> All french citizen had a free minitel device (like a mini computer)

Nitpicking: AFAIR, the Minitel was not "free" but rented - just like most ISPs in France today rent an ADSL modem-router.

Also, the Minitel was not really a mini-computer but merely a screen, a keyboard and a modem in a single box. People could tell the difference with a computer, because at that time 8-bit micro-computers (Amstrad CPC, Commodore C64, ZX Sinclair, Atari ST, you name it) were not uncommon at home.

> Now the only problem with State driven technological projects : Once it was delivered, Th french telecom did not continue to improve the system

Actually, they did. The French Wikipedia page [1] is much more detailed than its English language counterpart. The latest model could display JPEG black-and-white images, and spoke at 9600bps (versus 1200bps for the first gen.). But it is true it was too little too late; it could not rival the multimedia PC/Modem combo that started to be affordable for the masses at that time.

The (maybe?) too slow evolution of the tech probably had to more to do with the huge userbase and backwards compatibility issues than with "State driven tech projects" (BTW French civil nuclear power and high speed trains were for a long time "State driven tech" and are still alive and more-or-less kicking). Just like IPv4 seems to not want to die today.

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel

All of my Minitel terminals (2) were free from France Telecom. Living in France since 1982.

You're right. And to be more precise, French government at that time pushed its citizen to use the minitel:common example that come at the top of mind: when I was younger minitel was mandatory to register yourself at school or university which explains the quite important development within the country.there were even store offering minitel service. However this monopoly position were disrupted like any other monopoly by better and more advanced technology.

What do men get out of catfishing other men?

Speaking for myself, my friends and I would do this as teens in '99 with a open protocol chat program called MIRC. This was chatting with strangers, and back then everyone opened conversations by asking "ASL?" which meant "Age, Sex, Location".

We figured out pretty early on that by saying "Female", you opened yourself up to a torrent of creepy come-ons, which to us was absolutely hilarious. Here was this complete stranger who did not have so much as a profile picture to go off of, either professing his undying love to you after a few messsages, or straight up using abusive and degrading language.

As an old millenial now, it's been pretty shocking to me how open Gen Z is about revealing numerous identifying details about themselves on social networks. I'm under 40 and we were raised to protect our privacy online, and this was when surveillance tech was in the stone ages.

>surveillance tech was in the stone ages.

I believe it is a mistake to think that. I have some notes from an undergraduate course in digital signal processing, dated 1979. There is a section written by someone from "Joint Speech Research Unit, Cheltenham" there can only be one organisation in that town interested in researching speech, good friends of No Such Agency.

Reminds me of this: http://bash.org/?768122

But it's precisely that. The prevailing attitude is that, well, advertisers are going to track that you googled "ob/gyn prenatal care XYZ area" and hostiles are going to be able to doxx you anyway -- you have to take proactive measures to ensure privacy so fuck it.

I think it's a pretty broad hobby for early teenagers and children. For me personally, I just thought it was funny. It's also interesting, because you find out very fast that there's some guys just a little too into it when you say you're a 13yo girl. That I think informs your behaviour online also. It's a consequence-free way to learn about loads of impulses other people have, without the shadow of adult oversight.

When I was a young teen my friends and I picked female avatars on Runescape because we'd get free items from presumably male players. Sometimes you'd have to 'flirt back' but inevitably you'd get some good items, gold, and some creepy messages. As a 14 year old kid, it was hilarious to think about some sad older man flirting via Runescape gifts.

I had this happen as recently as probably 2007. I was in my 20s at the time, and it also happened in an online game (WoW). Albeit, my experience certainly wasn't deliberate.

For whatever reason, I've almost always preferred playing female characters, but it quickly became an eye-opener to me how creepy other dudes are online. One of the more abusive of these sorts (funny at the time until I realized it was a behavior he probably continued to actual woman) was when I'd gone in to help some RL friends who were stuck in a dungeon, and they had this random chap in the group. As soon as I joined up, he started hitting on me. I ignored it for a while until it started getting really strange, and I told him rather flatly:

"I'm a dude, dude."

He went ballistic and called me all manner of names, inferring that I must clearly be homosexual because I was playing a woman (not sure how that works). After launching into his insults, he quickly left the group. I think he tried harassing me via private messages, but I blocked him by that point.

It occurred to me sometime later that the fact he realized he was hitting on another guy must have challenged his sexuality and made him incredibly uncomfortable doubtless leading to his anger and lashing out.

I noticed this behavior dropped off dramatically in the years following, either because more dudes (like me) were playing female characters and the creepy sorts realized it was a minefield to take the risk against random other players who may or may not troll them. Or perhaps harassment of the sort started to be taken seriously by the moderation team as the number of women playing increased.

I have reasons to doubt the latter and suspect it's a combination of the former. I also suspect most of the harassment was probably concentrated in guilds by that point where I wasn't as likely to see it firsthand as I played largely with people I personally knew. Leastwise, the weird random encounters dropped off precipitously within about a year.

I wish all the dudes who don't believe women get harassed _all the time_ would take a spin just playing an online game as a woman. Shit is real.

I've had coworkers in customer success get messages from stalkers via Intercom like "Hey <female name> I know where you live and work, be careful."

Agreed.

It's true: The experience was eye-opening to me, and that was what--13 years ago? Actually longer, now that I think about it, since I started playing at release in 2004 (also on female characters).

And you're right, I think it's a valuable experience that has to be seen to be believed. It's easy for me to post about it here, but it's difficult to convey how annoying it was (at best). Not simply from borderline sexual harassment either. There was, at the time, an undercurrent of harassing accusation that any dude playing a female character clearly had to be "gay." Looking back on it, this whole idiotic and immature belief was laughable, because all the gay guys we had in our guild played male characters. They also gave me a hard time for being hit on with some regularity, so at least there was some levity among our group to make light of an otherwise sad and disgraceful situation.

Unfortunately, that's not the only circumstance I can remember. There's easily half a dozen others varying from odd to outright creeper material that stand out, though not as much as the one I shared above. I figure if it happened to me that frequently, it's absolutely happening to women whom other players know are women MUCH more often. It wasn't just limited to long term encounters, either. Just standing around waiting for something as a female character in the early days of the game sometimes painted me as a potential target.

A friend of mine who also played female characters--and who moonlighted as a stand-up comedian--had similar experiences, but his dialog was absolutely hilarious to watch.

Yeah, it was the same on Ragnarok Online when I played a female character as a teen. You got free items and creepy messages like "are you a virgin?".

I am pretty certain it’s especially fun for kids to discover what men are into so that when they finally grow up they could be better in touch with their own needs

Nothing. They are just young people who make fun of others.

Poster said he was a teenager. For adolescences, everything around sexuality is interesting. Some of those men he was tricking were probably other teenagers pretending to be adults!

paid & laid: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24440393

Yes, I was 16 as well in 1986 and was also interested in technology, especially when it was called 3615 ULLA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fmsF6PDXwc, probably NSFW because it is horribly politically incorrect today, like most of what we had in the 80's)

On the serious side - Minitel was such an incredible experience! The only feeling similar to that was the first email I sent in 1992.

I feel it is a horribly lost opportunity to lead the web, teen like us were driving the idea a lot (I was trying to explain my parents to not take the phone book anymore becauseit was all there, a search away...)

> french telecom did not continue to improve the system.

Had they improved it, it would still have made it paying by the minute because they had no interest in any other business model.

It was back when France was still "communist" and managed to make a profit out of it :-)