops a picture of Johnny Wadd on the job.
“See the potential Dick? The porn business is always evolving. Just a matter of time before we can do videos.”
He starts telling me how it works but it all sounds a bit daft to me. The way Oscar explains it blokes would pay money to look at grainy, dirty pictures on computers! You’re kidding, I said. Trust me Dick, says Oscar. There’s a fortune to be made online.
Naturally I was asking myself ‘Where do I fit in?’ Oscar showed me the basics of it and we soon had about 50 subscription sites going. Html was in its early days so to keep things simple the sites were all selling pretty much the same stuff. Pictures took about 10 minutes to download but who’s going to complain? And who are they going to complain to? Course this was before spammers and all the clever little pop-ups came along. Basically all we had to do was keep the punters happy. We’d scan a few pics out of magazines and upload a new bunch every few weeks. The worst thing we worried about was people flogging their passwords, which they did of course, but the money rolled in anyway.
The nicest thing about it was you could do it from anywhere. All you needed was a decent modem. The phone connections were slow in the beginning but that soon changed. Then along came cable and wireless and bugger me I could be on the beach or in a hotel or even on an airplane pumping out porn to the sex-starved millions. It was better than a license to print money.
Fair enough. I know it gets confusing. I’m confused myself. So if you’re still with me here’s a brief recap Arthur and Simon are two old school-friends. They hitch-hiked to India together back in the Sixties. Since then Simon has become a successful TV personality. Arthur lives in Northern Thailand where he runs a half-arsed bookstore. I’m on a boat in the British Virgin Islands with a laptop and some rum bottles and not much else. I’m supposed to be narrating but my mind wanders. I mostly wear Speedos.
I believe I was telling you about my mate Oscar. After my problems with the law suit he offered to put me up in his house on Malibu Beach. Course there was a catch. There always is with Oscar. He will be appearing again in the narrative so I might as well say right now he is one of the most horrible people I’ve ever met. No scruples. And he doesn’t care. He wanted me around so he could bounce ideas off me. Nasty ideas.
This was '77-'78. People were starting to talk about personal computers. “Mark my words Dick,” said Oscar, “the internet will be the next big thing. And I mean big. Come and have a look at this.” He’s got this Macintosh thing set up and he shows me how it works. “These are floppy discs. You’ve got your keyboard here….and this is what we call a mouse. Here have a go.”
I sit down and he shows me how to move the cursor around. “Now click on that.” He says.
“Click?”
“Press the top of the mouse.”
Bloody hell. Up pops a picture of Johnny Wadd on the job.
“See the potential Dick? The porn business is always evolving. Just a matter of time before we can do videos.”
He starts telling me how it works but it all sounds a bit daft to me. The way Oscar explains it blokes would pay money to look at grainy, dirty pictures on computers! You’re kidding, I said. Trust me Dick, says Oscar. There’s a fortune to be made online.
Naturally I was asking myself ‘Where do I fit in?’ Oscar showed me the basics of it and we soon had about 50 subscription sites going. Html was in its early days so to keep things simple the sites were all selling pretty much the same stuff. Pictures took about 10 minutes to download but who’s going to complain? And who are they going to complain to? Course this was before spammers and all the clever little pop-ups came along. Basically all we had to do was keep the punters happy. We’d scan a few pics out of magazines and upload a new bunch every few weeks. The worst thing we worried about was people flogging their passwords, which they did of course, but the money rolled in anyway.
The nicest thing about it was you could do it from anywhere. All you needed was a decent modem. The phone connections were slow in the beginning but that soon changed. Then along came cable and wireless and bugger me I could be on the beach or in a hotel or even on an airplane pumping out porn to the sex-starved millions. It was better than a license to print money.
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