Interview · moment 6 of 28
Working a 1990s Phone Party Line in Boston
from Louis CK | The Tim Dillon Show #317 · #317
3 min
Guest
Louis tells a long story about his teenage job as an operator on a pre-internet 900-number party phone line, breaking up fights between Boston guys competing for the attention of the rare women callers, who would then arrange to physically fight each other.
- Tim worked as a moderator on a 1990s Boston phone party line before the internet.
- Party lines were voice chat rooms where callers paid per minute to connect with other people.
- As an operator, Tim monitored rooms of people using a headphone system and could see which channels had activity.
- When a woman entered a room full of men, all the guys would immediately try to talk to her simultaneously.
- Tim's job was to prevent aggressive fights between callers competing for the attention of women on the line.
- Boston Irish men would threaten each other with violence, escalating to the point of yelling their locations and neighborhoods.
- Men fighting over a woman would actually calm down and start negotiating the logistics of meeting up in person to fight.
- Two guys would coordinate plans to meet and fight over a woman who had already left the chat room ten minutes earlier.