Yesterday, I got an alert that somebody was following me on Twitter.  It was a female name, not quite as blatant as Fifi LaBoom, but trending that way.  I think it was Louella something, but I ditched the notification when I found what it was.

It might have been genuine, but I doubted it.  I always look first before reciprocating, and in this case I found that young Fifi was following some 700 people and had three followers.

That struck me as an unexpected ratio on Twitter, where people typically follow twice as many as follow them, or if they are pack leaders, have more followers than people they follow.  I also noted the explicit language Fifi used, and suspected that all was not as it appeared.

To check my suspicions looked at one of "her" links.  It was to a page of ladies with varying degrees of wardrobe malfunction or deficiency.  Suffice it to say that young Fifi, probably a 120 kg mafioso in a dingy street in Vladivostok, is now blocked.

Clever people, these smut merchants: in 1859, Charles Baudelaire complained that pornographers were already exploiting the new technique of photography, and I'm now trying to think of any technology since cave painting that they haven't jumped into as early adopters of explicit sexuality.

Think of Wainewright the Poisoner, a man convicted of forgery and transported to Van Diemen's Land (even though everybody 'knew' that he had done far worse), who made a living painting scenes of sexual activity.

Think of literature sent "under plain wrapper".

Think of the car, where "back seat" does not make one think first of back seat drivers.

Think of the "adventuresses" who travelled on river boats (at least in the US).

Think of phone sex.

Think of the Mile-High Club.

Sex was widely used from the 1880s to sell lawn mowers.

I suspect the microwave oven may be the only stand-out.