‘Monetizing the sexual experience’
I’ve mentioned before b3ta.com/questions/books2012/post1489177 that I used to work for Amazon, starting when it was just a books business.

After the .com bubble burst I had to make my team redundant and took redundancy myself. Unsure of what to do next I started to do some consultancy work whilst I looked for a permanent position, so uploaded my CV online.

I received a call from someone who said he worked for an online publishing business and wanted to talk to me about a marketing role for a job based in Barcelona. The company was Private.com (NSFW) – the legal “hardcore version of Playboy”. He asked me if that was a problem for me and if not he’d like to bring me out to Barcelona to spend a day with them to understand more about the business and to be interviewed by their European MD.

Knowing that there was no way I would work for them (it would have had a substantial long term impact on my career) I agreed to go out to meet them purely to have a free trip to one of my favourite cities.

In the meantime he sent me passwords for all of their sites so I could “familiarise myself with the content”. Circulating these to my friends got me several free pints.

On arrival at the offices they gave me a tour. I saw a gang bang being filmed in a studio and various different videos covering genres being edited. Every part of the offices contained serious grot. None of the commercial or technical staff batted an eyelid when talking about content.

I felt a bit sorry for them. I guess if you work in McDonalds the last thing you want to do is to eat a burger and the same principle applied to these people.

My interview with the MD took place in a meeting room with a massive glass cabinet down one wall containing their full range of vibrators, cock rings, symbian machines, anal beads, fisting mittens, butt plugs and kegal balls. An experience I don’t expect to repeat in the rest of my career.

After all that they didn’t offer me the job anyway, but I got a free trip to Barcelona and an extended tour around a porn set in action. Only the internet could have created this opportunity. Thank you Tim Berners Lee.
( Fucking hell Jeff I am not a robot, Sun 25 Mar 2012, 9:29, Reply)