People Paid to Hear Someone Cry in the Weird World Before the Internet [VIDEO]

The world before the internet was a strange place. People didn't troll strangers. We were much more secretive about extreme political beliefs. You had to rent a VHS tape if you wanted to Netflix & Chill. To interact with someone, you had to actually go outside your house.

There was one thing that was even weirder and filled the gap between the old world and the modern one. There was a time period in the 80's and early 90's where people found an outlet for their weird interactions by picking up the phone and calling a 900 number.

Pay-Per-Call services are mostly thought of as adult only type conversations, but it turns out there were a lot of other options. You could call a psychic, or listen to jokes, or (as is the case above) pay $2 for the 1st minute and 45 cents for each additional minute to listen to someone crying.

Thankfully, the internet came around and made the world better for us all. The 99% of us who are normal didn't have to see these commercials anymore and the 1% who wanted to hear someone crying could just find it for free on YouTube.

Pay-Per-Call numbers still do exist, but you have to imagine they aren't getting anyone super rich anymore. Still, if for some reason you want to drop a bunch of money and hear someone crying, you are welcome to try calling the old number and seeing if it works. We could have, but we don't want to explain those charges to the boss.