WORK|MONEY|CULTURE

Women Who Managed the First Super Successful Online Adult Website

I had no idea just how rich the owner was but we sure did have a lot of fun (as my personal photos reveal)

Thinking back to the days when I worked at IEG, Internet Entertainment Group, still blows my mind, especially after reading a few articles about its founder, Seth Warshavsky.

I had no clue how rich, powerful and, to some degree, brilliant he was at the time.

It was 1998 and I was living in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle when I began working at IEG. I felt extremely lucky to find a good paying job that was only a 5 minute walk from my place. I’m not a morning person and was an ideal fit for the graveyard shift, which was from 11pm-7am.

When I answered the ad in a local paper, I knew that the company was looking for a manager who was “open-minded”, but I never thought that it was in the adult entertainment industry.

I had no negative judgements towards pornography or sex workers. I had the skills to operate their cameras and computers from the control room. I was fascinated by the uniqueness of it all and I was only 21 years old.

The Internet was just an infant during that time. Most people didn’t have cell phones. There was a landline at work that employees used to call to let me know that they were running late or calling out.

I used to call a friend in Argentina from that phone and the costs were astronomical. My supervisor was livid when she found out months later, but she never made me pay for them, probably because our boss was a multi-millionaire.

In a recent blog post, I wrote about how my time here in Rijeka (quickly coming to an end) has been making me feel nostalgic about Seattle.

So it’s no surprise that working at IEG came to mind while thinking about things of interest that I could write about. I never thought to google IEG or “clublove”, which was the name of the website that now automatically redirects me to YouTube or Seth Warshavsky, before the other day.

Boy was I surprised by some of the things I read!

I first read about him on good ol’ Wikipedia:

“Seth Warshavsky (born 1973) is an American pornographer and the founder of Internet Entertainment Group (IEG). During the dot-com bubble, Warshavsky’s welcome media attention made him the face of the online pornography industry to a public fascinated with what was then virtually the only segment of the dot-com industry operating at a profit.”

“Warshavsky converted a warehouse in Seattle into the studios of IEG’s flagship website, Clublove.com. The website used computer technology that was cutting edge for its day. The business model was similar to that of a live peep show. For a monthly membership fee plus an hourly charge, you could watch post-card sized, low resolution images of women strip and touch themselves in real time. For more money, you could talk to the cam girls over the phone and direct them.”

“Warshavsky was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal in 1997.”

“Warshavsky was also rated by Time Magazine in their Digital 50 edition as one of the 50 original pioneers of the internet, with the likes of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Steve Case (Warshavsky was #40 out of 50).”

My old boss was on the front page of the Wall Street freakin’ journal!?? AND is seen as one of the “50 original pioneers of the Internet”….I still shake my head in disbelief.

Why?

Because in many ways, the “Arcade”, which was the live section of the website and where I managed various performers, was a complete, mismanaged mess!

I read an article today in Wired from 1997 that paints a much better portrait of what it was like to work there:

“The women who staff the Arcade full time, however, are unknowns, many of them students and artists who use their $20 an hour to cover the rent. Women like Laura, a slim, peroxide-blond Annie Lennox look-alike, who told me when I went back the next day, ‘I can’t believe I actually get paid to work here. I mean, come to a really nice environment to goof around nude for the benefit of unseen admirers — what could be better?’ “

Granted, I started working for them a year after that very long and detailed article was written. They had changed locations and guys were allowed to work there in “the Buddy Room”. None of the performers were students or artists, although one I knew took real estate classes to get out of the industry and many were artistic with their hair, clothes and make-up.

However, most felt that $20 wasn’t enough for what they were doing, which was basically masturbating in 1 of 4 different room: the bedroom, the health club, the shower and the dungeon. There was a camera in a corner of each room and I controlled them all from a “control room”.

In September of 1999 I did some traveling and returned about 6 months later. I didn’t know the extent of the controversy surrounding a “dildo cam” that Seth wanted to introduce. I found that out the other day when reading this article in the local paper of Seattle called, The Stranger. I won’t go into details. You can read it for yourself, if you’d like.

That article paints a more negative, but also more accurate, portrayal of what it was actually like to work there. It wasn’t nearly as bad as they made it sound though.

One of the funniest things about working in the “Arcade” was that it was advertised to be 24 hour live shows, but the company didn’t want to pay to have performers there 24/7. The most important part of my job was to make sure that tapes were always running to make it LOOK live.

I lied to customers in the chat rooms and told them that the phones weren’t working. They were supposed to be able to talk to the girls, and they used to be able to at one point. When they changed locations, this feature was shoddy and the performers didn’t like having to talk to customers anyway. It was only in use when guest performers, big name porn stars, came (no pun intended).

Performers used to go to a bar around the corner, drink alcohol and return to work. Sometimes they’d fall asleep while working since the bed in the bedroom was really comfortable. They’d go smoke cigarettes and weed in the room with the servers since there were no cameras there. Cameras were everywhere else, even where I worked in the control room.

I was really lucky though, because I worked graveyard most of the time when no one else was in the building.

It was usually slow until 4am, when people on the east coast began waking up — yes, to porn.

Sometimes I took naps. I ate whenever I wanted. I could take breaks whenever I wanted. I even figured out how to play movies on one of the televisions without the camera that was pointed at my back seeing that television. I was making almost $500/wk after taxes. My rent was only $425. For a 21 year old woman without a college degree in 1999, I was doing pretty well and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

But all things come to an end.

When I returned after my 6 month hiatus, things had changed. Most of my co-workers were unhappy and my supervisor had become a royal bitch. I don’t blame her though. Seth was really demanding and didn’t pay her nearly enough for all the bullshit she had to deal with.

In 2000, I left once again and never returned, except from time to time in my mind.

Other stories of mine that might pique your interest: