My Hobby History: Part II, 1996-1999 (The Internet Changes Everything)

[TinMan]

This is the second of a series of threads I plan to start concerning my history in the hobby. My reason for investing the time and a discussion of my pre-internet start in whoring can be found here:

https://www.eccie.net/showthread.php?t=2496963

Newsgroups changed everything, at least for me.

I wish I could remember how I discovered Usenet in 1996. I’m not a tech guy, but being tech-curious and horny somehow led me to discover the exploding world of online sex.

I had a new desktop computer and a dial-up connection through whichever ISP Southwestern Bell contracted with at the time. This was before Google and other search engines where you could type a subject and the world would be made available in a nanosecond.

As best as I can recall, ISPs were offering readers for Usenet newsgroups that had become the first broadly available equivalent to today’s discussion forums. If you’re interested in how these discussion groups were managed and accessed, search “Usenet” on Wikipedia and you can get the details. If you want to get a feel for how the alt.sex.prostitutions newsgroups worked, I was able to find this FAQ (old timers in particular may appreciate the trip down memory lane):

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-sex/prostitution/faq/

I probably familiarized myself with newsgroups trying to learn more about a non-hobby subject, like travel. There was a logical hierarchy to the system, but since there wasn’t a search engine, you had to browse the news groups to find what you were looking for.

So, one day I started browsing the alt.* hierarchy and found alt.sex. Browse a little further and I found alt.sex.prostitution. My hobby fate was sealed.

All of a sudden, I had a place to go to ask about the ads I was seeing, the extras that might be available in studios, etc. My spending dramatically increased, since I was less likely to get busted or suffer blue balls.

I came up with a handle when I created my hobby email account (believe it or not, I still use that account more than 20 years later). I liked the whole “TinMan doesn’t have a heart” idea, which was the only connection I had to the character.

I lurked for awhile, at least 6 months, before I introduced TinMan to the world. Here is what appears to be my first post, from 1997:


Dick O'Stone has inspired me to "come out" with some of my experiences....

I've gone to most of the "jack shacks" in Tarrant County because I often have a short window of opportunity for this sort of endeavor and can't arrange an in-call visit in such a short timeframe. I'll apologize in advance for not being able to give specific addresses in most cases.

Arlington scene: They're plentiful along southeast quadrant of Hwy 360 and I30, but take note of the city ordinance prohibiting the private rooms from having doors. This obviously makes it less likely you'll get much beyond the standard show. In no case should you expect to get full service unless you invest a LOT of time and money. My impressions of some particular parlors:

Fantasy Nights (Due North of Lace nightclub a few blocks): It has been awhile, but the girls here were solid 8's and they didn't try to screw you out of too much money ($75/session). Strict no touch.

Dreamscapes (Galleria Dr.): Pricey ($250/session), but at times have received a little hand or between the-breast action. Girls here are 7's and 8's.

XTC (across the street from Six Flags Mall, on the east side): Been here once. Paid $75 for a standard show with a girl who would rate about a 6. Haven't been inspired to go back.

Xotic T'z (Galleria Dr.): The granddaddy of the D/FW jack shack scene. Used to be cheap and strictly no touch, but based on a recent experience in the Ft. Worth shop (see below), I haven't wanted to step in the place.

Fort Worth Scene: Only two places left, to my knowledge. At least they have doors at these places.

Xotic T's (N. Main, south of the stockyards): I walked in here one recent afternoon and and saw a woman so unattractive, I turned around and walked out. A couple of years ago, when I last visited the Arlington location, I noticed the girls were dropping to the 5 and 6 range; this one was no better than a 4.

Golden Goddess (S. Freeway @ Rysinger): My favorite. Girls are reasonably attractive (7's on average), and they stick around long enough so you can get to know them. Don't expect full service, but you can get some pretty heavy action from some of the girls, particularly after a few visits. Down side is the price: $250, but several of the girls put on a good enough show that you'll almost think its worth it. Ashley, Cheyenne and Chastity have been there the longest. You can call 817/568-6833 to find out which dancers are scheduled.

Hope this helps. If nothing else, you'll know what to expect (or not to expect) when you walk into one of these places.


Keep in mind this was a fairly small world when I joined. If you peruse the old posts that are still available (I used Google Groups for this purpose...not sure if they are archived elsewhere), you can see where most of our “leads” came from: alternative weeklies like the Dallas Observer (“Backpage” really was a back page back then), rags like Adult News & Entertainment (found at all your finer adult book stores and titty bars), and even the want ads of the dailies. The newsgroups were useful for decoding the ads (the DMN was a family newspaper after all), finding out which adult establishments might provide more than visuals (“jack shacks” were pervasive), and finally gave the ladies a means to start controlling their own careers.

Most of the acronyms we use today were popularized, if not coined, by the participants of this forum. It was just easier to type a few initials than use the jargon that was common on the streets. Out went “half and half”; in came “CBJ, CFS”. And even then, we were debating the meaning of GFE.

There are a number of stories I want to cover during this relatively brief period of my hobby career: the World Sex Guide, my immersion in studio life, Diana of Dallas (the first local provider to really exploit the internet), TSML, and the first legendary DFW hobbyist: the controversial but important figure Dick O’Stone. I’ll be exploring each of these subjects in depth with subsequent posts to this thread.

In the meantime, maybe some of the other old timers will provide their own remembrances, and correct the record where my memory may have failed me.

[Sir Lancehernot]

I subscribed to Newsweek in that era. One cover that arrived at my house had alt.sex.prostitution as one of many news groups and/or URLs (time fades) on it. At about the same time, I discovered the back pages of the Observer, and I was sent to NYC for six weeks at a time and found multiple tabloids available wherein escorts and brothels were advertised. Like you, my fate was sealed.

I had sworn not long before that that I would never have to pay to get laid. I was very significantly overimpressed by myself; it never occurred to me that money would be the ONLY way I would EVER get laid outside of marriage (and that stopped 21 years ago).

A few years ago, the question came up as to how the term "hobby" was popularized. The first use I could find of it was in an archived ASP post from the mid-90s by DOS.

A few other prominent local ladies who discovered ASP were Krissi-with-an-i, to distinguish her from Diana's sister, Krissy-with-a-y; and Nicky; along with Chelsea, who went on to become Rebecca.

Remember how we used to try to combat spam in Usenet by suggesting that people put ASP and the city (ASP Dallas) in the subject line? Some things never change, lol.

[TexTushHog]

Boy, Krissi with an i— now there’s a blast from the past.

Looking at the Google Groups a.s.p. I’m pretty positive that is not a full archive. The name that I first posted under is not there, though two of my first posts under my current hand,e are. I know my isp would have trouble maintaining g a consistent archive of articles. You’d see a thread one day, and it might be gone the next only to reappear a few days later.

And someone who knows more is going to ha e to make a fullish post on Dick O’Stone. He is truly a pioneer who moved the goal posts in a very significant way. He was a pioneer in this era and in the merger if the hobby and the internet.

[TinMan]

I’ll get to Dick soon (I don’t know if I like the way that came out). I’ll continue with my memories (supplemented with some actual research) of the World Sex Guide.

The WSG goes back at least to 1994 (anything other than horny geeks around back then?). It was a project maintained by a lady (presumably) named Atta, and hosted on the World Wide Web on a site appropriately named paranoia.com.

By the time I became active, Atta had a nice little database, consisting mostly of posts she pulled from the ASP newsgroups, but also supplemented by emails sent to her from folks whom she promised would remain anonymous when she posted their reports.

Atta would update the WSG every few weeks. I remember looking forward to those updates almost as much as I looked forward to a new issue of Boys Life coming in the mail when I was a kid. If you didn’t have access to the World Wide Web, she would email the updates to you. I don’t think she charged for this service, but member donations were solicited every once in awhile. I can’t imagine she made much money, at least originally. I do seem to recall that she started taking on advertisements, and became one of the earlier adopters of banner ads.

The WSG remained an active site well into the new millennium. I remember after my lengthiest hiatus from the hobby ended in 2001, almost the first place I went to get caught up was the WSG. The site hadn’t kept up with the times, with very little local activity. The newsgroups had pretty much dried up, too. It didn’t take me long to figure out there was a new, modern way to keep up with the hobby: ASPD. But for a few years, at least, the WSG was a vital part of the sex work landscape.

[Sir Lancehernot]

Interesting. I recognize the initials WSG, but I have no recollection of ever visiting that site. I do remember when Amber (I think it was) began advertising ASPD in ASP. I didn't pay attention to the posts at the time because we had begun using ASPD in the subject lines to identify discussion topics within ASP -- ASPD was for alt.sex.prostitution-discussion. At least I think that's how I remember it.

But WSG? Man, I'm drawing a blank.

[Sasquatch]

The memories are flooding back.

I recall Dick O Stone's writings. Words of wisdom for the times.

Grayson provided an outstanding experience at Golden Goddess. She upped her game with me after a glorious ass up DATY/DATO session. She damn near raped me the next dozen times I showed up.

Her buddy Mercedes was almost as accommodating after I massaged her back when she was worn down one day. A half hour session lasted more than 90 minutes orgasms for the both of us. Enjoyed her many times. It was worth the drive down south.

I hit every shack in Arlington. A busty lady at XTC expanded her boundaries after a few visits. She also arranged oral favors from her coworkers to really spice up my day.

So many other adventures.

The current scene is quite different for me. It's tough to find a non-Asian for immediate gratification. Then again, I really have grown to enjoy Asian delicacies. Can't eat just one.

[200K]

Thanks for sharing, TinMan!
The net has sure corrupted us!
We really take the technology now for granted. Kids now don't even know how to use a rotary dial phone.

[cage196]

wow

[TinMan]

Originally Posted by cage196

wow

Wow indeed

[BLM69]

We need a part 3!

[Alicia Lee]

This is interesting being so new to this I'm had no idea this was truly going to be a hobby or that this world even existed

[snarl]

I remember the early days of the internet. A few local BBSes had shell access to the internet. You'd dial in to the BBS, select the shell option, and get a UNIX shell. This predated using multiple stream PPP access from your PC. The shell would give you standard UNIX network access utilities, like archie, ftp, gopher, and tin. I used tin to access the newsgroups, mostly alt.binaries groups for downloading porn in base-64 encoded format. You'd tag every part of a text-encoded file, download them to the BBS's server, then convert them to binary with uudecode, and then download them to your PC using X-Modem or Y-Modem. That part could take upwards of 5 minutes PER FILE.


The other newsgroups I frequented were alt.sex.stories and (later) alt.sex.stories.moderated. I had several floppies full of text files before I got my first 40MB hard drive.




I never thought about alt.sex.prostitution. If I had, my life probably would have turned out differently.

[TexTushHog]

Spreading of shell access, I’ll try to remember enough about Compuserve to include that in a bit of the history.

As to World Sex Guide, it was a huge resource. I neevr knew Atta’s gender, but as TM pointed out, at first it was hosted on paranoia.com, and was just a manually archived and indexed collection of Usenet posts from a.s.p and later a.s.p.d (not to be confused with ASPD). Layer it was worldsexguide.com. But as it utility of the site became obvious — and it did very quickly — people began to submit reports directly with usernames.

I could stand to be corrected, but I think WSG was the first indexed by geography in forum, searchable, post by username hobby site ever in the web. And it was especially useful for international destinations. Then at some point, Attacwas going to quit maintaining it, and wirldsexguide.org too it’s content and took over taking new reports. But the worldsexguide.com got back in the game and for a time, they were both up and running with partially overlapping content.

[TinMan]

I’m a little surprised no one commented on the studio pricing back in the mid to late 90s. My favorite studio was Golden Goddess in Fort Worth. Services ranged from L1-L3, with most topping out at L2. You would pay the same price, regardless: $250.

They got away with it because guys couldn’t easily find something similar elsewhere. The information wasn’t yet available to the masses. That’s what we were trying to do back in those days: get the word out so guys could find what they wanted at the best price.

From what I can tell, today you can get similar service for $200 at Kendra’s; $300 if you want the whole she-bang.

When I say the internet changed everything, this is what I mean. It’s a textbook case of market efficiency at work. Rates have not kept up with inflation, and you don’t see nearly the wide variation in pricing that you did when the internet was young.

[Sir Lancehernot]

Originally Posted by TinMan

I’m a little surprised no one commented on the studio pricing back in the mid to late 90s. My favorite studio was Golden Goddess in Fort Worth. Services ranged from L1-L3, with most topping out at L2. You would pay the same price, regardless: $250.

They got away with it because guys couldn’t easily find something similar elsewhere. The information wasn’t yet available to the masses. That’s what we were trying to do back in those days: get the word out so guys could find what they wanted at the best price.

From what I can tell, today you can get similar service for $200 at Kendra’s; $300 if you want the whole she-bang.

When I say the internet changed everything, this is what I mean. It’s a textbook case of market efficiency at work. Rates have not kept up with inflation, and you don’t see nearly the wide variation in pricing that you did when the internet was young.

For the longest time, even throughout the period covered by this post, I was still relying to a great extent on printed media. The flood of information we have now was a mere trickle.

What I find more interesting is that, despite the ready availability of so much information, there are still so many guys going into appointments with providers who have enough "No" recommendations that anyone with a lick of sense would stay away, or providers who simply meet basic physical expectations.

For lots of guys, I know, that's enough. But there are plenty of clients who go see a known meets-exoectations girl knowing that she will only meet expectations, yet hoping somehow she'll exceed expectations, and then give her a "meets expectations" review and sound a little disappointed that it wasn't any better. I can't square that circle. The ready availability of so much information hasn't eliminated the demand for sub-optimal product like I would think it would have. It's like buying a Pinto, knowing that it's Pinto, then getting upset when it turns out to be a Pinto instead of a Mercedes.

Anyway, I think the better point you raised was disintermediation -- opening up the hobby to a lot of women who would never have entered it when their only recourse was to work at the whim or a pimp or a madam. Studios are still in business because some women prefer to work in the environment that they offer to the indie world. For many, studios are an stepping-off point to indie status. But 30 years ago, that wasn't the case. The Internet, as you said, allowed many women to assume control of their lives in this profession.